Xenorate uses directshow for video playback.
EditByBSEditor: Xenorate uses directshow for video playback. This means, we use your installed codecs for playing media content.

Basically this is good, but in some cases its annoying if you are missing some codecs.

By the way, Xenorate shows you which video & or audio codecs are missing ;-)

Thats the reason we came out with our own free codec pack which includes all required codecs to play almost every media format out there.

It also enforces that only xenorate can use this codecs, because we do not want to disturb any other installed directshow applications.

Codec pack features
Core filters:

ffdshow Audio & Video Decoder (Own build from ffdshow-tryout)
Contains tons of video & audio codecs out-of-the-Box:

H.264/AVC1, XvID, DivX, MPEG-4, Sorenson, Flash Video, Theora, ...

MPEG Layer 1-3, AC3, DTS, AAC, FLAC, True Audio, Vorbis, AMR, WMA, Real Audio, ...

Haali Media Splitter
Source filter for the following formats:

MPEG-4 (MP4)
Matroska (MKV)
Ogg Media (OGM)
Transport Stream (TS)
AVI
Including support for dynamic stream switching.

DirectVobSub (VSFilter)
Supports the following subtitle formats:

IDX, SMI, SUB, SRT, PSB, SSA, ASS, USF

Used for loading internal & external subtitles.

DVD/MPEG-2 filters:

MPV Decoder
Free mpeg-2 video decoder for playing dvds.

Addon filters:

Realmedia Splitter
Source filter for reading realmedia files.

BeRo Tracker Source
Supports the following audio formats:

ProTracker (*.mod)
ScreamTracker 3 (*.s3m)
FastTracker 2 (*.xm)
ImpulseTracker (*.it)
Imago Orpheus (*.imf)
MadTracker 2 (*.mt2)
BeRoTracker (*.brt)
669 Composer (*.669)
ScreamTracker (*.stm)
MultiTracker (*.mtm)
Oktalyzer (*.okt)
Mod#39s Gave/Grave Composer (*.wow) you can free download Xenorate Codec Pack 1.1 now.