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p>kurkosdr opined:

Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...

prompting dcsmith to respond:

As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.

The fact is that, as of today, MPC-HC is as stable as any application I've ever used on the Windows platform. Also, because the player employs whichever codecs the user has installed, it should be fully compatible with forthcoming video codecs for some time to come, as long as new ones are installed by the OS as they come into use - and on Windows, that's pretty much been the case.

Having said that, because development of MPC-HC has come to an end, it won't be capable of displaying VR content, once that becomes a thing - which, IMsnHO, won't be for a while, since nothing even approaching an industry standard has yet emerged (with the kind of de-facto "standard" of Google Cardboard excepted - and Cardboard is, at best, a tentative, preliminary step towards VR that nobody with any scrap of sense would contend is worth further development). So, sometime in the future, MPC-HD will become obsolete for al but by-then-legacy content.

Which will limit its users to watching, what, a century or more of movies and TV ... ?

Windows has the clearly superior MPC-HC which is free as in freedom and free as in beer...

As long as you don't think you'll ever need support of any kind, perhaps.

For those of you with Windows: Media Player Classic runs Flash stored locally.

Is my post being truncated? Is the summary being truncated? We're talking about MPC-HC, which comes with codecs built in, but aren't installed into the Windows framework. No additional steps required. As an option it can tap into the Windows' codecs.
Here's their website:
https://mpc-hc.org/

Now take an MKV file on a clean Windows 7 machine (no aftermarket codecs). Install MPC-HC. Try to play it with Windows Media Player, watch it fail.

Take the video and play it in MPC-HC, watch it work with the built-in codecs.

Try a FLAC file, watch it fail in media player, but work in MPC-HC.

In MPC-HC go View-Options-Internal Filters. These are the internal codecs availible.
Go start-run-msinfo32
Components-multimedia-video codecs. Notice Windows still only has the built in codecs.

1. The most hated feature of VLC by far is the Rebuilding Font Cache message. Why does VLC persist with it?
2. Why does your rival MPC Home Theater play high-def videos so much smoother than VLC?
3. Why does the Continue video button disappear so quickly before you can click on it? Why did it take you so long to add it? Does it disappear so quickly because you are philosophically opposed to it?
4. The progress bar is the spoiler bar because you can predict how something will end. How about a way to disable it without disabling on screen volume?
5. Is it true Cray is relaunching with a new line of supercomputers so people can watch H.265?

Two things I use the most on Windows and which are missing on Linux:

A media player similar to MPC-HC. (VLC's UI is kind of crap. Nowadays - animated crap. Always was and it seems that they are not going to ever fix it. Still no click to play/pause. And some keyboard shortcuts are missing too. And the video tearing is also much worse on Linux than on Windows.)

A tool similar to AutoHotKey. There are efforts to replicate the tool on the Linux, but they are all castrated because of security and missing features and whatnot.

But in reality, though the state of the video players on Linux is as frustrating as it ever was, there is really nothing I'm missing too much.

VLC sucks. Gay interface, buggy, slow, and its biggest supporters tend to be major douche bags. Evolve: switch over to Media Player Classic.

If you observed it during a credits sequence it is almost certainly due to the refresh rate of your display/video card not being matched to the refresh rate of the source. (Credits sequences are very easy to encode and decode and shouldn't run into a bottleneck anywhere).

The best way to start analysing this issue is to use MediaPlayer Classic Home Cinema or Black Editon (a fork of MPC-HC), and check the stats with CTRL+J (using Custom EVR as renderer):
https://trac.mpc-hc.org/attachment/ticket/2682/screenshot3.gif
The green and red lines should be perfectly straight if refresh rate and frame rate are perfectly matched.

Other tools if your display/video card do not support a 23.976 Hz refresh rate:
- SmoothVideo Project - http://www.svp-team.com/
- MadVR smooth motion - http://www.svp-team.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=1287 (MadVR smooth motion is discussed)
- ReClock - http://reclock.free.fr/ (last time I checked, it is not an option if you want to do audio bitstreaming)

Warning: once you get used to buttery smooth video playback, you will be ruined forever and unable to enjoy video that is not displayed properly ;-)