Media Player Classic Home Cinema 1.9.12 released with improvements
Media Player Classic Home Cinema, or short MPC-HC, is a popular open source media player for Windows. The developers have released Media Player Classic Home Cinema version 1.9.12 this week that introduces several improvements.
You can download and install the release from the official GitHub project site. It is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit version, and compatible with all 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft's Windows operating system starting with Windows Vista.
One of the main changes of the release is a removal. The developers have removed RealMedia and QuickTime frameworks from 32-bit builds of the media player. These frameworks have not been used anymore according to the release notes, as DirectShow codecs are used to play file formats that the two frameworks supported.
If you do run the media player on a 4K screen, you may notice differences in the display of subtitles. Subtitles use a default texture resolution of 1080p and are then scaled to 4K. The main reason for doing so is that it improves the performance significantly.
Users who prefer the higher texture resolution may change it under Settings > Subtitles > Maximum texture resolution.
As far as other changes are concerned, the player's support for youtube-dl has been improved. One change adds support for downloading subtitles for streams that are extracted by youtube-dl. Users of the new version may set the desired subtitle language under Options > Advanced.
Several other changes have been made to the player's subtitles support. SRT subtitles have HTML tags stripped from them, and enabling OpenSubtitle displays information that an account is required to use the site.
Closing Words
Media Player Classic Home Cinema plays most files that you throw at it. It is liked for a number of reasons besides that, including that it is open source, updated regularly, and very lean from a player's perspective.
Now You: which media player do you prefer? (via Deskmodder)
We use an older, less bloated version of Pot Player and MPC BE because Pot doesn’t support H.265. We used MPC HC for years until it ceased being developed and didn’t work predictably any more. It works fine now but I’ve not been able to get MadVR to run correctly on HC; it will on BE.
Seems the BE team has moved ahead faster with MPC; at this point, we could probably use just BE. Glad MPC is still being developed, it’s small, simple and very configurable. On a good display, the player and renderer matter; on a small or not-so-good display, whatever works…
Which version of pot player do you use?
Your version of Pot Player must be really old if it doesn’t support H.265.
it’s the opposite actually, Pot removed support for H. 265 just recently.
MPC-HC is one of the best, the very best is MPC-BE. Use it and compare the options/settings between the two and you will know why.
I wanted to like and use MPC-HC or MPC-BE, but one problem I found was when playing anime .MKV files that supported multiple audio channels and corresponding subtitle tracks, I did not find a way to switch these at will with either MPC-HC or MPC-BE. It works with PotPlayer (which I no longer use due to ads and whatnot) and just as fine in VLC, which is my player of choice for both Windows and Android.
So while MPC looks cool, it doesn’t serve me well enough to use. I’d like to be proven wrong, but I don’t really see this happening.
Assuming you’re using the latest version of MPC-HC with default settings, you should be able to switch through multiple audio tracks by pressing “A”, and switch the subtitle track by pressing “S”.
You can also right-click the currently playing video and open the “Audio Track” or “Subtitle Track” submenus to directly select the track you want.
That’s how it works in VLC and PotPlayer. I just tried the latest portable version and it’s indeed like that. I guess I will keep it in mind as an alternative if something goes wrong with VLC in the future.
@Dumbledalf
As stated above, you can use “A” and “S” hotkeys.
How you couldn’t find this options in MPC-BE is unclear to me – in addition to the hotkeys, there are buttons to switch the audio track and subtitles right on the panel. It does not have so many buttons on the panel that you can not notice these buttons.
The best video player for Windows hands down.
I thought they ended development on this years ago. Good to see they’re working on it again.
It it still a wonderful piece of software and many thanks to the devs working on it. But since the switch to the new development team video stated noticeably flickering during skipping. And playback lags/pauses for several seconds during entering and exiting full-screen when used with madVR’s “automatic exclusive full-screen mode” (which is useful in home theatres). Don’t think It’ll be ever be fixed as the problem seems to occur on old intel hd 4000 graphics.
Like to give MPC -BE a try after reading the comments here but the famous (and useful to get all codec updates at once) “K-lite Codec pack” still only packs MPC-HC.
I have not read the words “K-lite Codec pack†in ages.. Seriously, there are numerous Media Players that include all codecs one can ever wish for, and codec packs have been notorious to reek havoc on systems since waaaaay back. Do yourself a favor and ditch codec packs, it’s not 1995 anymore..
But K-lite includes bunch of other handy tools as well, not only codecs. Also, never reek havoc on any system I installed them on over 15 years using them. You must be downloading unofficial ones with malware in it.
“I installed them on over 15 years using them” ..deep sigh..
Exactly what I mean, you’ve been doing it wrong forever and because that’s how you are used to doing things, your way is the right way. Forever.
In 2021 you can use probably 20-30 different media players portable versions that all have ridiculous amounts of codecs included, nothing gets installed on your computer and every file you have will play.
But hey:
Your computer. Your way. Your problem.
I bet you still install VLC and a few other Media Players too, on top of your codec packs.. and Adobe Flash, Java, Ad-Aware, CCleaner, Firefox, WinAmp, Adobe Reader, KaZaa, Avast and Avira Antivirus because with 2 AV programs you have double protection.
Could you please put that annoying connatix pop-up in right side? Thanks.
drop out VLC ( 5 years of use bacause new version soo slow to a low hardware ), i use KMplayer X64
On an old 2005 superpotato Acer laptop, 32-bit processor from the lowest pits of eternal Hellfire, I use MPC-BE 1.5.8.6255 x86 Beta to watch YouTube videos in super-highdef mindblowing 720p. Works like a charm.
I like MPC-HC and have used it for around a decade. It works better, is faster, and much less bloated than VLC. It’s one of the reasons I’m reluctant to go linux as there is no MPC port, if one is even possible, because of the DirectShow codecs and filters.
Martin, you should correctly point out that the MPC-HC you listed in your article is a fork and is unofficial.
That’s right, the official MPC-HC seized active development years ago.
https://mpc-hc.org/2017/07/16/1.7.13-released-and-farewell/
The “official” one was discontinued back in 2019 IIRC if not earlier, this is the new official one that is supported, even acknowledged by the maintainer of the old version, the one you’re talking about has been dead for years.
It’s a very soft fork if anything, and I wouldn’t call it “unofficial” per se. The dev clsid2 has been actively involved in the main “official” branch development of MPC-HC for a long time, so after the other devs retired clsid2 carried on by himself. The number of devs decreased but the open-source model of development has remained unchanged.
MPC-BE is the actual fork.
MPC-BE (not to be confused with HC that’s being discussed here) is a piece of garbage and that’s because its developer is a moron who doesn’t seem to understand how to handle subtitles in MKV files.
He completely ignores ALL subtitles flags in MKV and just chooses the first subtitles whether you want it or not. And that’s not only based on my experience, but based on his own words when someone raised an issue about this crap on SourceForge.
TL;DR stick with MPC-HC!
I’m afraid it’s not the developer who’s an moron.
MPC-BE really ignores flags because you can set the preferred order (allows multiple by priority principle) in the settings. And this preferred order takes precedence over flags (which makes sense, because the player should play the track you want, not the file creator set).
This is useful when, for example, the default track is French and you would like the default track to be English.
I’ve been using Mpc-hc for years and years and madvr has always worked well for me. Mpc-BE doesn’t support compressed files, unless that changed in the last year or so.
Also prefer MPC-BE.