MPC-HC is a superb media player but it is not surprising to see this happen. Interest in maintaining open source Windows applications written in C/Win32/C++/MFC is going to keep dropping as there are not as many people with the skills or motivation to do it. Especially for something as complex as a media player.
Even on the Linux side I have seen a drop in the number of full blown media players being developed, they are mostly front ends to things like mpv and mplayer.
It's definitely bittersweet. I have a soft spot for raw Win32 programming. On Windows, I'd rather see a program written in Win32 than in something like WPF or XAML, so it's sad that there isn't much interest in developing Win32 programs these days. This news about MPC-HC came as a shock, because I thought it was popular enough to stay around. Still, I'd rather see a cross-platform program than one that only works on Windows, and unfortunately, MPC-HC falls into the latter category.
Making front-ends to existing back-ends makes a lot of sense to me. I don't really see the advantage of writing a monolithic media player from scratch as opposed to leveraging existing back-ends.
Plus, legal streaming video/audio has become ubiquitous in the US, and Chromecast/Fire TV/Roku are far cheaper than building a Home Theater PC (or even converting an old video game console or Linux box into one).
You can't use madVR with mpv.io which is a deal breaker for many (better scaling algorithms, better dithering, display calibration with 3DLUT, HDR conversion/processing and so on).
MPV is great but I wish the ecosystem around it was a little better (at least on Windows). There are a bunch of different GUI players but nothing definitive like a MPC-HC, VLC or PotPlayer.
MPC-HC was always my go-to. Starts up instantly and the performance was always superb, much better than VLC in seeking. I don't know what it is, but more often than not, VLC pauses for a moment when seeking to a random part of the file, while MPC-HC has always been instant.
Fortunately, I believe MPC-HC will still likely be updated if necessary, or forked and updated if need be. I know I haven't updated mine in years and haven't had any problems.
With some malformed files I have notice that VLC has a tendency to handle it when mplayer did not, so I always assumed that the delay in VLC is to more complex seeking that sacrifice performance for robustness.
I haven't used MPV enough to see if this case is still true.
Damn. I remember all the debates on /a/ (4chan anime board) on what are the best options and presets... for watching anime. Looking back it was kind of silly but we were able to do that because the player was so well built.
It reimplements mpc-hc UX using qt for the UI and libmpv for the heavy lifting. The issue with this one is that it doesn't have public builds yet, but it has been in active development for years.
> K-Lite contains a custom build of MPC-HC that contains additional fixes and improvements compared to the officials builds. This will continue in the future. The internal codecs that MPC-HC uses are also still actively maintained.
Very unfortunate, MPC-HC was so simple to use, has a slick UI inspired by MS Media Player and to quickly review/seek videos it was the very best. (much faster than VLC for that task)
I really want to use mpdn because it uses WMF but I haven't gotten results with it like I have using MPC-HC and madvr. Anybody know any other program that's as advance as mpc, compatible with madvr and uses Windows media foundation over directshow?
An excellent player with a ton of great features. However I'm not sure if it ever caught up to VLC in terms of performance. Specifically it was around 10x slower at seeking in H.264 video compared to VLC. When used on low performance machine (Pentium 4 @ 3 GHz + 7200 rpm HDD), this resulted in a sub-second seek time in VLC compared to over 5 seconds in MPC-HC when viewing 10Mbit bitrate video. Especially annoying when I wanted to rewatch a single moment over and over again.
MPC-HC is just a DirectShow frontend, or at least, that's how I used it. Filters do most of the work.
And no one seems to care about DirectShow anymore but that's mostly because everything works fine.
It will die eventually, because Microsoft is trying hard to kill DirectShow (to replace it with something inferior...) and the opensource guys mostly go to mplayer, but for now, updates are not really necessary.
Calling MPC-HC just a DirectShow frontend is almost as inaccurate as saying mplayer is just a UNIX frontend.
Just as mplayer is using POSIX APIs, MPC-HC is using the DirectShow API to run its filter graphs, but it actually provides a lot of internal decoders and filters (mostly based on ffmpeg/libavcodec), and if memory serves me right it even has its own renderer, and pretty much customizes its graph building, so you don't get a default DirectShow graph.
To be honest, the DirectShow code provided by Microsoft usually ends up providing very little besides the Renderer (unless you're using an external renderer like madVR or Haali) and the glue code.
Media Foundation ain’t that bad. I coded some moderately advanced stuff with it, custom stream sources, custom transforms — it was fun, and it run well.
I can see how it was inferior back in 2007. The first version of MF was shipped with Vista, and Vista… Let’s just say many people were disappointed with it. Nowadays however, when you only need to support Windows 7+, MF is fine.
I really like PotPlayer. mpv is great but requires a bit of tinkering, whereas PP comes with some ready to go defaults and as much flexibility as MPC-HC.
If you don't mind sending telemetry data to their HQ in Korea then sure it's a nice media player.
Article 5 (Collection and Use of Data and Other Information)
(1) Daum may collect and use data from the computer of Users as a part of its product support services that are provided to Users in connection with the Software. Data that may be collected solely include the type of computer and type of operating system used on the computer, memory capacity, type of graphic card, Directx version, media player version, type of webcam and TV reception card.
(2) Daum will use the above collected data only for the purpose of improving the Software or providing service or technology that is suitable to the user environment of the User and will not use such data for any other purposes.
Well, nuts. I really liked MPC-HC as part of the CCCP. I'll check out some of the alternatives offered in this thread. Hopefully one follows the slim design and flexibility of MPC.
[+] [-] satysin|8 years ago|reply
Even on the Linux side I have seen a drop in the number of full blown media players being developed, they are mostly front ends to things like mpv and mplayer.
[+] [-] rossy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pmoriarty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbhl|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NuDinNou|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] armada651|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puzzlingcaptcha|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] striking|8 years ago|reply
The default keybinds are absolutely nonsensical, though.
[+] [-] djsumdog|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattfrommars|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KonnieLaws|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kiro|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakshithbekal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ksec|8 years ago|reply
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mpcbe/
[+] [-] greyskull|8 years ago|reply
I suppose I'll try out MPV.
[+] [-] ApolloFortyNine|8 years ago|reply
Fortunately, I believe MPC-HC will still likely be updated if necessary, or forked and updated if need be. I know I haven't updated mine in years and haven't had any problems.
[+] [-] belorn|8 years ago|reply
I haven't used MPV enough to see if this case is still true.
[+] [-] sotojuan|8 years ago|reply
On Linux/macOS I use mpv - I recommend it!
[+] [-] rakshithbekal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veratyr|8 years ago|reply
Edit: Turns out this isn't unique to MPC-HC: https://www.svp-team.com/
[+] [-] kakarot|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m45t3r|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tibiapejagala|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Fifer82|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snvzz|8 years ago|reply
It reimplements mpc-hc UX using qt for the UI and libmpv for the heavy lifting. The issue with this one is that it doesn't have public builds yet, but it has been in active development for years.
[+] [-] GunlogAlm|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheKIngofBelAir|8 years ago|reply
http://codecs.forumotion.net/t2644-mpc-hc-is-dead#14216
[+] [-] castell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhasse|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rakshithbekal|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AsyncAwait|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] revelation|8 years ago|reply
Maybe you want someone to update the ffmpeg it links to. Occasionally. But that's already well into "super power user" territory.
[+] [-] xvilo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Strom|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuB-42|8 years ago|reply
MPC-HC is just a DirectShow frontend, or at least, that's how I used it. Filters do most of the work. And no one seems to care about DirectShow anymore but that's mostly because everything works fine.
It will die eventually, because Microsoft is trying hard to kill DirectShow (to replace it with something inferior...) and the opensource guys mostly go to mplayer, but for now, updates are not really necessary.
[+] [-] unscaled|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Const-me|8 years ago|reply
Media Foundation ain’t that bad. I coded some moderately advanced stuff with it, custom stream sources, custom transforms — it was fun, and it run well.
I can see how it was inferior back in 2007. The first version of MF was shipped with Vista, and Vista… Let’s just say many people were disappointed with it. Nowadays however, when you only need to support Windows 7+, MF is fine.
[+] [-] drngdds|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuxxy|8 years ago|reply
https://mpv.io/
[+] [-] mkishi|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] erikbye|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lostmsu|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seriouspat|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaimehrubiks|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sergiotapia|8 years ago|reply
https://mpv.io/
And you're off![+] [-] krautsourced|8 years ago|reply
It's super feature rich, with (in my opinion) a much nice interface than e.g. VLC.
[+] [-] TheKIngofBelAir|8 years ago|reply
Article 5 (Collection and Use of Data and Other Information)
(1) Daum may collect and use data from the computer of Users as a part of its product support services that are provided to Users in connection with the Software. Data that may be collected solely include the type of computer and type of operating system used on the computer, memory capacity, type of graphic card, Directx version, media player version, type of webcam and TV reception card.
(2) Daum will use the above collected data only for the purpose of improving the Software or providing service or technology that is suitable to the user environment of the User and will not use such data for any other purposes.
[+] [-] NamTaf|8 years ago|reply