Media Player Classic - Home Cinema 2.3.6

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC) is a free and open-source video and audio player for Windows. MPC-HC is based on the original Guliverkli project (which is no longer maintained) and contains many additional features and bug fixes. As the continuation of the original Media Player Classic, MPC-HC isn’t flashy but it works with nearly any media format.

MPC-HC uses DXVA technology to pass decoding operations to your modern video card, enhancing your viewing experience. And MPC-HC supports both physical and software DVDs with menus, chapter navigation, and subtitles.

Overview of features

A lot of people seem to be unaware of some of the awesome features that have been added to MPC-HC in the past years. Here is a list of useful options and features that everyone should know about:

Dark interface

Menu > View > Dark Theme
When using dark theme it is also possible to change the height of the seekbar and size of the toolbar buttons.
Options > Advanced

Video preview on the seekbar

Options > Tweaks > Show preview on seek bar

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

MPC-HC can remember playback position, so you can resume from that point later

Options > Player > History
You can quickly seek through a video with Ctrl + Mouse Scrollwheel.
You can jump to next/previous file in a folder by pressing PageUp/PageDown.
You can perform automatic actions at end of file. For example to go to next file or close player.
Options > Playback > After Playback (permanent setting)
Menu > Play > After Playback (for current file only)
A-B repeat - You can loop a segment of a video. Press [ 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.

You can stream videos directly from Youtube and many other video websites

You can stream videos directly from Youtube and many other video websites

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
Tip: to be able to download in best quality with yt-dlp/youtube-dl, it is recommended to also put ffmpeg.exe in the MPC-HC folder.
Several YDL configuration options are found here: Options > Advanced
This includes an option to specify the location of the .exe in case you don't want to put it in MPC-HC folder.

Play HDR video

This requires using madVR or MPC Video Renderer.
After installation these renderers can be selected here:
Options > Playback > Output

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.

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema 2.3.6 changelog:

Updates

Updated LAV Filters to version 0.79.2-20-g81c56
Updated MPC Video Renderer to version 0.8.7.2295

Changes/additions/improvements

MPCVR has been updated to support the display API changes of Windows 11 24H2, so HDR state is now detected correctly when the new "Auto Color Management" option of Windows is enabled.
Improved support for MPCVR exclusive fullscreen. The player now uses the exclusive mode seekbar (OSD based) in that situation.

Fixes