Media Player Classic / MPC-BE / MPC-HC : differences between them

[devilcoelhodog]

Hello, dear all.


Concerning about video players Media Player Classic, MPC-BE and MPC-HC:


1) What are the advantages / disadvantages/ differences about each one?


2) For playing Blu-Ray ( and similar ones ) content, which one is more efficient in your personal experiences?


3) Which one of them have more frequently updates / fixed issues / added features?


Thanks.


Best regards.


devil (johner)

[hello_hello]

MPC is old an outdated so you don't want to use that.

I'd suggest you try both MPC-HC and MPC-BE to see which you prefer. They have portable versions so you can download both flavours, unzip each to it's own folder, and run them from there. They both have a preference labelled "save settings to ini file". When it's enabled it works as advertised, saving the settings to an ini file in the player's folder instead of the Windows registry. Not that I think they'd interfere with each other's settings anyway, but using an ini file means they can't.

MPC-BE has a YouTube like preview above the navigation bar if you're into that sort of thing. MPC-HC doesn't. They're really not all that different from a user perceptive though. If memory serves correctly the guy mainly responsible for maintaining the MPC-HC decoders packed up his bat and split off to MPC-BE, and a short time later MPC-HC switched to using LAV filters for decoding, which I prefer. MPC-HC is probably updated a bit more, but from a user perspective they're still pretty similar.

There's also Potplayer. It's kind of like MPC-HC/BE with more options and functionality added. Many people here like it but I find it a bit bloated and prefer the more simplistic MPC-HC. I mention Potplayer as it no doubt started life based an a lot of MPC or MPC-HC code with the extra stuff added, so it's not completely dissimilar, and some people like the extra functionality. I don't think there's a portable version though.

Even if the latest MPC-BE ran on XP, which it doesn't, for me the deal-breaker is the way it handles pausing and resuming playback when you left click on the video, which I do a lot. It doesn't work reliably, I believe because you can also move the player window by clicking on the video and dragging it to a new location on the screen. MPC-BE tends to think you want to drag the video so left clicking to pause/resume only works intermittently and it drives me nuts as I'm stuck in my ways. For MPC-HC, the "left click down" option disables dragging the video so left clicking on it to pause and resume works perfectly. Sometimes it really is the little things....

[fritzi93]

I prefer MPC-BE for two reasons:

1) MPC-BE is more forgiving. Some of my captures are heavily edited for adverts and MPC-HC sometimes chokes.
I know, probably not the fault of MPC-HC as such, but MPC-BE plays them okay.

2) The preview pane on the nav bar. I've grown to like this feature and would miss it.

Otherwise, I've found the two very similar. I couldn't name any functional difference other than the two above, and I used both players extensively.

[EDIT] I haven't seen the pause/play misbehavior in MPC-BE described by hello_hello. Though I have no doubt it happens on that machine. Plenty of stranger things happen. One guy reports a bug, another says what the Hell are you talking about...[shrugs]

[hello_hello]

[EDIT] I haven't seen the pause/play misbehavior in MPC-BE described by hello_hello. Though I have no doubt it happens on that machine. Plenty of stranger things happen. One guy reports a bug, another says what the Hell are you talking about...[shrugs]

Anything's possible, but I'd be surprised if it's machine specific. I say that because after a MPC-HC update a while back (it was quite a while ago) it developed the same problem. Some protesting in the MPC-HC thread at doom9 led me to discover that for MPC-HC, the left click on video option for pause/resume had been changed to "left up" and for "left up" dragging is enabled..... hang on.... it's all coming back to me......

When it's set to "left up" clicking on the video and holding the mouse button down doesn't pause as it's not "up" yet. While holding the left button down if you move the mouse the player is dragged across the display. It keeps playing the video though and when you release the mouse button it's ignored, so that way the left mouse button can be used to drag the player without pausing the video, but it can still be used to pause the video if you don't drag. If the player thinks you're dragging though, clicking doesn't pause so clicking to pause isn't 100% reliable. For MPC-HC changing the pause option to "left down" means left down pauses/resumes and dragging the video to move the player is disabled. You've got to click the title bar to drag... which is fine by me.

For MPC-BE it doesn't work that way or the left click option is broken. I did complain about it in the MPC-BE thread a long time ago but it's still the same (version 1.4.6). I just tried it again and at the moment it appears to be fairly well behaved, but.... to confirm my belief it's a bit broken.... the left click option can be set independently for windowed mode and fullscreen mode. For MPC-BE, "left down" works in fullscreen mode but "left up" never works. You can have a click-fest and the video will keep playing or stay paused. For windowed mode the up/down setting doesn't seem to make any difference. It's always in "left up" mode even when set to "left down".
I'd be interested to know if the same is happening for you. Set the windowed left click pause option to "left down" and while a video is playing in windowed mode, left click on it and hold the mouse button down. It doesn't pause for me but it should if it's in 'left down" mode. Not only is it stuck in "left up" mode though, holding the mouse down for a brief period puts MPC-BE in "drag mode" even if you don't actually drag", which means the next "left up" is ignored when it should pause. So to pause a video by clicking on it I have to click and let the mouse button go quickly. If I hold it down for a bit it doesn't pause as it should and if the mouse moves at all the player things I want to drag instead.

Now I've finally looked at it more closely... that's it. "Left up" is broken in fullscreen mode and in windowed mode it's always in "left up" mode. Double left click as the default for fullscreen enable/disable just seems to compound the problem. It's retarded to have double click as the default for fullscreen mode anyway (MPC-HC is the same), but when you click to pause and it doesn't happen so you quickly click again.... whoops fullscreen mode.... double click to go back to windowed mode..... nope I think it missed a click so a couple of quick clicks again.... now it's out of fullscreen mode but still playing..... it really drove me nutty for a while.... I was swapping mice and throwing them at walls.... maybe using a wireless mouse when watching video didn't help either..... but why sometimes MPC-BE mostly detects clicks reliably for a while then other times it takes a clicking frenzy just to pause the video.... I've no idea.

I did notice, while messing around, one of the left click options doesn't pause in minimal mode for MPC-HC (View/Presets/Minimal). I can't remember which one, but I never use minimal mode anyway. Maybe it's by design, although I doubt it. It's just like MPC-BE in fullscreen mode, ignoring all left clicks. On the other hand, MPC-BE pauses normally in minimal mode.... sigh.


And to think.... if someone had told me.... even just an hour ago.... I'd be writing an essay on left click video pausing, I would have laughed at them.

[devilcoelhodog]

Hi, dear all.


Thanks for the tips!


I like to use MPC-BE and Potplayer for my daily activities. I use VLC for some cases too. I use DVDFab Media Player to play Blu-ray videos too.


1) Do you know if only VLC can play ISO files from video dvd content? I think that such feature is nice in some cases.


2) For playing Blu-Ray video material, do you like to use MPC-BE or MPC-HC? Which one is better in that field? Yes, menu support in such programs do not work nice, just main movies is OK. Concerning VLC I never could make it work properly to play Blu-Ray on my PC. Potplayer do not have support / plug-in or something for Blu-Ray video, right?


Best regards.


devil ( johner)

[flashandpan007]

If you're on Windows 10 or maybe also 8.1 MPC-BE (I switched from MPC-HC to MPC-BE some time ago) can play it. I know ISO, because I had to translate the feature of MPC-BE in my language

[devilcoelhodog]

@ flashandpan007

Hi. I tried to open an ISO file ( a complete video dvd structure ) and could not succeed.





The player is MPC-BE. When I tried the same using VLC its open without problem.


Am I doing something wrong? Or missing some settings to do it? Or such features only works if we are on Windows 10 or 8.1?


In time:


---> http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=150648


It seems that MPlayer / Mencoder + SMPlayer can play video dvd ISO files too.


---> https://www.videohelp.com/software/SMPLayer


---> https://www.videohelp.com/software/MPlayer



Or doing something like that:

CD/DVD emulation tool (e.g. Daemon Tool) and play it with MPC-HC.

Thanks.


Best regards.


devil (johner)

[flashandpan007]

As far as I know it's only Windows 8.1 and 10 and I switched to Windwos 10 as soon as possible, because all programs I use which are quite a lot are working fine so no issue for me.

[Attachment 37875 - Click to enlarge]

[TechLord]

MPC is old an outdated so you don't want to use that.
[HIDE]
I'd suggest you try both MPC-HC and MPC-BE to see which you prefer. They have portable versions so you can download both flavours, unzip each to it's own folder, and run them from there. They both have a preference labelled "save settings to ini file". When it's enabled it works as advertised, saving the settings to an ini file in the player's folder instead of the Windows registry. Not that I think they'd interfere with each other's settings anyway, but using an ini file means they can't.

MPC-BE has a YouTube like preview above the navigation bar if you're into that sort of thing. MPC-HC doesn't. They're really not all that different from a user perceptive though. If memory serves correctly the guy mainly responsible for maintaining the MPC-HC decoders packed up his bat and split off to MPC-BE, and a short time later MPC-HC switched to using LAV filters for decoding, which I prefer. MPC-HC is probably updated a bit more, but from a user perspective they're still pretty similar.

There's also Potplayer. It's kind of like MPC-HC/BE with more options and functionality added. Many people here like it but I find it a bit bloated and prefer the more simplistic MPC-HC. I mention Potplayer as it no doubt started life based an a lot of MPC or MPC-HC code with the extra stuff added, so it's not completely dissimilar, and some people like the extra functionality. I don't think there's a portable version though.

Even if the latest MPC-BE ran on XP, which it doesn't, for me the deal-breaker is the way it handles pausing and resuming playback when you left click on the video, which I do a lot. It doesn't work reliably, I believe because you can also move the player window by clicking on the video and dragging it to a new location on the screen. MPC-BE tends to think you want to drag the video so left clicking to pause/resume only works intermittently and it drives me nuts as I'm stuck in my ways. For MPC-HC, the "left click down" option disables dragging the video so left clicking on it to pause and resume works perfectly. Sometimes it really is the little things....[/HIDE]

Two other minor differences that I noticed:
MPC-HC is capable of showing the millesecond count during playback. MPC-BE supports flawless GPU video decoding and also shows a GPU badge, if enabled. Unfortunately, there is no option menu for that purpose.

Is PotPlayer OpenSource?
How do you compare MPC-HC and MPC-BE to VLC?

[sneaker]

MPC-HC is capable of showing the millesecond count during playback. MPC-BE supports flawless GPU video decoding and also shows a GPU badge, if enabled. Unfortunately, there is no option menu for that purpose.

"flawless" as opposed to "flawed" or "not at all"? Because MPC-HC also has lots of GPU decoding options. During playback click Play->Filters->LAV Video to set the options. (usually, DXVA2 copy-back is recommended)

[sheppaul]

Unlike someone said, potplayer is not based on mpc code at all. Please stop spreading something you don't know. MPC and his variant are nothing special these days. I feel stupid someone is continually claiming it as if it is true.

[hello_hello]

Unlike someone said, potplayer is not based on mpc code at all. Please stop spreading something you don't know. MPC and his variant are nothing special these days. I feel stupid someone is continually claiming it as if it is true.

Where's your evidence Potplayer didn't originally use code from MPC-HC?
If you want proof Potplayer has borrowed something from MPC-HC, simply go to the "PotPlayer\PxShader" folder, open the "Unsharp mask" pixel shader in Notepad and have a look at what's written at the top:

// unsharp mask=ps_2_0
// Code from MPC
// unsharp mask by crantastic

Potplayer's menus and options were remarkably similar to MPC-HC back in it's early days. Not just MPC-HC though. Try comparing Potplayer with some of ffdshow's filters and ask yourself if it's just co-incidence they're so similar?

Potplayer may have progressed and looks less similar to MPC-HC these days, but I'd be astounded if MPC-HC code wasn't used originally. Back in it's early days, if you combined MPC-HC with ffdshow, you basically had Potplayer.

[hello_hello]

Two other minor differences that I noticed:
MPC-HC is capable of showing the millesecond count during playback. MPC-BE supports flawless GPU video decoding and also shows a GPU badge, if enabled. Unfortunately, there is no option menu for that purpose.

Unless it's changed (I have the last XP compatible version), MPC-BE has two internal filters for each codec type for which it supports hardware decoding. If you look at the screenshot below, H264 DXVA is at the top, and standard H264 is down the bottom. If the DXVA decoder is enabled, it'll try to use that first.

MPC-HC displays "H/W" in the status bar when it's using hardware decoding. You can choose between Nvidia Cuvid, Quicksync and DXVA2 in the Video Decoder configuration.

[sheppaul]

You cannot entirely maintain borrowed codes. There are evidently some pixel shaders from MPC-HC, it doesn't mean the whole pixel shader system is copied from MPC-HC. Secondly, media player's menus can be similar. You should not judge something only by the similarity of menus or options. For example, Potplayer's video filters mostly comes from ffmpeg, not ffdshow. So that's no surprise Potplayer have similar options but you'll find the difference in details between ffmpeg and ffdshow if you look closely. As for winamp part, you'll find the developer of potplayer could do much more thing as he had implemented almost whole winamp plugin supports including input, general and even visual plugin in his previous work.

If you were using potplayer more than 1 years, you might never tell it's a copy of something. Again, borrowed codes cannot be maintained properly or combined with other things without breaking a functionality. It is simply impossible. That's why the built-in decoder is ditched and replaced into lav filters in the recent version of MPC-HC.

[hello_hello]

So you have no evidence at all that Potplayer didn't borrow any code from MPC or ffdshow? You've just decided?
Maybe I'm wrong, but you've offered nothing to show I'm not either.

ffdshow is also based on ffmpeg but I don't understand how Potplayer using ffmpeg decoders somehow proves Potplayer didn't borrow from ffdshow's GUI. LAV uses ffmpeg decoders too. Just about everyone does.

My understanding is MPC-HC switched to LAV filters because there was only one person doing the bulk of the work maintaining the decoder part, and he left and started a new fork which became MPC-BE. As far as I know the few people still contributing to MPC-HC either didn't have the time to maintain the decoders, or weren't interested etc, so replacing them with LAV Filters would have been logical, because LAV Filters is stable and maintained by someone else.

The fact that MPC-BE didn't ditch the same decoders and switch to LAV seems to contradict your theory MPC-HC switched because "borrowed code" couldn't be maintained, otherwise it wouldn't be possible to maintain it for MPC-BE either.

MPC-HC vs Potplayer. Of course it could be a coincidence Potplayer has the same external filter and pan and scan options and they look almost identical, but I doubt it.

[sheppaul]

Those are not same if you look closely. Modern players have similar features, not just potplayer. Pan & Scan is pretty common feature. As a proof, there are many advanced feature for pan & scan in potplayer. Screen Margin Settings is one of them in your screenshot above. It's not just addon.






You need to understand how different all the filter management system is in potplayer. The behavior/usage of Filter Priority is somewhat different if you look closely as potplayer has different filter management system. The following is the basic filter control in potplayer which does not exist in MPC-HC.







What GUI are you talking about? Look high precision/quality 3d denoise filter here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#hqdn3d-1
Does it really matter making such a simple GUI for such a filter?


What else other filters? Some comes from ffmpeg, others are native like resize, extend/crop. Look deinerlacing part if the implementation is from ffdshow. I don't have ffdshow to be compared with now so only I guess it'll not have a same implementation even if it can be similar.





The following is vapoursynth support in the recent version of potplayer. What can you say if there are players supporting vapoursynth afterward? Does it come from potplayer? These kinds of thing could be similar.

[hello_hello]

Those are not same if you look closely. Modern players have similar features, not just potplayer. Pan & Scan is pretty common feature. As a proof, there are many advanced feature for pan & scan in potplayer. Screen Margin Settings is one of them in your screenshot above. It's not just addon.

That hardly disproves Potplayer didn't start out using some MPC-HC code, only that if it did, it's been expanded on since and extra features have been added, which is something I mentioned originally.
Your argument doesn't make sense because if you looked at an old version of Potplayer and compared it's pan and scan abilities to the current version, you'd see the current version has many new and advanced features. Therefore applying your logic, the latest Potplayer pan and scan functionality can't be based on older Potplayer code.

Here's the pan and scan menu from the original MPC-HC. Version 6.4.5, dated 2003. 14 years later MPC-HC and Potplayer still have such similar pan and scan options, you'd need a pretty vivid imagination to believe they were developed independently.

You need to understand how different all the filter management system is in potplayer. The behavior/usage of Filter Priority is somewhat different if you look closely as potplayer has different filter management system. The following is the basic filter control in potplayer which does not exist in MPC-HC.

Much of that didn't exist in earlier versions of Potplayer, but even if Potplayer can brew coffee, it doesn't change the fact it's external filter configuration looks and functions identically to MPC-HC's external filter configuration.

What GUI are you talking about? Look high precision/quality 3d denoise filter here: https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#hqdn3d-1
Does it really matter making such a simple GUI for such a filter?

I was talking about the ffdshow GUI. I offered three examples of ffdshow filters that are virtually identical to Potplayer filters. The ffmpeg 3d denoise filter wasn't one of them. Unless you can link to the ffmpeg Winamp filter, or an ffmpeg Crystality filter with the same options as ffdshow, or to ffmpeg's Avisynth filter, I don't know what ffmpeg has to do with it.

What else other filters? Some comes from ffmpeg, others are native like resize, extend/crop. Look deinerlacing part if the implementation is from ffdshow. I don't have ffdshow to be compared with now so only I guess it'll not have a same implementation even if it can be similar.

ffdshow doesn't do hardware de-interlacing because it's old and not updated, but once again it has enough software deinterlacing in common with Potplayer (even if a few of them now have different names) for it to seem they may have the same origins.

The following is vapoursynth support in the recent version of potplayer. What can you say if there are players supporting vapoursynth afterward? Does it come from potplayer? These kinds of thing could be similar.

Well of course the Potplayer's Vapoursynth filter is very similar to it's Avisynth filter because they're pretty much the same type of frame server and I doubt modifying the Avisynth filter to create a Vapousynth version would ber hard if you know what you're doing, but once again it doesn't change the fact that Potplayer's Avisynth filter is remarkably like the ffdshow Avisynth filter in both appearance and function.

[sheppaul]

Ok, believe and keep doing what you want. I'm out.

[hello_hello]

You haven't been in yet.

[hello_hello]

If the Potplayer developer ever released the source code, it probably wouldn't be hard to determine if some of it came from elsewhere, but I don't think he ever has. Or he hasn't released the correct source code. That's why Potplayer discussion was banned at doom9. Not that I think it's the job of doom9 to police those sort of licence issues, but the main moderator at the time removed the Potplayer thread. I guess it was a slow moderating day.

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=165743