What Program Do You Use To Watch Anime?
- Media Player Classic (50%, 164 Votes)
- VLC Player (14%, 46 Votes)
- Other (13%, 43 Votes)
- Zoom Player (12%, 39 Votes)
- Windows Media Player (11%, 35 Votes)
- BS Player (0%, 4 Votes)
Total Voters: 330
Loading ...I’ve certainly seen this discussion before, but I like to revisit the debate from time to time. I started out using BS Player to watch anime (and take screencaps), but eventually switched to VLC for the better media support. Unfortunately, VLC does not provide frame-by-frame advancing (and never will, apparently), and it handles the subtitles and notes that you find in .mkv files rather badly. I currently use Zoom Player for all my needs, and it is very close to perfect for me. The only problem I have with it is the Invalid Floating Point bug that occasionally pops up when I am skipping through a file quickly. Fortunately, I heard this problem has been fixed in 6.0RC, and it will only affect the few of us using Vista SP1. I still like MPC and keep it as a backup player program.
This post was written by...
Kabitzin – who has written 1971 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
I always like MPC to do my screenshots and view my anime. Is Zoomplayer the best? @_@
I’ve never had reason to try anything other than MPC. I heard a lot about VLC so I tried it out but I don’t like how I have to turn on subtitles every time I play a file. I probably just don’t know how to use it.
I also didn’t know how to put subs on VLC. After I got used to it, I just uninstalled it ;P
When I was still noob at anime, I used Windows Media Player, but I always hated how whenever you moved the mouse, the bar (pause/play/etc) would pop up, and sometimes would block the subs
.
I like how in Media Player Classic, the bar only pops up when you move the mouse all the way to the bottom of the screen! Oh, I also like how I can press the spacebar button and it will pause! MPC ALL THE WAY!!! Our two years together have been strong! I don’t want to take any chances with another! :love:
BS Player was back in the day for me as well, then I switched to MPC for a few years. Now a days I’m using KM Player which has worked out decently for me. Not exactly the best but allows for A LOT of customization if you’re into that.
MPC + KLite FTW. Alternatively, there’s the CCCP, but I’ve been with the former for a long time now.
I mostly use Zoomplayer and MPC. The former much more than the latter for the past few months.
I have a mac, so I use Quicktime, with the Perian plug-in to handle .MKV files. The subtitling is much neater than the horrendous mess you get in VLC.
That works for 99.9% of stuff.
MPlayer for nearly everything, and CCCP+WMP for the few things like MKV with Ordered Chapters.
I use KM player, but for MKV files I use MPC+CCCP. I don’t use GOM player, but I have it on my computer for some reason.
I use MPlayer. MPlayer works really good including under mac osx. smplayer (a front-end to MPlayer) can be used in windows, supports frame by frame advancing, screenshotting, all codecs I ever stumbled on and is power-user friendly (if you can read doc)
I use VLC but I think I’m coming to hate its terrible mkv handling.
Maybe I should switch to MPC…
I’m using MPlayer on OS X. It does have its problems, but so far the best solution for me.
I watch using Zoom Player, Windows Media Player AND VLC. It just depends what I feel like using lols
On the PC I use Zoom, on the Mac, I watch avis with VLC and mkvs in MPlayer. I take all my screenshots using VLC on the mac, though.
I would use VLC for everything on the mac but, as you point out, it sucks when it comes to mkvs.
And the problem with MPlayer for avis is that I have it set to automatically play the first subtitle layer or whatever, but since avis don’t have a subtitle layer, MPlayer barfs them up with that setting. So I just find it easier to use two different players.
MPlayer isn’t even an option? What kind of n00b is this Kabitzin?!?
Dude, I’ve never even heard of Lynn Icks! And who is Max?
I still like MPC, but I just feel ZP has better .mkv support (which is why I came to hate VLC).
You can use Mplayer on Windows… and it’s pretty stable, to top.
As far as the implementation of the stack comes, I found Mplayer to be the best, most stable and featureful. However, all its front ends suck fiercely (I only heard that OSX one was useable). After trying everything, I settled upon driving the core Mplayer from the terminal with raw keystrokes. That has a real caveman feel, but it’s bug-free. I really do not recommend this to anyone, unless he’s a UNIX fetishist.
As far as VLC is concerned, I could live without subtitles, but it artifacts when decoding h.264 (specifically, in ef). It has a slick and pleasant non-skinned interface (skins are for pimpled teens who read Slashdot), so I use it for everything that it can handle. It means mostly the obsolete media like DVDs and AVIs.
MPC with ffdshow handles .mkvs perfectly
Been using MPC for many years now, never used anything else to watch anime before.
MPlayer mostly (especially if I’m watching softsubs), VLC occasionally. Both work quite well for the most part.
I’m a Zoomplayer boy myself. It works, which is all I require of it, being at the opposite end of the tech-savvy spectrum from Author with his ‘caveman’ solution.
I prefer to use MPC because it’s straightforward and allows for easy screenshot grabbing; Zoom is great for .mkv and especially for higher-def stuff (I watch Macross F exclusively in the higher definition, in fullscreen mode). Sadly I don’t know how to get screenies with ZP, which stops me using it all the time.
VLC is handy for getting screencaps off DVDs (MPC doesn’t like playing DVDs on my machine for some reason) but otherwise it’s either MPC or ZP.
I think you have to use the VMR9 renderer in Zoom player to grab screenshots.
I think this particular Nagato parody (torrent) explains best why I gave up on VLC too.
MPC FTW!
I use VLC as my main screenshot generator (any screenshot you see on my blog comes from that program), as also because of how annoying it can be to deal with screenshots and mkvs and such, it’s also my last option player. Since it tends to play anything, I find it useful when other players can’t utilize some files, or when files are too high powered for them (back when I had a nice fast 700MHz computer, VLC was the only player that could play h264/x.264 files relatively smoothly. As in, I could see movement while everything else would basically be random screenshots.).
As for what I use normally?
>_>
<_<
Winamp, with a crapload of modifactions that I placed on it. So the way I have it set up, it can play any video file I can give it (though I haven’t tried to see what I could do with it and DVDs), and I can use subtitles with it no problem. It’s really all a bunch of add-on, but it does take a little time to do that most probably wouldn’t want to mess with to watch stuff. And the only reason I really stick with Winamp is because I can forward and reverse the files 5 seconds. If there’s another program that I can use to do that with that short interval, lay it on me. I’d be glad to mess with it.
Media Player Classic along with:
Haali Media Splitter/Video Renderer
ffdshow-tryout
VSFilter
MPlayer for anything which doesn’t play well in the above.
I seem to be one of the rare few people here using GOM player
I find it more lightweight compared to MPlayer, MPC, and other players. I like its screenshot feature than MPC too. It doesn’t get in the way of watching since I can just press Ctrl+E (pause for a little while at times), then it just saves the screenie like VLC does (it provides an auto-generated name, based on the filename), no prompts whatsoever ;P There are just times when it skips a few frames when I take screenies, and there are some subtitle renderring issues as well (this is where it kinda fails compared to VLC and MPC), but I found myself attached to GOM now ;P
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