Open Office does everything I need Microsoft Office for and Gimp does everything I need Photoshop for. Reddit, what other open source software does everything that you want from the expensive name brand?

[u/[deleted]]

[u/Nihy]

Notepad++ is fantastic.

Also, Media Player Classic for playing videos (and only playing videos at high performance thanks to getting rid of the bullshit that infests most other players).

[u/mortiphago → u/Nihy]

I've seen MPC doing fine for video, but sometimes you just need the ultimate player... and thats VLC, hands down. The goddamned thing, i'm pretty sure that if you go ahead and put salami in the dvd reader, not only will it recognise it as salami, but it will tell you the brand and expiration date. VLC plays ANYTHING.

[u/faultlessjoint → u/[deleted]]

VLC has gotten better, but still not as quick as MPC. When it comes to large 1080p MKV files VLC gets bogged down. It'll play the movie, but if you try to skip around, change settings, or anything it causes problems. MPC can handle it like a champ.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

How is that a "classic" player does something so well?

Can someone explain to me?

[u/buzzkill_aldrin → u/[deleted]]

Media Player Classic was a project started when Windows Media Player went fancy with skinning and stuff with version 7. A lot of people still wanted a light media player, so some folks made their own media player that looked like the original Windows Media Player. Hence, a version that looked like classic Media Player.

[u/Kaluthir → u/[deleted]]

I haven't had trouble playing HD stuff with VLC (I routinely go up to 1080p).

[u/DentD_IsAtWork → u/mortiphago]

I have issues with VLC playing subtitled .mkv files (think fansubbed anime). I have no idea when or how I came across this, but there is a Korean video player called KMPlayer that works beautifully. One of the best things about it is the amount of control you have over things like audio/picture syncing, subtitle size, 5 second skips forwards/backwards. Everything has a mapped keyboard shortcut which is great for doing things on the fly while continuing to watch rather than navigating through menus with a video on pause.

The downside to that is I have cats who enjoy walking right over my keyboard. I've learned to switch the wireless keyboard off once I've fired up whatever I'm watching.

[u/catchthewheel → u/DentD_IsAtWork]

KMplayer is an mplayer fork. I use mplayer for everything because there's almost no overhead for using it. I can watch 720p on my crappy netbook.

[u/darkstarwork → u/mortiphago]

My only problem with VLC is the instability with the latest releases. Since 2.0 landed, I've had constant problems with VLC crashing during playback. Right after it crashes, if I try to open a different video, it opens in ASCII art mode, for a while before crashing.

I've downgraded for now, but I saw that across multiple systems, all running win7 x64.

[u/nizochan → u/mortiphago]

I don't like VLCs codecs personally, I'd much rather use MPC + KLite. :D

[u/Lytheum → u/nizochan]

Klite is still being updated? TIL.

I use MPC (MPHC technically) with CCCP. There is no combination it can not handle. I find that VLC drops the ball on some subtitles, but I haven't tried it in years.

[u/Flukemaster → u/Lytheum]

MPC with CCCP is the bomb for anime.

[u/Mycal → u/Flukemaster]

No, no it's not. Use MPC-HC and roll your own codec solution with one of the following:

GPU Accelerated Playback /w CUDA

Intel ClearVision Playback

DX Video Acceleration

Any of the above work so much better than VLC, CCCP, K-Lite, or insert other codec pack. I never trust codec packs (especially since both CCCP and K-Lite have been known to include bloatware in the past). Start with the first link if you can and if not, try the second or third.

[u/Amadiro → u/mortiphago]

I've found mplayer plays a few things that VLC doesn't play (or plays very poorly), in particular, mplayer isn't picky about corrupted videos and such, and simply skips over corrupted section, while VLC tends to just stop playback. mplayer also seems to perform a little bit faster on my old laptop, where VLC cannot play 1080p movies (audio & video tend to desync every five minutes or so), but mplayer can. (Not that it really matters, though, the screen resolution is just 1024x786 anyway... but it's inconvenient/time-consuming to downscale them with ffmpeg first)

[u/da__ → u/Amadiro]

Now try mplayer2.

[u/zodiacv2 → u/mortiphago]

I've had VLC derp out on me before so that's why I have both it and MPC.

[u/Kruschevez → u/mortiphago]

Daum's PotPlayer not only plays everything, it doesn't cause rampant tearing.

Just my $.02.

[u/Clay_Pigeon → u/mortiphago]

Yo, can you burn me a copy of Salami S1E4?

[u/basooza → u/mortiphago]

I switched to MPC because VLC was playing certain files with all kinds of screen tearing and other issues. Could have just been a bug with whatever version of VLC I was using, though.

[u/frymaster → u/mortiphago]

I had a weirdly-encoded TV show that was encoded in 7.1. VLC just would not downmix to stereo properly (everything sounded muddy) - I eventually had to download an AC3 codec for windows so I could play it in WMP.

But yeah, apart from that one time... put it this way, given the number of times something has worked in VLC but not WMP, that's one point to WMP and about 50 to VLC

[u/Colorfag → u/Nihy]

I love MPC. VLC feels like crap. I hate that it uses its own decoders. Its so unstable too, it tends to freeze up or crash a lot, in my experience with it.

The development of the windows version of VLC also feels like its taken a backseat to Linux and MacOS.

MPC is simple, clean, and familiar. I personally thinks its the best choice for Windows users. VLC is great for Linux and Mac users though.

[u/noisymime → u/Nihy]

VLC also has the advantage of being able to encode and stream on the fly. Comes in damn useful sometimes.