If you are having trouble playing our files on your computer, there are very simple steps you can take to troubleshoot the problem.

If you are on Windows, follow these steps:

1. DON’T USE VLC.

2. Uninstall any existing codec packs and download and install the latest version of CCCP from here.  If one or several of our files don’t play properly, make sure that your installation is up-to-date.

3. If your file still doesn’t play, you may have a corrupted download. Try redownloading the video file. If it still doesn’t work, you’re either doing something very wrong or something went wrong during the creation of the file.  Please report it to us (only after you re-downloaded and verified that the file’s CRC32 in the [brackets] is correct).

If you are on a Mac, I can’t really help you because I don’t know anything about Macs. I hear MPlayer works well, so try using that. But as always, DON’T USE VLC.

Ignore everything except that last sentence.

1. Download mplayer osx extended rev14 here and download this.

2. Install mplayer.

3. Install and enable binary from preferences.

4. See step 4 above. Please note that this has almost no settings to manipulate unlike CCCP. If you can’t get this to work, you are seriously fucking something up.

If you are specifically having trouble with ordered chapters (otherwise known as “You didn’t include the OP and ED, Chihiro!”) read below:

If you have to ask: We didn’t cut out the OP and ED. We used something called “ordered chapters”. This means that the OP and ED are in separate files (and are magically linked to each episode so they play normally). It helps to keep you from having to download an extra 100MB with each episode, saving bandwidth and disk space.

HOW TO PLAY ORDERED CHAPTERS:

a. For Windows: Install CCCP. Then, go to combined community codec pack/filters (in case you can’t find this, it’s in your start menu), and select LAV Splitter settings. Make sure that “Load Matroska Segments from external Files” is checked.
a1. For Macs, download mplayer osx extended rev13 here and download this binary. Install, and check that subtitle scale is set to 100%.
a2. For GNU/Linux, use this build script to get a working mplayer install that supports ordered chapters.
b. Put the episode in the same folder as the OP and ED files. If you do not have the OP and ED files, they’re most likely in the torrent for episode 1 of the anime you’re trying to watch, or on the IRC bots.
c. Open the episode using Media Player Classic. It will play normally.

Some people have asked this, and yes, you can rename the episode and OP/ED files and the ordered chapters will still work, as long as everything is in the same folder.