Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Portable Windows movie players

After I do a video file conversion I like to check how the conversion plays back.

I don’t really care for or use the stock Windows Media Player software.

For the longest time I have used VideoLAN VLC media player and found it adequate for the purpose. I prefer the VLC Media Player Portable package. However it seems to take a long time to load up and get started on all the systems I run it on. Maybe that’s me.

I was reading this TinyApps blog post Download Flash videos and I jumped and browsed around on the Grab Any media app/extension that was mentioned.

There I saw a recommendation for the MPC-HC open-source video player. It also comes in a Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC) Portable version over at PortableApps.com.

Me likey!  It is relatively small, launches much faster than VLC, and has so far been compatible with my favored video codecs.

So I’m keeping it around in my portable apps collection.

Another similar alternative to both VLC and MPC-HC is SMPlayer, another free media player for Windows systems also available in a SMPlayer Portable via PortableApps.com.

Always good to have alternatives!

Claus Valca

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