[Windows?] Include MPC-HC filters as optional, alternate decoding engine to FFMPEG

This idea has probably already been explored, and with a directshow alternative in the future is perhaps of limited use, but my understanding is that mpc-HC and its inbuilt decoder/filters are somewhat of a standard amongst encoders in terms of compatibility.

I understand that ffmpeg project shares code with mpc-hc but mpc-hc does seem slightly more resilient in some sense, and I have files that do funny things in xbmc but work fine with mpc. I believe its been mentioned they use dxva slightly differently too which may or may not be beneficial.

As both are projects for the community, rather than commercial, would it be possible to integrate mpc filters as an optional alternate in future, so users can switch without having to go through the hassle of setting up external player, with the aim of making xbmc even more compatible in the future?
Would be great to just be able to switch decoder if we discover compatibility issues with a file yet still retain the UI and other aspects of xbmc. As it stands using external player sounds like a more awkward way to try and achieve a similar goal, but obviously things like finding command flags come into play.

If its not possible, no worries, just seemed like a good idea.

Check the dsplayer builds in the Windows section. Development is pretty far along.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=70436

I knew DSPlayer (DirectShow) is coming along as I pointed out in the first line, I just thought this might be another way of improving the core XBMC app

I'll probably have a play with the DSPlayer in the future, Im a little reluctant to use something like that which is still in development, rather than being at 'release' stage, from the notes it sounds like its coming on as you say, but it sounds, from the notes at least, that its not as 'complete' as the normal player yet.

I read it was going to be integrated as an option in the main XBMC distros in the future though, which will be a good time to compare it, I doubt the XBMC main team would include it til they're 100% happy.
From some of the threads it sounded like there was a lot more configuration required as well, although perhaps I've been looking at information that's too old.

DSPlayer uses MPC-HC filters by default and requires no configuring you only need to configure it if you want to move away from the default codecs it uses

I've been using it since the beginning and cant tell the difference between the version I use and 9.11

Ah, thats interesting to hear. I may well take a closer look at DSPlayer in the near future then and see how it compares in terms of playback, from the little I'd read I believed it still used FFMPEG filters like the original, just offered 'easier' use of directshow external filters, rather than being based off of MPC-HC's filters.

Both of you thanks for making me take another look at DSPlayer. As I suspected its not where I want it yet (out the box it has weaker sub support than Dharma) and obviously theres more playing about to get everything working, but when they bring that out of alpha, it looks like it'll be what some of us are after.

Several files I have issues on the normal Dharma Betas, regardless of settings, work flawlessly (no stutters/frame drops) with the DSPlayer.
You can tell its still in alpha because of the extra level of configuration and tampering required (for example telling it to actually use the DSPlayer) but once it goes out the box...

I guess it depends which version you use

You realize you can run the DSPlayer builds without setting it as the default player then any files you currently have problems with under Dharma you can just select DSPlayer from context menu "Play Using" best of both worlds as it were

Using the newest release, I found that unless I specifically set it to DSplayer, it wouldnt actually work! Would start loading the file but never load the actual player.

Just installed the latest and gave it a try and it worked without any configuration at all I just pressed "C" on the keyboard and chose "Play Using" and then selected DSPlayer, if you don't do that it uses DVDPlayer as normal

How wierd. Guess I must have encountered a bug somewhere because it just wouldnt have it when I installed earlier. (actually I got it working once after I had a version of Dharma installed and forgot to delete the profiles...wonder if some files aren't created...)

Still, once it heads out of alpha I'll probably start using it. Video wise its perfect with DSPlayer, its just making use that the refresh rate adapting is working (as I'm not sure yet whether all the video options in the gui work, given the mentions of judder bugs caused by xbmc interface and dsplayer conflicts), and all subs are in place, which Im not entirely sure how to fix right now (tried swapping to Haali and it made no difference). It definately plays some files normal XBMC has issues with so its a worthy thing to wait for.

So close and yet so far, haha.
Anyways, again thanks for pointing out that what I'm after is already being worked on, hopefully one day it'll be equivalent in capabilities to XBMC's main release, just using the alternate player.