Need advice on media playing software.

[LeetPirate]

I am currently looking for a better media player than VLC. I have been looking through this list here but I don't think I want to test every program to see which one I like more. I have a problem with VLC in that it stutters for high resolution MKV files but it only uses 1 cpu core which could be the reason.

I want to know if you guys know of any media playing software capable of:

1.) using GPU or

2.) using multiple cpu cores or

3.) both.

[irefay]

Media Player Classic is what I always use.

[bearoninternet]

I want to know if you guys know of any media playing software capable of:

1.) using GPU or

2.) using multiple cpu cores or

3.) both.

I am not aware of any media player which is capable of any above.

Personally, i like gomplayer .

[KotaXor]

I am currently looking for a better media player than VLC. I have been looking through this list here but I don't think I want to test every program to see which one I like more. I have a problem with VLC in that it stutters for high resolution MKV files but it only uses 1 cpu core which could be the reason.

I want to know if you guys know of any media playing software capable of:

1.) using GPU or

2.) using multiple cpu cores or

3.) both.

Maybe you are looking for CyberLink PowerDVD, which has hardware acceleration for graphic processor.

[LeetPirate]

Maybe you are looking for CyberLink PowerDVD, which has hardware acceleration for graphic processor.

I think the hardware acceleration in Cyberlink PowerDVD is only for MPEG2. The same driver is used in K-Lite Codec packs to allow MPEG2 hardware acceleration on media player classic. It's basically a competitor to nvidia pure video codec. I don't think mpeg2 is the problem though, it's HD rips 720p and higher in the Matroska container format that stutters VLC.

I saw GOM but I didn't want to use it because of their taking advantage of FFMPEG technology which is already free. I hate to see people take advantage of the little guys. Anyway GOM is on the Hall of Shame. :welcome: Please no flaming about this, it's just my personal choice.

I have decided to use Media Player Classic, ALLPlayer, and Crystal Player. All 3 of them seem to be performing excellent with ALLPlayer and MP Classic using the least resources so I might just keep those in the end. Crystal Player costs money but they do have some great features like on the fly picture sharpening which I think was pretty decent. I noticed that I could select the Multi Threading versions of ffdshow while installing K-Lite mega pack, (they call it ffdshow MT experimental versions), which benefit ALLPlayer and MPC. They both use the same K-Lite codecs but I dislike MPC because I lose volume control ability from the keyboard, same reason I still use VLC 0.8.6i because the new ones suck.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I think the best option currently is the MT ffdshow codecs used by Media Player Classic and ALLPlayer but if anyone hears about a better player in future please update me. Thanks. :cheers:

[KilJaden]

Well i'm sory to inform you but Cyberlink Power Dvd does suport BlueRay and HDTV hardware decoding , just check out their Graphics Card Support List.

If you need a software fast software decoder for hdtv files CoreAVC is the one one for you .It has dual cpu support and all you need is ram and a fast CPU, single or dual core.

[LeetPirate]

Well i'm sory to inform you but Cyberlink Power Dvd does suport BlueRay and HDTV hardware decoding , just check out their Graphics Card Support List.

If you need a software fast software decoder for hdtv files CoreAVC is the one one for you .It has dual cpu support and all you need is ram and a fast CPU, single or dual core.

Thanks, I am looking into them now. I could not help but notice that CoreAVC is 2MB but PowerDVD is 76MB. Since I never used either programs before I am severely in favour of CoreAVC which I already acquired and it looks promising. They say GPU support will come some time in future to be determined and CoreAVC already supports multicore processing.

I will try out CoreAVC later to make sure it supports my files. I'm no expert so I really don't know if the files I have are H264 encoded, all I know is they are inside the Matroska container. They are blu-ray and HDdvd rips and I prefer the mkv container format because it holds all the audio, video, and subtitles in 1 file. So I will provide some feedback later. I last question though, do you think it is worth the 76MB for me to still try out PowerDVD 8 Ultra? Considering I won't use it for disc playback, only for HD rips on file.

[KilJaden]

As a personal note Cyberlink's mpeg/x264 is the best decoder when it comes to video quality, but it's power is in hardware accelaration . On the other hand CoreAVC is faster , and you don't need the same setup, but it's only for x264 files plus as a personal note the quality isn't the same, could be wrong off course. So try them both and then make you're decision.

[LeetPirate]

As a personal note Cyberlink's mpeg/x264 is the best decoder when it comes to video quality, but it's power is in hardware accelaration . On the other hand CoreAVC is faster , and you don't need the same setup, but it's only for x264 files plus as a personal note the quality isn't the same, could be wrong off course. So try them both and then make you're decision.

Ok I'm a bit confused about how to use CoreAVC. I installed it but I don't know how to use it. I am trying to get Core Player to see if that helps. Sadly I noticed CoreAVC installs Haali Media Splitter which is the same thing used by every other program I have so I am unsure about it's self contained performance since it clearly depends on Haali. Makes me wonder if it's just marketing that make it sound great when really every other program that uses Haali is just as good. I could be wrong cuz Im no expert but I still wonder these things.

Still working on getting powerdvd 8 to try it out.

Update (date='Jan 30 2009, 02:00 AM'):

I finally got PowerDVD 8 Ultra and it was 127MB to download then after I installed it, immediately it harassed me to get an update patch which was 102MB and after all that it could not even play mkv files. There are other reasons why I doubt I will want to use it in future. It is adware, constantly advertising other titles by Cyberlink at every place they could find which makes no sense, imagine how people who actually pay for it must feel! It also takes longer to load than I would expect but I checked some reviews to see if the problem was my AMD cpu but I saw other people with Core 2 duo and quad experiencing the same long load times. It also seems to connect to the internet whenever it wants without ever asking for permission which is quite undesirable. I had high expectations for PowerDVD but was greatly disappointed. :(

Still no luck getting Core Player or figuring out how to use CoreAVC codec.

[KilJaden]

Well CoreAVC, it's just a codec it's not a player. You need another player for that even windos media player can be the one all you have to do is make sure that CoreAVC is the preferred decoder. So : Start - Programs - CoreCodec - Configure CoreAvc. In this new program that starts make sure the checkbox " Preffered Decoder" is checked. Now when you play in any video player that doesn't have internal video codecs CoreAVC will do the work and he is going to do it well :coolwink:. So you can use Media player Classic and CoreAVC.

As for Haali Media Spliter it's role isn't to decode it's to "split" the mkv file in to streams : video , audio . After this splitting the decoding begins, and it's done by you're codecs.

[LeetPirate]

Well CoreAVC, it's just a codec it's not a player. You need another player for that even windos media player can be the one all you have to do is make sure that CoreAVC is the preferred decoder. So : Start - Programs - CoreCodec - Configure CoreAvc. In this new program that starts make sure the checkbox " Preffered Decoder" is checked. Now when you play in any video player that doesn't have internal video codecs CoreAVC will do the work and he is going to do it well :hitit: . So you can use Media player Classic and CoreAVC.

As for Haali Media Spliter it's role isn't to decode it's to "split" the mkv file in to streams : video , audio . After this splitting the decoding begins, and it's done by you're codecs.

Well I have been trying MPC and CoreAVC still does not show up. I reinstalled it and it is set as the preferred decoder and I even enabled the tray icon so I could see when it's in use. Sadly each time I load a file it still uses ffdshow decoder. To be more specific, 3 icons show up in the system tray: Haali Media Splitter, DirectVobSub, and ffdshow video decoder, in that order. I really want to get this thing working but I don't know what I could be doing wrong, I didn't touch any of the options in the configure page except the tray icon one, it was set as preferred decoder by default. What do you suggest I do? I will try booting to safe mode and removing K-Lite Mega Pack then reinstall CoreAVC and see what happens.

[KilJaden]

You could just configure ffdshow :hitit:

Here's how you do it : Start - Program Files - K-lite Codec Pack - Configuration - ffdshow video decoder

Now on the left side in ffdshow video decoder click Codecs. Now there should be on the right a list of codecs that ffdshow should or shloud not decode : the first one on this list is H.264/AVC. Now select in the tab next to it disbled (there are two or more options: disbled and libvacodec ore more). This way you dissabled ffdshow as the default codec for H264 files , and you need to make sure now is that prefered decoder is selected in CoreAVC configuration.

One more thing if you use K-Lite i recomend that you use Mediaplayer Classic , not the HomeCinema build because the later is very buggy and might cause video or sound issues.

Do report when finished :P

Hope it Helps :D

[RKP]

I would say get klite mega codec pack. install with the option lots of stuff. It installs media player classic too. this will help you not only with better viewing but also every format can be played with just one player!!!

[LeetPirate]

You could just configure ffdshow :hitit:

Here's how you do it : Start - Program Files - K-lite Codec Pack - Configuration - ffdshow video decoder

Now on the left side in ffdshow video decoder click Codecs. Now there should be on the right a list of codecs that ffdshow should or shloud not decode : the first one on this list is H.264/AVC. Now select in the tab next to it disbled (there are two or more options: disbled and libvacodec ore more). This way you dissabled ffdshow as the default codec for H264 files , and you need to make sure now is that prefered decoder is selected in CoreAVC configuration.

One more thing if you use K-Lite i recomend that you use Mediaplayer Classic , not the HomeCinema build because the later is very buggy and might cause video or sound issues.

Do report when finished :P

Hope it Helps :D

SUCCESS!!! It bloody works!! I love you man!!! (not in a queer way of course :D ). I configured ffdshow as you said and that did the trick. I don't know if changing the MPC had anything to do with it but I replaced the my MPC with the one on the front page. To tell you the truth I never even noticed that the one I had was HomeCinema build, nor was I even aware there were different builds of MPC.

As for the playback quality, the videos play very fluidly and look great. Core 0 averages around 50% and Core 1 averages around 25% and the cpu remains clocked down to 1000Mhz so I can only say that CoreAVC seems to be really efficient.

Thanks for the help with getting this to work, I really appreciate it. :cheers:

I would say get klite mega codec pack. install with the option lots of stuff. It installs media player classic too. this will help you not only with better viewing but also every format can be played with just one player!!!

Yea I already use K-Lite Mega Pack with option 7, lots of stuff :P. Only thing I did was replace that mplayerc.exe with the one on the nsane front page. I really don't know the differences between the HomeCinema build included with K-Lite and the regular MPC but I'll take KilJaden's word than the regular MPC might be more stable.

[KilJaden]

SUCCESS!!! It bloody works!! I love you man!!! (not in a queer way of course :P ). I configured ffdshow as you said and that did the trick. I don't know if changing the MPC had anything to do with it but I replaced the my MPC with the one on the front page. To tell you the truth I never even noticed that the one I had was HomeCinema build, nor was I even aware there were different builds of MPC.

As for the playback quality, the videos play very fluidly and look great. Core 0 averages around 50% and Core 1 averages around 25% and the cpu remains clocked down to 1000Mhz so I can only say that CoreAVC seems to be really efficient.

Thanks for the help with getting this to work, I really appreciate it. :P

I would say get klite mega codec pack. install with the option lots of stuff. It installs media player classic too. this will help you not only with better viewing but also every format can be played with just one player!!!

Yea I already use K-Lite Mega Pack with option 7, lots of stuff :hitit:. Only thing I did was replace that mplayerc.exe with the one on the nsane front page. I really don't know the differences between the HomeCinema build included with K-Lite and the regular MPC but I'll take KilJaden's word than the regular MPC might be more stable.

Good to hear that everthing is ok. And one thing when you upgradde on the following klite build just make sure you check Media player Classic in the setup, because as i saw last time it's the HomeCinema build installed by default now :D

Cheers :D