Continous loss of sync in MPlayer Classic

[rorypyro]

I'm having problems watching xvid episodes in Mplayer Classic.

Problem is, about halfway through every single ep, I have to pause, go to options, and shift the sync of the audio EXACTLY +250 ms. Then when I watch the next episode, I have to reset it to 0, then jump +250 again about halfway throught that episode.

I figured it was just bad encoding, but then I realised that VLC Media Player doesn't have this loss of sync problem on the same files. But I know that MPC is supposedly much better at handling this stuff than VLC is.

Am I doing something wrong? Are my ffdshow codecs out of whack?

[rorypyro]

I'm having problems watching xvid episodes in Mplayer Classic.

Problem is, about halfway through every single ep, I have to pause, go to options, and shift the sync of the audio EXACTLY +250 ms. Then when I watch the next episode, I have to reset it to 0, then jump +250 again about halfway throught that episode.

I figured it was just bad encoding, but then I realised that VLC Media Player doesn't have this loss of sync problem on the same files. But I know that MPC is supposedly much better at handling this stuff than VLC is.

Am I doing something wrong? Are my ffdshow codecs out of whack?

Ok next question. This is about the sixth time I've posted a simple question on here and not gotten an answer. Is there some sort of initiation I have to go through before people will reply to my threads?

[signatory]

Ok next question. This is about the sixth time I've posted a simple question on here and not gotten an answer. Is there some sort of initiation I have to go through before people will reply to my threads?


you're not the only one to experience this. Be glad you didn't get banned for asking a question. check out www.moviecodec.com as an alternative.

[Spider D]

rorypyro. I don't know if you're still interested in an answer, but I'm sorry you or anybody else with such issues aren't getting any help. For those of you who still care for an explanation please accept this late reply.

I'll keep this to the basics.

VLC player has it's own inbuilt decompresser. It can handle most codecs around, but not quite everything.

MPC comes with no codecs. It uses whatever you computer has installed.

Obviously for these reasons VLC is much simpler at running media. Most people recommend it for standard use.
However MPC has some distinct advantages. Because it relies on your system's setup, you can always install the codec you need. In theory it's capable of playing anything (provided you know what to download). And because it uses the actual codec of the video, and not a substitute, sometimes compatibility and quality are higher.
The second major advantage is that since MPC uses external codecs, it is able to take advantage of external codec settings. This is especially true of FFDShow (if you don't have it, GET IT!). It provides a massive variety of options for improving visual beauty. If you tweak the setting right you can achieve VERY noticeable quality improvements.

Power comes at a price though. Too much image filtering is a frame rate killer.

Bottom line. Think of MPC like a computer game. High end media requires lower quality setting to run acceptably. The loss of audio sync is generally a sign of unrealistic settings.
Before playing with FFDShow though, I would first suggest taking a look at MPC's output renderer. You'll find this under: View > Options > Playback > Output.
If you have VMR9 selected, that's probably your problem. VRM9 is demanding. "System Default" could also be an issue, if the default is VRM9. Try switching to Overlay Mixer (which should be able to handle everything), or VRM7 (which isn't as taxing on your PC as VRM9). If that doesn't work, THEN look to your codec settings.

If that all sounds like too much work, then you probably should just stick with VLC. It's a good media player.