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  1. What is the best computer media player to buy. It is for previewing files from camera before loading to editor. VLC seems a bit slow.
    There was one i read of recently but cannot recall name. I would welcome suggestions
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    The best one I know of that is a commercial product is Arcsoft Total Media Theater. But I would recommend it primarily as a means of playing Blu-ray.

    For your purpose you should try a few more of the free players, like PotPlayer or Media Player Classic Home Cinema. PotPlayer's default interface is really clunky, but it will play files that many of my regular players won't touch, like some examples of H265 or raw .h264 files.
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  3. Originally Posted by Kerry56 View Post
    The best one I know of that is a commercial product is Arcsoft Total Media Theater. But I would recommend it primarily as a means of playing Blu-ray.

    For your purpose you should try a few more of the free players, like PotPlayer or Media Player Classic Home Cinema. PotPlayer's default interface is really clunky, but it will play files that many of my regular players won't touch, like some examples of H265 or raw .h264 files.
    are they clean no ads/ spyware?
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    Originally Posted by Dopey2013 View Post
    are they clean no ads/ spyware?
    No ads or spyware. Download them from the links here at Videohelp.
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    I use XBMC on my HTPC.

    A_L
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    media player classic home cinema is the one i use, better than vlc and free as well
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    Originally Posted by Kerry56 View Post
    The best one I know of that is a commercial product is Arcsoft Total Media Theater. But I would recommend it primarily as a means of playing Blu-ray.

    For your purpose you should try a few more of the free players, like PotPlayer or Media Player Classic Home Cinema. PotPlayer's default interface is really clunky, but it will play files that many of my regular players won't touch, like some examples of H265 or raw .h264 files.
    I tried the Arcsoft Total Media Theater software once and does play video well, the version i used complete took over my PC it set itself as the encoded/decoder & player for everything using its own proprietary codecs. After installatin my NLE failed to properly work. Uninstalling the software did not solve the issue and some issues were not resolved until i reinstalled my OS.

    I contacted tech support and they were no help in resolving my issues, in short i have a version 5 or 5.5 and i wouldn't give it to my worst enemy.
    Murphy's law taught me everything I know.
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    Originally Posted by dragonkeeper View Post
    ... I tried the Arcsoft Total Media Theater software once and does play video well, the version i used complete took over my PC it set itself as the encoded/decoder & player for everything using its own proprietary codecs. After installatin my NLE failed to properly work. Uninstalling the software did not solve the issue and some issues were not resolved until i reinstalled my OS.

    I contacted tech support and they were no help in resolving my issues, in short i have a version 5 or 5.5 and i wouldn't give it to my worst enemy.
    This sounds like a good reason to avoid it, though it's an endemic problem in windows (and not confined to paid software). That's one of the big reasons I almost always use linux now. Windows permission levels stink. No program in linux could take over the whole OS like that without big red flags appearing.

    To the OP's question, it sounds like he wants a program that's light weight so it loads fast ... though I'm just assuming that's what he means by "vlc is slow" ... and supports the video format from his camera. Not knowing the camera or what format it outputs that's hard to answer.

    I don't think vlc is that slow but potplayer may be faster and it doesn't need stupid 3rd party codec packs. Neither does vlc or smplayer (which is what I prefer).

    You shouldn't really need to buy a program for playing media. I see very little evidence that paid programs are better than free ones. Even for encoders, let alone players.

    I don't use the same program for music and video. It's not necessary. If I were still using windows for music I'd use vlc. It's very good and has excellent playlist features, which are necessary for me for music.
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    Originally Posted by dragonkeeper View Post

    I tried the Arcsoft Total Media Theater software once and does play video well, the version i used complete took over my PC it set itself as the encoded/decoder & player for everything using its own proprietary codecs. After installation my NLE failed to properly work. Uninstalling the software did not solve the issue and some issues were not resolved until i reinstalled my OS.

    I contacted tech support and they were no help in resolving my issues, in short i have a version 5 or 5.5 and i wouldn't give it to my worst enemy.
    I've never had that problem, and I've been using TMT since version 3. I test quite a number of different software players, especially since I started testing for Cinavia from various sources, and the worst one for intrusive behavior is PowerDVD.
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    Originally Posted by dragonkeeper View Post
    I tried the Arcsoft Total Media Theater software once and does play video well, the version i used complete took over my PC it set itself as the encoded/decoder & player for everything using its own proprietary codecs. After installation my NLE failed to properly work. Uninstalling the software did not solve the issue and some issues were not resolved until i reinstalled my OS. I contacted tech support and they were no help in resolving my issues, in short i have a version 5 or 5.5 and i wouldn't give it to my worst enemy.
    I originally used TMT 3 which was a great BD player (best of the commercial ones) that rendered HD video quite smoothly with GPU hardware decoding. It was never a great general media player though (much too fussy), but did play BD discs with full menus (at least until the BD protection outgrew the TMT 3 updates). Unfortunately all commercial BD player software is by design full of nasty DRM and low level anti debug system drivers. (Arcsoft had ArcSec.sys and ArcHlp.sys). They even included anti 'PrintScreen' keyboard hooks. I had no end of trouble trying to upgrade to TMT 5 and finally gave up in the end due to all the BSOD I got! I only use completely stable clean OS images, so I know it was not due to anything other than the essential services for my MOBO. I know how intrusive the ArcSoft drivers were and noted how quickly they grew in size with each progressive version.
    Last edited by katipo; 16th Feb 2014 at 12:59.
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  11. Thanks everyone for replies. i would not touch anything of arcsoft. I had a webcam of theirs once. i would not touch anything of arcsoft
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