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)
For MAC use MPlayerX. You can download it for free on the apple store. I can read any type of movie format with that, and it receive commands from the apple remote. It’s really easy to use and have some nice feature, like the automatic reading of the next video file. The only default is that the use of external subtitles is a little complicated (so no problems with mkv from coalgirls). Personnaly I use VLC when i have external subtitles.
AFAIK mplayerx uses mplayer1 under the hood: that means no ordered chapters.
So use pigoz’s binary that was linked.
Also, about your comment “The CCCP pipeline will dither everything down to 8 bit twice before rendering, and also has bad performance”
I actually found it has better performance than madVR. In this one scene madVR totally choked but it played fine in CCCP
I keep getting this error whenever I try to playback a file with MPC-HC and madVR:
“madVR reports:
-creating Direct3D device failed (8876086c)”
I’ve follow the guide correctly, but still get error,
what should I do?
@matt
Do you have a discrete graphics card? madVR requires one.
works just fine with my shark 007 on win7
@matt:
Make sure you have enough graphics memory or decrease the amount of buffers madVR uses (or enable some performance tweaks)
Thank you very much 😀
Now my files run smoother and the subtitles look better :3 I’m really impressed by the Hi10 videos, continue your releases in this format, it’s perfect.
It works with the last build of VLC 1.2. I test it with the lead developper. The video is perfect… but VLC don’t understand the segmented MKV. I work with kempfjb to fix it.
I made an OSX guide…
My site looks like shit at the moment though.
But anyways: http://adriasil.nekosubs.com/blog/index.php/media-players/mac-video-players/
Nice comment on Linux.
I use Win7 x64 with shark007 codec pack.
After installing MPC-HC and madVR, my PC crashed, and couldn’t be repaired.
After re-installing windows and all my software, I installed CCCP.
It works perfectly, but since I use WMP as default, I must just right-click and choose Open with MPC-HC to play 10-bit files.
you could also get mplayer2 and just drop file on it to open.
+1 for MplayerX for Mac.
+1 lol @ linux
I can’t seem to get MadVR not to drop frames, my hardware isn’t the problem…
This is bizarre… it seems to only happen with 10-Bit encodes…
Hey there, thanks for this mini guide. It helped alot, and I can now play anything 10 bit (hi10 w/e). My only problem is now my subtitles look stretched out or as if they have no 3d depth, this is a problem because especially for subber’s that render their own special subtitles, not only will the effects appear weird, but the overall subtitle looks like its been stretched out or something. Is there anything to fix this? Is there something in the MPC settings I was suppose to enable/disable that I didnt know about?
Now that CoreAVC 3.0 is available, will you try it? Have you some benchmarks between various players/decoders? Thanks for your help!
@Gio: CoreAVC 3 is awful, fails on higher bitrate scenes and has worse performance than libav.
Stop playing on a Fisher Price PC then. The latest CCCP plays 10-bit just fine for me. CPU usage is up a bit, but w/e.
I downloaded the latest CCCP with the MPC HC player and everything seems to play fine. I know most people don’t care for Windows Media Player much, but does anyone know if there is a way to get playback through that program? There is no indication of such in the guide above.
I’m also curious as to what this Hi10p is exactly, I just started to see a couple subbers “experimenting” with it. Anyone care to drop me a hint? Thanks in advance!
@Kazy. 2nd that. Lucky me, I wen’t through the trouble to pull mplayer2/smplayer from the git repo a few months ago and compiled it. Works like a charm. Now, my Linux box is better in playing videos than Windows, except, since F15, my ac3/aac setup is borked (back channels are silent), always have to use stereo downmix :(.
@Andromeda: Why do you people always have to be so intolerant. Fisher Price PCs. Some people don’t get a 1k-2k rig paid by their parents.
What kind hardware (Proc and how much RAM) is needed to play [Coalgirls]_Cardcaptor_Sakura_Movie_I_(1920x1080_Blu-Ray_FLAC)_[CDF7F555].mkv smoothly?
I had AMD Athlon X64 6000+, 2GB DDR2, Nvidia GT8600 use FFDShow Video Decoder (K-Lite Mega Codec 7.7.0 is instaled) and my Windows Task Manager got 90~100% proc load. And at the end of show (at ED), my MPC-HC is crashed
I tried to use CoreAVC 3.0.1 to decode, but have the same thing.
Are Intel Core i5 2500 is enough? or it must be Intel Core i7 2600? (yes I know, Hi10p can’t use GPU accelerated) with 4GB of RAM or more?
*sorry for my bad english
To mada2dane, Your hardware is good enough to play full HD content and you don’t need to upgrade your hardware just for watching anime, movies, etc. Try XBMC http://xbmc.org
Is the use of Haali’s splitter absolutely necessary for playback using the mpc hc and madvr method? Is there any functionality that I lose if I just use mpc hc’s internal splitter?
Well i found the reason madvr played macross frontier with many dropped frames.
it doesn’t use the second core of my 4870×2.
one gpu is running at arround 75% and the other 2%
So to use madvr you need a very fast single chip card.
i reconfigured mpc hc to use lav filter for the moment until either i get a new card or it start using the second gpu
@fathom2821
I was able to play using MPC-HC 1.5.2.3456, madVR and LAV Filters without the Haali Splitter (using MPC’s splitter).
… although Matroska splitter in MPC-HC does not support linking.
@xeon_1
I have madvr and LAV codecs installed and in use, Now my PC is a Core i7 920 at 3.2GHZ and my Video card is a ati HD4870 while playing CCS it still have some problems, (drop frames). glitches, while playing the CPU is at 20% ( the 4 cores) but the GPU is at over 80%.
While madvr has better quality, MPC-HC EVR custom using Bi-cubic at 0.6 to play Sakura.
It kind of sucks that madvr drop frames even with a HD4870 (I haven’t have any problems playing a game)
@M
Thanks for the response. Yeah, forgot about ordered chapters. Figured it out when I went to watch Bakemonogatari.
@ AlexTo
Lol my system is nearly identical.
i7 920 stock /12Gb cl7 memory / 4870×2
Thats how it was for me also at first.
But in MPC go to the external filters tab click add filter
Select Lav splitter / lav splitter source / lav video decoder.
for the splitter source and video decoder i have set to prefered.
Could be that i put one to many or few there but thats how it works for me.
This solved most of my problems while still using the gpu for rendering with madvr.
In madvr i set enabled exclusive mode and run presentation in seperate thread but with those you have to experiment to see if it helps in your case.
After this i just got a lot less dropped frames then after some fine tuning the memory i now get 0 dropped frames due to performance issue’s.
The memory was underclocked and the timings wrong in my case
i have 1600mhz cl7 memory but it was set to 1333 cl9 after a couple of cmos resets
Set it back at the correct timings and frequency and the last of dropped frames where gone.
Do note that when you overclock the cpu the memory automatically follows.
So in your case you may have to set the memory multiplier lower to compensate for the higher cpu speed.
Hope this helps you
K got them to go away in 1 of my players had to disable one of the other filters which was still on on that one. But the quality on it went way down.. hmm
^ by them i mean artifacts.
Also all the standalone players that supposidly support 10- didn’t for me. Neither did following any walkthrough.
Just had to mess with it hit and miss.
For Mac OS X, I use a modified MPlayer OSX Extended done by Hermi:
https://sites.google.com/site/hermihg/
It is basically MPlayer OSX Extended, but with a whole lot of bug fixes and comes ready to go with an Mplayer2 binary. Best thing out for mac that I know of.
I have follow your guide with Use MPC-HC together with madVR,and i use Ctrl+J to enter the OSD it show up like your guide,but i want to ask is monitor set up refresh rate how should i set it 59hz or 60hz my monitor can play full hD 1080p 23inch.
If i set 59hz have frame drop 1 frame every second,and if i set to60hz have frame repeat every second.
Refresh rate which should I choose, I do not understand about this can you help me to explain it and which one should I choose
Thank you
Anime runs at 24Hz, so you’ll get “choppy” playback anyway.
^^ Get a monitor/HDTV with 24p mode.
So what the best refresh rate should i choose 59hz or 60hz?
Can’t manage to buy new monitor now low budget….hikz….
10bit is such a nuisance this early on, have to jump through so many hoops to get it to work.. But thanks for the guide!
I second what valtism said above for mac os x. Hermi’s modified mplayer os x extended is able to play the files for me. I also had a problem getting the 5.1 sound to passthrough on my mac with mplayer though, even though it works fine with plex. I was able to get it working with mplayer by going to the advanced tab, and adding this additional option: “-channels 8 -af lavcac3enc=1” Although that should be “channels 6” if you have a 5.1 system (i have a 7.1 system)
I followed these steps, no problem at all, except one. mkv cannot display Japanese fonts. Is this the player’s fault or my computer fault ? Wins 7, upgraded from XP through Wins 7 DVD.
I’ve got a completely different problem from the people above. The only videos I have problems playing are the videos that made me have to get this fix. I was playing the Macross Frontier movies and the anime before but the high bitrate was giving me insane lag. I changed all my settings according to this guide and the lag went away, but now I lost all voice audio. I can hear background music and PEW PEW perfectly fine, but I hear no audio from the characters.
Other CG releases work perfectly fine, (Bakemonogatari, Ano Hana, Toradora, Infinite Stratos, Maria + Holic) but this is the only one that has issues now.
I don’t think this whole 10 bits thing is worth it and it’s a bit misleading as well!
First of all, using 10 bits of information doesn’t reduce file size, it actually increases the file size. Simple logic says, more information means you need more space.
Higher compression ratios of the Hi10p profile refer to in relation to bit ratio of itself (i.e. the ratio of its 10 bit video before and after compression, not in comparison to 8 bit video), since the other profile that uses 8 bits of information has a relatively lower raw file size to begin with, using Hi10p doesn’t always ensure a lower file size. It is very conditional and dependent highly on the video content.
Here’s a t-shirt analogy. You see two t-shirts in a store. Both have identical prints and labels and of the same size. The only difference is the material. One is of a 100-thread count, meaning that it’s almost see through, and the other is 400-thread count and very comfortable to the touch. If you measure them on a scale, which would be heavier?
Here’s another analogy. You want to rip the latest song from a CD you just bought. If you rip it using Constant Bit-rate MP3 at 128-kb, would it have higher or lower file size than the rip at 190kb?
Regardless, Hi10P seems to cater only for professionals. Why? Because unless you have access to the original 12-bit video master, you are only going to generate Hi10p videos using at most Blu-ray Discs, which is not a 10-bit video source.
Blu-ray Discs are an 8-bit video source. The files the discs are generated from are mostly from 12-bit 2K/4K files from a telecine transfer or direct from a digital camera. So while BD is still better than HD broadcast, it doesn’t give you the same quality as the master tapes.
If an 8-bit source is encoded in Hi10P, you’re just wasting your time encoding/downloading the file because the 10-bit data is generated from an 8-bit source. You are also wasting HDD space. The encoded file is only as good as the source it is encoded from.
@jarod_007:
Do you know how h264 compression works?
You don’t know what you are talking about.
http://x264.nl/x264/10bit_02-ateme-why_does_10bit_save_bandwidth.pdf
Persona plays without a hitch on the VLC 2 release candidate.
http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/
Might be worth checking out for Linux geeks, Mac enthusiasts and codec pack haters.
Download link for VLC 2.0 (stable 17/2) for openSUSE Linux
zypper ar http://download.videolan.org/pub/vlc/SuSE/12.1 VLC VideoLan client
zypper in vlc
@damedame
You missed the point. Blurays are encoded in 8bit. Encoding them to 10bit… = adding bits that never existed. What’s the point?
And I think you need to understand something from that PDF you linked.
“The net result is a better quality for the same bit-rate or conversely less bit-rate for the same quality: between 5% and 20% on typical sources.”
Say the source is 10000 bitrate.
10000 bitrate 8bit file vs 10000 bitrate 10bit file will have the 10bit file looking better but in this instance, the more bits you have, the bigger the file will be.
10000 bitrate 8bit file vs 9500 bitrate 10bit file will have both files looking the same but the 10bit file will be smaller (cause it has less overall bits to achieve similar quality).
What is a better video quality?
The video quality is better when the decoded video is closer to the source. The most common way of expressing “closeness” in video processing is stating that there are less errors relative to the pixel bit-depth. For example, a 1 error bit on a 8-bit signal provide the same relative error than 3 bits of error in a 10-bit signal: 7 bits only are actually meaningful in both cases.
So… what is better quality then?
the 8bit… because the bitrate is closer to the source.
From what I can see in his explanation, the benefit of the 10bit… is reducing bandwidth to achieve the same quality. But if you’re a quality junkie and you want to be closer to the source… I’m still going to say the 8bit weighs out on top.
For anyone still having issues the newcodec downloaded when you install zoom player seem to do the trick as long as you avoid LAV unless nesseary. I also set AC3 as my primary audio codex as i have a dss2 sound processor that allows 5.1 optical audio to headphones and it works great even on stock spdif as long as in the offline confige you set it from its defuat of 2.0 to 5.1 also it allow you to add gain to output audio (for those that need increased sound) zoom player also supports pre sub selection or by stream number so if your are watching a series with muti audio it can be set to always play jap audio and english(or other) subs if you have any issues with zoom player i can help just email me worldseyes at yahoo dot com (spelt this why to prevent bots from abusing it) with the subject zoomplayer help. If you do not have the subject EXACTLY as spelt you will not get a reply due to spam rules i have in place. If i see a trend i will make up a walkthrough and add it as a autoresponce until my webpage is updated or someone from CG post it above.
the minimume system require for 10bit in zoom is 2gb RAM @ 1333 or higher, x2 amd or intel core 2 dual @ 2.4 or above, grapics card that has it own dedicated memory of at least 512MB.(may work fine on some system without this with extra ram added), a SATA 2 3GB/sec connection with a SATA gen 2 harddrive with W/R of at least 50MB/sec (solid state Harddrive recomended as data rate are approx 500MB/sec W/R (so worth the money as your pc uses the harddrive as backup ram when it runs out!!! Sata 3 gen upto 950MB/sec), Vista or win7 in x64( 32bit seems to bottleneck the rendering alot!!) AND MOST IMPORTANT a motherboard that support the newest processors even if you do not have one!!! They are backwards compatible quite far just make sure it is the same socket that you current cpu is. This also allows you to upgrade individual compoents as money permit and I will be happy to help with walkthoughs for installing any hardware. my current favorate in AMD is the MSI 990FXA line as it support processors back to sempron CPUs from 7 years ago and also is a military class 2 mothermord with solid compasitors(increased stability and extra long life.) i have also tested the ASUS m5a99x evo and it has more options but does not seem to proform as well in games or rendering with identical hardware. However this is recomended for anyone needing alot of external connections such as esata, usb, ect. This motherboard although made for overclocking does not do well in stability when overclocked.)
contact me for help @ worldseyes at yahoo dot com
@jarod_007:
The point is, at same bitrate the 10bit video will look better. So, NO MATTER WHAT, if you are re-encoding 8bit video, you WILL have better quality with 10 bit.
>The video quality is better when the decoded video is closer to the source.
lolno. x264 and other h264 encoders use psychovisual enhancements to get better video by…being less close to the source. The psy_rd command line argument does this.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=faade224d11e59db01ace2cb91e31347&t=138293
If you want to stay close to the source, I’d say you should avoid everything encoded using x264 on the internet, which happens to be virtually every single h264 reencode on the internet.
Again, come back after actually learning how stuff works.
I don’t even know why I bother to reply a troll post…
>Linux
>Use mplayer2
>Not MPlayer
How do i saged coalgirls?
When I’m watching your release of Steins;Gate , The audio sometimes diminished , then goes loud again . I feared that it has something to do with my player (I’m using this guide btw) . but is it possible it’s just the way it is ? It’s annoying that I have to readjust the volume every time I experienced a drop in volume level . and I have to readjust it again when it goes up or it’ll be too loud >.<
thanks in advance !