As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Best Media Player For PC?
Professor Snugglesworth
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I made a thread like this not too long ago, but I wanted to start fresh and specify what I'm looking for.
First and foremost, I want a movie player that will play every single kind of video format out there. Currently I have to use either SM Player or MPC, depending which one will play nice with the movie file.
So I want to delete them all and start fresh, with a player that will play flv, mkv, quicktime and whatever other stupid format exists out there without any hassle.
I'm also looking for a player that automatically optimizes a movie, in both format (anamorphic, widescreen, etc) and audio (subtitles for the anime stuff).
Lastly, it needs to have customizable hotkeys for fast forwarding, rewinding, skipping ahead however much time I want (10 seconds, 30, a minute, etc).
Also, if possible, it would be nice if it could also feature motionplus (doubling a picture's framerate) as an optional On/Off feature.
So, recommendations please.
First and foremost, I want a movie player that will play every single kind of video format out there. Currently I have to use either SM Player or MPC, depending which one will play nice with the movie file.
So I want to delete them all and start fresh, with a player that will play flv, mkv, quicktime and whatever other stupid format exists out there without any hassle.
I'm also looking for a player that automatically optimizes a movie, in both format (anamorphic, widescreen, etc) and audio (subtitles for the anime stuff).
Lastly, it needs to have customizable hotkeys for fast forwarding, rewinding, skipping ahead however much time I want (10 seconds, 30, a minute, etc).
Also, if possible, it would be nice if it could also feature motionplus (doubling a picture's framerate) as an optional On/Off feature.
So, recommendations please.
Professor Snugglesworth on
0
Posts
Thread over. Seriously CCCP is all you want.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Also, will I need to delete previous codecs for CCCP to work correctly, or will it do that automatically?
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
MPCHE works fine for everything I watch, but you do need a reasonably modern video card to do DXVA acceleration of HD content.
If you can find your current codecs (anything you've installed yourself, anyway. Don't delete the ones that came with Windows), it would be safer to delete them first but I'm not sure it's strictly necessary.
I would avoid codec compilations like the plague. They have possibility to cripple the media playback capabilities of a Windows system (often without remedy) and can also impact the movie playback within games. The only thing you need, if you really, really want to use MS media player, is maybe a xvid codec. As far as I know the MS Media player in Windows 7 should also handle most commonly used formats like divx, h.624 without extra codecs.
Otherwise, VLC can handle nearly everything. VLC might not be very pretty, but offeres lots of customization options and shortcuts. A long time ago I build a custom HTPC. I used VLC + freeware media center + a custom driver for my Hauppauge remote to select movies and let VLC play it in kiosk mode. For this - I remeber - I had to assign the buttons of the remote to the VLC shortcuts. And there are a shortcuts for nearly everything in VLC.
I mean, SPACE plays and pauses. VLC doesn't do that for me.
Also, ctrl+enter for fullscreen. VLC is all ass backwards.
Double click for fullscreen / exit fullscreen
I have to admit, the interface isn't the best in VLC.
Even better CCCP will work with Windows Media Player as well. WMP plays HD video better than any other player since it has DXVA support. VLC doesn't use DXVA which is why it sucks for HD video, especially on portable devices.
'Nother vote for CCCP. Configuring it to work with WMP 12 will basically make it capable of opening almost every type of file that you could otherwise with WMC (I guess the exception is RealMedia and Quicktime files...does anyone still use those on Windows?). The installation will do it for you. MKVs are no problem.
I prefer WMP over WMC because my keyboard's quick buttons don't work with WMC, I think, but they're both good. CCCP will also save you some trouble with getting the right options to get most streaming options to consoles, if my memory serves.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
:?
Is it really that hard to double-click anywhere inside the video window? MPC keeps pausing when I click anywhere in it's window, which is annoying. I also prefer VLC's subtitle options. But hey, it's all about what you're familiar with and little else. They're both competent pieces of software.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Also, unlike VLC it's instantly responsive when you pause/play, which is something I like. And unlike MPC you can customize controls and do cool stuff like middle-click to toggle fullscreen and the arrow keys to skip by 5 or 20 second increments.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
Check to see in the FFDshow and/or Direct Show filters what the audio output is set to. It's possible that it's set to something other than the default i.e. your soundcard. If you didn't do it when you installed CCCP, re-run the setup wizard again to see if there's an audio option that needs to be changed.
-ridiculously good format support
-automatic aspect ratio settings (and custom settings for when people encode things badly.)
-lets you set up subtitles how you want them. And edit the subtitles themselves, for that matter. And load external subtitle files. And sync them to the video.
-ridiculous amounts of audio / video tweaking/rendering options.
-customizable hotkeys for fast forwarding, rewinding, skipping ahead etc. And yes, you can customize how far they skip ahead or backwards.
On top of that, it's got:
-internal codecs that don't fuck with things
-support for external codecs, though I've never needed to add one
-support for dxva (though you have to set it up, which I've only bothered to do on my laptop)
-good capture support
-on the fly zooming in/out/stretching of the video. Handier than you'd think.
-oh, and FLAC support
-edit: another good one is on the fly adjustment of brightness/contrast/saturation/etc, through keyboard shortcuts, both in hardware and software.
MPCHC is good, too.
WMP & MPC-HC use DXVA to get hardware acceleration on any brand of card as long as the card has the hardware decoding built in. VLC has just started to work with CUDA for Nvidia cards and nothing for AMD cards. So VLC can't handle HD video really at all, especially if you're not running specific Nvidia cards and the latest beta of VLC. MPC is the best right now for play back of HD video with MPC-HC as a very close second.
AC3Filter is another thing you might need. Just sayin'. I don't think MS's media player does AC3 out of the box.