Questions about Media Player Classic Home Cinema

[Seeker47]

Can this coexist peacefully with an installed WMP-9 or later, or do you need to choose one and have it be exclusive ? Does MPC-HC have the greatly expanded codec coverage that you would otherwise need FFDSHOW or SDK-11 for ? (In particular, I'm thinking in terms of being able to play Divx-5 or later, as well as WMV 10 - 11.)

The ideal place for me to try this out might have been the laptop that has no WMP at all on it, but it's an older P-3 based model, which is probably marginal for playing most video.

[redwudz]

I've never seen it conflict with WMP. WMP is the one that 'butts' in and tries to take over. And most of the time WMP can't play much of anything. I disabled it on my XP systems.

I also have VLC to play any odd formats the MPC-HC might choke on. No conflicts there at all. I also have Zoom player, Real Alternative, Quicktime Alternative players and none of my players conflict.

I've played WMVs with MPC-HC, but I do have ffdshow installed for other uses.

[DarrellS]

What I hate about VLC player is that it is as bad as Nero about taking over all your file types.

[redwudz]

You can set up most any player to be the default for certain formats when you install the player. WMP seems to be the worst, trying to play everything and rarely succeeding.

I set VLC for WMV and a few other types. I find it a bit cumbersome to use, but it does play damaged video and it's really useful for that. It can also transcode video to a different format. Not great quality with that, but it can be useful when nothing else will play the video. VLC can also play VOBS or a VIDEO_TS folder and most ISO type files.

I prefer Zoom player for most video as it has a easy adjustment for color, saturation, etc., while other players make that a bit more complex. MPC-HC I use mostly for HD video and MKV files because it works well with my video card acceleration.

[lordhutt]

What is the difference between this and regular MPC?

[Seeker47]

What I hate about VLC player is that it is as bad as Nero about taking over all your file types.

That is one thing I find so charming about most Winblows apps in a given category: they all insist on grabbing the file associations exclusively. And then may fight over them. To try to minimize that (because one app per category is rarely sufficient), I do a couple things. On installation, when the app asks to be made the default whatever program, I usually say NO. And then I don't double-click on the text, .Htm, or media file directly to open it -- which might be a convenience or might just be laziness, depending on your POV. It's not much of a hardship, really. FireFox is what I use for a browser, 90 % of the time, and it's probably going to be open anyway, so no mystery there for anything HTML. If I'm going to be reviewing a bunch of .MPG clips, I'd just open VLC first and go through them. For other media file types, I might open something else first.

I don't recall VLC or Gom being any more aggressive than most, in trying to hog all the possibly relevant file types for itself.

You can set up most any player to be the default for certain formats when you install the player. WMP seems to be the worst, trying to play everything and rarely succeeding.

I set VLC for WMV and a few other types. I find it a bit cumbersome to use, but it does play damaged video and it's really useful for that. It can also transcode video to a different format. Not great quality with that, but it can be useful when nothing else will play the video. VLC can also play VOBS or a VIDEO_TS folder and most ISO type files.

I think Gom can also -- the first two, maybe not the ISOs, but I haven't tried it for that. Someone else here said that VLC and Gom were poor choices for WMV, because they couldn't handle them well.

Appreciate your info re MPC-HC, which I did intend to check out anyway. Also interesting to get your comments on Zoom Player, a program I had pretty much overlooked.

How do you disable regular WMP . . . as opposed to removing it entirely ?

[jagabo]

What is the difference between this and regular MPC?

MPCHC has many more built in decoders. Some of the most important being h.264, VC1, Xvid, Divx, FLV1, and FLV4. Go to View -> Options -> Internal Filters to see the list.

[lordhutt]

What is the difference between this and regular MPC?

MPCHC has many more built in decoders. Some of the most important being h.264, VC1, Xvid, Divx, FLV1, and FLV4. Go to View -> Options -> Internal Filters to see the list.

Are there any future plans for MPC to play .ISO dvd images like VLC does?

[jagabo]

Are there any future plans for MPC to play .ISO dvd images like VLC does?

It already has some rudimentary support for ISO images. It doesn't work very well though. Maybe it will improve with time.

[Seeker47]

What is the difference between this and regular MPC?

MPCHC has many more built in decoders. Some of the most important being h.264, VC1, Xvid, Divx, FLV1, and FLV4. Go to View -> Options -> Internal Filters to see the list.

Well, I "installed" it last night. (I'm always very much in favor of anything that works standalone, does not require an actual Win install, and needs no system-wide drivers or Registry junk !) This looks like a promising player, and I've already discovered that it plays .MKVs. Not a format I run into that often, but it's nice to have a solution for it.

BUT, this is apparently not the solution to my problem. Tried a couple Divx-5 vids, and they still kill the video, forcing a reboot. No BSOD, just a black screen you can't get out of. With some of these, I still hear the audio going with the black screen, because the audio codec is there on this computer. (So sayeth GSpot.)

What the hell is WMV 9 Professional ? WMV files made with that usually also kill my video display.

Guess it's time to put on WMFORMATSDK11, as Moviegeek suggested. Whoever it was who said I needed to reinstall WMV-9 because it may be corrupted, I would say that's conceivable, but I doubt it. The failures are too limited and too specific. It sure feels like an "ain't got the necessary codecs" thing.

[jagabo]

WMV9 is Microsoft's codec. If many different codecs are killing your computer the problems isn't the codecs. It's probably the graphics card drivers.

Try using different output devices in MPCHC. View -> Options -> Playback -> Output...

Also note that you can configure MPCHC ot use its internal decoders or DirectShow decoders -- on a codec by codec bases. If an internal decoder is giving you problems switch to a DS decoder. View -> Options -> Internal Filters...