The Combined Community Codec Pack (CCCP) is a collection of

codec A codec is a computer hardware or software component that encodes or decodes a data stream or signal. ''Codec'' is a portmanteau of coder/decoder. In electronic communications, an endec is a device that acts as both an encoder and a decoder o ...

s (video compression filters) packed for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, designed originally for the playback of

anime is a Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, , in Japan and in Ja ...

fansubs. The CCCP was developed and maintained by members of various fansubbing groups. The name is a pun on the name of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

; namely, the

Cyrillic The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Ea ...

version of the

abbreviation An abbreviation () is a shortened form of a word or phrase, by any method including shortening (linguistics), shortening, contraction (grammar), contraction, initialism (which includes acronym), or crasis. An abbreviation may be a shortened for ...

of its full name in

Russian Russian(s) may refer to: *Russians (), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *A citizen of Russia *Russian language, the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages *''The Russians'', a b ...

(Сою́з Сове́тских Социaлисти́ческих Респу́блик). As part of the joke, the project's logo features the

hammer and sickle The hammer and sickle (Unicode: ) is a communist symbol representing proletarian solidarity between industrial and agricultural workers. It was first adopted during the Russian Revolution at the end of World War I, the hammer representing wo ...

and star from the

Flag of the Soviet Union The State Flag of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also simply known as the Soviet flag or the Red Banner, was a Red flag (politics), red flag with two Communist symbolism, communist symbols displayed in the Canton (flag), canton: a gold ...

. The CCCP was last updated on October 18, 2015. There are more up-to-date

alternatives Founded in 1994, Alternatives, Action and Communication Network for International Development, is a non-governmental, international solidarity movement, international solidarity organization based in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Alternatives works ...

Purpose

CCCP was created to fulfill the following: * Alleviate the major problems caused by conflicting codec packs * Provide a video media playback standard for the

community * Be capable of playing back most common video media files and formats * Be easy to install and uninstall — even for users with no technical knowledge The pack is small and compact, containing only what is needed for most videos; it intentionally disables support for many codecs it considers unnecessary. It thus can potentially avoid problems caused by inappropriate combinations of filters by providing an all-inclusive playback solution. To view a CCCP-approved video, one must simply theoretically uninstall all other codec packs and install the CCCP. This philosophy leads to some disadvantages; since many formats are not enabled by default, they have to be manually toggled by the user if needed. Additionally, unlike many competing packs, CCCP is designed around decoding rather than encoding, and as such doesn't include many video encoders that other packs do. The CCCP is made only for the

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and works with Windows XP/Vista/7/8/10. The last release to support Windows 2000 is 2010-10-10; the last release to support Windows 98/Me is 2007-02-22.

Reception

In 2006,

On2 On2 Technologies, formerly known as The Duck Corporation, was a small publicly traded company (on the American Stock Exchange), founded in New York City in 1992 and headquartered in Clifton Park, New York, that designed video codec technology. ...

began recommending the CCCP as a simple decoding solution to feed video and audio to their Flix encoding application. The CCCP staff recommends to not use On2's included registry patch, but rather turn on or off any necessary codecs within the CCCP settings menu. In 2009, the German

C't ''c't'' – (; ''Magazine for Computer Technology'') is a biweekly German computer magazine, published by the Heinz Heise, Heinz Heise publishing house of Hanover. file:Ct jubilaeum 30 turm.jpg, The 5.71 meter high tower from the 587 published ...

magazine recommended CCCP as the only trustworthy codec pack available today.

Technical details

:''Note: Installing all of these separately will not have the same effect as installing the CCCP because the Media Player Classic Home Cinema is customized and so are all of the components' settings.'' * Gabest's FLV Splitter * Haali Media Splitter * LAV filters * Media Player Classic Home Cinema lite (custom build) * xy-

VSFilter DirectVobSub (formerly known as VSFilter) is a software add-on for Microsoft Windows (a DirectShow filter) that is able to read external subtitle files and superimposes them on a playing video file. DirectVobSub/VSFilter were formerly part of ...

CCCP adds

Video for Windows Video for Windows was a suite of video-playing and editing software introduced by Microsoft in 1992. A runtime version for viewing videos only was made available as a free add-on to Windows 3.1, which then became an integral component of Windows ...

(VFW) codecs and

DirectShow filter DirectShow (sometimes abbreviated as DS or DShow), codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and application programming interface, API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is ...

s to the system, so that DirectShow/VFW based players like MPC,

Winamp Winamp is a media player (software), media player for Microsoft Windows originally developed by Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev by their company Nullsoft, which they later sold to AOL in 1999 for $80 million. It was then acquired by Rad ...

, and

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP, officially referred to as Windows Media Player Legacy to retronym, distinguish it from Windows Media Player (2022), the new Windows Media Player introduced with Windows 11) is the first media player (application soft ...

will use them automatically.

Supported formats

Container format A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Nota ...

s: AVI, OGM, MKV, MP4, FLV,

3GP 3GP (3GPP file format) is a digital multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services, largely based on MPEG-4 Part 12. A 3GP container may consist of H.263 or H.264 video ...

and TS *

Video codec A video codec is software or Computer hardware, hardware that data compression, compresses and Uncompressed video, decompresses digital video. In the context of video compression, ''codec'' is a portmanteau of ''encoder'' and ''decoder'', while ...

s: H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2, Generic MPEG-4 ASP (

3ivx 3ivx ( ) was an MPEG-4 compliant video codec suite, created by 3ivx Technologies, based in Sydney, Australia. 3ivx video codecs were released from 2001 to 2012, with releases of related technologies continuing until 2015. 3ivx provided plugins to ...

, lavc, etc.),

DivX DIVX (Digital Video Express) is a discontinued digital video format. Created in part by Circuit City, it was an unsuccessful attempt to create an alternative to video rental in the United States. The format's poor reception from consumers resu ...

, XviD, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, WMV9, FLV1, and

Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It was developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg contai ...

Audio codec An audio codec is a device or computer program capable of encoding or decoding a digital data stream (a codec) that encodes or decodes audio. In software, an audio codec is a computer program implementing an algorithm that compresses and decompres ...

s: MP1, MP2,

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

, AC3, DTS,

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder ( codec) for lossy audio compression, libvorbis. Vorbis is most comm ...

, LPCM,

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

, TTA and

WavPack WavPack is a free and open-source lossless audio compression format and application implementing the format. It is unique in the way that it supports hybrid audio compression alongside normal compression which is similar to how FLAC works. ...

Notable formats not natively supported

Nullsoft Streaming Video Nullsoft, Inc. was an American software house founded in Sedona, Arizona in 1997 by programmer Justin Frankel. Its products included the Winamp media player and the SHOUTcast MP3 streaming media server. History In 1997, Justin Frankel, ...

.nsv *

QuickTime QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Pla ...

.qt .mov (Can be played back with CCCP's MPC by installing the official

software or QuickTime Alternative) *

RealMedia RealMedia is a proprietary multimedia container format (digital), container format created by RealNetworks with the filename extension . RealMedia is used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio, while also being used for Streaming media, st ...

.rm .rmvb (Can be played back with CCCP's MPC by installing the official

RealPlayer RealPlayer, formerly RealAudio Player, RealOne Player and RealPlayer G2, is a cross-platform media player (software), media player app, developed by RealNetworks. The media player is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimed ...

software or Real Alternative)

References

External links

* {{official website, www.cccp-project.net Codecs Windows-only freeware