replacement for wmp?

[Capella]

I don't know why it would be choppy My video played fine... But the point I wanted to make was that wmp used less resources than VLC and less cpu.

I'm not sure though why your video played so badly. Here was mine for a 500 megabyte video file

VLC------------95 mb ram, 14%-25% -smooth playback
WMP12 32 bit---38 mb ram, 2%-10% -SLIGHTLY worse playback than vlc (but you seriously had to look at it with a magnifying glass ^^
WMP12 64 bit---75 mb ram, 2%-10% -better playback than wmp12 32 bit, on par with vlc

Ill download your file later and see what my system says.

 

[hdmi]

I'm using 'Media Player Classic Home Cinema,'with k-lite codec pack (I've chosen k-lite mega codec pack, although there's less bulky versions of it that might be sufficient enough for alot of people too). No choppy playback, not even on my laptop that's already getting a little bit outdated step by step right now.

I have a one year old laptop with an Intel T5800 2.0 GHz Core 2 Duo Centrino2 CPU that has 2 megabytes of Level 2 cache, including a mobile graphics adapter that's an nVidia 9600M GS with 256 megabytes of video memory and HDMI out (no DVI out). System memory is 4 gigabytes of DDR-2. Now guess what? Even though this thing is slowly getting old, it's still capable of doing fullscreen 1080p .mkv files on my Full HD LCD TV without any stutter, nor even judder. No judder, because I've made a custom resolution for flawless 23.976 Hz adaptation. The only player that can do this for me is Media Player Classic Home Cinema, and I've kept trying for weeks to find another way. Maybe this is slightly off topic because you were asking what's the best player for mostly music and I'm writing a whole paragraph about how it took weeks on end for me to configure my perfect video, yet I think this clearly demonstrates that there are indeed better alternatives to any player, depending on what it is you actually need.

For music and for the majority of videos, I think I'll recommend Windows Media Player 12. Works brilliantly efficient, in terms of power consumption also, for both music and video. I've tested it on my new cheap (299 €) netbook that has an Intel Atom CPU and 3D graphics capability already inside its Intel chipset, and that came with Windows 7 Starter OEM. Using a high quality shielded VGA cable, this thing allows me to under most circumstances work efficiently at home on my TV in Full HD, while listening to music in Windows Media Player 12 but without consuming too much power from the net, and without the sacrifice of picture quality. So each time the netbook is too slow for what I need, I switch the TV to my laptop's HDMI, while keeping both the laptop and the netbook's built-in display switched off for as long as I don't need them.

Although I don't recommend anyone to buy a netbook just to save electricity at home and nothing else, I still really want to totally recommend the new Windows Media Player to those who are on battery power and to those who don't need and / or can't use a hundred percent flawless customized video playback. Technically, VLC player has become just another pure waste to our entire planet now... If you want your children and your children's children to be able to do in the future what we can do now, then please don't always run that kind of special software unless your hardware and / or software deployment still requires it.

 

[Capella]

ok, I played a 904mb 720p mp4 file that is encoded to H.264/MPEG-4 AVC1 codec in a Sony PSP mp4 container, according to G-Spot.

when playing full screen here is what I found:
VLC ------------ 80mb ram, 16-20% cpu usage - smooth playback
WMP12 64bit--- 80mb ram, 1-5% cpu usage - slightly choppy playback
WMP12 32bit--- 65mb ram, 1-5% cpu usage - slightly choppy playback

Note that 64bit wmp uses the same memory as VLC, though 32bit used less. I don't know why wmp was getting choppy playback, so I uninstalled K-Light, and installed Shark's windows 7 codec pack. Still had the choppy playback, even after trying different settings in the H264 tab.

I'm not sure why it's not playing smoothly. This file does stream smoothly through my xbox 360 though.

Here is a link to the file on Vimeo. Scroll down, and there is a torrent you can download.

The Third & The Seventh on Vimeo

http://www.temporarygate.com/TheThird&TheSeventh.mp4.torrent

Any ideas?




EDIT: Ok, I think I got it. I wasn't hitting the "save all settings" button on the misc tab in Shark's settings screen. after I did that, and changed everything to ffdshow in the "swap" tab, I got silky smooth playback in WMP12.

BUT... now with a proper codec, WMP12 is using 103mb of ram and about 15-18% cpu.

This shows that the media foundation codec is still slightly buggy I guess. It doesn't work perfectly with fluid playback for all H.264 videos. The codec for H.264 in media player is actually one part of the media foundation. However, the fact that using this codec was able to play the video with much less resources (though with slight lag) shows that media foundation is probably a good idea and will be developed in the future to correct such problems. I also hope third parties will eventually adopt media foundation instead of directshow.

Thank you for all your tests XD

PS-similar results with your torrent

 

[mikey63]

thanks for the info, Sparkie! I am glad it wasn't just my setup that showed the stuttering. Though to be fair, this particular video file is the ONLY one that I have that stutters in WMP using the default windows codec. It's also the best quality file I have with the highest bitrate (I don't have any 1080p files though), so it really taxes the machine more than anything else I usually play (dvd rips and such).

Either way, I am okay with the higher memory and cpu usage using the ffdshow codecs, as long as I can get fluid playback. Usually, I am not doing anything else on the pc when a video is playing, so it's acceptable to me. I also have 6gb of ram, so there is plenty to go around

Now if they can just put a shortcut button to the video settings/adjustments on the WMP taskbar, I'll be all set!