Is VLC Video Player good or bad?

[CrimzonEyed]

Mplayer2 > > > Potplayer > > > any other player

if Mplayer2 is to hard for you to setup/configure, use Potplayer instead

 

[alphamule]

Oh, I thought the comment about screenshots was referring to how they could just F12 or something like games. It's actually configurable. The 'green screen' or 'blank' screenshot issue is common to every player. VLC is fortunately very easy to configure for GPU or CPU decoding. It's also possible to make it use external codecs. Am I the only one in here that mostly just tries a different player until finding one that likes a file? I've seen player A work great with videos 1 and 2, and player B work great with videos 2 and 3 or something like that. It's annoying but usually a player will work with a specific format consistantly, at least. You can just associate the file extension to make it the default player. It's part of the reason that I had VLC in the first place - to act as backup for WinAmp and a few other player's issues with codecs. VLC just plain worked without tracking down weird codec downloads. Now it's actually a matter of it running decently fast and having a 'clean' GUI (if using the default or classic skins).

My brother uses Pot Player. Then again, he has Windows 7 just so he can play Halo 2. *shudders thinking about using it*

 

[DarkStriker]

I loved VLC until i started to watch 10bit videos instead of 8bit(10bit uses less space and has more colors) and VLC gave me green screen on all the 10bit videos. There were those nighhtly builds that supported it, but no im not going to find them. So i changed to CCCP and never looked back.

 

[Rydian]

Wait, 10 bits of color depth take up less space then 8? This is news to me.

 

[alphamule]

But higher compression and less FPS, most likely. Without a link to some sample videos, there's no way to see. I'm not 100% sure that they're legal to link to, either so that could be why no one's posted examples.

 

[DarkStriker]

Wait, 10 bits of color depth take up less space then 8? This is news to me.

It has to do with something like how they are being compressed and that. I remember seeing a posted picture around somewhere explaining the proccess. Its really not noticeable. Maybe 1MB-10MB less with a file size of 300 i think.

EDIT: @alphamule: Tons of examples around the net. If you see it taken down, then its because of copyrights infrigment like using clips from a copyrighted movie.

 

[alphamule]

How exactly do you search for 10-bit color planes in a video search? LOL, there any sites with legal samples like how Apple's site has QT videos?

 

[DarkStriker]

How exactly do you search for 10-bit color planes in a video search? LOL, there any sites with legal samples like how Apple's site has QT videos?

I meant more like this

And this. Take notice in the file size for this one lol.

Spoiler

AAAAND HERE:
http://x264.nl/x264/...e_bandwidth.pdf
Look at the first picture AND READ ABOVE THE PICTURE. That should get you a idea on how it works.

 

[alphamule]

8-bit color=256 colors and a palette, shared among 3 color channels.
24-bit color=16777216 colors with no palette, shared among 3 color channels.

So what you're talking about is 24-bit and 30-bit direct color planes, or 8-bit and 10-bit palettes? There's quite a bit of difference. I thought MPEG and others used 24-bit color? If so, there shouldn't be any visual difference going to 30-bit color. But if it's 8-bit, then that would make a small improvement and mostly to smoothly shaded images (like some animation). For movies, it would be useless since it's VERY rare to have the banding effect that 8-bit color gives on gradients. Part of the reason is that photos are highly containing of random noise. Edit: OK, found some info. It seems that it is 24-bit and 30-bit as I thought. Here's some theory about 10-bit versus 8-bit color channels.

 

[yusuo]

Personally used to love VLC but the newer releases are more memory hungry and lag alot if you (like me) use multiple monitors, ive been converted to Media player classic now for it has the same support codec wise as vlc but is alot less hungry for my RAM

 

[Arras]

Mplayer2 > > > Potplayer > > > any other player

if Mplayer2 is to hard for you to setup/configure, use Potplayer instead

I have to agree with this. I've used Mplayer2 for a pretty long time now and it has played everything I threw at it without a need for codecs. The main reason I stopped using VLC was because it doesn't support ordered chapters. If you have a MKV file with ordered chapters, VLC WILL crash/stop whenever the chapter changes.

 

[DarkStriker]

8-bit color=256 colors and a palette, shared among 3 color channels.
24-bit color=16777216 colors with no palette, shared among 3 color channels.

So what you're talking about is 24-bit and 30-bit direct color planes, or 8-bit and 10-bit palettes? There's quite a bit of difference. I thought MPEG and others used 24-bit color? If so, there shouldn't be any visual difference going to 30-bit color. But if it's 8-bit, then that would make a small improvement and mostly to smoothly shaded images (like some animation). For movies, it would be useless since it's VERY rare to have the banding effect that 8-bit color gives on gradients. Part of the reason is that photos are highly containing of random noise. Edit: OK, found some info. It seems that it is 24-bit and 30-bit as I thought. Here's some theory about 10-bit versus 8-bit color channels.

I like how u edited your post to a link which i edited and posted before you. Keep in mind that what i watch is usually anime 90% of the time. Its very visible in the skies etc. And rather than theory. is a fact.

 

[Mazor]

For me, the most interesting part when the VLC vs MPC-HC etc discussion comes up are the people who say "I've been using VLC for x long amount of years and it has been working perfectly". Now, I haven't used VLC past 2010 so I cannot comment much on the recent developments of the program. What I can say however is that anyone claiming that they've had VLC worked perfectly since long before that time, including people in this thread, are either spouting bullshit or must have been getting all of their video from the same source using obsolete format(s).

Some time over five years ago MKV became a very common, if not the most common, format for videos uploaded to filesharing sites such as torrent sites and has remained so since. Initially the support in VLC was outright laughable. Where MPC-HC, MPlayer and likely other players (but I personally only used these two in addition to VLC) would let you choose your audio track, VLC would instead just default to a language and not let you change, seemingly by alphabetical priority. This meant that for many anime dvd rips sourced from outside Japan you would default to English (E in English comes before J in Japanese) and for many dvd rips from Europe you would seemingly default to German "at best" and at any rate to some language other than the original a lot of the time.

The next problem with MKV files that instantly became apparent was subtitle support. For a very long time, at the very least until sometime 2008, VLC simply could not render a lot of subtitles instead showing nothing. For the cases where it could show the sub (besides hardcoded subs), the actual font and any visual style or effects of the sub would be entirely disregarded and an ugly default font shown instead. This problem was still present when I completely stopped using VLC in 2010. For some subs there was also a timing issue where lines would appear on top of each other.

Setting aside the above, perhaps the most important quality of a video player is the quality of its output. A subjective matter of taste at times, I think everyone should form their own opinion on how VLC compares in video quality to other players. One thing is however very clear to me: the output does not look the same as MPC-HC, not even near the same. In fact even when trying to mess with the settings of VLC I failed (could admittedly have been a failure only on my part) to get it particularly close to the output of MPC-HCs in my opinion vastly superior video quality.

On the 10bit issue I can't make much of comment except it seems to be another case of VLC lagging behind when something new appeared, leaving its userbase to post complaints online (much like I did myself some years ago when my beloved VLC dissapointed me on so many levels for MKV playback).

tl;dr: If you are one of the people who are claiming VLC has been working for you perfectly without even having compared the video quality and other aspects with anything else I'll be the one to inform you that you are the cancer killing these threads.

 

[porkiewpyne]

Well while I won't say it's bad, I personally rather have MPC with K-lite or CCCP. Well back in the day, loooooooong ago, it was pretty terribad iirc but I guess it's pretty decent now.

PS: I rmbr reading in some forum somewhere saying that VLC is superior because it's simpler to install than K-lite or CCCP codec pack.... I swore that I wanted to headdesk myself to death.

 

[DarkStriker]

Well while I won't say it's bad, I personally rather have MPC with K-lite or CCCP. Well back in the day, loooooooong ago, it was pretty terribad iirc but I guess it's pretty decent now.

PS: I rmbr reading in some forum somewhere saying that VLC is superior because it's simpler to install than K-lite or CCCP codec pack.... I swore that I wanted to headdesk myself to death.

Haha. CCCP installs so easily that you start to think if that was CCCP itself x)

 

[Archenyte]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png
There are those dark blocks almost everywhere on the shelf in that picture, but the thing I noticed first was: Why can't it even display the colours properly? The background colours look washed out (everything lost its saturation), not to mention the artifacts at the sides block out some of the video and there is excessive banding.
VLC has improved over the years (from way back when a certain fansub group crashed VLC with a bug they found in the subtitle renderer), but it is apparantly still too broken to be used to display videos. At least I didn't get a green screen.

Please do not use VLC unless it's your last resort.

 

[SifJar]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcom...mparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png
There are those dark blocks almost everywhere on the shelf in that picture, but the thing I noticed first was: Why can't it even display the colours properly? The background colours look washed out (everything lost its saturation), not to mention the artifacts at the sides block out some of the video and there is excessive banding.
VLC has improved over the years (from way back when a certain fansub group crashed VLC with a bug they found in the subtitle renderer), but it is apparantly still too broken to be used to display videos. At least I didn't get a green screen.

Please do not use VLC unless it's your last resort.

I literally see almost no difference between the two screen shots. If it wasn't for the fact that it changed from one to the other on mouse over (i.e. if they were two separate images), I'm pretty sure I could not tell them apart. Now I see why people have problems with VLC - they are the equivalents of "audiophiles" for video. Is there a word for that? "Videophiles"?

 

[CrimzonEyed]

So I got some screenshots ready.
http://screenshotcom...mparison/123980
Tools > Codec info here: http://i.imgur.com/jZ3JD.png
There are those dark blocks almost everywhere on the shelf in that picture, but the thing I noticed first was: Why can't it even display the colours properly? The background colours look washed out (everything lost its saturation), not to mention the artifacts at the sides block out some of the video and there is excessive banding.
VLC has improved over the years (from way back when a certain fansub group crashed VLC with a bug they found in the subtitle renderer), but it is apparantly still too broken to be used to display videos. At least I didn't get a green screen.

Please do not use VLC unless it's your last resort.

I literally see almost no difference between the two screen shots. If it wasn't for the fact that it changed from one to the other on mouse over (i.e. if they were two separate images), I'm pretty sure I could not tell them apart. Now I see why people have problems with VLC - they are the equivalents of "audiophiles" for video. Is there a word for that? "Videophiles"?

If you don't see any big difference on the two image's you're blind/color blind :/

 

[SifJar]

If you don't see any big difference on the two image's you're blind/color blind :/

*Looks round room with his 20/20 vision* Nope, pretty sure I'm not blind nor colour blind. There is a small difference yes, but absolutely nothing worth caring about, let alone making a big deal out of.

 

[Ziggy Zigzagoon]

I had experiences with VLC. While VLC does play a lot of formats, the controls were hard to manage.
Maybe I should try again, though...