How to add Support for Flac, Ogg and other formats to Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a native multimedia player that is available in all versions of Windows that Microsoft supports. While Microsoft did create special editions for use in the European Union and some other regions that come without it by default, it is fair to say that the player is available on the vast majority of Windows systems.
Windows Media Player supports only select media formats by default. It supports audio formats such as mp3, wav, or wmv, and a selection of video formats as well.
The multimedia player refuses to play any format that it does not support; that is different from players such as VLC Media Player or AIMP that play a gazillion formats out of the box.
WMP Tag Plus plugin for Windows Media Player
WMP Tag Plus is an extension for Windows Media Player that adds support for several new formats to the multimedia player.
Support in this context means that Windows Media Player plays the new formats just like any other and that it will integrate files with the new extensions into its libraries.
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The plugin for Windows Media Player adds support for the following extensions after installation: ape, fla, flac, m4a, m4p, mpc, oga, ogg, and wv.
As far as supported formats are concerned, support is added for the following: Monkey's Audio, FLAC, Musepack, MPEG-4, Vorbis, and WavPack. All formats come with read, write and tag support.
The WMP Tag Plus options launch automatically on first start of Windows Media Player after installation and you will notice that Windows Media Player refreshes the libraries on first start as well thanks to support for new file formats.
You can open the options at any later point in time as well in the following way:
- Select Tools > Plugins > Options from the main menu bar of Windows Media Player.
- Switch to the Background category on the Plug-ins page.
- Select WMP Tag Plus and then Properties.
The plugin detects if extensions have native support already, for instance through installation of codec packs, and won't interfere with the integration.
You can disable formats on the formats tab; the only reason you may want to do so is if you run into playback issues with a format that you can't resolve.
The Tools tab gives you an option to refresh song tags. Doing so will refresh tags of all songs and add the music to the library based on those tags. The program preserves existing tags and the developer notes that using the feature is only necessary if you added music files in formats that WMP Tag Plus adds to Windows Media Player prior to installation of the plugin or when the plugin was disabled.
Verdict
WMP Tag Plus is a useful plugin for Windows users who work with Windows Media Player. The plugin extends playback capabilities of the media player.
Check out the developer's other Windows Media Player plugin, Windows Media Player Plus, which adds tag editing and other functionality to the player.
