wanna play a 20 year old video in a format that you and God didn't even know existed? I gotchu, it doesn't even need to be a video or sound file, I'll figure it out
People downvoting you must be young, they don't remember the struggles before VLC where we had to download a codec-pack (CCCP) at the system level so things like Windows Media Player would recognize anything other than wmv or av1.
I always did both. I don't care about downvotes. I touch grass lol. And yes they are young. Cccp and vlc is something I've done together as long as I remember. I didn't get cccp last time first time I forgot and didn't know if it still exists. I'll look it up
Those still exist, they're just called something different. Maybe Windows Media Codecs or something like that? I had to install it since it isn't included in Windows N.
basically, a stupid file you have to download because God forbid they put it with the software that lets you run certain video formats
Windows media player was notorious that you would download a file to tell the Windows media player how to run the video since there’s a bunch of different video formats
To add to this, codec is short for encoder decoder. Essentially it's a compression algorithm that's used to make the video smaller and requires software to read the encoded data into a format that is able to be displayed
Edit: it's short for COmpressor/DECompressor. I made a mistake
Codecs and media players were separate because different codecs can have different priorities and capabilities, and there's no need to lock a media player to certain codecs only. Like CoreAVC was known for producing the best image but it also required lots of CPU. Others could have GPU decoding support but produced worse a worse image.
Haali, avisynth, cccp, k-lite, ffdshow. All blasts from the past.
A codec is a standard that signifies what you can and can't create regarding a bunch of information structured in a certain way.
You have video codecs like h.264, h.265 and AV1, image codecs like JPEG, AVIF and JPEG-XL, audio codecs like AAC-LC and Opus and even generic compressors like LZMA2, deflate, etc.
A codec is a piece of software that compresses/decompresses a certain file/compression format. E.g. x265 is a codec that implements the h.265 compression format. Of course there are other codecs that also implement the same file format.
A codec is a hardware or software tool that compresses large data streams (like audio or video) to make them smaller for storage or sharing, and then decompresses them so they can be played back
however I like to compare a codec to a translator, essentially making video software to understand how to play a video file.
It's the language your computer needs to decipher what the video file is saying, it basically tells the media player what to do in order to turn the data into images and sound in the intended order. It's needed because otherwise video files would have to be stored in raw formats which is very inefficient. Instead of saving 200 frames of the same image for static sequences, the compression algorithm can just say "hey, take this one image, and display it for 200 frames"
Are you replying to the correct comment? Everyone else in this thread seems to be more confused than the commenter you're replying to. They just explain it very much in layman's terms. Those other comments confuse codecs (the software) with the compression formats (standards and specifications).
It stands for code decode, it's the protocol to turn the images into 0s and 1s and then back into an images again. (Basically the definition of a video format for your computer to use).
For real, just recently tried out chiptunes and accidently opend them with vlc rather than xmplay and vlc just bloody played it. It isnt even an audio format in the traditional sense lol.
MPC-BE is better. It has been years since the new MPC-HC fork and it still cannot change subtitle or audio tracks without the video track blacking out for a few frames.
Owner just flat out refused to fix this. So, I don't actually care about MPC-HC (atleast this fork of it, even if it is fixed now). Besides, BE does the job perfectly fine for me. Potplayer picks up the slack anything odd that MPC won't play, which is very rare.
There are also better Linux clients for it that respect system theming. It would always drive me crazy when I would customize my system and then VLC still looks like a Windows program from 2003. Now I use Haruna and it looks better, has more formats, AND is faster.
Lately? It's been like this for a long time. I believe that VLC and Winrar are just one of the first applications users will download for their respective purposes and many don't even realize that Pot Player/MPV and 7-zip exist until they need something specific done. For me, I needed a video to be windowless and edge-less, that could be split on my ultrawide monitor. VLC could only do half of that, so I found Pot Player, which could do it and the color balance looked amazing.
However, I still remember the days where you needed to download video/audio codecs to play all sorts of videos back in the day (Real Player was especially bad with this), and VLC was one of the leading video players to play anything without needing additional codecs, and for that I'll always be grateful.
Yep it does , it's way faster than vlc - more efficient and much more snappy and responsive than vlc. And apply modern z layout on mpv and you basically have the perfect media player app ever
That is not always true, it is (mostly) not the reason why I praised MPV. MPV just generally has more capabilities and can make use of a LOT of external libraries/apps.
For example, when you pass a video site URL to MPV, it will try to fetch the video using yt-dlp and then play it. Or, for archives, it can play videos inside compressed archives using external programs like unrar or unzip.
It also can try to find media in middle of unrecognised data. For example, let's say you have a document that has an image inside it, MPV will search through the data and try to find a recognised header in the mess, when it finds a header, it uses it to display the image.
It also has really effective anti-banding, upscaling, downscaling, and tonemapping.
Only looked at the Linux dependencies earlier, looking through the repos for both seems they both test on version 8 or 8.1 and are testing/updating for 9 for builds that include it
Call me crazy, but I find the playback quality in MPV to be better than in VLC. Could just be I need to mess with some settings. But running stock to stock, side by side, I noticed MPV to look much better especially with displaying blacks.
If the difference in blacks you're describing is that one of the two players displays lighter than the other, the lighter one is crushing your color range.
I have both installed but 99% of the time i use MPC. Media player classic. Prefer the interface over VLC and plays everything VLC plays (in fact i have some old videos shot with some Nokia phones that only play with MPC for me )
Ya I'm very old school with programs like that and I really enjoy MPCs aesthetic. Simple, functional. It's why I use Tixati as my P2P program too.
Was hilarious seeing my nephews reaction when I showed him Tixati and how to use it though. He looked at me like I looked at my dad when he used a DOS prompt. It's utilitarian and functional, which is all I need since most of the time I spend with it is NOT interacting with it.
ffplay, from the ffmpeg project, will play even more obscure formats than VLC, in my experience.
I had some obscure proprietary CD disk-image format (don't remember what it was now, unfortunately) and I wasn't sure how to unpack it to get to any usable audio data. Audacity couldn't parse any raw audio data from the file. VLC wouldn't play it either. But ffplay would happily play it.
I still use windows media player for all the default extensions it can play just because for some fuckin reason VLC takes forever to open for the first time after not being used for a while and it annoys me.
Android build pure mess, same on Android/Google TV, there problem with subtitles from the start of Android build, if your subtitles overcomplicated it will lag video playback.
Wait, it is suppose to be terrible? It can plays HD videos with stylized subtitles flawlessly on my phone while the native video player struggles to play mid res videos and cannot stylized the subtitles
For lower end devices mpv is way better than vlc matter of fact even for high end devices - mpv does hdr way better than vlc. , vlc lags and takes time to jump to scenes on skip and changing audio streams. Mpv is way more snappy uses the newer ffmpeg and u can freely customize it for example I use modern z ui ,
In today's day and age where chat gpt can help you set up mpv your meme no longer applies it just takes an hour to get settings that suit your needs and then just upload that 100 kb config folder to your gdrive that's it you're set
Biggest edge is mpv tonemaps hdr content to sdr for displays that do not support hdr and vlc just puts a grey filter on that thang
That's....actually kind of huge since a lot of times the English subtitles won't have a translation for a foreign language in the movie.
It did lead to one of my favorite unintentional moments watching a movie though. 30 Days of Night, I got the subtitles but it didn't have any for the vampires. So I never knew what they were saying, which honestly made the movie exponentially better. Seeing them speaking and coordinating without understanding what was actually said really put me into the mindset of a person in that town watching it all go down.
When I told my friend about how much I liked that decision he was like, "Wtf are you talking about, it had subtitles for everything they said."
I use potplayer too. This one time, I was trying to figure out how to get side-scrolling video look as smooth as it does on my TV without the choppiness, and it's incredible how deep the configuration goes.
I had a filetype a few years ago...I don't remember what...that VLC couldn't play. I didn't know what to do haha. It'd been so long since I'd found a video that VLC couldn't do. I didn't even know it was possible.
Honestly I've been having so many issues with VLC over the last few years, most notably really long start up. I switched to Screenbox a few moths ago and It feels way better so far
Can't remember the last time I used another video player. I double-click on something after a fresh install and whatever Windows has by default starts up? I close it almost in disgust.
I've only had one thing (so far) not play on VLC, and it confused the hell out of me because everything else would just simply run, but it wasn't a video file: it couldn't play a .dsf audio file.
I put a collection of pictures into vlc and it turned it into a slideshow. I hit shuffle, put on a YouTube video in the background, boom, instant professional looking slideshow.
While we're on the topic, it would be great if there were a spot to type the % of volume I want instead of having to land the slider on not 99% or 101%.
Also, if the "Continue" bar could appear long enough for me to click it, or better yet, that and add an "X" for me to close it if I don't need it.
VLC has been my default media player for years, but for the last year or so it has been having issues with selecting audio tracks/subs on newer MacOS versions. For many videos the audio selection drop-down menu is bugged and prevents you from selecting a preferred audiotrack, same with subs menu. Also no HDR, so now I have to use other players like OmniPlayer & MovistPro.
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u/k5pr312 5h ago edited 55m ago
wanna play a 20 year old video in a format that you and God didn't even know existed? I gotchu, it doesn't even need to be a video or sound file, I'll figure it out