Video playing software, basic

Dr.EM · 4 Mar 2010 at 15:37

Can anyone reccomend me a free, basic bit of software (simple interface, small install file, fast) to playback videos of various formats (AVI, MPEG4 etc).

I'm using Foobar2000 for audio which is great and haven't added Windows media on this install, basically, I'd prefer not to at all! I only have a few videos so don't want a large bit of software just for them.

Any reccomendations?

mrk · 4 Mar 2010 at 15:42

MPC-HC from here.

Luke · 4 Mar 2010 at 15:45

mrk · 4 Mar 2010 at 15:52

VLC video decoders are of slightly poorer quality to MPC.

Both are free and lightweight but what's the point in getting poorer quality when you can have better (and hardware accelerated).

Dr.EM · 4 Mar 2010 at 15:55

That's great, cheers

Supertaff · 4 Mar 2010 at 16:27

I use GOM player a lot, though can't argue the case whether it's better than the others in terms of quality.

Taff

Tripnologist · 4 Mar 2010 at 17:06

Khaaan! said:
VLC video decoders are of slightly poorer quality to MPC.

I actually noticed that the other day when my wife was watching something on her PC through WMP and the colors on her screen looked much better than the same thing on mine through VLC.

mrk · 4 Mar 2010 at 17:15

Yeah it's like a really fine layer of fog in front of the video on VLC

Deleted member 77746 · 4 Mar 2010 at 17:29

Interesting.....

Azuse05 · 4 Mar 2010 at 17:33

VLC have YUV>RGB conversion on by default (god knows why). Video options, disable, restart & your colours are back to normal.

mrk · 4 Mar 2010 at 18:02

Azuse05 said:
VLC have YUV>RGB conversion on by default (god knows why). Video options, disable, restart & your colours are back to normal.

Aha This has solved that image quality issue - quite good!

The only reason I have VLC is for DVD playback as navigation is more accurate than MPC.

MPC is better for everything else though!

Leedslad · 5 Mar 2010 at 00:22

i use WMP with CCCP and VLC for everything that won't play with WMP

Azuse05 · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:03

Well this is annoying. I though I'd go back to MCP after more than a year of vlc just for hardware acceleration. Got the stable 1249 build of HC however it running 16-235 by default (dark grey bars instead of black) and I have to manually enable the 16-235 > 0-25sd/hd shader just like vlc

Tried the lasted development build with the same result, mvk/mp4 are all slightly washed out. Is there some obscure setting I missed or do I just keep using the shader?

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:11

No issue here, don't use any of the shaders, disable them and delete your mpc-hc.ini file then load MPC and see if the same issue happens with totally stock settings.

You need to tell MPC to save settings in the ini else it will pull settings from the registry which are probably old.

Azuse05 · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:20

And where is the ini? I've checked it but it's not in the program folder.

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:23

That means you're using the registry. Set MPC to store settings in an ini file then it will create the ini file.

Delete the ini file once created and restart MPC and replay the video.

The latest build is 1735 btw.

Azuse05 · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:45

I did and these wasnt. Reinstalled and the problems gone, however it's working now so it's not a huge issue, but still no ini :S Out of curiosity, what should be the full file name and location?

EDIT: nvm, had to run it as an admin to make it create the ini.

mrk · 6 Mar 2010 at 16:47

Wherever you have installed MPC, there are no subdirectories so it sits solely on the root.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC HomeCinema