free AVC/H.264 player - Splash

[patch1]

I don't see what most users (this segment of population that would find Splash player's friendliness on level) would need to change in a default MPC-HC setup.


On XP default is
Playback -> Output -> DirectShow Video -> Overlay Mixer
Internal Filters -> Source Filters -> Matroska -> disable

Both of which need to be changed to enable mpc-hc to play movies with DXVA. Not hard to do if you are aware of it but not nearly as easy as splash.

Also during install, the option to keep defaults only applies to the user installing, other users always keep old defaults.
Splash is also better at maintaining synchronisation between audio and video then the CPU is heavily loaded (Playing HD movie for which ATI GPU acceleration is not supported).

The overall effect being splash works out of the box where mpc-hc needs considerable effort to achieve similar function.

BTW I still use mpc-hc as my main player.

[namaiki]

The overall effect being splash works out of the box where mpc-hc needs considerable effort to achieve similar function.

Oh, didn't think about XP as DXVA works out of the box on Vista+.

[ltGuillaume]

Based on your review and the fact that I see you have no interest for HD content, I'd say you'd be better of with KMPlayer or SMPlayer (MPlayer for Windows (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=138725)). This two seem to cover all your needs. ;)
I have to say that when comparing frames of The KMPlayer vs. Splash, without any exception Splash came out as the winner for SD material, both on 100% size as when set to full screen. Stretching SD material really normally both shows encoding artifacts and lack of color, in both cases Splash really showed me an improvement over The KMPlayer (default settings of the still beter 1434 build). Colors were more natural (needed extra saturation in KMPlayer) and artifacts didn't show as much at all or were filtered out magnificently afterwards. I'm really impressed by this player and it's playback quality, both on SD and HD.

Any chance to have a "portable version" of this player?
RNiK: on splash forum I found info that portable version is planned.
It's pretty much protable already: if you just use "Universal Extractor" to extract the files or install it in a virtual machine, you'll end up with these files: splashlite.exe, zlib1.dll, d3dx9_40.dll. The settings are saved in %LocalAppData%\Mirillis (just settings file and a playlist file). Nice'n clean. For more details on what it installs by default (which is really clean to begin with), my review: http://www.addictivetips.com/windows-tips/splash-lite-refreshing-hd-media-player/

[Astrophizz]

Two different players should not get different output from h.264 video. Players by default should not apply color/saturation tweaks though you may have improperly configured color ranges. Splash doesn't have it's superscaling implemented yet so my guess is that you're just using a video render with a poor scaling function in KMPlayer. In summary, I don't think you can blame KMPlayer for the playback quality.

[DGMurdockIII]

splash work great for being a young media player

[iSunrise]

I have to say that when comparing frames of The KMPlayer vs. Splash, without any exception Splash came out as the winner for SD material, both on 100% size as when set to full screen. Stretching SD material really normally both shows encoding artifacts and lack of color, in both cases Splash really showed me an improvement over The KMPlayer (default settings of the still beter 1434 build). Colors were more natural (needed extra saturation in KMPlayer) and artifacts didn't show as much at all or were filtered out magnificently afterwards. I'm really impressed by this player and it's playback quality, both on SD and HD.
Same here. I just downloaded 1.4 Lite and gave it a go, even though I was a little hesitant at first.

I have played various M2TS (VC-1, AVC), some TS (MPEG2) and various other files with an MP4 or AVI container and I didn´t even have to look at the settings. It just played them at very good image quality and even though in the Lite version there´s no 24p->60p conversion available, the picture it displays is always _very_ smooth to my eyes (tested this on a display refresh of 59.94 / 60Hz). All pans from top<->bottom or left<->right look very good. Not a single hiccup I could detect.

What impressed me the most, however, is it´s _extremely low_ CPU usage on my i7 even though GPU-decoding is not active at all. It plays back one M2TS (VC-1) file I have with about 4-8% CPU usage.

Have to test some more, maybe I will even buy it just to support their dev team a little and congratulate them for this nice and efficient piece of software.

[naoan]

If you have i7 avisynth+ffdshow+madvr can potentially give far better result than any filter out there, of course the cpu will work harder though.

[iSunrise]

If you have i7 avisynth+ffdshow+madvr can potentially give far better result than any filter out there, of course the cpu will work harder though.
I know, since thats exactly my current setup. But that setup has it´s own problems, which I won´t go into detail now. Wrong thread.