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  1. Member
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    Hi Guys/Girls
    Do we any Potplayer Gurus lurking in the forums I have swapped from VLC (don’t ask me why a real newbie at this video tech) But I must say from a novice point a view it seems very slick and fast and good quality.

    I have followed a few tutorials which ended in disaster

    This one here and similar one here
    I followed then to the letter but the quality was poor red videos and so on.

    So I started to ask the newbie question to myself if Potplayer is so good why does everybody add thse other codecs? (see told you newbie question)

    I am really missing the point here I want Potplayer to play my music stream some radio chanels view a few videos. So if that is all I want do I need to tweak it? WHy do people spends hours tweaking theses players?

    Please don’t ban me I am not being rude or trying to upset people just trying to find out why? I take it VLC and Potplayer are the best in the world why are we trying to change them with other codecs?

    I get the point in say Photoshop with pluggins but these are added because they speed workflow or do something PS does not do!

    Finally because PP is designed by a Korean ( a clever one) I find it difficult to find tutorials or articles on how best to configure PP if you need to. The tutorials above fail if you use 64 bit codecs I found.

    Just submitted for a general debate

    P.S. Can you stream TV like SKy news through PP if so how?

    Thorrrr
    Last edited by thorrrr; 11th Jun 2012 at 11:25.
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  2. Member
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    "I take it VLC and Potplayer are the best in the world why are we trying to change them with other codecs?"

    I don't really think either are the necessarily the best in the world, and just because they doesn't need codecs doesn't mean that people won't use them. Their systems may already be loaded with extra codec packs so they don't have much choice.

    Potplayer is pretty good, I have it installed, but it's my 3rd favorite for video playing behind SMPlayer and VLC, in that order. None of them need codec packs and I don't have any installed that aren't microsoft ones.

    I agree that the docs for potplayer are kind of pitiful. Being fluent in Korean would probably help a lot. Isn't there a user forum for it anywhere? If there isn't a decent one, good luck finding any 'gurus'. SMplayer docs are pretty sparse too but the preferences and menus are intuitive enough for me that I've never found I've needed them.

    Using one player for everything sounds a lot more convenient but I don't do that. SMplayer is by far the best I've used for playing videos. It's played a number of files properly that vlc wouldn't, and the reverse has only happened once. The menus and filters are excellent ... it's the only one I've tried that has a convenient dithering ("add noise") filter.

    VLC is what I use for music, and it's probably the best I know of for streaming web music and the like. But I hate the menu / settings structure and it just doesn't play video as well as smplayer. VLC doesn't have some settings I think are essential in the newer versions, like setting up a cache for HDd files.

    Potplayer isn't bad, I haven't yanked it, but I can't get it to play video as well as smplayer.

    The thing with programs like pp is that they make the interface look easy but once you just scratch below the surface you'll find it's not easier than ones like vlc. Mpc-hc it much worse in this respect. It dumps you straight from pretty menus to serious video geek stuff.

    Actually, I find it's true of media programs in general that the ones that look easy for newbies either don't have more advanced settings beyond the simplest stuff in the first place or they make them harder than other programs that seem more difficult to use.
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  3. Member
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    Any thoughts on how I can stream TV programmes?
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  4. Member
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    I don't use pot player for streaming. The docs and support stink. If you do a search for streaming on vlc you'll find tons of info.

    You could also try reading the vlc docs.

    I can't quite see why you're so determined to use pot player for everything if you can't figure out how to use it and there are no decent docs or user support.
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  5. It isn't apparent if PP can stream. I have played around with the "capture" some.
    Well, like thorrrr I would like to learn more about PP and although I am no noob,
    I am not a computer geek so I see why people like PP.
    I find myself wondering why I have VLC on my computer after using PP for a while.
    Rob, I tried the latest SMplayer, it was much more buggy than VLC....am I missing something?
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  6. Member
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    Hi Rob

    I have no issue ditching any software I was just interested in it. Some people say it is brilliant but some are like you not to keen. I will try your two favourites and see how I get on.

    DO you have any links on how to configure both VLC and SMPlayer for best results?
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  7. Member
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    I'd install the stable smplayer version, not the betas. I usually don't use betas anyway. What do you mean by bugs? Some of the later betas have had problems with the mplayer engine. I've found build 4316 works great though. I usually don't do beta anything, anyway ... this is why. The smplayer interface looks a bit clunky (like old versions of vlc) but it works fine.

    I actually have found vlc more buggy. It doesn't play vob files properly after vlc version 1.0.5 and it you can't configure it to play h.264 well.

    There aren't many configuration links for smplayer. I set up a file stream cache of 8192 Kb (it's a geek thing). That works very well. i set the priority pretty high in the performance settings ... very high or realtime, though realtime can cause problems on some machines. I haven't had any problems with it though.

    I also set the output driver to directx(fast). This gives the best performance. If you have Aero in windows 7 (and vista too, I think) it'll set itself to direct3d and it will work fine but not as well. I turn aero off anyway ... it's just overhead for no good reason.

    Other than that I leave the smplayer settings as default. I get a better picture than I can with any other video player I've tried. Better than vlc any way better than potplayer.

    VLC configuration? Do a search. There's tons of information out there for vlc. That's the best thing about it. It's also very good for streaming.

    Actually, though, iTunes is an excellent streaming player. I know people who us it for that on their windows boxes and they really like it. I'm kind of philosophically opposed to iTunes but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try it ...
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