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The future of MPC-HC

forum.doom9.org

52 pointsdbcooper25 comments

I would be fine if MPC just received standard updates to its 3rd party components such as the LAV codecs/splitter and such, because so far MPC-HC is the most stable, fast, and 'proper' video player available. A lot of people talk about VLC, but VLC doesn't even do proper color reproduction most of the time, while MPC just always 'does it right'. You can even load in your own splitters and codec components, like DirectVobSub. With MPC-HC, second you click a video, you're watching it, and its the standard of what to run for home entertainment already. Perhaps I can forsee issues with future codec compatability, such as h265, but I'm unsure if thats all handled in LAV, or requires some custom code to get it to display in the program right.

Can't MPC-HC just be uploaded to GitHub where it can be collectively administered. This way the process of forming a steering body will be transparent and open and, if hell ensues, people can still fork. Way better than letting it gather dust in the closet.

MPC-HC is on GitHub:

main repo: https://github.com/mpc-hc/mpc-hc

group: https://github.com/mpc-hc

thank you.

MPC-HC's source is already on github, anyone who wants is free to fork it - but for that matter anyone who wants to actively develop the code has been free to do so for a long time now (it's GPLv3-licensed after all).

MPC is a fairly hairy C++ project that uses the low-level Win32 API heavily, there's probably not a lot of developers out there who would like to work on this code by choice even if they really like the project as a whole.

The repo has been on github for a long time, but the issues are on trac for some reason

It's been on GitHub for years...

thank you i overlooked it.

MPC-BE has several active devs with years of regular work being committed and looks a lot nicer which is reason enough for people to prefer it. Over the past year the activity of users has shifted from mpc-hc to mpc-be it seems, at least on the doom9 forums.

What I would love to see is someone make a nice Windows GUI player based on mpv but depending on your hardware mpv can be a real PITA to get working smoothly without experimenting with various backends so you don't have dropped frames or really fucked up output (my igpu notebook when using my desktops config just produced a green and LSD-trip style static image).

For me it works perfectly (on OSX) and what's more - it's the least resource intensive player among the ones I've tested, by quite a big margin. Which means you can play more video while on a battery (good for watching movies on a plane :).

I remember Media Player Classic, back when it came as part of the K-Lite Codec Pack. It was the only way to watch anime circa 2004, with all of their wild codecs and subtitle files.

It was incredibly useful, and if memory serves I believe I got better performance out of it than VLC on lower-end PC's.

I eventually transitioned over to just VLC, however. The fact that I could just download it and play everything out-of-the-box without having to then download a bunch of codecs was very attractive. It had a portable version, too.

when my htpc ran windows, this was the only player I would ever consider. years ahead of anything else, even vlc.

but the problem is, nobody who is a suitable contributor run windows nowadays.

every open source project must support Linux now.

Plus macOS, Android and iOS.

I think the reason VLC it's the moster it's right now it's their approach to multi platform and "out of the box" experience, with the user not having to worry about codecs and things like that.

Well this isn't true for codecs anymore. mpv and many other players support many codecs out of the box. The reason VLC has become slow it they keep on adding features.

The whole application can pass off as professional video playing software. So many ways to play and so many places to play from that it surprises me everytime I open it (which is very rarely).

I would argue that mpv has pretty much a similar feature set like vlc. I use mpv to watch youtube videos. And expanded it with a lua script to be able to zoom in. Its pretty crazy what is possible with mpv nowadays.

VLC was designed (and, well, still is) as streaming media server. This actually causes some problems with regard to normal playback but also makes it really good as... well, streaming media server, something mpv can't really do well (and doesn't intend to).

Approach to vlc is that word of mouth gave it significant market share while mpc had a boring interface when everyone wanted to migrate with a player with colors and better UI at the time (WinXP design). VLC was to video players what chrome is to internet browsers.

Yes! I do like this project and thought about contributing, but then it struck me that I have next to no know how on windows systems... Is it possible to get it running on linux at all, via say wine?

Use MPV, it's pretty much the successor of MPC and it's fantastic.

MPV is the MPlayer codeline however.

MPC-HC was basically the Windows Media Player from WinXP era, except maintained to a modern audience. That's partly why its so slim and efficient: its directly written in the Win32 GUI.

I do video editing with Vegas, which is DirectShow based as well. So an entire workflow working with DirectShow is important for codec reasons: Vegas, MPC-HC, and VirtualDub / AviSynth all are tools built on top of Microsoft's DirectShow platform.

Oh, I see, yes, I remember the program now (I haven't used Windows in years). It's the continuation of the original, light Windows Media Player from Windows 98, before it got all iTunesy. Yes, MPC is a fantastic piece of software.

For me it is mplayer for life, I like the command line switches

mpv is a fork of mplayer2, which itself is a fork of mplayer.

I really hope MPC and madvr move to Media foundation. That is the future or anybody else who makes their equivalent or better media foundation alternative gets my money.

Seeing as they're free they probably won't make too much off of you.

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