Best allround video playing software?

[oj^LaTinO]

Hey guys 1st post in this forum and was just wondering what is the best software for playing most common video mideas i.e VCD, SVCD, DIVX, etc etc. Thx guys would appreciate any help on this

[jkl]

powerdvd 4 xp

[ya_jai]

ditto!!

[KingJohn]

Hey guys 1st post in this forum and was just wondering what is the best software for playing most common video mideas i.e VCD, SVCD, DIVX, etc etc. Thx guys would appreciate any help on this

Nothing wrong with the default Windows Media Player, it plays everything if you have all the codec's. And since it is already part of your system, there is less change of it giving trouble.

[ya_jai]

Nothing wrong with window media player but buggy, slow, spyware.

Did I mention about all the features that doesnt exist in WMP?

[MOVIEGEEK]

I like I-VCD player located in "Tools",it's free.

[KingJohn]

Nothing wrong with window media player but buggy, slow, spyware.

Did I mention about all the features that doesnt exist in WMP?

I don't know what you have, but there are no spy's in my version, even if there was, the firewall would block them anyway.

What features do you need ?. It plays the movie what more do you want from a "player"

I have the rest, but for a quick playback WMP works just fine...

[ya_jai]

[keithsebastian]

Win DVD !

Everything that PowerDVD has + Great sound[/b]

[ya_jai]

Hi John or should I call you King!

I was going to post this morning but something come up and I just wanna test new WMP which comes with XP first (don't use it very much becuz it's sux). But this is my experience with WMP and to answer your question " What do I want more?".

1. WMP doesn't support full feature VCD/SVCD disc in disc mode, which PowerDvd does.
2. Can you FF/RW with WMP.
3. Is there a capture screen shot with WMP?
4. WMP always freeze a bit but long enough to get annoying After you move slide bar while playing SVCD.
5. New WMP which come with XP doesn't show the right aspect for 352x480 type of SVCD.
6. If you wanna watch like 5 mpeg files continueously, what do you do? Open one by one? So this should call feature of next skip or previous skip.
7. etc. etc. etc. which I can't think of right now.

C'mon John tell us the truth what player software you always use for your mpeg/avi files. When ppl ask us for the best, should we give them the worst? I don't think so.

P.S. It's just my opinion over WMP so if this offend you in anyway pls accept my apology.

[jesterspet535]

MPlayer plays almost everything under the sun, and it is free, and it is open source, and it is skinable, and it encodes, and it <ad nausium>

Suffice to say, it should suit your needs (if you have a C/C++ compiler)[/url]

[ya_jai]

MPlayer plays almost everything under the sun, and it is free, and it is open source, and it is skinable, and it encodes, and it <ad nausium>

Suffice to say, it should suit your needs (if you have a C/C++ compiler)[/url]

I believe you jester, just that everything wmp has I, one, don't want it. And sorry for my poor knowleadge I don't know anything about C/C++. I just know how to put da right software to da right job. You are right that WMP is free but sometime if you pay for a very good software, it might worth the money. I didn't not mention anything about warez or crack, okay admin? so pls don't remove my post. Like the wise man said " YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR".

[Ego_Shredder]

Windows Media Player v6.4 is the best in my humble opinion (version 7 sucks). Install all your codecs and after that you'll find v6.4 is quick and easy to use, not buggy, slow and cumbersome like other ones.


Power DVD v4.0 seems very buggy for me, plus it doesn't play my VideoCD's, despite the fact they work fine in any standalone DVD/VCD/CDi player which I use all the time.


Cheers,

Ego

[therick]

ya_jai - I think that you are talking about WMP7.0+. I use 6.4 (no spyware) as others mentioned. works great and doesn't have all the funky (ugly) crap around it either. and I never have problems seeking in mpeg2 files. and who wants ff/rw when you can just drag the seek bar, huh? try 6.4 I bet you will be pleasantly suprised...oh wait! you can't get rid of 7.0 without re-installing windows, I forgot...good luck with all of that XP stuff :P

[Ego_Shredder]

Actually you don't have to reinstall Windows if you want to get rid of Media Player v7. I installed it, and for some reason it kept crashing, so I uninstalled and went back to using v6.4 again. I wasn't forced to install Windows again.


Just wanted to clear that one up.


Cheers,

Ego

[Martyn1980]

For picture quality Win DVD, for sound Power DVD 4.

WMP does the job but not as well, Ive had no trouble with VCD's on Power DVD, but Win DVD does them better, especialy SVCD's.

For mpegs or DVD then Power DVD 4 is the best, DD5.1 DTS, Dolby Headphone, Dolby Pro Logic2, TruSurround, lovely.

For DIVX then WinDVD or WMP, dont use Power DVD, it doesnt recognise the borders have been chopped and doesnt display them, so u either get a small screen, which u can resize if u want, or maximise it and it stretches it.

Theres also Winamp now, but it plays DIVX upside down, plays XVID blue, so people look like smurfs, and only plays the sound on Mpeg2, plays Mpeg1 fine though.

[ya_jai]

I give up to you all WMP supporter

But still I wouldnt change my mind for PowerDVD. And for you guys who are so support WMP, humm don't let me know if you use any other softwares than WMP, otherwise I will tell Mr. Billy 8)

[Martyn1980]

Im not a WMP supporter, and the main program i use is Power DVD, its the easiest to use and has more options than any other,and is the best for Mpegs, especially if you want to check the bitrate on your VBR encodes, but it just cant do DIVX properly like Win DVD can and even WMP can, hopefully it will be fixed by the nest release.

Best all round is WinDVD, its fiddlier to use and doesn't have Dolby ProLogic 2, but its plays everything, and looks great with DVD.

[paul8883]

Does anyone know if powerdvd xp 4.0 can run in other windows OS like 2k, 98?
thx

[ya_jai]

Yes PowerDVD can run under win98 (not sure about 2000, thou). And I suggest you to go for it becuz PowerDvd is the best. lol

[Movman]

Try Sasami 2k ( downloadable in section tools ).

It plays everything except of SVCD and its very functionable.
It gots serveral audio and video filters to improve playback quality.

Best Fullscreen performence

peace

Movman

[KingJohn]

Hi John or should I call you King!

I guess the username is KingJohn, or did you miss that ?

1. WMP doesn't support full feature VCD/SVCD disc in disc mode, which PowerDvd does.

Select file from disk to play

2. Can you FF/RW with WMP.

Yes, move or click the scroll bar at the bottom, or click and drag to skip through

3. Is there a capture screen shot with WMP?

Why would you want to capture in a "Player" ?

4. WMP always freeze a bit but long enough to get annoying After you move slide bar while playing SVCD.

It may do on your system but not on most peoples, I guess its XP playing up again, no problem at all with Windows 98SE

5. New WMP which come with XP doesn't show the right aspect for 352x480 type of SVCD.

Again this must be with XP only...

6. If you wanna watch like 5 mpeg files continueously, what do you do? Open one by one? So this should call feature of next skip or previous skip.

Again you are referring to features the average person would not use, most people double click the full movie to play it. Windows Media Player comes free with the system, it does not install alien software to the OS, and so is more compatible than anything else. I guess you could make a list in a batch file call, to do the same thing...


The original post..

best software for playing most common video mideas i.e VCD, SVCD, DIVX, etc etc. Thx guys would appreciate any help on this

That’s playing, not editing, not capturing the screens, not loading several movies in a cue (Which you have to add to the list anyway).

Windows Media Player is simple. And it simply plays "Midi" "WAV" AVI/Mpeg/ASF/ etc etc it plays anything you thow at it, and it comes built in with all Windows OS systems, you can also update it for free, it will even download a missing codec if the codec is legal.

I have every editor, player you can think of including Power DVD 4, but when people double click a video file, they want it to be on the screen playing immediately, no fancy gimmicks just playback....

Telling someone to install Power DVD 4, for the missing codec is one thing, but telling them to install it "Just to play files" is another....

[paul8883]

Ok I'll give a try to powerdvd, hopefully it work for win2k.
I usally use windvd to play mpeg2 files like dvd, svcd,..
winamp for mp3
quicktime for mov,...
realpalyer for rm,..
DivXPlayer come with DivX5 for divx...
wmp for the rest (mpeg1, wma, wmv, wav, normal avi, ...)
I tryed to use wmp to play mpeg2, but it failed (and error in download codec!!!)
I tryed to use wmp to play some kind of DivX, it failed too
tha's why I have a lot of players for different kinds of media files

[ya_jai]

I guess the username is KingJohn, or did you miss that ?

I got it your name is KingJohn, thanks for clearing my understanding KINGJOHN.

Select file from disk to play

Don't you read I was talking about full feature in disc mode. you know like pop up VCD/SVCD disc into the dvd/cd rom and the software play from the beginning especially vcd/svcd with menu. Why do I have to search file from disc and click when PowerDvd can play right from start!.

Yes, move or click the scroll bar at the bottom, or click and drag to skip through

I agree that you can use slide bar with WMP, but as I mentioned it freeze when I play SVCD with 800 MB file size. Have you ever tried that? Go figure!

Why would you want to capture in a "Player" ?

Why would I? I'm a newbie with vcd/svcd, but sometime I wanna make some complicate thing like menu and chapters which one screen shot. I think you are an expert has a better way to do, but for me a newbie this is the easiest way. BTW if I want motion menu or chapter with short clips I would do with TMPGenc to get all the frames at once not capture.

It may do on your system but not on most peoples, I guess its XP playing up again, no problem at all with Windows 98SE

Like i mentioned about it freeze when you move slide bar with mpeg2 file size very large. And don't ask why do I do that? I have to have my reason which might not be yours. And this happened with my older win98 system as well(version 6.x).

Again you are referring to features the average person would not use, most people double click the full movie to play it. Windows Media Player comes free with the system, it does not install alien software to the OS, and so is more compatible than anything else. I guess you could make a list in a batch file call, to do the same thing...

Average person, How do you know? Don't use your judgement and compare to majority. I always play music videos while I working with my computer that why I mention. I don't know about other ppl but FOR ME, PowerDvd is the best. BTW I don't wanna create batch file eveytime I wanna watch 5-6 music videos at a time. So this doesnt help.

Quote:

best software for playing most common video mideas i.e VCD, SVCD, DIVX, etc etc. Thx guys would appreciate any help on this

oj^s asked for the best software to play, when WMP come std with all OS and if he wanna use it, why he ask for any other softwares?

I have every editor, player you can think of including Power DVD 4, but when people double click a video file, they want it to be on the screen playing immediately, no fancy gimmicks just playback....

If you wanna talk about tech. I think you can do that with PowerDvd as well. Just change file type all, mpg, m2v, m2p, avi to play with PowerDvd instead of WMP (which I did for only m2v, m2p) and everytime you click PowerDvd will play.

Windows Media Player is simple. And it simply plays "Midi" "WAV" AVI/Mpeg/ASF/ etc etc it plays anything you thow at it, and it comes built in with all Windows OS systems, you can also update it for free, it will even download a missing codec if the codec is legal.

I agree with this simple, free and universal playing things. But original post asked for opinion in other software ( don't you think he/she knows already that can play anything he/she wants with WMP) and IN MY OPINION I think PowerDvd is a lot better than WMP.

Telling someone to install Power DVD 4, for the missing codec is one thing, but telling them to install it "Just to play files" is another....

You must be kidding me!!!, When did I tell da guy to install PowerDvd? Did I say something like if you don't install PowerDvd you will become @#$@. Yes in all my post I always recommened PowerDvd but that up to them if they wanna install it or not. It's just a SUGGESTION.

So if WMP is the best for you it's fine but for me I'd go with PowerDVD period. Let's say here, if oj^ asked for what is the fastest car? you wouldnt say Honda, Toyota, or Nissan becuz they can do pretty much the same Ferraris do, would you? Or you might say Hey ALL is the fastest becuz you cannot drive over the speed limit anyway or maybe the cop car is the fastest one becuz you cannot drive faster than them lol.

[KingJohn]

In that case, I would recommend the most reliable, and that is WMP

Judging by the large number of posts on Power DVD problems, knowing it crashes more that it plays I would not say it was one of the best at all..

[ya_jai]

IMHO, I'd say PowerDvd 4.0 XP any built.

Knowing that I can get more features, never crash on me and can play almost everything. And for whom that what to upgrade to WMP version 9, Pls do think really hard about it, search all info in the internet about this version before you attempt to upgrade.

[Spicuzza]

Who would've ever thought a blood letting war would start over this topic?
Personally, I prefer the ATI File Player!

[ya_jai]

yeah ATI is good, I like zoom function. I have used it before but somehow I got so many problems open mpeg2 files so I stopped.

Good to have alternative!!!

[KingJohn]

IMHO, I'd say PowerDvd 4.0 XP any built.

Knowing that I can get more features, never crash on me and can play almost everything. And for whom that what to upgrade to WMP version 9, Pls do think really hard about it, search all info in the internet about this version before you attempt to upgrade.

Yes and it was just the other day people were saying this about XP