Light weight media player for 720p 1080p?

[BLASTO]

Hi,

I currently use VLC and SMPlayer for media playback on my 42" plasma through VGA.

While SD works great, the 720p and 1080p videos have some hic-ups in some places.

VLC has more hic-ups than SMPlayer and so I was wondering if there could be another player which can get rid of them entirely without changing the hardware.


Configuration:
NVEDIA Quadro 140M
Processor Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz
4GB RAM

P.S: All movies including 720, 1080p plays smooth in the native screen of the laptop. But when I connect the TV, both the TV and the laptop screen has the hickup.

Thanks,

 

[audiodelic]

Media Player Classic with K Lite Codec Pack

 

[idlebrain]

Hi,

I currently use VLC and SMPlayer for media playback on my 42" plasma through VGA.

While SD works great, the 720p and 1080p videos have some hic-ups in some places.

VLC has more hic-ups than SMPlayer and so I was wondering if there could be another player which can get rid of them entirely without changing the hardware.


Configuration:
NVEDIA Quadro 140M
Processor Core 2 Duo 2.2 GHz
4GB RAM

P.S: All movies including 720, 1080p plays smooth in the native screen of the laptop. But when I connect the TV, both the TV and the laptop screen has the hickup.

Thanks,

You can check with DIVX 7 PRO or Quick time pro with Perian. Personally I always use Quick time when I connect macbook to HDTV.If it got any issues will try with VLC which always works unless file I downloaded got issues.

 

[master007]

try using mpc-hc (media player classic-home cinema), that will use your graphics card (by default) to decode HD videos and reduce the jerky playback

 

[thexfactor]

The best solution for playing HD content that i've found so far is to use Media Player Classic along with CoreAVC, which is easily one of the best and lightest decoder available, the newer version also supports Nvidia CUDA to provide GPU accelerated decoding

else you could try out KMPlayer.

 

[aneelr]

Hi,

KMPlayer is a good option as suggested.

If you want to play .m2ts, .ts etc.......... use ArcSoft's Total Media Theater. Really good player for native Bluray formats.

TotalMedia Theatre 3 Platinum — The ultimate high-definition movie experience

cheers

 

[thevortex]

MPC-HC as suggested earlier (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition) and TheKMPlayer could do a wonderful job. They are both pretty light and snappy.

But if your machine cannot run SMPlayer or VLC then I would think it is time to look at a hardware upgrade anyway. Of course only after you rule out all software issues.

 

[BLASTO]

MPC-HC as suggested earlier (Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition) and TheKMPlayer could do a wonderful job. They are both pretty light and snappy.

But if your machine cannot run SMPlayer or VLC then I would think it is time to look at a hardware upgrade anyway. Of course only after you rule out all software issues.

Given that I have no problem running them on the laptop's LCD screen and I only get lags trying to play them via VGA to the (external) TV, Is there anything else that could be a problem? What is the difference?

 

[spirovious]

Power DVD9 is good for HD decoding.
But vlc & KM are free & handy.

 

[allajunaki]

Err, Just one thing though. I believe your processor is more than capable of perfect playback. Perhaps the issues is elsewhere.

However, given a choice I would ditch VLC. Media Player Classic and MPC-HT are 2 good alternatives.
(Though I dont use either )

 

[BLASTO]

Err, Just one thing though. I believe your processor is more than capable of perfect playback. Perhaps the issues is elsewhere.

However, given a choice I would ditch VLC. Media Player Classic and MPC-HT are 2 good alternatives.
(Though I dont use either )

Found the problem and fixed it.

Wierd as it might seem, Everything runs ultra smooth when laptop is connected to power.. The problem occurs only when the system runs in battery.

Earlier I had it running from battery while playing and obviously the laptop seem to have entered into some kind of power save mode which limits processing..

Verified by removing the power.. Same laggy picture.. goes away when connected to power.

Watched LOTR 720p complete.. :yahoo:

The Black bars on top and bottom got retained after I switch off when viewed closely but not visible when TV is running. I do not like the strech (full screen) mode.. Looks like I have to wait till the TV crosses 100 hours for the next movie..

 

[allajunaki]

Found the problem and fixed it.

Wierd as it might seem, Everything runs ultra smooth when laptop is connected to power.. The problem occurs only when the system runs in battery.

Earlier I had it running from battery while playing and obviously the laptop seem to have entered into some kind of power save mode which limits processing..

Verified by removing the power.. Same laggy picture.. goes away when connected to power.

Watched LOTR 720p complete.. :yahoo:

The Black bars on top and bottom got retained after I switch off when viewed closely but not visible when TV is running. I do not like the strech (full screen) mode.. Looks like I have to wait till the TV crosses 100 hours for the next movie..

Yup, Core Processors will clock down to save power. Additionally, Graphics cards also go into agressive power saving mode. You can disable these by going deep into the power options. But if u change em, u'll affect the run time off the battery.

 

[thevortex]

Given that I have no problem running them on the laptop's LCD screen and I only get lags trying to play them via VGA to the (external) TV, Is there anything else that could be a problem? What is the difference?

I would see if your laptop has new display drivers that need to be updated. That is what it sounds like your problem could be about.

 

[thevortex]

Oops. Just saw your update. Good to know it is all resolved.

 

[BLASTO]

Was playing around with various players yesterday and thought I would share it here.

Picture:

MPC-HC == Power DVD 9 with True Theatre HD >> SMPlayer > VLC.

VLC was my default player till date and it seems that VLC does not provide any HD enhancements.. This was OK with laptop screen but fell short in HD TV.

MPC-HC with shader combiner having
"16-235 -> 0-255 [SD][HD]"
YV12 chroma Upsampling
sharpen complex 2

in that order gave surprisingly balanced and sharp picture for SD.

Auto mode in power DVD takes away configuration from you and gives good results close to MPC. Manual caliberation may do wonders.

Attached is the best picture I could get within 15 minutes on the players which means there is scope for improvements.. VLC and SMPlayer has no scope as I have been using them already and know their limitations.



P.S: VLC is showing blank for no particular reason.. Dunno what happened during print screen.
It was more or less similar to SMPlayer.

Sound:

In first look, power DVD True Theatre surround/Dolby headphone eats other players..
Did not caliberate the MPC for sound. Will get back soon with results.

 

[BLASTO]

Also I could not get the ffdshow to work with any of the players.. Missing something here..

I have made the configurations but the players just would not pick up ffdshow as a filter!

 

[spirovious]

Nice work & helpful to others...:clapping:

 

[allajunaki]

Hi Blasto,
FFDshow is a bit more complex, since it is purely a directshow filter.
From the screenshots below, u r running windows 7 (fat task bar ).
Windows 7 sort of breaks the compatiblity of WMP and FFDShow.
In any case, the settings u mentioned with MPC-HD will work just as well!
In fact, MPC will use ur GFX card to do a lot of work (u see all the shader works are done in GFX card!), so you can squeeze a bit more with MPC than you can with ffdshow (since it CPU only).

One more great software is XBMC . Nice interface, more attuned to playback on TV. Havent yet tried it with tv. But I was quite pleased with the images it put out on screen.

 

[mr_grump5]

does powerdvd 9 play mkv's? i have an oem version,it doesn't.
any workaround?

 

[BLASTO]

Hi Blasto,
FFDshow is a bit more complex, since it is purely a directshow filter.
From the screenshots below, u r running windows 7 (fat task bar ).
Windows 7 sort of breaks the compatiblity of WMP and FFDShow.
In any case, the settings u mentioned with MPC-HD will work just as well!
In fact, MPC will use ur GFX card to do a lot of work (u see all the shader works are done in GFX card!), so you can squeeze a bit more with MPC than you can with ffdshow (since it CPU only).

One more great software is XBMC . Nice interface, more attuned to playback on TV. Havent yet tried it with tv. But I was quite pleased with the images it put out on screen.

I see..
So Windows 7 + ffdshow + WMP/MPC does not work!
Thanks for letting me know. I've been banging my head a whole night as to wht ffdshow did not appear in the filters list of ANY player.

BTW, Iam satisfied with MPC-HC PQ for the moment. It works great.
Only sound output is an issue now.