Convincing .flac files to play in Windows Media Player 12
For quite some time, whenever I wanted to play .flac files I resorted to using Winamp. Winamp is a perfectly good piece of software, but at the end of the day my preference has always been with Windows Media Player. I recently installed Windows 7 and decided that now was as good a time as any to see if I could do away with Winamp and listen to all my music through Windows Media Player 12.
I’m happy to say that getting .flac files playing in Windows Media Player wasn’t actually all that difficult. Still, there seems to be some confusion regarding the process and everything I’ve read online makes it out to be more difficult than it needs to be. So I thought I’d write a quick guide that I’m hoping will have a better signal-to-noise ratio than what’s already out there. I suspect the instructions I’m providing here work equally as well on some older versions of Windows Media Player, though I’ve only tested this out on version 12 and your mileage may vary.
The short version of getting .flac files to play in Windows Media Player 12
- Close Windows Media Player 12.
- Go to http://xiph.org/dshow/ and download the Windows 32-bit Installer of the codecs. Do this, regardless of whether you have a 32 or 64-bit operating system. Install it.
- Restart your computer.
- Open Windows Media Player 12.
- Try opening one of your .flac files through Windows Media Player 12.
If at this point you’ve got your .flac files playing through Windows Media Player, then rejoice in whatever way you see fit (if you lack imagination, a cheque in the mail would be fine). If your .flac files aren’t playing, then by the power vested in me by my Works On My Machine certificate, I hereby abdicate myself of all responsibility for your stuff not working and redirect you back to Google to seek further assistance.
So you’ve got your .flac files playing, but they’re not showing up in your media library. Fear not! There’s an emacs command a plugin for that!
Getting your .flac files to show up in Windows Media Player 12 library
- Close Windows Media Player 12
- Go to http://www.softpointer.com/WMPTagSupport.htm and download the tag support plugin. Install it.
- Restart your computer.
- Open Windows Media Player 12.
- Reimport your music library.
Now the last step there, “reimporting” your music library – I don’t know of any new fan dangle way of doing this and if a “reimport” button does exist then I sure haven’t found it. The way I “reimport” my music library is to first remove all of my library folders (press Ctrl + M to show the menu bar and then go File > Manage Libraries > Music and remove all of the library location folders that you keep your music in). Then I add my music folders back again; believe it or not, using the “Add…” button. This should force Windows Media Player to repopulate your music library, this time including any .flac files.
And really that’s all there is to it. Now you can play your .flac files through Windows Media Player and even access them through the media player library.
For those interested, here’s a few quick notes on some of the things I glossed over in the instructions:
- I’ve recommended restarting your computer after installing both the codecs and the library tag plugin. You might actually be able to get away without doing any restarts. The only reason I recommend restarting your computer is that when I installed the codecs/library tag plugin, Windows Media Player froze on me when I tried to pause one of the .flac files I was listening to. I suspect this was caused by having not restarted my computer after installing the codecs, although I could be wrong.
- I’ve said to download the 32-bit version of the codecs, regardless of whether you have a 32 or 64-bit operating system. If you have a 32-bit version of Windows, of course this makes sense. If you have a 64-bit version of Windows, then your computer actually has two versions of Windows Media Player installed on it; a 32-bit version and a 64-bit version. The thing is, by default, Windows uses the 32-bit version of Windows Media Player whenever you launch it and not the 64-bit version (I don’t know for sure why, but I imagine it’s to do with some aspect of compatibility). The 64-bit version of the codecs don’t work with the default (32-bit) version of Windows Media Player.
Thanks for the article. I would have to say that getting .flac & .ogg files to play well with WMP is a chore at the very least. After installing the plugin support in Xp, WMP still freezes and crashes regularly. Although I have my files playing in my Win7 64, I will withhold my judgement until I really put it through the paces.
Hi Jaq,
After having read the existing articles on getting .flac playing in Windows Media Player I too thought it must be a real pain or not even possible to get working. I was actually quite surprised by how easy it was in the end, though based on your comment it sounds as though things can be a little more difficult with XP. I’ve only been playing .flac files/using the plugin mentioned in my article through media player 12 for probably two weeks, but during that time it hasn’t missed a beat (bad pun, I know). If you come across any other problems, please do share.
Hey Bryce, I have Windows 7 64 bit on my machine and I’ve never had a problem playing flac files and they are in my library on WMP 32 and 64 bit programs but they are in the other media section. I have WMP tag plus installed and Shark007 codecs for 32 and 64 bit installed. Do you actually have your flac files showing up with your regular artists files? That’s what I’m trying to do. I have wma, flac, and mp3 files on my machine and the wma and mp3 all show up in the library under the artists name but not the flac. any help would be appreciated.
Hi Anthony,
Yep, my .flac files show up with my regular artists files in media player. I haven’t tried WMP Tag Plus though (I’m using the tag support plugin that I link to above in my post), so WMP Tag Plus may have something to do with your .flac files not showing up under artists on your machine. All I can suggest is that you try the tag plugin I’ve linked to above and see how that goes.
Good luck!
I checked again and some of my songs are under the artists name and some are still in the other files section. I’ve tried that plug-in before and I don’t think it fixed it either but I’ll try again. Would be nice if it just worked out of the box. I would even pay a small fee to M$ if they would have full flac and other lossless support for WMP. I remember when XP came out I had to buy an mp3 decoder to use on WMP. Why can’t they just offer that now? They know people would pay it. Too bad we can’t sue them for their lack of support for an open source codec out the box. Say they are trying to monopolize with their own wma lossless. Or do you think we could???:)
Very fast and easy Didn’t even have to restart my pc
thanks !
Quote “The 64-bit version of the codecs don’t work with the default (32-bit) version of Windows Media Player”
Yes they do. I’ve installed the x64 codecs and WMP x86 plays flac files fine.
Unfortunately, the Tag Support Plugin causes WMP 12 on Windows 7 x64 to crash when playing movies.
Music plays fine, it’s just movies that make it immediately crash if the plugin is enabled.
Their website states it supports x86 only, but I don’t know for certain if that’s the reason.
Anyway, instead I’ve had to use “WMP Tag Support Extender v1.4″ or “WMP Plus v1.2″.
Either one work great on x64 without crashing WMP.