OT: Media Player for Windows 7 64 bit?

Kit wrote on 12/4/2010, 11:22 PM
I don't like Windows Media Player and would like an alternative. I'm thinking more about video files than just sound. I've read here to avoid installing codecs so I guess that rules out Media Player classic. Is VLC Portable usable? What about Winamp? Wondering what people recommend for viewing video files (avi, mov, mpg, mpeg, swf and flv). I'd prefer one application that can play everything unless I hear otherwise. I don't want anything that might interfere with Vegas 10. Thanks

Comments

ritsmer wrote on 12/5/2010, 12:54 AM
I do not know what Microsoft has done to their Windows Mediaplayer - but recently it has started behaving strangely here.

When I view my raw AVCHD (1080 50i 17-25Mbps) input directly from my internal HDDs it often hangs for a minute or so and then reports some media server error.

When I view a simple output format like MPEG-2 1080 50i 25 Mbps it starts to stutter - especially the audio is bad.

My machine is a 2 x Xeon quad and the CPU utilization is very low during this. Changing the MPs priority also does not help.

So now I use the VLC player which -at least on my machine- does not seem to interfere with my Vegas's 9.0e and 10.0a 32 and 64 bit or my plugins.

It plays the above media very well and smoothly.
Kanst wrote on 12/5/2010, 2:48 AM
Best alternatives:
- The KMPlayer (http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/)
- Media Player Classic Home Cinema (http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/)
Richard Jones wrote on 12/5/2010, 2:55 AM
VLC wok well with me in both 32 and 64 bit Windows 7.

Richard
ushere wrote on 12/5/2010, 3:42 AM
no problems at all with wmp in 7/64bit, though i also have vlc for those 'obscure' files that sometimes turn up....
PeterDuke wrote on 12/5/2010, 4:53 AM
I use all the above at times but none that I prefer particularly. Some file types play better on some. I could add Media Player Classic (not Home Cinema version) and Splash Lite (latter for AVCHD only).

Note that VLC uses its own codecs so you do not need to add any, nor can you add any if it won't play (it politely tells you that there is nothing you can do about it). It won't play Cineform or Lagarith for instance. The same applies to Quicktime Player I think.

Then there are the pay-for players, PowerDVD, WinDVD, etc.

What annoys me about some is that if you just want to play a file you seem to have to put it in a play list. How do you avoid this with the latest Windows Media Player for instance? (I find the file with Win Explorer then right-click and open it in WMP that way.)
GenJerDan wrote on 12/5/2010, 8:39 PM
AFAIK, there isn't a 64-bit version of VLC yet. But the x86 version works on 64-bit machines.

Me, I just use WMP with ffdshow installed to take care of the non-native-WMP encodings.