Download the MPC-HC media player. This MPC-HC is the upgrade of the media classic player which is no longer developed. The Media Player Classic – Home Cinema. This is the media player classic home cinema edition. There are a number of difference between the two. None the less you can download the classic player below which is the home cinema edition. This is commonly referred to as the MPC-HC player.
MPC-HC
Firstly, the Media Player Classic (MPC) and Media Player Classic Home Cinema (MPC-HC) are both media player software programs. You will note that both of them had been developed by the same group of programmers. MPC is a compact as well as a lightweight media player. It is well used as it can play a wide range of video and audio formats. Likewise see more on the Media Player Classic – Home Cinema on here. See also the MPC-HC Settings on here which I wrote about.
The other one being MPC-HC is an extended version of MPC. The HPC Home Cinema includes additional features such as support for playback of Blu-ray and DVD discs. This as well as additional video and audio codecs. Both MPC and MPC-HC are free to use and open-source software.
MPC-HC Features
You can play HDR video this however needs either the MPC Video Renderer or madVR. Now once the HDR capable renderers are installed you can be select them as follows:
- Options > Playback > Output
With other video renderers, the colors will be wrong!
You can also change the interface colour on the player. This can be done as follows if you want to change the theme colour. You can change the MPC HC colour theme as follows:
- Menu > View > Dark Theme
When using dark theme on MPC it is also possible to change the height of the seekbar and size of the toolbar buttons.
There are many other options which are available. These have been included as follows:
- Options > Advanced
Video preview on the seekbar
Options > Tweaks > Show preview on seek bar
Adjust MPC-HC playback speed
If you would like to increase or decrease the playback speed of videos and audios in MPC-HC, using a keyboard key.
- Adjust playback speed
Menu > Play > Playback rate
The buttons in the player that control playback rate take a 2x step by default. This can be customized to smaller values (like 10%):
Options > Playback > Speed step
Adjusting playback speed works best with the internal audio renderer. This also has automatic pitch correction.
Options > Playback > Output > Audio Renderer
The MPC-HC can also recall the playback position so you can layback the video later.
- MPC-HC can remember playback position, so you can resume from that point later
Options > Player > History
Keyboard Shortcuts
Keyboard Shortcuts for the Media Player
- Ctrl + Mouse Scroll wheel – quickly seek through a video
- Press PageUp/PageDown.- jump to next/previous file in a folder
You can also perform automatic actions when you reach the end of file. The options are that you close the media player or you play the next file.
- Options > Playback > After Playback (permanent setting)
Menu > Play > After Playback (for current file only)
Basically you can also loop the video with an A-B repeat. This is done by pressing [ and ] to set start and stop markers.
- You can rotate/flip/mirror/stretch/zoom the video
Menu > View > Pan&Scan
This is also easily done with hotkeys (see below).
- There are lots of keyboard hotkeys and mouse actions to control the player. They can be customized as well.
Options > Player > Keys
Tip: there is a search box above the table.
Streaming Video with MPC-HC
Basically can also stream videos from Youtube and other websites. This can be done by download the additional files and then placing these files in your installation folder for the media player. From there you can follow the instructions to stream video on your player.
- Put yt-dlp.exe or youtube-dl.exe in the MPC-HC installation folder.
- Then you can open website URLs in the player:
- Menu > File > Open File/URL
You can even download those videos: - Menu > File > Save a copy
Also in order to be able to download in best quality with yt-dlp/youtube-dl, it is recommended to also put ffmpeg player in the MPC-HC folder.
Other Configurations
Several YDL configuration options are found here: Options > Advanced
Consequently this includes an option to specify the location of the .exe in case you don’t want to put it in MPC-HC folder.
Ability to search for and download subtitles, either automatically or manually (press D):
Options > Subtitles > Misc
Besides all these (new) features, there have also been many bugfixes and internal improvements in the player in the past years that give better performance and stability. It also has updated internal codecs. Support was added for CUE sheets, WebVTT subtitles, etc.
Download MPC-HC
