Windows 7 - VLC playback blocky/pixelated?

ShazaM, don't use ffdshow for audio. it's terrible at normalizing.

instead, install ac3filter. make sure you add it in your player and turn off ffdshow's audio filter.

you'll have to mess with the settings a bit - pump up the Master Gains, and maybe give Voice a boost. you'll end up with much crisper, bolder audio than ffdshow can ever provide.

I got MPC Star and I set up AC3 Filter and I'm digging it so far. But I am still getting pixelated playback even with MPC... what the hell do I need to do to get rid of this pixelation problem?

I installed BS.Player for the time being and now it somehow installed FFDSHOW AUDIO and I don't know how to disable it. Any ideas?

i've never heard of mpc star, but it looks fishy. you really only need a few filters and a basic player to get excellent results with any video.

i use Media Player Classic - Home Cinema edition with:
CoreAVC
ffdshow
AC3Filter
Quicktime Alternative
Real Alternative

its enough to play everything, and i have never had any quality issues.

this shot is using MPC-HC on Windows 7. output is set to VMR9 Renderless. active filter is CoreAVC. quality, as you can see, is fantastic.

Nevermind on all of what I previously wrote. I'm sticking to BS.Player, its playing everything now. Or at least I hope it is. I'm tired of playing with this.

I heard some negative comments expressed about K-lite in this thread. I'm no expert on this stuff but I use K-lite for video (not audio) with MPC HC and it's been working extremely well for me on 7. If it's bloated (and I'm not saying it isn't), I don't seem to notice any ill effects from it. It plays everything I throw at it and I usually get great quality and sound. When I need to add subs and change sych and stuff like that, it's easy to work with. Also the UI for MPC HC is pretty good, imo. YMMV, of course.

To keep K-Lite from "wrecking havoc," just pay attention to not allowing it take over all file associations when installing it. I uncheck the audio associations as I use other apps (mostly F2k) to play audio files.

harpua, did you actually go into the filters section in MPC, disable its internal filters, and add the external filters that k-lite installed? if not, your codec pack is just taking up space

i think the reason some people don't like it is because it's far more than the average person needs. why install codecs for formats you will rarely if ever use? MPC alone covers most things, and for more quality/control you can throw in something like ffdshow or ac3filter. but k-lite - it's just overkill.

I found quite easy solution for the bug.

Since internal codecs work fine, you just have to change the unsupported renderer.

Go to VLC settings (simple mode). Click Video tab and change the Output to OpenGL.

Works fine on my 7 (32-bit RTM).

I have some, but not all, internal filters disabled.

What I like about K-lite is that just by downloading their "pack" with it's frequent updates, I know that everything I'm using (MPC-HC, FFD show, various codecs, etc.) are always kept up to date with the latest versions without my having to worry about each separate component. For example, I just tried to download the latest stand alone version of MPC-HC and I saw that that available version was an earlier build than what I got through installing the latest K-lite update.

I'm not disputing anything you are saying. I'm just saying for me, the main advantage of K-lite seems to be its integration and that just by simply downloading K-lite and keeping it up to date, it takes care of keeping all the various sub components including ffdshow & MPC-HC, as well as all the codecs/filters up to date. And there are frequent updates to MPC and ffdshow among other things.

And if I should ever happen to need any of the more esoteric codecs it installs, they are there and they don't really take up very much space (56.8 mb, including ffd show, MPC-HC, filters, real alternative, etc., about half of which is just MPC and ffd show.)

That gets rid of the pixelation, however the image quality produced is far inferior to that of MPC or BS.Player. Which use DirectX instead.

BS.Player PRO is the only thing that has worked for me. I got tired of messing with Codecs so I just ended up installing AC3Filter and I configured it to run with BS.Player and now everything works flawlessly

PM me if you want a PRO license for BS.Player. A friend of mine works in their testing team and all of them get lifetime PRO keys, for free.