Hi guys,

I am a bit of a newbie on Foobar, mostly because I was on ME and it did not run very reliably on that. Quite often I would click on a song and it just would not play. Then I had to reboot ME.

Now I have a new machine with XP and Foobar plays every time.

I have always thought Foobar had a nice clean sound. Having used Winamp. The main reason I want to use it is because of the tabbed playlists. I like having lots of play lists and being able to see the name of the playlist I am playing which yoiu cannot see in Winamp !

What I want to do is try to get rid of Windows Media Player, but I still need to be able to play videos. (And Winamp does allow me to edit my ID3v3 tags fairly easily)

What I would like to know is how do some of you guys set you machines up to handle 3 or 4 media players with file associations etc) so that you play what you want when you want.

Have many of you removed Winamp or Media Player ?

I use VLC sometimes to play videos, is it a viable option to replace Media Player with Foobar and VLC ?

Kind regards

Digby
NZ

I'm not familiar with VLC. But Media Player Classic is great (and a very popular alternative).

Tagging in fb2k is good, with foo_id3v2, foo_freedb, and foo_masstag. It's been a while since i've used winamp, but I don't recall it's tagging features being anything special. perhaps i missed something?

I am personally a big fan of Media Player Classic, it has the old Windows Media Player UI, before it went to crap. It uses the directshow filters, and does DVDs.

Edit: I guess I didn't read all of Cosmo's post, didn't see his comment on Media Player Classic. Oh well, my vote for it as best Video Player still stands.

I keep WMP on my computer, just because, but I never use it. I don't think I've ever used Winamp. Foobar200 plus VLC or Media Player Classic is a fine combination, in my opinion.

foobar2000 and Media Player Classic via K-Lite Mega Codec Pack (found here), which includes quicktime alternative and realplayer alternative, plays anything I can ask for. I associate all music with fb2k of course, and all video with MPC. The K-Lite Pack can be easily customized to play all the new encodings, including h.264, and even some of the obscure ones. It's my preference; your mileage may vary.

Thanks Guys

Great replies and feeback.

Looks like its Foobar and Media Player Classic for me as well

Regards

Digby

I'm a big fan of VLC, and I highly recommend it. No dealing with codecs or codec packs or anything of that nature. VLC just works all by itself.

...with outdated filters and decoders. Woo.

Hi Guys,

It now seems you are split 50 / 50 between

Foobar with Media Player Clasic (for videos)

and

Foobar and VLC player

Any more comments ?

Regards

Digby
NZ

Yes. I suggest you look here.

Outdated how? The video plays with no issues or artifacts, the audio uses the full 5.1 surround setup... I don't use any filters, except the occassional cropping filter when I get widescreen content in a 4:3 format (yuck).

Okay, maybe a slightly more recent codec might cause a couple percentage points drop in my CPU usage, or might cause it to crash more often (which is what I always found to be the case).

There's something to be said for "just works", man. And really, decoders shouldn't be changing all that often. Encoders are where the improvements happen, decoders should remain the same for long periods of time as the decoders are supposed to produce specific output given specific inputs, no?

* Partial or broken codec support (think h.264)
* Lack of support for lavc mpeg4 video (plain MPEG-4 ASP)
* Broken or very feature-incomplete ssa subtitle renderer
* Incomplete (non-existant in 0.8.4 beta?) mkv support
etc etc etc

Thing is, if you wait for stuff like that to be fixed and/or implemented, you're basically at the developers' mercy, while there are perfectly fine dshow filters out there. And indeed, it is a lot of work to keep up with the more complex and bleeding-edge features.


All in all you're perfectly right - "just works" is a great thing. However, for some features VLC "just doesn't work".

The problem with VLC and Media Player Classic is that they have trouble playing DRM (possibly read, cannot play at all). Try playing this in MPC for instance : http://audio.microcuts.net/microcuts/clips...yndrome_usa.wmv

I have also experienced some trouble streaming with both these players. But this problem is intermittent. Unfortunately, I have to keep Windows Media Player 10 installed just in case.. I'm open for help.

My little problem when streaming with MPC is there's no UI to change buffer time and stuff. That shouldn't matter if you had a fast connection though. Not disputing that VLC is nice overall, but foobar + MPC still is my combo of choice.

I am guessing that there is a value in the MPC .ini that changes 'buffer time and stuff'. Anyone have any ideas on this? (Sorry about the thread-hijack, but maybe it'll help you decided about players..)

Probably true, yes. So stop buying DRM'd material. Long term solution, man.