MPC-BE
Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) is a fork of MPC and MPC-HC. It moved away from MPC's aim to mimic the look and feel of Windows Media Player with updated player controls and provides additional features on top of MPC-HC such as a video preview tooltip when...
Features
Properties
- Lightweight
- Customizable
- Support for Themes
Features
- Dark Mode
- Thumbnails
- Ad-free
- Portable
- Works Offline
- Integrated Youtube support
- No registration required
- Support for 4K
- Lossless Audio
- Extensible by Plugins/Extensions
Tags
MPC-BE News & Activities
Recent News
Recent activities
piro0919 added MPC-BE as alternative to Mac Classic Player- brokesimp69 liked MPC-BE
tomxe added MPC-BE as alternative to Xelitan Video Player
keramservice2014 added MPC-BE as alternative to Local Media Player+
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What is MPC-BE?
Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) is a fork of MPC and MPC-HC. It moved away from MPC's aim to mimic the look and feel of Windows Media Player with updated player controls and provides additional features on top of MPC-HC such as a video preview tooltip when hovering the mouse cursor over the seek bar, as known from video platforms such as YouTube and Dailymotion, though many of these features, including the video preview on seekbar, were added to MPC-HC at a later date.
MPC-BE, however, doesn't include LAV filters by default, making it less efficient than MPC-HC for decoding. This is most noticeable with higher resolution files, newer codecs, or on lower end hardware.
MPC-BE information
Developed by
Alexander Vodiannikov Licensing
Open Source (GPL-3.0) and Free product.Written in
Rating
Average rating of 4.2Alternatives
131 alternatives listedSupported Languages
- English
- Russian
AlternativeTo Categories
Video & Movies, Audio & MusicGitHub repository
- 4,428 Stars
- 190 Forks
- 3 Open Issues
- Updated
Comments and Reviews
I don't think there is a better media player than this. I used to use the MPC-HC but because I didn't like the appearance, (yes, it's super ugly), MPC-BE was a perfect solution.
While the player can probably handle every media format out there, its user interface feels like it's stuck 20 years in the past. Basic image adjustment controls are hidden away in deeply nested menus and take several clicks to reach. I can achieve better picture quality in the default Windows 11 media player just by adjusting the brightness and contrast than I can with this one.
My issue with MPC-BE is that the developer intentionally ignores MKV flags. I remember seeing his post about this at some point.
This is a problem when you're dealing with MKV files with many audio/subtitle tracks.
MKV flags exist for a reason, they can define which audio/subtitle tracks are the default for a specific MKV file. They should not be ignored!
That's why I still stick with MPC-HC.
Works extremely well. Now that I have more experience of it I have found that it often takes appreciable time with 'opening' displayed. During this time the video itself is being displayed but the windows as a whole is unmovable and otherwise inoperable.
It's a good alternative to VLC but the only thing that you can't do is set as default video player which for me is not good.
You can associate it with video/audio/playlist file during installation. It's also very easy to set it as default video player from OS.
A great successor to MPC, very similar to the MPC-HC. However, MPC-HC is only receiving security and bug fixes, MPC-BE is receiving feature updates.
It's a continuation of MPC-HC, which having been on the net since the mid 90s, is let me tell you, the best media player ever made. VLC is trash by comparison and always has been.