Video Player for anime?

[Jimbasushi]

hey guys, I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions for what is a good video player to watch the anime that is fansubbed? I use VLC since it has good codecs. anyone has another suggestion, i am sort of interested in using another if it is a good one! thx!

-Jim

[sa547]

I use Media Player Classic (MPC), which comes with the CCCP codec pack. By the way, there's a lot more on those players in this section:

http://forums.animesuki.com/forumdisplay.php?f=23

[Claies]

I prefer The KMPlayer (and I shouldn't, since I'm pro-open source and this is proprietary).

[Craymel]

for windows use cccp for everything else there's mplayer. That's basically my opinion.

[AnimeTheme]

VLC is good as a simple all-in-one solution without needing to download any extra codecs, but I like MPC more once I installed all those extra codecs and stuff.

[KiNA]

MPlayer for me.. And I have a backup in GOMPlayer

[IRJustman]

Windows:

For my personal viewing, I prefer MPC-HC along with ffdshow, AC3Filter, CoreAVC, Haali, and VSFilter, all of which I install myself. That's because I tend to keep bleeding-edge on the former two and the latter one (from the standalone MPC-HC decoder/splitter package).

When I want to play with sound filtering, I use Winamp plus the VST filter bridge plugin for Winamp which allows me to use VST filters commonly used in professional sound editing software suites.

For an exhibition, I tend to use ZoomPlayer. Everything else, as I stated before, I install myself. I do not use packs.

Unix in general:

I prefer anything which uses Xine-lib--Kaffeine in particular--but the problem with that is that as of a while ago, H.264 wasn't fully working, plus styled subtitles don't work. Since it's been a while since I've last tried it, I'd expect the former to have changed. I'm hoping that at some point, the Xine authors will do the same thing the VideoLAN devs did, only do it better. For all I know, that might have happened, but I'm a bit behind the times.

Basically, I use a different player based on the environment I'm in, both computing and real-world.

--Ian.

[Solafighter]

CCCP pack is realy good for it.

[AceD]

ccc-p with coreavc, using media player classic

cant see any reason to use owt else when that is perfect

[chikorita157]

VLC is not good, because it does not handle soft-subs well, which is increasingly becoming popular and it's not very stable when playing MKV files (which happen occasionally when seeking though the video.)

For Windows, just use CCCP and Media Player Classic Cinema since it should handle it without problems.

For me, on Mac OS X Leopard, I use Quicktime Pro + Perian and MPlayerOSX Extended (which is highly recommended). I use Quicktime since the interface is simple and I can convert my subtitled anime to iPod, iPhone and even Playstation 3 (If you have Pro registered). MPlayerOSX Extended, however is my recommended player for the Mac over VLC since it supports most media formats, supports soft title subs with full effects and also have smaller footprint compared to VLC (VLC for Mac OS X is over 50MB which is ridiculous).

[TubZzz]

WMP + Real Alternative ^_^

[SeijiSensei]

Like Ian, I preferred the kaffeine/xine solution on Linux until its lack of support for ASS subtitles took it out of the running. (There's a bug posting from as recently as last month complaining about this.)

Nowadays I recommend smplayer for both Windows and Linux, especially for people who are still using VLC. smplayer uses (surprise!) the mplayer engine and keeps fairly current with its development. On Windows, you can run this installer; Linux users can install from their repositories, though you might want to read this discussion first. Sadly there doesn't seem to be a build of smplayer for OS X, though if I used a Mac I'd probably give anime_layer's build of mplayer a try.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by Claies

I prefer The KMPlayer (and I shouldn't, since I'm pro-open source and this is proprietary).

KMPlayer is open source... or better said, it's a thin closed-source wrapper to stolen open source libraries for which it (illegally) gives no credit

[IRJustman]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

KMPlayer is open source... or better said, it's a thin closed-source wrapper to stolen open source libraries for which it (illegally) gives no credit ;)

Or worse, no source.

--Ian.

P.S. Are we talking about "The KMPlayer", the Korean media player?

[Discerptor]

Originally Posted by chikorita157

VLC is not good, because it does not handle soft-subs well, which is increasingly becoming popular and it's not very stable when playing MKV files (which happen occasionally when seeking though the video.)

This used to be true. The current version of VLC handles softsubs just fine and is in fact more resource-efficient than the other players I've tried (Mplayer, Perian, etc.). It's currently the only option on OS X 10.5 that doesn't have some crippling flaw (Mplayer in all its forms, including non-GUI, has a memory leak that eats up "Inactive RAM" and never gives it back, and Perian has to take several seconds loading MKV files up front). The image of VLC as unusable for anime is simply false at this stage.

That said, when on Windows I still use Media Player Classic with the CCCP, and on Linux, where Mplayer does not have such problems, I use that, simply for UI reasons.

[denice25]

mplayer for me..

[KiNA]

Originally Posted by Discerptor

This used to be true. The current version of VLC handles softsubs just fine and is in fact more resource-efficient than the other players I've tried (Mplayer, Perian, etc.). It's currently the only option on OS X 10.5 that doesn't have some crippling flaw (Mplayer in all its forms, including non-GUI, has a memory leak that eats up "Inactive RAM" and never gives it back, and Perian has to take several seconds loading MKV files up front). The image of VLC as unusable for anime is simply false at this stage.

That said, when on Windows I still use Media Player Classic with the CCCP, and on Linux, where Mplayer does not have such problems, I use that, simply for UI reasons.

So thats the reason!

O_O!

Back to MPC I guess.. or maybe I'll gives VLC another chance.

[SageGaiGar]

Niceplayer works well for problem .mkv's' Aside with occasional issues with .mkv, VLC is a good choice

[Craymel]

Originally Posted by Discerptor

This used to be true. The current version of VLC handles softsubs just fine and is in fact more resource-efficient than the other players I've tried (Mplayer, Perian, etc.). It's currently the only option on OS X 10.5 that doesn't have some crippling flaw (Mplayer in all its forms, including non-GUI, has a memory leak that eats up "Inactive RAM" and never gives it back, and Perian has to take several seconds loading MKV files up front). The image of VLC as unusable for anime is simply false at this stage.

That said, when on Windows I still use Media Player Classic with the CCCP, and on Linux, where Mplayer does not have such problems, I use that, simply for UI reasons.

While vlc has improved it still has issues with ass subtitles for example if you use opengl as a video driver the colours of the subtitles are rendered incorrectly. It's definitely not as good as mplayers libass renderer especially since greg made those recent bug fixes for libass in mplayer. Still vlc has come a long way and is pretty decent now (I personally still wouldn't use it myself). This is from a linux user perspective though I don't know how mplayer works on the mac.

[Nosauz]

Originally Posted by SageGaiGar

Niceplayer works well for problem .mkv's' Aside with occasional issues with .mkv, VLC is a good choice

actually VLC is not that great at playing anime, theres been issues of rendering images and codecs. Best player is what comes with cccp, basically zoom is the best player, the rendering is smooth. I mean i use vlc to play live action stuff but for anime I go Zoom or MPC