VLC playback blocky/pixelated?

[The Sly Assassin]

despite its popularity and ease of use, VLC is not a very good player. its internal filters are definitely not the best available, and it tends to smooth the picture too much, causing apparent pixelation for most videos.

for a superior all-in-one solution, try KMplayer. for the best possible video playback (xvid), just install the CCCP codec pack, and use Media Player Classic which comes with it.

if you're dealing with videos encoded with H.264, it's best to purchase CoreAVC and use that with MPC (it's cheap).

Thanks for the suggestions!, ill have a look into each of them

 

[driecken]

despite its popularity and ease of use, VLC is not a very good player. its internal filters are definitely not the best available, and it tends to smooth the picture too much, causing apparent pixelation for most videos.

for a superior all-in-one solution, try KMplayer. for the best possible video playback (xvid), just install the CCCP codec pack, and use Media Player Classic which comes with it.

if you're dealing with videos encoded with H.264, it's best to purchase CoreAVC and use that with MPC (it's cheap).

Generally speaking vlc is a good player because you need not mess with the havoc of downloading all sorts of codec packs to watch a few differently encoded movies.

As to the CCCP I have had less then satisfactory experiences there, so I will stick to other players.

My video drivers where the ones causing the problems with vlc playback in the first place, I simply went to an older version and no problem.

 

[garbanzo]

:sarc: havoc?

what's so hard about installing a few codecs to get good quality playback?

CCCP is basically just ffdshow with a few splitters added for good measure. using ffdshow with MPC gives excellent quality for xvid, mpeg and wmv. if you experienced problems using it, chances are you tried to run it on top of other codec packs like that bloated k-lite rubbish, or you just didn't set it up properly in your player.

i use AC3Filter for audio, it offers a great set of features, including excellent normalization.

Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative are two others i install, they also work nicely with MPC.

finally, Matroska Splitter (part of CCCP) for videos using the MKV container, and CoreAVC to deal with H.264 playback.

but enough words, let's let these screenshots do the talking

 

[swarfega]

I tested VLC with KMPlayer and you can see the difference from the screenshots below, so I think its clear which is the better quality player:

 

[John Henry]

after installing shark007 codecs and using MPC x64 the result is pixelated as VLC, while it's not with WMP.

 

[Shark007]

after installing shark007 codecs and using MPC x64 the result is pixelated as VLC, while it's not with WMP.

John Henry's problem was fixed in this thread.

 

[elbeasto]

It would be good if all I had to use was WMP but it can't play streamed .nuv files over the network from my mythtv box.

WMP also has less options during playback, like cropping and aspect ratio etc.

I suppose this would be a matter of installing the right codecs but VLC with play anything out of the box where WMP doesn't.

WMP 12 still seems bugged to me. eg. I just went to play an mp4 game trailer and less than a min into the vid wmp encounters a problem and stops playing but VLC plays it all the way through no problem.

 

[Mr President]

oh... VLC

i also was having issues with VLC, if it was a standard def file it would look grainy as can be and look absolutely horrible. the only solution i found was when watching a .mkv format file (12 gig file 2 hr movie) and it looked clear and sharp... for a minute. VLC would skip all over the place and i have radeon 4650 with 1 gig vram so there was no reason for it. i then downloaded and installed GOM player. everything runs smooth, no issues, standard def files sharp... its free too so go with that

 

[John Henry]

I just tried KMPlayer with internal codecs and it's pixelated too. Anyone has the well working configuration?

 

[garbanzo]

that's really not enough information to troubleshoot.

what's the container/codec of your source?
what splitter/filter have you assigned to that container/codec?
what other players have you tried, and what's the result?
are you certain that the source itself isn't pixelated, and that other players are artificially smoothing the output?

 

[herzeleid]

In VLC
Tools-Preferences-Video
set video output to DirectX and pixelation is gone for videos and unfortunately aero transparency too, but it is back when you close VLC. VLC needs an update for compatibility with windows 7 and directx apparently. I don't recall any problems with KMPlayer, I use sharks codecs and WMP for video.

 

[John Henry]

that's really not enough information to troubleshoot.

what's the container/codec of your source?
what splitter/filter have you assigned to that container/codec?
what other players have you tried, and what's the result?
are you certain that the source itself isn't pixelated, and that other players are artificially smoothing the output?

KMPlayer codecs are default, didn't touch them.
External codecs are Haali Matroska Splitter, FFdshow Tryouts, AC3Filter.
I tried with WMP and MPC-HC, both working fine. I disabled all the internal codecs in MPC-HC. And yes i'm sure the source isn't pixelated. They are dvdrips mkv 1,4gb each with ac3 audio made by pro users. This is one of the videos info:

FourCC: xvid/XVID
Res: 592 x 320
Frame aspect ratio: 37:20 = 1.85
Pixel aspect ratio: 1:1 = 1
Display aspect ratio: 37:20 = 1.85
Framerate: 25 fps
Frames tot: 174751
Stream size: 769,762,672 bytes
Bitrate: 880.982279 kbps
Qf: 0.186018
Key frames: 2156 (0; 250; 368; 618; 668; ... 174641)
Null frames: 0
Min key int: 1
Max key int: 250
Key int medio: 81.053339
Latency: 0 ms


Res: Medium (592 x 320)
Width: moltip of 16 (GOOD)
Height: moltip of 32 (GOOD)
Quality DRF medium: HIGH (2.742118)
Quality deviation standard: HIGH (0.539778)
Medium dev. std.: HIGH (0.345032)

DO i actually have to use external codecs in KMP?

 

[garbanzo]

if you have not touched the filter sectoin of KMP's options, then Haali Matroska Splitter, FFdshow Tryouts, and AC3Filter are doing absolutely nothing.

even disabling internal filters in MPC won't activate these - you have to manually add them and tell your player when to use them.

video players aren't magical things. they need a lot of tweaking to get set just right so they work properly with your system. this is one of the main reasons i prefer MPC. i use a portable install that keeps settings in a local INI. i keep it on a non-system partition, so when i have to reinstall, i don't lose my settings, which took forever to get just right! i just have to reinstall a Matroska, AC3, ffdshow, and CoreAVC, and i'm good to go.

 

[John Henry]

if you have not touched the filter sectoin of KMP's options, then Haali Matroska Splitter, FFdshow Tryouts, and AC3Filter are doing absolutely nothing.

even disabling internal filters in MPC won't activate these - you have to manually add them and tell your player when to use them.

video players aren't magical things. they need a lot of tweaking to get set just right so they work properly with your system. this is one of the main reasons i prefer MPC. i use a portable install that keeps settings in a local INI. i keep it on a non-system partition, so when i have to reinstall, i don't lose my settings, which took forever to get just right! i just have to reinstall a Matroska, AC3, ffdshow, and CoreAVC, and i'm good to go.

I'm using MPC too, but since a lot of users says KMP is very good and simple, just install and watch. I didn't feel the same. My results are worse than VLC default installation.

Where do i find the INI of mpc-hc? I did look in the AppData folder and Program FIles and there are no INI at all.

 

[garbanzo]

install-and-go systems that rely exclusively on internal filters are ok for most users, but then again, most people are ok watching single dvd rips of 2 hour films encoded by some click-and-go app. VLC tends to perform a lot of smoothing and other post-processing actions to make videos appear smoother, while KMP offer a more authentic output, but neither are ideal right out of the box.

for a portable install of MPC, just go to the options screen, and right there on the first page, right hand column about half-way down, there is an option "Store settings to .ini file". that's all it needs. set that, exit, then you can copy the whole MPC folder to a thumb drive or wherever and keep all the settings intact.

 

[John Henry]

install-and-go systems that rely exclusively on internal filters are ok for most users, but then again, most people are ok watching single dvd rips of 2 hour films encoded by some click-and-go app. VLC tends to perform a lot of smoothing and other post-processing actions to make videos appear smoother, while KMP offer a more authentic output, but neither are ideal right out of the box.

for a portable install of MPC, just go to the options screen, and right there on the first page, right hand column about half-way down, there is an option "Store settings to .ini file". that's all it needs. set that, exit, then you can copy the whole MPC folder to a thumb drive or wherever and keep all the settings intact.

Thank you mate!

 

[ShazaM]

Garbanzo,

I just installed a fresh copy of W7 Ultimate 64bit. On my laptop, I use BS.Player Pro and it plays everything sharp and clear for me with no problems. This time, on my desktop, I decided to go back to VLC and see if the new update had fixed anything. Unfortunately, not.

Now, I went on VLC's settings, turned Video Output from Default to OpenGL, I get no extreme pixelation but the video quality is a lot poorer than that of BS.Player back on my laptop.

My problem with installing something like MPC or BS.Player on the desktop is whenever I install these custom codecs. They screw up big time with my Audio Playback. Last time I installed BS.Player with its codec manager which installed FFDSHOW Video and Audio codecs, My audio got so muffled to the point where I couldn't play any of my movies for the sheer fact that I couldn't hear the audio properly.

I have an SB X-FI 5.1 sound card and having 5.1 playback is key for me. What can I use that would be able to play all my XVID/MKV rips without screwing with my online video playback and my audio channels. I am sick and tired of downloading random codecs and ending up screwing everything altogether.

K-Lite codec pack, wrecked havoc on my computer the last time I installed it. And CCCP installs a bunch of Audio codecs and AC3 filters that screw up my audio big time. How the hell does someone watch videos on Windows 7?

Sorry for my tone, but I'm extremely frustrated with this matter. I wish VLC would just study this matter and fix it. It used to be my favorite player.

 

[zigzag3143]

ShazaM

what I would do is un-install all the codecs. they install all sorts of thing we dont even know. Then try vlc (new rev is out). Vlc does play mkv files. there are several threads abt codecs causing problems and solutions for them Just search here at sevenforums

Ken

 

[dan7777]

i use gom player seems alot better than vlc these days

 

[driecken]

Combined Community Codec Pack works fine for WMP, also I like media player classic, and vlc is ok for a lot of file codecs, as far as ease of access.