MPC Image Source 0.3.6.199

Drop a JPEG into a video player's playlist and most of them will skip straight past it.

MPC Image Source is a small free filter that closes that gap, letting your player open and display still images the same way it plays a clip.

You can download MPC Image Source 0.3.6.199 here, and it is open source under the LGPL-2.1 licence.

What a DirectShow Filter Does

A DirectShow filter is a small piece of code that a media player loads in the background so it can understand a file type it could not read on its own. MPC Image Source is that piece, for pictures.

Once it is registered on your system, a compatible player can open a still image, hold it on screen and move on to the next item. How long it holds is controlled by your player, not by the filter.

It does not edit, convert or organise anything. It only lets your player read and show images, which is worth knowing before you download it expecting a photo tool.

The Part That Trips People Up

The filter does not decode images itself. It hands the file to the Windows Imaging Component, which is the part of Windows that already knows how to read picture formats, and displays whatever comes back.

That matters because Windows does not know every format out of the box. If Windows cannot read a file, this filter cannot either, no matter how correctly it is installed.

Here is what each of the modern formats actually needs on the machine before it will open.

A quick way to check your own setup is to open an AVIF sample file in Windows Photos first. If Windows itself cannot show it, no player filter will.

What Opens With No Extra Work

None of that applies to the formats Windows has always handled. JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, ICO and JPEG XR open with nothing installed beyond the filter itself.

DDS is in the supported list too, which is unusual and handy if you poke around in game texture files. For most people the everyday formats are the whole story and the table above is something to come back to only when a specific file refuses.

Which Player You Need

The developer builds and tests against MPC-BE, and recommends version 1.5.7.6180 or newer. That is the combination with a stated requirement behind it, so it is the one to use if you want this to simply work.

Because it is a standard DirectShow filter, other DirectShow-based players can load it as well. That is not the same as being tested, though, so treat anything outside MPC-BE as worth trying rather than guaranteed.

If you are on MPC-HC and wondering whether to switch, our MPC-BE vs MPC-HC comparison covers what actually differs between the two.

What Changed in 0.3.6.199

This is a small maintenance release with two changes, and one of them is a removal.

The fix addresses image decoders that do not report their own decoder information to Windows. Some format add-ons did not identify themselves the way the filter expected, and certain pictures failed to open as a result. That is now handled.

The Settings Window

The filter has a configuration dialog, which is easy to miss on something this small. It is reached through your player's filter settings rather than as a separate program.

The option worth knowing about is Max. non-scalable size, which defaults to 8192. It exists because some video renderers using Direct3D 9 or DXVA2 cannot handle textures beyond a certain size, and a very large scan or panorama can come out as a black frame instead of a picture.

If that happens to you, that setting is where to look before you conclude the file is broken. Recent versions also show an information field in the same window, which reports what the filter is doing with the current image.

Regular Build or Debug Build

The download page offers two files: the normal build and one with _Debug in the name. Almost everyone wants the normal one.

The debug build is the same filter compiled with extra internal logging and checks left switched on. It runs slower and the file is larger, and it exists so a developer can see exactly where something failed.

It is meant for one situation: you hit a bug, you reported it on the project's GitHub page, and the developer asked you to run the debug build so they can get a useful log out of it. Unless someone specifically asked, install the regular version and ignore the other one.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

Four things to check before you download, none of which need you to install anything first.

• You want to view or sort photos. This adds images to a video player, it is not a viewer - PicView or the Image Viewers section is what you want.
• You want to edit RAW files. This only displays them, so darktable is the free tool for actually developing them.
• You want the format added to Windows generally. Install the WIC extension from the table above instead and every app benefits, not just your player.
• You do not use a DirectShow player. If your player is VLC or a browser, this filter does nothing for you.

Quick questions

If a file still refuses after all of that, our How to Fix: Codec is Not Supported guide walks through the usual causes, and the Codec Troubleshooter helps identify what is missing.

It sits in the Graphics section alongside the other image tools, and if you are new to camera files our guide to understanding RAW formats explains what your camera is actually saving.

Download MPC Image Source 0.3.6.199 and see how it handles your files, or tell us how you got on if you have used it before - which formats worked for you is the most useful thing anyone can leave on a page like this.