AVI video player

[MyTitthias]

What is the best universal video player for avi files?

[Rockstaru]

VLC or Media Player Classic.

DivX will do AVI, but VLC is standalone and does pretty much everything; there's even a portable version.

[Kaisha]

Another vote for VLC.

[Sindalf]

http://www.cccp-project.net/

VLC is terrible.

[Street]

I use Media Player Classic for all my video.

[MyTitthias]

Thank you for your responses!

[Takedown3]

how exactly is VLC terrible i've been using it for a couple years at least now and never had ANY issues unless it was a bad file.

[Marcin]

how exactly is VLC terrible i've been using it for a couple years at least now and never had ANY issues unless it was a bad file.

There's always someone who'll say the exact opposite.
I'll vote for VLC, too.

[fishstix]

I use KMPlayer, it's like photoshop for media playback

[Lhyet]

Can't go wrong with VLC. There's few things it won't play.

[Amastacia]

http://www.cccp-project.net/

VLC is terrible.

VLC is a much more elegant option than codec packs (generally speaking, codec packs are bad and you should feel bad, but that's not a blanket 100% of the time statement).

That said, it's not perfect, and there are times (especially MKV containers with soft subs) when some version of codec'd up WMP is a better option.

[Jakson]

Mild bump, but I'd like to say for years VLC worked until I d/l'd some Full Metal Alchemist episodes that would play the audio just fine but the video didn't work. Media Player Classic worked, but the audio doesn't sync up perfectly with the video.

[rothhaas2]

http://www.cccp-project.net/

I used VLC for the longest time, but after I found the player above its all I use now. It can open all media files (so far) for me.

I've had problems with VLC where it would say there's a new download available and to click to download, but when I do I just get an error. Also, some media extensions don't work with VLC, so I just made the switch.

[Caiyuo]

I've had lots of problems with VLC, from staright bugginess to horrible, choppy playback while PC performance wasn't an issue. I've used MPC-HC for awhile and recently swapped to CCCP w/ MPC-HC and have had much better results, especially pairing CCCP with CoreAVC for h264 playback. No slowdown whatsoever!

[Hitoshura]

Is this even a question? CCCP all the way.

[Isiolia]

CCCP isn't a player though. It's a codec pack (or, as they say, a filter pack). The player included with it now is MPC-HC, which will play most files all by itself.

Think of it more like, with something like VLC or MPC, you're putting -one- application on your machine that doesn't affect anything else.

With CCCP you're dumping a bunch of little pieces of software on your machine that may or may not get along happily with everything else that's on it. Granted, they strive to keep it from screwing anything else up, and more often than not, that's the case.
If it all does work right, then you also get the capability to play stuff in a variety of players as well.

It's not that it's necessarily bad, it's just got more potential to cause issues. Again, a big part of what CCCP does is strive to avoid problems and fix those caused by other codec packs...but still...

Personally, I have had MPEG playback cease to function with CCCP, and reinstalling didn't fix it. I've had game audio not work right because of a codec pack as well (maybe CCCP, maybe the junk Gordian Knot dumped on the system, was a while ago), and other little quirks.

I wouldn't say VLC is perfect either - it's had some pretty annoying bugs at times - but the simple fact is that it's self-contained and plays most everything.

I've had little trouble using just VLC and/or MPC-HC on machines recently. Haven't used CCCP in a couple years, and I can't recall I file I couldn't open...

[Zosi]

For AVIs, you're probably pretty safe with VLC. AVI can't hold most of the things that give VLC trouble (softsubs *cough*), and it contains support for a lot of codecs "out of the box". MPC-HC plus appropriate codecs and splitters (I'd suggest CCCP, but people here will disagree) is an excellent choice for more complex stuff.

Edit: In case I wasn't clear, I'd strongly suggest having both. VLC (or Mplayer, if you're more tech-savvy) is about as close as you're going to get to a "self-contained" solution, but you'll still probably run into stuff that makes VLC choke. AVI is a bit of a dying format as well, because there's no good way to put modern features like H.264 video, multiple audio streams or softsubs into it.

[Isiolia]

I've had relatively little trouble with subs from MKV and the like with VLC - in fact, one of the first things I used it for was to watch some episodes of Blood+ in the format because CCCP couldn't display the subs and VLC did...

[Zosi]

I've had relatively little trouble with subs from MKV and the like with VLC - in fact, one of the first things I used it for was to watch some episodes of Blood+ in the format because CCCP couldn't display the subs and VLC did...

You said in your earlier post that you haven't used CCCP for years. I happen to know that VLC's softsub support was even more horrible (to the point of being unwatchable) a few years ago, so I'd be very curious to know why CCCP didn't work better for you.

[Isiolia]

Couldn't tell you. I stopped using CCCP because I had quirky stuff pop up like that. VLC wasn't perfect (had issues with the font being too large I think), but it actually had subs...CCCP with Zoom Player, at the time, didn't for me, for whatever reason. Like I mentioned, it also wouldn't play MPEG files right (sound with no video). I had tried reinstalling it n' all, just didn't work.

At first I just used Zoom Player + the codecs it downloaded for itself...but then they stopped making a free version of that. So I just used VLC, which I'd previously just installed as backup.
Since I haven't had many issues with VLC (sure, the MKV issues around 1.0 were annoying), I've just continued to use it, or MPC-HC as I mentioned. While they aren't perfect either, at least they're stand-alone and won't screw up any other aspect of the system - or be broken by something else changing the system libraries.