Playback

There are a number of different methods available to achieve proper playback of our releases:

Easy

Not perfect quality and may fail in rare cases, but should work most of the time for most people.

  • All Platforms: Get the latest version of VLC.

Advanced

These options may require some command-line knowledge, manual reading and config-file tweaking.

  • All Platforms: Get the latest version of mpv.

Do not use under any circumstances

  • Windows: Windows Media Player
  • Linux: Anything that isn’t VLC, mpv or Kodi
  • Mac OS X: Perian (or anything else that tries to hack mkv support into QuickTime)

122 Responses to Playback

  1. j4k writes:

    If you’re on OS X, you should really check out the modified version of MPlayer OS X Extended made by Hermi. https://sites.google.com/site/hermihg/
    You can even play Hi10P with it 🙂

  2. James Saging writes:

    Would anyone know a way to play to play back these files on Smart TVs (Samsung For Me) With The Subtitles? I would definitely love to just plug in my hard drives to my T.V. and watch these HIGH QUALITY shows Coalgirls provide on my TV without the help of my computer.

  3. damedame writes:

    Unless you want to re-encode everything, there’s no way to do it.

  4. Cube writes:

    I can’t guarantee that this will work, but you can extract the subtitles and give them the same base-name as the video. To my knowledge srt subs work on Samsung tv’s, and should load as external subtitles. Samsungs dont support ass subs so you’ll have to convert them, if that is the format the video uses, with something like SubResync.

  5. Cube writes:

    Also you’ll probably have to remux FLAC tracks into something like AC3 for compatibility, depending on the encode you might be forced to rencode the video codec as well, youll have to check though.

  6. pigoz writes:

    @ j4k: no please don’t. mac mplayer guis incorrectly use wrong colormatrix (BT. 601) for any kind of video. When it comes to mplayer, only standalone mplayer2 doesn’t have this problem.

  7. Chortos-2 writes:

    @pigoz Since when does standalone mplayer2 do it properly?

  8. Yi-Long writes:

    Hi Coalgirls,

    I have a question about an audio-lag issue I experienced with episode 1 of your 1080p BR Nichijou release.

    When I watch the episode from start to finish, a lag in the audio slowly builds up, so it starts becoming noticable after about 15 minutes orso.

    However, when I start the video again and just skip ahead to about 15 minutes in, the audio and video are still in-sync, meaning the lag ONLY builds up during playback.

    Which makes it even weirder is that when I watched another movie, using the same mediaplayer (Media Player Classic), there wasn’t any build-up of audio-lag!? I have the CCCP-codec pack btw.

    Are you familiar with this problem!? And if so, do you know of any solution!?

  9. pigoz writes:

    @Chortos-2: November 2011. It has support for native -vo gl: through cocoa, not X11/sdl like mplayer1. Some weeks ago we also added the same feature to -vo corevideo but it doesn’t work on the GUI (it must be implemented on the GUI side).

    Only think of -vo corevideo as fallback, it’s pretty bad compared to gl/gl3.

  10. Chortos-2 writes:

    @pigoz That’s cool! Took a look at the git log, lots of good stuff there. However, speaking of YUV–RGB matrices, it seems it still doesn’t read the matrix from AVCodecContext inputs. I suppose I should finally stop being lazy and make a patch… but I’ll probably just be too lazy to stop being lazy.

  11. pigoz writes:

    I didn’t know AVCodecContext held all that kind of information, it exposes a lot of color related info beyond the colorspace that could be put to good use. I’ll probably work on a patch for this.

  12. namubi writes:

    Hi there, I like your fansubs and therefore I wanted to watch them on my HDTV on my WD TV Live box but I have a audio problem.

    The audio starts for a few secondes and stops, the video keeps on running but no audio….
    the WD TV Live is capable of FLAC and I have the latest FW on my box. Can you help?

  13. Tim writes:

    It looks like MPC-HC 1.6.2 (r4902 – released 2012-05-26) has 10-bit support built-in – updated FFMPEG and I couldn’t see any of the artifacts you would expect when decoding 10-bit as 8-bit.

    Also, the XBMC nightlies support 10-bit as well now, and OpenELEC 2.0b4 does too (though it’s a side-effect of upgrading FFMPEG to fix another problem). There are also OpenELEC builds against XBMC trunk (Frodo) being done.

  14. MarinerBert writes:

    I have a question. I would like to burn some of your releases to DVD that will actually play on a DVD player. Is there a free program you would recommend? I tried DVD Flick which was recommended to me. However I can’t figure out how to get the subtitle files to show up. It asks for a subtitle file to associate with the video but subtitles are already part of the mkv files. Is there a DVD authoring program that will recognize the components in mkv files? Or do I need to strip out the mks files? Thanks for any info.

  15. Kazy writes:

    @MarinerBert: Use DeVeDe, this application will convert videos if needed (size, bitrate, etc.). DeVeDe is free and open source.

    http://www.softpedia.com/get/Authoring-tools/Authoring-Related/DeVeDe.shtml

  16. MarinerBert writes:

    @Kazy. Thanks! Will give it a try.

  17. ClaymoreGray writes:

    Well i’ve just run across an interesting problem. I have CCCP and have been able to play everything I’ve downloaded here just fine, however recently I just downloaded FMA: Brotherhood and episodes 1-13 played just fine, but when I try playing the others my player (I currently use WMP) states that I dont have the right codex. Is there a difference between episodes or something, because I cant find anything wrong. Btw I do have the latest CCCP.

  18. damedame writes:

    Use the MPC-HC included with CCCP.

  19. ClaymoreGray writes:

    Keeps saying cannot render the file. I even tried reinstalling CCCP.

  20. ClaymoreGray writes:

    Should I just try deleting and dling the series again? I used MPC-HC with CCCP and it still says file cannot be rendered for any episodes past 13.

  21. damedame writes:

    Recheck the torrent on uTorrent. If it is 100%, there’s no point downloading it again.
    You can try SMPlayer, but it should be working on CCCP (but I don’t use it or any other failpacks lol).

  22. OtakuDude83 writes:

    How do I watch with Nero9?

  23. valtism writes:

    I wrote up a guide for bleeding-edge Mac OS X playback. It’s up-to-date, unlike the guide for compiling mplayer2:

    Here is the guide.

  24. shadowmaster850 writes:

    When I try to play any Guilty Crown files which are 1080p the audio doesnt work and there are no subtitles. Do you have a solution to this?

  25. craggy writes:

    what happened to your own version of mpclassic guide?
    Is it outdated? or these are these better alternatives

  26. Eien writes:

    I have the same problem as Yi-Long. I even went as far as downloading the latest VLC media player and I still get lags watching Durarara!!! I downloaded the Durarara! 1080×720 Blue-ray FLAC. I have the latest CCCP and xy-VSFilter. I don’t know what else to do use to play my files.
    PS. I have the problem no matter which player I use (MPC, VLC, Zplayer or even Windows Media Center)

    Yi-Long says:
    Hi Coalgirls,

    When I watch the episode from start to finish, a lag in the audio slowly builds up, so it starts becoming noticable after about 15 minutes orso.

    However, when I start the video again and just skip ahead to about 15 minutes in, the audio and video are still in-sync, meaning the lag ONLY builds up during playback.

    Which makes it even weirder is that when I watched another movie, using the same mediaplayer (Media Player Classic), there wasn’t any build-up of audio-lag!? I have the CCCP-codec pack btw.

    Are you familiar with this problem!? And if so, do you know of any solution!?

  27. Eien writes:

    Actually, I can’t play the file with WMC…

  28. Niyawa writes:

    So, I`ve been trying to build and install mpv in a distro called elementaryOS, it`s a Ubuntu 12.04 fork. Just mentioning in case that could be useful.

    Everything goes well until `make` command, then I get this error.

    scripts/ffmpeg-config
    yasm not found, use –disable-yasm for a crippled build

    If you think configure made a mistake, make sure you are using the latest
    version from Git. If the latest version fails, report the problem to the
    ffmpeg-user@ffmpeg.org mailing list or IRC #ffmpeg on irc.freenode.net.
    Include the log file “config.log” produced by configure as this will help
    solving the problem.
    make: *** [ffmpeg-config] Error 1

    If I use `make clean` like mentioned it should be needed sometimes, I get something else.

    rm -rf ffmpeg_build build_libs
    make -C libass distclean
    make[1]: Entering directory `/home/elementary/mpv-build/libass’
    make[1]: *** No rule to make target `distclean’. Stop.
    make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/elementary/mpv-build/libass’
    make: [clean] Error 2 (ignored)
    make -C mpv distclean
    make[1]: Entering directory `/home/elementary/mpv-build/mpv’
    Makefile:22: config.mak: No such file or directory
    make[1]: *** osdep/: Is a directory. Stop.
    make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/elementary/mpv-build/mpv’
    make: [clean] Error 2 (ignored)

    I`m fairly new to Linux platform so I got no idea why that happens. Any help or tip is appreciated.

  29. Niyawa writes:

    Okay, that worked! I thought you only needed git (not both git and yasm) so that was my fault for misreading the dependencies. Still, something else came up. I’m not sure what exactly happened at this point but I got this message at the end of the build:

    Running autoreconf…
    ./autogen.sh: 3: ./autogen.sh: autoreconf: not found
    Running configure…
    ./autogen.sh: 5: ./autogen.sh: ./configure: not found
    make: *** [libass-config] Error 127

    I tried to ignore the “error” and install it but didn’t work. I checked all the dependencies and they’re currently installed so that can’t be it. It’s mentioned that I can use it without installing (don’t know how though, again, my first time using this) but I really want to know what could have caused this.

  30. pigoz writes:

    @Niyawa: install gnu autotools (automake, autoconf and libtool).

  31. Dancho writes:

    I got the best quality with KMP using CORE AVC and hardware acceleration with some settings in the AMD driver. Also some shit for the subtitles, but i forgot what.
    I tried the VLC with the codecs and shit, but it was worse than kmp with core avc.
    A lot of you with AMD cards might wanna try this out. May also work good on Nvidia gpus, SUX on intel gpus.

  32. SkySkimmer writes:

    MPV is in debian unstable now.

  33. install gentoo writes:

    I think you can stop recommending compiling mpv from source, and refer to packages instead. Debian is now packaging it[1], and it’s also in other major distros such as Arch or Gentoo.

    [1] http://packages.debian.org/sid/mpv

  34. Heather writes:

    SMplayer? Rly? Since when this is better than MPC-HC+LAV+madVR? I thought that madVR has best quality.

  35. Jappie5 writes:

    i want to watch the animes on my ipod but all you file are mkv. files. How can i convert these files without losing the subs ???

  36. Elkay writes:

    for some people who have lag, audio out of sync.. does your pc spec powerful enough? if not, no wonder you are lagging..

  37. HazelEyes writes:

    Coalgirls, do you ever encode in Hi10p?

  38. Herolies writes:

    I still don’t see any difference from Mplayer and VLC both have same Quality :/ I’ve even Screen shot them both but I guess that won’t help. Here’s a link.
    VLC
    http://postimg.org/image/v9fesabgh/
    http://postimg.org/image/6id33sdnj/

    Mplayer
    http://postimg.org/image/rbs52von5/
    http://postimg.org/image/c59g19g67/

  39. Herolies writes:

    Ignore the last post.. sadly i can delete it ;-; anyways i love the setting of KCP and what you can do with it. Can’t find anything for sound and mess around with the EQ. But oh welz. KCP is better then VLC by far :3

  40. Matthew writes:

    I’ve been using XBMC for quite a while now. It’s an all in one media center (for those who don’t know), and it carries as much support for all video formats as VLC, plus you get perks such as bookmarking, resume on all unfinished files, and being able to use various remotes, including your smartphone. It has the ability to add any folder, local or networked, and if you want you can add a Crunchyroll app for total Anime bliss.

    The current stable version if called “Frodo”.

  41. ChrisNar2025 writes:

    [K-Lite Codec Pack Full]
    Version 10.6.0 Full ~ 26.6 MB ~ June 27th 2014

    Changelog:
    *Updated MPC-HC to version 1.7.5.195
    *Updated LAV Filters to version 0.62-5-ga731178
    *Updated GraphStudioNext to version 0.6.1.403
    *Updated Codec Tweak Tool to version 5.8.3
    *Updated Icaros to version 2.2.6 b2
    *Added audio pass-through options to installer and CTT

    Download:
    http://www.codecguide.com/download_k-lite_codec_pack_full.htm

    (n_n)/ Good

  42. decimer writes:

    Windows playback of 10-bit videos tested and working exceptionally well:
    Media Player Classic Home Cinema 32-bit Installer / http://mpc-hc.org/downloads/
    xy-VSFilter 32-bit Installer / http://code.google.com/p/xy-vsfilter/wiki/Downloads
    madVR / http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

    1. Uninstall all codec packs, previous instances of the aforementioned, and the like, and delete their settings if prompted.
    2. Reboot.
    3. Install MPC-HC with default settings.
    4. Install xy-VSFilter.
    5. Extract “madVR.zip” into a new “madVR” directory in your “C:\Program Files (x86)” directory.
    6. Right-click on the “madVR” directory, click on “Properties”, go to the “Security” tab, click on “Edit”, click on “Add…”,
    type your Windows user name, click on “OK”, click on the left “Modify” checkbox, click on “OK”, and then click on “OK”.
    7. Double-click on “install.bat” in the “madVR” directory you just populated.
    8. Start MPC-HC, go to “View” -> “Options…” -> “Playback”, and uncheck “Use the built-in subtitle renderer”.
    9. Go to “View” -> “Options…” -> “Playback” -> “Output” and select “madVR” under “DirectShow Video”.
    10. Go to “View” -> “Options…” -> “Internal Filters”, click on “Video decoder”, and select “None” in the
    “Hardware Decoder to use” dropdown menu in the “Hardware Acceleration” section. Click on “OK”.
    11. Play a video file, go to “Play” -> “Filters”, click on “madVR”, and click on “Edit Settings”.
    12. Go to “processing” -> “artifact removal” and check “reduce banding artifacts”.
    13. Go to “scaling algorithms” and select “Spline”, or “Jinc” if you have a fast graphics card, and “activate anti-ringing filter”
    in both upscaling submenus.
    14. Go to “rendering” -> “general settings” and check “disable desktop composition” and “use a separate device for presentation”.
    15. If you are using a wide gamut display that is not in a proper sRGB mode, color management is a requirement.
    This is done by selecting “calibrate this display by using yCMS” under “devices” -> [Display] -> “calibration”, checking the
    “disable GPU gamma ramps” checkbox, and filling out at least the “primaries / gamut measurements” table on the “yCMS” tab.
    If you do not have any suitable hardware, but you do have a proper ICC profile, you can acquire at least the XYZ values for
    red, green, blue, and white point by using an application such as ICC Profile Inspector
    / http://www.color.org/profileinspector.xalter and double-clicking on rXYZ, gXYZ, bXYZ, and wtpt, respectively.
    Plenty of ICC profiles and the settings used with them can be found at http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/icc_profiles.htm .
    Change the format from Yxy to XYZ and fill out as appropriate.
    16. Click on “save”, click on “OK”, click on “OK”, restart MPC-HC, and start watching some 10-bit H.264.

    [AUDIO]

    foobar2000 / http://www.foobar2000.org/
    1. Install.
    2. Add components as you see fit. The ones you need are almost always available on the official site
    (Monkey’s Audio for .ape, TAK decoder for .tak, and so on). http://true-audio.com/ has the TTA decoder component.
    3. Search Hydrogenaudio / http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showforum=33 for additional components.

  43. incko writes:

    Thanks for updating the mpv builds constantly,

    however, is it possible to add a RSS Feed to your “recent build of mpv” pages?

    Would be totally awesome.

  44. Jaggi writes:

    I wanted to watch FMAB on my tv , so I converted the episodes to mp4 using a simple converter . The audio works perfectly fine , but the video gets stuck at during the playback .

    Can anyone elaborately suggest some way I can convert these episodes to mp4 , so that they work on tv ?

    Coalgirls help! 🙁

  45. Kratos writes:

    Potplayer + LAV Filters + madVR will remain my choice

  46. sorrus writes:

    http://imgur.com/kK5HCsl

    K-Lite Codec Pack 10.9.5 Mega installed.
    How is this problem called? so I can check a solution

  47. sorrus writes:

    Sorry, didn’t found the problem in the comments so far and already did what decimer posted but cannot fix it yet.
    VLC works fine but I would really like to keep mpc-hc for all.

  48. pixelwitch writes:

    Why not use mpv builds distributed as preconfigured for opengl-hq, wasapi and blended subs with the install/association scripts as windows easy-mode? It is more convenient than having to configure VLC for full RGB coverage and runs even on a thinkpad x200 which bears a pre-“HD graphics” intel GPU.

  49. decimer writes:

    you might want to post it to FAQ

    How to stop MkvMerge from generating extra tags.

    MkvMerge from v.7+ automatically calculate a number of statistical properties for each track and writes additional tags. It can be safely disabled.

    Go to MkvMerge Toolbar → Muxing → Add command line options

    1. In the window find and paste in “Command line option:”
    –disable-track-statistics-tags
    2. Check mark “Save as default for new jobs”
    3. Click “OK” for window “Add command line options”
    4. Quit and restart MkvMerge.

    There will be no more additional tags generated in new files

  50. Anonymous writes:

    Recommended scalers to use with mpv?