XBMC - Change default player?

NachT · 21 May 2012 at 22:46

I've read that you can change the default media player within XBMC to something else, such as MPC-HC. I'm really wanting to do this, as the default player (whatever it may be) causes lag in certain scenes of nearly every file played.

I'm using XBMC v11.

I've had a google, and came accross the wiki on how to supposedly change the default player. So I created a new XML file titled 'playercorefactory' and stuck it in the 'AppData\Roaming\XBMC' as advised. The XML contains the following code:

Code:

<playercorefactory>
 <players>
   <player name="MPC-HC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
     <filename>C:\Program Files (x86)\Combined Community Codec Pack\MPC\mpc-hc.exe</filename>
     <args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>
     <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>
     <hideconsole>false</hideconsole>
     <warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
   </player>
 </players>
</playercorefactory>

This doesn't seem to be working for me, when I launch a video file from XBMC after adding this file, everything seems exactly how it was before (same GUI on the video controls, i.e. Pause, stop, fastforward etc - I'm assuming this is supposed to change to MPC-HC GUI?), and the scene lag still occurs.

Any guidance on this one please? :3

cokecan · 22 May 2012 at 15:03

i had a terrible time trying to get an external player working for bluray disks.

To get it working but had to use batch files which launched the external player when certain file types were selected in XBMC. I didnt like it because it wasnt as seamless as I would have liked and I also couldn't control anything in the external player using XBMC Constellation remote app on my iOS devices.

Link to guide: http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=116724

In the end I abandoned it and went for XBMC with HD Audio mod and anydvd hd. This plays back everything within XBMC (including bluray disks), just needed to make sure that you tell XBMC to sync your screen to the file being played and that removed all stuttering/lag/glitching in my playback of MKV's and blurays

CaptainCrash · 22 May 2012 at 16:53

NachT said:
Any guidance on this one please? :3

You seem to have defined the external player correctly, assuming the path to the MPC-HC executable is right, but you also need to tell XBMC to give it priority over its own internal player - you do this by means of a "prepend" action rule:

Code:

<playercorefactory>
 <players>
   <player name="MPC-HC" type="ExternalPlayer" audio="false" video="true">
     <filename>C:\Program Files (x86)\Combined Community Codec Pack\MPC\mpc-hc.exe</filename>
     <args>"{1}" /fullscreen /close</args>
     <hidexbmc>false</hidexbmc>
     <hideconsole>false</hideconsole>
     <warpcursor>none</warpcursor>
   </player>
 </players>
 <rules action="prepend">
   <rule video="true" player="MPC-HC"/>
 </rules>
</playercorefactory>

The above will tell XBMC to use MPC-HC for all video, but if you just wanted to use it for, say, .mkvs, you'd use <rule filetypes="mkv" player="MPC-HC"/>

Also, playercorefactory.xml needs to be in \AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata, not its parent directory.

I will add at this point that much of the documentation for XBMC is absolute pants.

edit: if you don't want to have XBMC firing up an external player, you might also like to check out the DSplayer build, which allows you to use external filters and decoders such as LAV or ffdshow. Development is a bit, umm, erratic, and the link in the first post is dead, but you can grab the latest build from the link in post #1307, and you can still use axelrose1uk's guide to setting it up with LAV filters in post 875.

CaptainCrash · 26 May 2012 at 10:16

So, did it work? :rolleyes:

mmsandi · 18 Oct 2012 at 14:12

CaptainCrash said:
So, did it work?

It did for me

. Thank you very much.