Some Wikipedia articles include sound or video files. The purpose of this page is to explain how to play sound and video files found on Wikipedia. For help making and converting video and audio into the format usable on Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Media.
Wikipedia media files can be played on almost all personal computers. However, your computer must have the right software. If your computer does not automatically play these files when you click on them, you can enable it to do so by downloading and installing free software from the Internet.
Sound files on Wikipedia generally use the Ogg project's Vorbis sound format, and video files use the Ogg Theora format. Although these are not the most common media formats, they are used in order to avoid possible problems with patented formats, such as MP3 or MPEG.
Occasionally music files use the MIDI format (.MID extension). Usually the Midi format gives no problems while most computers have a midi-enabled player and sound card.
Ogg files
The list below contains programs capable of playing both video (Theora) and audio (Vorbis) files. Look under your operating system and follow a link to download and install the software of your choice.
It is highly recommended that you use a program which is capable of playing both Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora files. The reason is that both files use the same file extension, namely .ogg. Programs which can only play Ogg Vorbis files, such as Winamp, will still attempt to load video (Ogg Theora) files but will fail to play them.
Windows
- Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora codecs for all versions of Microsoft Windows can be found at Illiminable.com/ogg (click on "Download Now"). Run the program to install the codecs. After installing these, Windows Media player (as well as several other players) should play any .ogg file properly.
- MPlayer for Windows [1] is available as a zip file, and can play .ogg files.
- jetAudio is a versatile multimedia application that can play almost all media types, including Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora.
- VLC
Macintosh
Unix (Including Linux, *BSD, Solaris, etc)
- libtheora [2] is required for Ogg Theora support. It comes with a demo video player (player_example).
- MPlayer [3] can play Ogg Theora files using a previously-built libtheora. Note: a prebuilt package (such as an RPM) may not include support for all codecs: consult the MPlayer documentation for instructions on compiling it yourself with appropriate codecs.
- Totem [4] is the default movie player in GNOME. It can also play music.
- VLC
MIDI files
There can be remarkable differences in the sound produced by a MIDI file, depending on the machine on which it is played: MIDI files traditionally only contain instructions that trigger sounds being played by a synthesizer (e.g. sampled sounds contained in a computer's sound card) and/or a mechanical device (e.g. a MIDI-driven player piano).
Following problems might occur when playing MIDI files:
- MIDI files encoded with a more recent version of the MIDI standard might not be correctly rendered if your machine doesn't support that version of the standard.
- Some hardware manufacturers produced proprietary extensions to the general MIDI standard, not rendered by all MIDI players. Such hardware-specific extensions are to be avoided for MIDI files uploaded to Wikipedia.
- The machine on which you play the file must have both the software and hardware enabled to play MIDI files. "Memory stick" type of music players might play MP3 and most other standard audio formats, while not playing MIDI files.
Note that there is free software that can show the content of the most current types of MIDI files in sheet music and/or sequencer format, for example Rosegarden and Lilypond.
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