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Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) for Windows Pushes What Could Be Its Last Update (mpc-hc.org)
Popular open-source media player for Windows, Media Player Classic Home Cinema -- or MPC-HC, has issued what it says could be the last update the app ever receives. The team writes: v1.7.13, the latest, and probably the last release of our project... For quite a few months now, or even years, the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero. This, unfortunately, means that the project is officially dead and this release would be the last one. ... Unless some people step up that is. So, if someone's willing to really contribute and has C/C++ experience, let me know on IRC or via e-mail. Otherwise, all things come to an end and life goes on. It's been a nice journey and I'm personally pretty overwhelmed having to write this post.
Because that never happened with closed source...
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is not unique to open source. This very thing happens to closed source, commercial products as well.
I don't think you're trolling, I just think you're ignorant.
sig: sauer
Good thing commercial vendors never cancel product lines or go out of business.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'm guessing VLC killed it? I used to use it all the time but now I just use VLC.
That's probably why "the number of active developers has been decreasing and has inevitably reached zero".
People who know C and C++ well are becoming rarer and rarer. The ones who are good are too busy making big bucks in industry, even if they're working on open source software like the Linux kernel (which is heavily corporate-developed these days).
If this project really wants to attract the next generation of developers to work on their project, they'll need to rewrite it in a fad language like Ruby, Go, or especially Rust.
I can't believe I'm typing this, but... There is literally no alternative. I have never found ANY other media player that supports what should be the most basic possible feature: BOOKMARKS! How is this possible? I have no idea, but VLC certainly does NOT support it. They have some sort of "fake" bookmarks which disappear once you close it, which makes them completely pointless.
Since MPC-HC is the only program that does the most basic imaginable feature, I will have to keep running it even if they kill it. On the other hand, even "MPC-HC" is a "resurrection" from the original "MPC"...
As opposed to what? Relying on Microsoft and Apple? Even if you're willing to pay, both companies have taken a general direction of not listening to their users.
#DeleteFacebook
How is this problem unique to open source? I've had plenty of closed source software/hardware that has gone end-of-life before I wanted it to.
I have to admit I've used MPC-HC for many many years now, in fact I'm using an old out of date version. I wonder if basically it's "good enough" that it doesn't need further development? There's products like "PuTTY" which essentially don't update for ages because the open source product fulfills it's function. Unless the product needs more fancy features which often risks breaking things. Time will tell I suppose.
... some great work there!
I started with Media Player, and then I moved to Apple's AppleTV for a while. The last iteration of AppleTV was a bust for me, as it seemed to prefer Apple's store over my own media, and the touch remote was pretty useless. So I wound up with JRiver Media Center. I have it running on Debian Liunx. So far, JRiver Media Center is looking very good.
The developer can decide to just end up not supporting it, with no option to pay for support. Open source is notorious for screwing over loyal users in this manner.
Because that never happened with closed source...
Yeah. I've been screwed over much worse with projects done using commercial software where my old project files are now unusable because the software either stopped being supported, or the vendor decided to "upgrade" in a way that was not back-compatable with old files.
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
Yep.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Did you sign a contract with them for support?
Did you donate to them through the life of the project?
If the project was profitable then they would either continue to do it themselves or easily find a developer to take over the project. Like most projects though they received a pittance from donations and work was completed out of their own interest / free time. If they can't continue the project (for whatever the reason) at least being open source you still have the option to continue their work or to pay somebody to continue it for you.
Difference between data and an anecdote.
There hasn't been much in the way of software that just does what you want it to, in a small clean package. Much thanks to the developers that kept this going as an alternative to Microsoft's pointless stupidity.
Didn't MPC come about as response to closed source developers dropping a product?
Well, consider the time we're living in. It's more and more common that software gets altered in ways you do not like. A former for-license model getting changed to a subscription pay-by-month model, or some additional "enhancements" that make the software unusable or send your lifetime history to its maker to sell. And that's just what I come up with in the minute this took to write.
In commercial software, your choice is to grin and bear it. For reference, see Windows in its latest incarnations.
In OSS, you can at least remove the shitty bits that are detrimental to your interests. Or wait, you don't have to, because they don't get baked into the package because the maker of the software KNOWS you'd immediately remove that bullshit, so why bother waste resources on creating it?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You mean like Windows Vista?
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
The real question now is how this affects the offshoot MPC-BE.
Before I ventured from Windows to Linux MPC was my de-facto media player.
Thank you for all the developers. People like you has made the Open Source what it is today.
HAHAHAHAHAHA what the fuck?? :-D
Butthurt troll is butthurt
Considering data overwhelmingly supports open source over closed source, I'd say you're right
Why keep working on something that works as intended?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The people who created and updated this software deserve a huge "Thank You" from people who used it for years, including me. I mostly use VideoLAN now, but still have MPC on my computers, where it has lived happily since Day 1 (and will continue). It has always done exactly what it promised without gobbling a lot of resources and without trying to make itself the star of the show. The best thing about it is that the developers never fell into the "bloatware" trap.
So whatever happens, thank you Kacper Michajlow, XhmikosR, Goran Dzaferi and JellyFrog (still listed as "Active People"), and many now listed as inactive who contributed in the past.
People forget that when Media Player Classic came along, it was at a time when Microsoft seemed determined to force non-tech users to use Media Player, which was becoming more bloated, invasive and greedy with every update. MPC was a breath of fresh air.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Like Systemd?
I think MPC came about way back in the day in response to windows media player becoming a bloated POS compared to the old Windows media player. It was designed at the time to mimic and look much like the old windows media player..
This was back during the late Win98/WinME/Win2k era.
Back when windows media player went from this
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Player#/media/File:MediaPlayer601Info.png
to this
https://www.reddit.com/r/nostalgia/comments/66soci/windows_media_player_skins/
http://mp3decoders.mp3-tech.org/decoders_wmp7b.html
Maybe it has reached its design goals, and is largely bug-free and tested.
What's the fuss? Enjoy it!
> let me know through IRC
> wonders why project is DEAD
"I second MPV. All you need for watching video, with none of the bloat of VLC." - https://news.ycombinator.com/i...
You definitely have an option to pay for support, Throw the code at a dev and pay them to do whatever you need.
No sir I dont like it.
Screwing how? When an open source project dies it typically continues working. When a closed source project dies the company folds, the license servers get taken offline and you no longer have a working product.
I just checked. I am running version 1.5.0 of MPC-HC. A quick look on project history shows that was released in November 2014. Still works 100% fine.
I wish I could always feel this screwed.
Because that never happened with closed source...
With maybe the difference that in closed source, nobody can pick up the slack and continue if he feels the software is worth supporting. Closed source maker going under, software is dead in the water. Sucks to be you if you depended on it.
Yep. As an example. a few years ago ArcSoft abandoned their media playing products, including the excellent Total Media Theater which I bought. I didn't use a warez copy, I paid for it. Still have it on my PC. Still use it at times. It was great because if you ripped a BluRay, it would play the rip without any questions. The only realistic commercial alternatives to TMT are WinDVD and PowerDVD and both refuse to pay rips. In fact, both are determined to do everything that the MPAA wants to make sure that their products are as barely useful as possible. I used MPC-HC some years ago but the only real advantage it had was for me over VLC was that it could "play" AviSynth scripts and you could see the output you would get from the script kind of in slow motion without having to run the script on the whole video (which could take hours depending on what you were doing) and then check the output. AviSynth is a scripting tool that lets you do rather complex operations on video and audio, mostly video, like if you need to re-encode something to different resolution.
I don't know what they were thinking back then, I guess that't what happens when you get GenXers who did too many drugs in the 80's and early 90's to develop a UI. Since the late 90's is when they would have been getting into development shortly after college
MPC-HC has been incredibly feature complete for a long time. I mean the list of fixes, changes, and features look impressive with each release but frankly I'm running a 3 year out of date version on my desktop and compared to my laptop running something very recent ... errr.... the buttons look a bit different...?
For the longest time it has truly excelled at it's core feature: The ability to play videos via a small footprint media player.
Oh behalf of the many users: Thanks for your hard efforts over the years, and thanks for not turning it into a steaming turd as much of the rest of the world seems to embrace change for changes sake. I see the abandoning of this project after its long stability in design and core purpose as part of its success story.
Is someone forcing you to use systemd? Is it part of your license agreement? A paid contract? A gun held to your head?
Free software is free-as-in-freedom. Runit, SysV init, Upstart, and GNU Shepherd all have their own virtues. Support one.
It's the only media player I use on windows.
Really not looking forward to using VLC.
I might have to get off my ass and help with this thing.
", or the vendor decided to "upgrade" in a way that was not back-compatable with old files."
Why does Intuit pop into my head at this reference?
Do you realize the AC was trolling & you got caught in the trap?
Why would you think this? It's so blistering obvious that serious responses seem ridiculous.
MPC came about as basically a way to keep using the minimalized "windows media player" interface, no not that cluster-fucky-wants-to-be-the-player-for-everything windows media player 6.4+, but rather the earlier version that just had that one strip of tape-deck buttons.
And that's why I've used it ever since. It's small, it works, and I never have to sit there and fight it for licenses. The only thing I could never get it to do was play bluerays. I prefer it over VLC (which is far more bloated, but works about the same.) VLC plays almost everything but MIDI's due to junk the underlying midi source links with and doesn't need (and therefor doesn't compile on Windows.) Excise that crap, or roll back to where the author didn't put their head up their butt, and midi will work just fine.
People need to keep their political like or dislike of something out of programming otherwise this stuff keeps happening. The point of MPC-HC was that it would actually try to use the underlying hardware acceleration if it was available, where as VLC did everything possible to avoid it for the sake of portability. Midi support was lost in VLC for windows because the developer of the midi support library integrated a library that is only available on linux that didn't previously need it, and couldn't be arsed to do without it.
This is why I tell developers to not jump onto these framework steaming piles of poo. If you don't absolutely need it, don't use it. Roll your own code, it's often smaller and you can fix things in it. If you depend on a library, you depend on it for life, and if the developer doesn't directly support your project goals, then you shouldn't use it.
Right now the "dream team" library for just about every open source project on earth is:
zlib
libpng
freetype
opengl
No sound library, no windowing/UI/widget library, hell, no input library. Throw SDL2 in there, and you cover all the other missing parts except music playback. To which, due to missing hardware acceleration on mobile targets, and patent issues on desktops and mobile devices, nobody is willing to commit to having a subset of libav as part of their base set. Because LibAV keeps changing shit with every version, nobody wants to commit to using libav either. FFMPEG, MPC-HC and VLC use libav. So at some point MPC-HC will stop working due to this.
Nearly, if you use any linux disto it is in just about all of them. There's what, maybe 2 or 3 semi mainstream distros not using it now?
And don't give me the BS about building it yourself. Yes that is an option, but not for everyone and if linux ever wants to hit the mainstream desktop, users aren't going to be compiling their own OS. If you ask any not necessarily techie, but having at least some tech knowledge friends to name a linux distro, my guess would be the response will probably be ubuntu since that is about the only one to make any significant impact in that space.
Dying Columbine *BSD Blood Katz Rivers Theo Dead Grief Neil Cowboy Cmdr Netcraft
If you are using linux as your desktop (versus server), chances are systemd is more than good enough and probably better than what logs you get with windows home edition.
I prefer to use the better term STABLE, or ROCK-STABLE. And terms like no longer being developed, dead, defunct, etc are misleading. Thank you, MPC devs for making MPC! You have done extremely well; I salute you and your coding skillz.
Sure, lots of us used MPC-HC for years and it was always, IMO, one of the best options for a Windows based media server but times have changed. Most folks have moved onto all-in-one packages like Plex or simple streaming devices like Apple TVs and Rokus. These days I use Plex and Rokus. I don't miss the days of having a full-blown Windows PC under my TV, fiddling with CODECs, etc.
Closed-source software companies go defunct, and file formats go unsupported. One of the many examples would be the Wingz spreadsheet. I used this in college in the 90s, and had quite a few .wkz files from my physics classes. But, Informix (the maker of Wingz) went out of business, and there's no way to open these files in a modern OS (with the exception of installing an older OS and Wingz in a VM).
sig: sauer
See subject: For Media Player Classic to do as good a job as VLC you need to install codec packs (3rd party) - VLC has them built-in already & iirc (correct me IF I am off/wrong - feel free on this note) they are installed LOCAL to the folder/subfolder structure VLC has (not in a public folder like %WinDir%\system32 for example - which IS iirc, what codecpacks do).
* You "bloat" MPC's installation right there by adding more libs/dlls for it to work as well as VLC does (has libs in its distro already).
APK
P.S.=> Lastly - I like them both - both decent programs (coming from another freeware dev in myself no less) BUT this is WHY I prefer VLC (no need to install 3rd party codec packs)... apk
I think the GP's "Why would you think this?" question was really in response to your "I don't think you're trolling, I just think you're ignorant." GP thinks the OP was clearly trolling; I don't think the OP was ignorant at all, I think he was trolling either to be an ass, or to throw in FUD.
Ah yes, the "bad old days" of skins. "Hey, let's not make a good UI for our media player, we'll throw something trashy out there, I'm sure someone will make a great skin!"
Ehh... you're probably right -- he was trolling. I must be feeling less cynical than normal today.
sig: sauer
Nothing of value was lost. Use PotPlayer, it's by far the best video player software in existence.
Back in the days of hey lets make our software look like an appliance. DVD playback software was notorious for this. Lets make an interface that looks like an actual set top DVD player. Also apps that Creative used to bundle with their sound cards.
Thank god that era is behind us, they shipped crappy "skins" and the stuff that the 3rd party community made was usually even worse.
Funny, OpenGL. So OpenGL 1.0? Or 2.0? Or 3.0? Or maybe GLES? 1.0? That is actually dead. 2.0? Or maybe 3.0?
And your writing around LibAV/libav/FFMPEG is very confused, I am not sure you even really know what they are...
But anyway "nobody" for you includes companies like Valve and Google, amongst others.
And "roll your own"? Well, see how well that worked for Google with Android's media server. How many security issues have they had now because they decided to roll their own? 20? Or is it up to 50 by now? So at least don't roll your own if you clearly lack the competence to do so.
I use both MPC-HC and VLC, and MPC-HC is pretty feature complete. In fact, I often times skip updates for it because it just works well as is.
I think I encountered a few times where MPC-HC worked better because it was lighter, and I like the simpler interface I guess.
So there you are, thanks for all the development, I hope it can keep going with this final release for a long time.
crap, windoze only software... but it's sad to see an FLOSS project go...
Good luck with that, considering more and more userspace applications have systemd as a hard dependency.
Thank you to all of the MPC people over the years, a staple. Sad to see you guys go.
Memories:
-ffdshow with MPC running Divx,Xvid,Mp4 content at full speed on slow computers AMD K6-2
-my first 1080p content from nvidia running on my athlonXP
I guess VLC won the media war but
MPC-HC's codecs are much much more efficient than VLCs. 1080p and even some 720p Videos VLC stutters and struggles on MPC-HC plays beautifully on all PCs. For VLC you need a high-end PC for these.
My only criticism of MPC-HC: It uses a different keymapping from VLC which must frustrate people who consider switching to it. Example is Ctrl-up/down is volume on VLC, but Ctrl-up/down speeds up the frame rate on MPC-HC which is very difficult to get back to normal. That might have hurt it more than anything else.
But yes: Thanks for an excellent piece of software. So long as the codecs work I'll keep using it. I hope it stays around.
Free-as-in-freedom is not the same as written-the-way-I-want. There is nothing stopping the open source community from making forks of existing projects or brand new projects to escape systemd.
The hatred in the free software world for Canonical is pretty understandable - Mark Shuttleworth and others have occasionally issued inflammatory or dishonest statements (for example, the false claims about design flaws in Wayland) or included adware in their software releases (the Amazon shopping lens).
The hatred for systemd baffles me - you're mad because volunteers are building something you don't want? Isn't that a ridiculous display of arrogance and entitlement? "This thing you're making and giving away has features I don't like, so you shouldn't create it!"
In all seriousness I wish the developers and supporters of Devuan, Gentoo (which can run with or without systemd), Void Linux, GuixSD, and the other systemd-free Linux distributions all the success in the world. But frankly I don't care enough to contribute. For the people that do care, if they put 1% of the energy that went into the flame wars into contributing, Devuan would have conquered the world by now.
... chickens just haven't come home to roost.
Their video APIs will enforce DRM, whereas stuff like VLC is built to ignore/bypass all that stupid "revenue protection" bullshit. People go "OH BUT THE COMPANY WILL GO BROKE IF THAY CANT DRAIN UR MONEY EACH VIEW/MONTH"
Good.
I hope every company that thinks charging people extra for a piece of shit that only works on their EZ-noobtouch-device, not only goes broke -- but also that their stupid H-1B Indians get killed along with their familes, for perpetuating greedy jew DRM schemes.
They claim to have different builds of MPC-HC so their codec pack won't be dropping out along upstream.
Anyway I hope there could be a similar idiot-proof solution but using mpv or something.
Got me a +4 insightful, why should I complain?
I see it more as a symbiotic relationship.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Linux is fundamentally not a desktop OS exactly because you can build it yourself. There is a development process that results in collections of free Unix software, and you can join that process if you want. Linux should probably be called the Universal Build-an-OS-kit, and if you're not keen on that you should probably not install it.
I actually can't imagine downloading a two-hour lecture and needing data from it. It sounds like a poor way to transmit data. And frankly I don't know who is even making two hour lectures these days; if it won't fit into the YouTube attention span, why bother? And in no case would you be required to watch the entire two hours.
I think you should let someone who actually does use this feature explain why rather than trying to invent something out of whole cloth.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
You should check out AVIDemux if you haven't already - it can do various transforms on video. I don't know how complex your AviSynth scripts were, but something like changing resolution (or aspect ratio, or rotating, etc.) are simple enough that it can show you the output in real time before re-encoding the whole video.
my, your, his/her/its, our, your, their
I'm, you're, he's/she's/it's, we're, you're, they're
You implied there is a choice and I pointed out in many cases there simply isn't one. Yet you still insist there's a choice when there isn't.
I use systemd on a couple computers. Out of five computers, it only truly works properly on one, half works on another, and doesn't work at all on three.
Maybe the hatred has something to do with it being a piece of utter shite? Every other month there's news (not good news) about systemd, the last one being systemd-resolved - another halfass attempt at assimilating another system function that led to very serious vulnerabilities.
Back in the days of hey lets make our software look like an appliance. DVD playback software was notorious for this. Lets make an interface that looks like an actual set top DVD player. Also apps that Creative used to bundle with their sound cards.
Thank god that era is behind us, they shipped crappy "skins" and the stuff that the 3rd party community made was usually even worse.
It was also the age of "hey, this skin will look really awesome in a screenshot! That'll make people want to use it. Of course, no one actually stares at their media player while playing music or watching a movie, but let's make something that's more flashy than coherent or usable."
There is still choice. You can put FREEDOS on the computers. You can turn them into pieces of modern art. You can take them to the firing range.
You can't demand other people write the software you want.
I have systemd running on three machines at my house and fifty servers at work without problems.
Yes, but why should we have to replace great logging with good enough logging? Good enough logging may be much better than Windows, but what we had was great.
If you want to make your argument, you would do it like this:
Of course, you'll have to be ready to defend any shortcomings, such as binary logs, log corruption, logs wiped at every boot by default (have they fixed this yet?), and logs sometimes not getting stored, perhaps with a combination of the second above.
My only other complaint is with the verbosity of the command names. My fingers became too tired, and my tab key spring is now broken, so I've linked sc to systemctl, jc to journalctl, and so on. Yes, I'm aware there's a conflict naming machinectl to mc, so I just changed it to mcdo. Problem solved.
I eagerly await PolypAudio/PulseAudio's absorbtion into the systemd project. I also hope that they absorb the Avahi project as well. That project doesn't seem to have a maintainer. Avahi keeps filling my system log with Invalid response packet from host blah . I've written a syslog script that drops that crud for now, but you'd think the developers of Avahi would at least give you a tunable parameter. Something refined and understated like "refrain_from_filling_my_log_file_with_senseless_crap=yes|no|sometimes".
I wonder who the developer of Avahi was? Oh. Oh, and he still is. Well, that certainly is enlightening. I hope Mr P can find a group maintainers for his "actively maintained" software.
See subject: I'm not wrong & you said it yourself: EXISTING codecpacks. IF they're not installed, they don't exist yet. You install them as I said then (IF you already have, then fine, you have them BUT Media Player Classic doesn't ship WITH THEM already (VLC does, but iirc, it built those libs themselves (or licensed them)).
APK
P.S.=> You have to get used to 1 thing w/ me - I'm NEVER wrong (well, rarely perhaps, but this isn't one of those times)... apk
See subject: It's WHY I noted what I did. I've gone thru that very thing (most of us probably have).
Windows OWN media player fails minus codecs as you said but so would media player classic (not 'home cinema' version which ships w/ libs already) as it doesn't ship w/ codec packs/libs/dlls in place.
APK
P.S.=> We had some 'wires crossed' on the Home Cinema/HC model (ships w/ libs/dlls/codecs) vs. "normal" Media Player Classic (doesn't ship w/ libs/dlls/codecpacks)... apk