VLC Media Player

Description
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. VLC is based primarily on the libavcodec produced as part of the FFmpeg software.

User Experiences

 * http://siarchives.si.edu/blog/digital-video-preservation-identifying-containers-and-codecs
 * Digital Video Preservation: Identifying Containers and Codecs
 * http://www.carli.illinois.edu/sites/files/digital_collections/documentation/guidelines_for_audio.pdf
 * Sound and Moving Image Viewer question on Digital Curation Google Groups forum