Media Player Classic
Encyclopedia
Media Player Classic is a compact media player for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows
. The application mimics the look and feel of the old, lightweight Windows Media Player
6.4 but integrates most options and features found in modern media players. It and its forks
are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack
and the Combined Community Codec Pack
.
Media Player Classic was originally created and maintained by a programmer named "Gabest". It was developed as a closed-source application, but later relicensed as free software
under the terms of the GNU General Public License
. MPC is hosted under the
. The project itself is something of an umbrella organization
for works by Gabest.
This project is now principally maintained by the community at the Doom9
forum. The currently active fork is called "Media Player Classic Home Cinema".
, SVCD, and DVD
playback without installation of additional software or codecs. MPC has built-in codecs for MPEG-2
video with support for subtitles and codecs for LPCM
, MP2
, 3GP
, AC3, and DTS audio. MPC also contains an improved MPEG splitter that supports playback of VCDs and SVCDs using its VCD/SVCD/XCD Reader. On October 30, 2005, Gabest added *.mp4
and MPEG-4 Timed Text
support. An AAC
decoding filter has been present in MPC for a while, which makes the player suitable for AAC playback in MP4, and so makes it an alternative to both Winamp
and iTunes
.
architecture and therefore automatically uses installed DirectShow decoding filters. For instance, after the open source DirectShow decoding filter ffdshow
has been installed, fast and high quality decoding and postprocessing of the MPEG-4 ASP
, H.264, and Flash Video formats is available in MPC.
MPC provides DXVA
beta support for newer NVIDIA
and ATI
video cards when using an H.264 or VC-1
. This provides hardware-acceleration for playback.
In addition to DirectShow, MPC can also use the QuickTime
and the RealPlayer
codecs and filters (if installed on the computer) to play their native files.
container formats. However, OGM audio playback is limited by a lack of support for the CoreVorbis DirectShow filter, which mainly affects newer OGM files (c. 2006). The crux of this problem is that MPC is hard-coded to use an older Vorbis filter, so even if one installs newer filters, MPC is unable to use them.
if a supported TV tuner is installed.
, had each violated the GNU General Public License
(GPL) by using portions of the Media Player Classic source code. Maui X-Stream, the distributor of VX30, previously accused of GPL violations with its CherryOS
software, has made no response to the claim. The authors of K-Multimedia Player
published an official comment on their forum denying the alleged GPL violation, however their forum posting lists GPL licensed libraries used by their executable, which would require their entire program also be released under the GNU GPL license.
forum has since continued the project in two main veins. The version known as Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 was meant for fixing bugs and updating outdated libraries; its branch's development is mostly inactive. The other version, called Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), is meant for adding new features, as well as fixing bugs and updating libraries. Gabest, the main developer of the original version, stated in March 2007 that development of Media Player Classic is not dead but that he was unable to work on it.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema updates the original player and adds many useful functionalities including the option to remove tearing, additional video decoders (in particular H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 with DirectX Video Acceleration support), Enhanced Video Renderer support, and multiple bug fixes. There is also a 64 bit-version of Media Player Classic Home Cinema that supports Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64, and Windows 7 x64. MPC-HC as of version 1.4.2499.0 and later is also the first open source media player to implement color management
support.
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. The application mimics the look and feel of the old, lightweight Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
6.4 but integrates most options and features found in modern media players. It and its forks
Fork (software development)
In software engineering, a project fork happens when developers take a legal copy of source code from one software package and start independent development on it, creating a distinct piece of software...
are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack
K-Lite Codec Pack
K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of audio and video components for Microsoft Windows that enables the operating system and its software to play back various audio and video formats generally not supported by the operating system itself...
and the Combined Community Codec Pack
Combined Community Codec Pack
The Combined Community Codec Pack, more commonly referred to as the CCCP, is a collected archive of codecs packed for Microsoft Windows, designed originally for the playback of anime fansubs. The CCCP is developed and maintained by members of various fansubbing groups...
.
Media Player Classic was originally created and maintained by a programmer named "Gabest". It was developed as a closed-source application, but later relicensed as free software
Free software
Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do...
under the terms of the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
. MPC is hosted under the
guliverkli project at SourceForge.netSourceForge.net
SourceForge is a web-based source code repository. It acts as a centralized location for software developers to control and manage open source software development. The website runs a version of SourceForge Enterprise Edition, forked from the last open-source version available...
. The project itself is something of an umbrella organization
Umbrella organization
An umbrella organization is an association of institutions, who work together formally to coordinate activities or pool resources. In business, political, or other environments, one group, the umbrella organization, provides resources and often an identity to the smaller organizations...
for works by Gabest.
This project is now principally maintained by the community at the Doom9
Doom9
Doom9 is a website featuring information on digital audio and video manipulation, mostly video, and digital copyrights. It is also the forum username of the author of the page, an Austrian then college student at the time of the creation of the site...
forum. The currently active fork is called "Media Player Classic Home Cinema".
MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and MPEG-4 playback
Media Player Classic is capable of VCDVCD
VCD is a three-letter abbreviation with multiple meanings, as described below:* VCD Athletic, semi-professional football team* Video CD* Voice command device* Value change dump * Vocal cord dysfunction* Visual Communication and Design...
, SVCD, and DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
playback without installation of additional software or codecs. MPC has built-in codecs for MPEG-2
MPEG-2
MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...
video with support for subtitles and codecs for LPCM
LPCM
Linear pulse-code modulation is a method of encoding audio information digitally. The term also refers collectively to formats using this method of encoding...
, MP2
MPEG-1 Audio Layer II
MPEG-1 Audio Layer II or MPEG-2 Audio Layer II is a lossy audio compression format defined by ISO/IEC 11172-3 alongside MPEG-1 Audio Layer I and MPEG-1 Audio Layer III...
, 3GP
3GP
3GP is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones....
, AC3, and DTS audio. MPC also contains an improved MPEG splitter that supports playback of VCDs and SVCDs using its VCD/SVCD/XCD Reader. On October 30, 2005, Gabest added *.mp4
MPEG-4 Part 14
MPEG-4 Part 14 or MP4 is a multimedia container format standard specified as a part of MPEG-4. It is most commonly used to store digital video and digital audio streams, especially those defined by MPEG, but can also be used to store other data such as subtitles and still images...
and MPEG-4 Timed Text
MPEG-4 Part 17
MPEG-4 Part 17, or MPEG-4 Timed Text, or MPEG-4 Streaming text format is the text based subtitle format for MPEG-4, published as ISO/IEC 14496-17 in 2006...
support. An AAC
MPEG-4 Part 3
MPEG-4 Part 3 or MPEG-4 Audio is the third part of the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 international standard developed by Moving Picture Experts Group. It specifies audio coding methods...
decoding filter has been present in MPC for a while, which makes the player suitable for AAC playback in MP4, and so makes it an alternative to both Winamp
Winamp
Winamp is a media player for Windows-based PCs and Android devices, written by Nullsoft, now a subsidiary of AOL. It is proprietary freeware/shareware, multi-format, extensible with plug-ins and skins, and is noted for its graphical sound visualization, playlist, and media library features.Winamp...
and iTunes
ITunes
iTunes is a media player computer program, used for playing, downloading, and organizing digital music and video files on desktop computers. It can also manage contents on iPod, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad....
.
DirectShow
Media Player Classic is primarily based on the DirectShowDirectShow
DirectShow , codename Quartz, is a multimedia framework and API produced by Microsoft for software developers to perform various operations with media files or streams. It is the replacement for Microsoft's earlier Video for Windows technology...
architecture and therefore automatically uses installed DirectShow decoding filters. For instance, after the open source DirectShow decoding filter ffdshow
Ffdshow
ffdshow is a media decoder and encoder mainly used for the fast and high-quality decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP and AVC formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well...
has been installed, fast and high quality decoding and postprocessing of the MPEG-4 ASP
MPEG-4 Part 2
MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual is a video compression technology developed by MPEG. It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It is a discrete cosine transform compression standard, similar to previous standards such as MPEG-1 and MPEG-2...
, H.264, and Flash Video formats is available in MPC.
MPC provides DXVA
DXVA
DirectX Video Acceleration is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion compensation and deinterlacing to be offloaded to the GPU...
beta support for newer NVIDIA
NVIDIA
Nvidia is an American global technology company based in Santa Clara, California. Nvidia is best known for its graphics processors . Nvidia and chief rival AMD Graphics Techonologies have dominated the high performance GPU market, pushing other manufacturers to smaller, niche roles...
and ATI
Ati
As a word, Ati may refer to:* Ati, a town in Chad* Ati, a Negrito ethnic group in the Philippines* Ati-Atihan Festival, an annual celebration held in the Philippines* Ati, a queen of the fabled Land of Punt in Africa...
video cards when using an H.264 or VC-1
VC-1
VC-1 is the informal name of the SMPTE 421M video codec standard, which was initially developed as a proprietary video format by Microsoft before it was released as a formal SMPTE standard video format on April 3, 2006...
. This provides hardware-acceleration for playback.
In addition to DirectShow, MPC can also use the QuickTime
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
and the RealPlayer
RealPlayer
RealPlayer is a cross-platform media player by RealNetworks that plays a number of multimedia formats including MP3, MPEG-4, QuickTime, Windows Media, and multiple versions of proprietary RealAudio and RealVideo formats.-History:...
codecs and filters (if installed on the computer) to play their native files.
Matroska and Ogg containers
Media Player Classic supports native playback of OGM and MatroskaMatroska
The Matroska Multimedia Container is an open standard free container format, a file format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture or subtitle tracks in one file. It is intended to serve as a universal format for storing common multimedia content, like movies or TV shows...
container formats. However, OGM audio playback is limited by a lack of support for the CoreVorbis DirectShow filter, which mainly affects newer OGM files (c. 2006). The crux of this problem is that MPC is hard-coded to use an older Vorbis filter, so even if one installs newer filters, MPC is unable to use them.
TV tuners
MPC supports playback and recording of televisionTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
if a supported TV tuner is installed.
GPL violations using MPC code
In April 2005, Gabest claimed that two media players, namely VX30 and K-Multimedia PlayerK-Multimedia Player
K-Multimedia Player is a media player software for Microsoft Windows which can play a large number of formats including VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, FLV and QuickTime...
, had each violated the GNU General Public License
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License is the most widely used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project....
(GPL) by using portions of the Media Player Classic source code. Maui X-Stream, the distributor of VX30, previously accused of GPL violations with its CherryOS
CherryOS
CherryOS was a PearPC based PowerPC G4 processor emulator for x86 Microsoft Windows platforms, announced on October 12, 2004. It was released to the public on March 9, 2005 and development stopped on May 6, 2005...
software, has made no response to the claim. The authors of K-Multimedia Player
K-Multimedia Player
K-Multimedia Player is a media player software for Microsoft Windows which can play a large number of formats including VCD, DVD, AVI, MKV, Ogg, OGM, 3GP, MPEG-1/2/4, WMV, RealMedia, FLV and QuickTime...
published an official comment on their forum denying the alleged GPL violation, however their forum posting lists GPL licensed libraries used by their executable, which would require their entire program also be released under the GNU GPL license.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema
Due to a stall in development of Media Player Classic in May 2006, many bugs were left unfixed. The community at the Doom9Doom9
Doom9 is a website featuring information on digital audio and video manipulation, mostly video, and digital copyrights. It is also the forum username of the author of the page, an Austrian then college student at the time of the creation of the site...
forum has since continued the project in two main veins. The version known as Media Player Classic 6.4.9.1 was meant for fixing bugs and updating outdated libraries; its branch's development is mostly inactive. The other version, called Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC), is meant for adding new features, as well as fixing bugs and updating libraries. Gabest, the main developer of the original version, stated in March 2007 that development of Media Player Classic is not dead but that he was unable to work on it.
Media Player Classic Home Cinema updates the original player and adds many useful functionalities including the option to remove tearing, additional video decoders (in particular H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 with DirectX Video Acceleration support), Enhanced Video Renderer support, and multiple bug fixes. There is also a 64 bit-version of Media Player Classic Home Cinema that supports Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64, and Windows 7 x64. MPC-HC as of version 1.4.2499.0 and later is also the first open source media player to implement color management
Color management
In digital imaging systems, color management is the controlled conversion between the color representations of various devices, such as image scanners, digital cameras, monitors, TV screens, film printers, computer printers, offset presses, and corresponding media.The primary goal of color...
support.