Best player for watching mkv's

Switch

Skilled
Jan 13, 2005
5,579
342
227
So the HD addiction is on and everybody has to get the best HD prints of all the movies in the world... But what about the best way to watch them... I use Media Player Classic but i find it too vannila for my taste and its kindda irritating at times cause you cant fastforward and take snaps and stuff... So which is the best player for watching HD prints or mkv files for that matter...
 

azayer

Disciple
Apr 1, 2008
6
0
0
HDbits recommends media player classic with ffdshow decoder(fast computers) or coreavc x264 decoder(Slower computers)
You can also try BS player pro but it sometimes can't display subs properly which are embedded in mkv files.
 

superczar

Skilled
Mar 17, 2005
5,185
1,651
302
43
Think there was a long thread on this sometime back

Personally I use KM Player for upto 720p

And MPlayer Home cinema classic (that uses SM Player as the front end) for 1080p

KM Player because I find it the most flexible and efficient player which allows quick access to any sort of setting including enabling/disabling video/audio filters and sub resync (time /framerate) with keyboard shortcuts

(I watch a lot of foreign language flicks and this is an essential feature for me)

It also allows me to route DTS/DD audio untouched to my AV receiver optically, while decoding other formats to PCM

SM Player/MPC Home cinema for 1080p because this is the only player that can efficiently handle DXVA (hardware decoding on GPU) for x.264 (most mkv's we get are x.264) thereby allowing playback/seeking without any AV sync problems

Now SMPLayer/MPC can also handle most if not all of what KMP can, but accessing the features is a lot more convluted
 

Shripad

ex-Mod
Mar 17, 2005
5,964
482
223
42
Class M Planet
I personally stick with WMP classic and ffdshow.

And WMP classic too simple? It has most no of options to be honest if you can go through the options :p

You can fast forward and take snaps in WMP classic.

There are FF buttons there in line with play pause buttons.

You can save the snaps by going to File > Save Image...

You didnt knew this??? :p

I recommend coreAVC only if you do not have a good processor or GPU.

Otherwise ffdshow works beautifully.

Seeking and FF will only be issue on older comps. And 1080P seek becomes issue at 1080P only if you have something really subpar. Even 6200TC was able to cope with 1080P playback with E8400 for playback but seeking did become issue with 5 sec delay for video to actually start playing.
 

main_trouble

Adept
Dec 30, 2007
471
27
0
+1 for mplayer with smplayer frontend.

put post processing on max(6) for more juice.

man mplayer is THE most efficient player ever.

try it urself.

run all the players to run ur 1080p file , see the cpu and memory utilizations for diff players.

u will notice mplayer uses minimum resources of all.

another gem of software from linuxland.

only thing i can say is

1. mplayer is updated often . keep urself updated too

2. select ur architecture type during installation (amd/intel). this will enforce cpu optimizations(sse3/4 etc etc)
 

Party Monger

Skilled
Jul 15, 2007
4,850
1,259
251
KM Player FTW..
Just check al the settings in there...
Its got EVERYTHING!!!! With SUPERB quality..
Audio synchronisation, subtitle synchronization and superb shortcuts for all these...!!!
 

Quad Master

Skilled
Apr 17, 2005
5,301
259
222
Mumbai, IN
I use KM Player for all my video's play all.

But But , To watch MKV's with custom subs use MPlayer Classic

As come MKV's have special fonts and color settings for the subs which

can only be seen with Mplayer Classic with MKV Splitter installed via Klite Codec Pack.

KMPlayer displays all subs in white color only.

certain MKV's have special settings for subs which are ignored by KMP.

Else KMPlayer is the all in one video solution.
 

200mph

Skilled
Dec 20, 2006
1,610
115
152
36
switch i told u na the other day , even i use KM player . simply awesome . and lets have that meet later only :D , u gonna be happy , u will know why :D
 

titana

Adept
Jan 14, 2008
874
53
118
New Delhi
KMP -easy to configure and customise with all the advanced options

Zoom Player - takes some time time to configure but works great once done.

mpc-hc - easy to use and setup but lacks the advanced configuration options