Best Free Video Players

[SkyFuser]

Since everyone else is adding free alternatives for our computers, I might as well add my own. Since I see many people on Yahoo Answers and other forums askig about video players, I thought I could compile a list.

CCCP - Stands for Combined Community Codec Pack, not something Russian. By far my most favorite solution. Comes with Zoom Player and Media Player Classic. Supports all popular formats, especially .mkv and H264/AVC. Official Windows solution to Matroka (MKV) files since 2006. Only downside is that it's for Windows 2000/XP/Vista. No Linux =[

MPlayer - CCCP's recommendation for MPlayer. I personally recommend it too. Open-source so you can compile and modify it yourself. Has its own codec packages and supports almost all types of video. Can be portable. I have the CCCP-build of MPlayer on my USB. Works perfectly.

VLC Media Player - Free open-source video player. Part of videolan project. I tried this before, although I didn't like it. For one, subtitle tracks screw up; all of them play at the same time, and manual selection is needed. It also immediately changes all file associations to play with VLC without any choices. Also unclean install. But it CAN play broken files. I'd stick with MPlayer.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema - Based on Gabest's Media Player Classic. Has internal subtitle renderer and H264 decoding. Standalone, meaning it's portable. I tried it for a while, and it was actually really good. But I ditched it for CCCP =]

Media Player Classic - Standalone player by Gabest. Discontinued, spinoff is Home Cinema above. Included with CCCP, has internal subtitle splitter. Needs ffdshow though.

GOM Player: Free, simple, light media player. Patented technology to play broken or unfinished downloads of AVI files.

I will add more later, and anyone who feels like adding their own recommendations is appreciated 🙂

 

[abhishek_a01]

kmp is another one. its good for screen caputre..

 

[Dark Atheist]

cccp is a codec pack that bundles players with it - i don't recommend any codec packs, just grab ffdshow-tryouts and latest mpc build, which is what cccp does.

Windows = MPC + ffdshow
Linux = MPlayer + ffmpeg + MPlayer codecs

 

[Perris Calderon]

cccp is a codec pack that bundles players with it - i don't recommend any codec packs, just grab ffdshow-tryouts and latest mpc build, which is what cccp does.

Windows = MPC + ffdshow
Linux = MPlayer + ffmpeg + MPlayer codecs

linkerage please, my google is not working today

 

[Dark Atheist]

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=173941&package_id=199416&release_id=439904 - ffdshow

http://tirnanog.fate.jp/mirror/Misc (not by celtic_druid)/MPC-Homecinema SVN/ - mpc

 

[Sazar]

Since everyone else is adding free alternatives for our computers, I might as well add my own. Since I see many people on Yahoo Answers and other forums askig about video players, I thought I could compile a list.

CCCP - Stands for Combined Community Codec Pack, not something Russian. By far my most favorite solution. Comes with Zoom Player and Media Player Classic. Supports all popular formats, especially .mkv and H264/AVC. Only downside is that it's for Windows 2000/XP/Vista. No Linux =[

MPlayer - CCCP's recommendation for MPlayer. I personally recommend it too. Open-source so you can compile and modify it yourself. Has its own codec packages and supports almost all types of video. Can be portable. I have the CCCP-build of MPlayer on my USB. Works perfectly.

VLC Media Player - Free open-source video player. Part of videolan project. I tried this before, although I didn't like it. For one, subtitle tracks screw up; all of them play at the same time, and manual selection is needed. It also immediately changes all file associations to play with VLC without any choices. Also unclean install. I'd stick with MPlayer.

Media Player Classic Home Cinema - Based on Gabest's Media Player Classic. Has internal subtitle renderer and H264 decoding. Standalone, meaning it's portable. I tried it for a while, and it was actually really good. But I ditched it for CCCP =]

Media Player Classic - Standalone player by Gabest. Discontinued, spinoff is Home Cinema above. Included with CCCP, has internal subtitle splitter. Needs ffdshow though.

I will add more later, and anyone who feels like adding their own recommendations is appreciated 🙂

VLC is my player of choice because it has a small footprint and plays everything I need it to play, including partially downloaded files.

I've never had an issue with subtitles btw.

 

[abhishek_a01]

VLC is good player. Recently there was one article in computerworld regarding one security bug in VLC player. they have updated this bug. Make sure you have update your VLC player 🙂

 

[SkyFuser]

cccp is a codec pack that bundles players with it - i don't recommend any codec packs, just grab ffdshow-tryouts and latest mpc build, which is what cccp does.

Windows = MPC + ffdshow
Linux = MPlayer + ffmpeg + MPlayer codecs

I don't like codec packs either. K-Lite has already seen to that. But this one's custom made by expert people that do encoding and subtitling for various (unlicensed) shows for years. Their VS Filter and ffdshow are custom build to provide the best solution. They continually update, and I've never had a problem with it before. Support is fast and almost always solves the problem.

The VLC bug was with the subtitles. The muxing could lead to malicious code running. And I still don't like it, it changes file associations whether you like it or not. And the uninstall was so messy, there were a few hundred registry keys even after I rebooted.

I'm looking up kmp. I'm not sure I want to try it though. I keep on getting results from these "full releases" sites. You know what I'm talking about. Some info on it might be nice though 🙂

 

[Basekid]

The good think about vlc is that it playes about anything. Media player does that as well, but it has less options imho.

 

[binoyxj]

I mainly use VLC player to get a preview of the partially downloaded video :devious:

 

[SkyFuser]

I mainly use VLC player to get a preview of the partially downloaded video :devious:

That reminds me of GOM Player. Play broken AVI. That's all I find it good for though. I think all add that. And update some more info. And I didn't realize it can play broken files. Which ones does it support?

 

[zaroba]

besides the CCCP there is also the Ace Mega Codecs Pack. its pretty much the same as the CCCP, except from a different group of people. i liked its splitter a lot more then ffdshow though. the last time i checked, it didn't have h264 support like the CCCP. but, i have also seen some video files encoded in a way that the CCCP didn't support but the Ace Mega Codecs Pack did support.

 

[failurbydesign]

Vlc and Gom are two of my fav..every thing else can suck my right tit! Ha! 🙂

 

[Tuffgong4]

ffdshow tryouts for wmp 11 and for everything I usually use vlc...kmp was good but vlc was easier

 

[Lauzyguy]

Currently, I only use vlc and cccp (mpc). The rest of the video players i don't bother with anymore, probably until either vlc or cccp doesn't work with my computer anymore.

 

[SkyFuser]

besides the CCCP there is also the Ace Mega Codecs Pack. its pretty much the same as the CCCP, except from a different group of people. i liked its splitter a lot more then ffdshow though. the last time i checked, it didn't have h264 support like the CCCP. but, i have also seen some video files encoded in a way that the CCCP didn't support but the Ace Mega Codecs Pack did support.

Holy bleep. That's even more than K-Lite. If I downloaded that I think I'd die of shock :dead: Seeing how Ace Mega Codecs Pack has waaaay more "features" than K-Lite... I think I'll stop there.
I learned about it from here. And fyi, the guy who posted that enormous 2nd post is one of the contributors to CCCP.

It's very informative. Even I who am (grammar fails me) not an expert understood most of it. And uhhh. There's some profanity, and the later posts will explain in human language how these enormous codec packs are... trash to the extreme.

 

[Bigstie]

For the last eight months I've switched to VLC Media Player.
I'll give CCCP a try one of the following days, thanks! 🙂