anyone use vlc exclusively?

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 2:59 pm

for many years i've use mpc (media player classic)
but have been pondering switching over to vlc
however, one thing that has kept me from doing it is browser plugins

for example, for mpc i install both quicktime alternative and real alternative.
doing so also installs associated plugins for firefox

since vlc comes with all the necessary codecs you don't need to install others.. but what about browser plugins? if i have to install qta and ra along with vlc then i might as well just keep using mpc.

just wondering how others handle this or if there is something i overlooked?

redxii · Post by **redxii** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 3:15 pm

VLC has a browser plugin.

scarface · Post by **scarface** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 4:21 pm

use vlc and the decoder pack http://sharebee.com/6596b25a

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 7:25 pm

redxii wrote:VLC has a browser plugin.

does it? b/c i have it installed and i see no plugin. whats it called?

Knowone · Post by **Knowone** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 8:55 pm

I've used VLC for a year or two and it is a great allround player. Lately, though, I have completely fallen in love with the KM Player. It resembles VLC in being a self contained package having all the codecs included, but there's several details that have sold it to me over the VLC.

For one, it has as sleeker, sexier interface makes VLC come across as downright ugly (yes, I know VLC has skins) and the file icons are pretty and informative compared to VLC's traffic cone(?) theme. There's other details, like when pressing the 'next' button, in VLC it only plays the next thing in the playlist, while KM Player actually plays the logical next item _in the folder_ AND automatically adds it to the playlist.

In addition to KM Player I have installed scarface's decoder pack (including mpc), which is a very good pack without carrying lots of bloat. This is a habit from the VLC times, providing an alternative when VLC somehow didn't do it's job to satisfaction.

beats · Post by **beats** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:18 pm

ccl0 wrote:does it? b/c i have it installed and i see no plugin. whats it called?

NPAPI plugin, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VLC_media_ ... er_plugins

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 1:52 am

thats odd.. i don't have that listed in my addons. i wonder if its b/c i already had quicktime alternative and real alternative installed, or if the npapi is an optional install. i think i just selected the default install for vlc

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 6:12 pm

Here are the instruction to install VLC for IE and Mozilla, but they are for very old version and doesn't seem to apply for new VLC anymore: http://wiki.videolan.org/Windows

I noticed that VLC does provide playback for embeded media clips, but I was only able to do so when installed VLC to a Windows OS that has WMP completely removed. But the support is really poor. Real medias aren't supported, and zero interface for other formats so half of the time the clips don't even work.

I have been wanting to use Windows with WMP completely removed and still be able to stream embedded Microsoft clips on the web. The only real solution I found is via the Firefox's addon "MediaPlayerConnectivity". It detect the embedded clips and open them an external player, you get to choose which player open which format. The only downside with this for me is MPC can't play some of the stream Microsoft formats, so I still have to install VLC for them.

WMP in Vista and 7 is obnoxious, even after I removed the media shell handler so video thumbnail won't show, with WMP installed you still see the thumbnails. And it has the tendency to hijack your file associations. So now I'm using Windows 7 with WMP and its codecs completely removed, and FINALLY, I can open a folder with videos in it and the files are sorted as detail view as I told it to be.

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Wed Sep 30, 2009 8:40 pm

looks like i discovered the answer. by default the plugin is not selected

after i did that i checked my add-ons and there was a new listing for
"vlc multimedia plug-in 1.0.2"

does anyone know of a site where i can test to see if firefox can playback various media formats?

i also found something called mediawrap https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1879 not exactly sure what it does but maybe someone will find it useful.

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 1:43 am

Just try googling for clips, here are random ones some I found on google, not responsible for the contents you will see:
real: http://www.radio.real.com
mp3: http://www.audiofarm.org
quicktime: http://www.illavision.com/videos.html
asf: http://www.wrc.com/jsp/index.jsp?lnk=250
wma: http://audio.crash.net/radioplayer.asp

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Thu Oct 01, 2009 9:22 am

previously the only thing i found was this http://plugindoc.mozdev.org/testpages/
but it was missing a few media formats to test

scarface · Post by **scarface** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 7:49 pm

v6 here http://sharebee.com/dc79cf48
i dont know if i will update it again. I dont know if ill come back too. im fed up.

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 2:06 pm

scarface wrote:v6 here http://sharebee.com/dc79cf48
i dont know if i will update it again. I dont know if ill come back too. im fed up.

i'm trying to avoid using extra codecs (if its possible). thats why vlc seemed appealing to me.

otherwise i'll just switch back to k-lite codec pack which has media player classic + everything else in one

problem with switching to something 'new' is i don't know how it works compared to what i currently have. i've been using k-lite + mpc for like 4 years, so i know how it works. vlc.. well i'm not sure if it will do everything i want it to do

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Sun Oct 04, 2009 9:42 pm

I know the codecguide.com people does good works and I enjoy QT and Real Alternative, but I prefer just using ffdshow alone and no K-Lite packs.

ffdshow is amazing in itself because of the amount of video and audio filters that you can apply. But MPC+ffdshow sometimes can't play a few amount of video, but it is very rare, this is when VLC comes into play.

If you want to know if its for you just try it out, the magic with computers is you can have two softwares installed at the same time and uninstall the one you don't like. There features VLC has that MPC doesn't have such as network streaming which is crucial these days. There is also a cool feature called DirectX wallpaper mode, where the video is playback on your desktop screen. MPC has ceased development for a long time now, VLC will have everything MPC have and more. Of course there is MPCHomeCinema, which I really dislike and is quite buggy to me.

For me, its crucial to have MPC+ffdshow, then have VLC installed as a back up, but with no files association. When VLC overtake files association, all the associated files uses the same icon making it very difficult to differentiate when you have many videos in a folder. Also it is a pain in trying to get the associations back to MPC.

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:04 pm

the good thing about VLC is that it can play broken or partly downloaded media files.... it can also play strait off the *.rar part for some lets call it a "movie distribution pack"

for audio my all around choice must be winamp
still media player classic + kliteCodecs maintain the best choice for a good all around quality & for free!

ENU_user · Post by **ENU_user** » Mon Oct 05, 2009 12:21 pm

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:05 pm

Maybe you should give foobar2000 a try. I've stopped using winamp like 3 years ago when I discovered foobar2000. I run foobar2000 under wine in linux and mac, rather than using anything else. But right now I couldn't find a worthwhile opensource alternative to foobar. Everything seem to be commercial service driven, songbird, amarok, etc. They always contains bunch of internet services.

yumeyao · Post by **yumeyao** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 10:22 pm

winamp is bloated any lacks a lot of better format/tagging support. foobar works perfectly and it doesn't lose on the quality.

Yes I would find an opensource alternative but there were none. In fact there are also limits with foobar, but anyway it doesn't harm - maybe the problem is just to me. I listen to j-pop a lot then many songs tagged in japanese encoding won't display correctly since my default codepage is chinese. huh.

conclusively, I don't use winamp because:
bloated size. AAC support issue. Ugly classic skin while modern skin eats too much resource. Many Tagging issues.

I prefer foobar because:
Replaygain. integrated library support. Very good tag compatibilities for different format. Powerful audio converter shell(Although I prefer the old one in 0.9.5).

ccl0 · Post by **ccl0** » Sat Oct 17, 2009 11:37 pm

media plugins for firefox is important to me. i've tried a few different media players but so far i like vlc or media player classic + codecs. i'd probably just stick with mpc except the skin is starting to get old and boring. at least vlc supports skinning and i like the all-in-one aspect of it

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:16 am

VLC skins usually have limitation, you'll have to look around a bit to find a good one.

The only way I know how to make MPC look good is to use Aero theme and disable all of its menu features beside the Seek Bar:

avexmode · Post by **avexmode** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 9:28 am

foobar2k have also skin problem (by default). I have this impression that the author hates (beautiful) skin for some reason. Having said that foobar "ReplayGain" feature... FTW.

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 3:41 pm

Not a problem really. To use those skins you have to download third party plugins, if you don't know the right skin they don't work. But when foobar is updated the older plugins stop worknig. Also some developered doesn't like the closed source status of foobar so they stop developing the plugins.

But I don't need foobar skins since they don't let me browse music any quicker, I stick with the normal interface. It would be nice to bundle nicer looking interface out of the box though.

scarface · Post by **scarface** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 4:07 pm

ive had some worries recently but a big update of the decoder pack is available here for the few who use it http://www.ryanvm.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=91465#91465.
you probably all know im the best driver of the parisian far west. but in the south of france people are so lousy they dont know to drive. A terrible 10year son of a bitch nearly killed me in my car and hit me in the ass. believe me I made him spit out the money. no insurance problem. Im glad his pretty car is much more destroyed than mine. my godfather is helping me to mend the rear bumper.

RogueSpear · Post by **RogueSpear** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:07 am

I have yet to see any media player that can play back smooth and still keep CPU utilization so low. As an example, my previous laptop had a P4M-2.0Ghz CPU. When playing videos from Lynda.com MPC would usually peg the CPU anywhere between 60% to 80%. VLC would play the same media file and maintain between 15% to 30% utilization.

So especially for older or low end units, VLC will often be capable of smooth playback when nothing else will. I really have no idea what they have done in their source code to make things so efficient, but you can perform your own benchmarks and see for yourself.

newsposter · Post by **newsposter** » Wed Oct 21, 2009 4:39 pm

not free, but try the JR MediaCenter. I bought is for it's massive device sync and library capabilities, but since I paid for the license, I've stopped using anything else.

http://www.jrmediacenter.com/

eksasol · Post by **eksasol** » Thu Nov 26, 2009 1:56 am

I was inspired to create this a while ago after the discussion of this thread. If you use VLC and Windows 7, you'll notice that if you go into "Start -> Default Programs -> Set your default programs" you won't see VLC Player to be able to associate it with media files. It is available for Vista, but as of 1.0.3 its not yet implemented for Windows 7.

I'm sure they will implement it soon, but for now I created some registry entries that will enable VLC to show up in the "Set your default programs" list, you can read more about it and get it here. This is a very effective way of overridding WMP associations, I'm sure someone will find it useful.

krwilson · Post by **krwilson** » Wed Dec 02, 2009 3:20 pm

Hey, was hoping to try your Media Player Classic prog for Win7 default list, but the link is down.............can you fix it or post it, please.

eksasol wrote:I was inspired to create this a while ago after the discussion of this thread. If you use VLC and Windows 7, you'll notice that if you go into "Start -> Default Programs -> Set your default programs" you won't see VLC Player to be able to associate it with media files. It is available for Vista, but as of 1.0.3 its not yet implemented for Windows 7.

I'm sure they will implement it soon, but for now I created some registry entries that will enable VLC to show up in the "Set your default programs" list, you can read more about it and get it here. This is a very effective way of overridding WMP associations, I'm sure someone will find it useful.