Media player classic setting for .mkv

[Apexi]

Hi guys. Sorry if this question has been up before, and sorry for my lack of English in advance.

I'm using a HTPC+external surround setup to watch HD movies ".mkv" with a MPC, ffdshow and Haali Media Splitter combination. Dont ask me why, all i can say that i've read somewhere that this is the best way to go.

But what i dont know is which settings i should use.
I've noticed some tearing on the upper screen "using a 50" LCD" that i cant get rid of. It's nothing wrong with the temperature and all the drivers are up to date.

[Baldrick]

Try mpchc instead of mpc.

If you already is using you could try the new potplayer and see how it works.

[hello_hello]

If you use MPC-HC there's no "need" for ffdshow or the Haali splitter, but you can of course still use them. MPC-HC has it's own filters built in although I use the ffdshow audio decoder and let MPC-HC worry about the video.

Try installing ReClock to see if that helps with the tearing. Admittedly, in my case it didn't but I still use it for other reasons. I had a problem with tearing which drove me nuts. I think MPC-HC's various renderer options (there's a bunch of them under the right click menu) are renderer dependent. You possible won't have all of them with some renderers, but try "fiddling". Reclock can also help by running a tearing test and adjusting vsynch.

After being driven mad by tearing for a while, thinking I'd fixed it, then realizing I hadn't, the solution for me turned out to be to change the resizer used by MPC-HC. I've got all the renderer settings running at the "defaults" again and I'm using the WMR9 renderer.
For some reason a Bicubic resizer seemed prone to causing tearing while the Bilinear resizer causes none. Not everyone's cup of tea I guess (using Bilinear) but I prefer it for standard definition AVIs on a decent size TV anyway. I don't know why the resizer effects tearing with my setup. Maybe I should upgrade my video card one of these days.

[Apexi]

Thansk for the answers guys.
Iknow that MPC-HC has it owns filters, but they are not the best once for quality
Found this guide yesterday http://www.avsforum.com/t/1357375/advanced-mpc-hc-setup-guide and i works great, except one thing. It lags like he** when i run a movie in windowed mode.
The quality of the movie itself becomes great though.

[Hoser Rob]

Thansk for the answers guys.
Iknow that MPC-HC has it owns filters, but they are not the best once for quality ....

That's it in a nutshell with that program ... all these people say you don't need external codecs/filters and then everyone seems to use them anyway ...

I yanked mpchc a long time ago. My preferences for video (windows and still in linux) are smplayer and vlc. In that order.

vlc is my preferred audio player (and it does a lot more things) but smplayer beats it for video performance, and the filters are much more intuitive and useful. The smplayer interface seems flakier (like vlc a couple of years ago) but it works file.

Neither needs any external non microsoft codec crud. They, like other good programs and windows in general, perform best without any of them.

[hello_hello]

So which filters does MPC-HC use? Or for that matter smplayer and vlc. I'd always assumed they all pretty much use the same toys for decoding.

I have ffdshow installed but I only use MPC-HC's internal video filters and it happily plays everything I need it to play. I do use ffdshow for audio but that's so I can use it's EQ and run a Winamp compressor plugin. I guess there's a difference between saying you don't need external filters and running them because you want to.

[Apexi]

Well my expertises when it comes to filters and encoding is that all thoose internal filters are crap, only if you use a big screen TV or projector. I've notice a big different between internal filters and ffdshow. And now with the new "setup" everything looks cristal clear, but still with some minor problem.

[hello_hello]

I don't think I've used ffdshow for video decoding much in recent times but I do have this PC hooked up to a 51" Plasma. I can't say I've noticed any difference between the internal MPC-HC decoders and using ffdshow so I'd be surprised if the difference is "big", but when I get a chance later on today I'll do some comparisons so I know I'm not talking rubbish. It shouldn't be too hard to run two instances of the same video on the TV, one using ffdshow and the other not.

I'd still be keen to know which filters the other media players mentioned use and why they're better than than the ones used by MPC-HC. Maybe I'll install those players later on and run some comparisons on the TV too. Well I already have VLC installed. I kind of quite dislike it but it there's for the odd occasion I think I might have a problem and want to determine whether it's the player or the video. Fortunately I've hardly ever had to run it.

Neither needs any external non microsoft codec crud. They, like other good programs and windows in general, perform best without any of them.

On it's own even that comment doesn't seem completely logical to me. Does anyone actually encode using Microsoft encoders? Is that because they're so good?
When it comes to decoding, of course other players use non microsoft codecs. They may not be external to the players themselves, but it doesn't seem logical to call DirectShow codecs "external non-microsoft crud" when the same codecs can be used by a player internally, and I'd guess in the case of free software it's very likely many of them are.
I guess Windows must perform better when trying to play video for which it doesn't have it's own codecs for decoding, or maybe installing external non microsoft codecs in some way impacts the performance of media players which don't actually use them, or maybe Windows Live Mail runs better without external video codecs installed.... or something.