Especially when gaming?

Due to the recent computer turmoil (described elsewhere) I went looking for a better media player than the usual Windows Media player. Turned out the free VLC player was recommended very often by RKIs.

I installed it on my laptop some time ago, and it has served me well in that venue. More intuitive controls than Windows Media Player, and more options.

I also noticed that many files within EAW games--as well as others-- now had the little orange-and-white VLC Media Player traffic cone associated with them, as opposed to the former WMP association.

I understand the video card makes a huge difference, but I have never heard it discussed whether a particular media player makes any difference when playing any particular game. Perhaps people with marginal video cards might find that a more robust media player might be of some help, or perhaps not.

So, what do you all think? I'm ignorant on the subject; perhaps someone else is not.

II think it matters in that some people just prefer other features as offered in some players. For me as a musician the player can sometimes help me judge my recordings better and if you listen a lot to CD's and/or collections on various media, some playlists may be better organised or more easily accessible. As for the icons in EAW, I guess the program you installed searched your drive for possible mediafile extensions and associated itself with what it found. Howver none of the files in EAW can directly be played, inspite of having a few extensions which seem to suggest they can be opened by paint programs or mediaplayers. It won't harm anything as all it does is select your player to open the file when you double click it. This usually results in an error message that the file can not be parsed with the player, or in other words, it's not a media file.

There are ways to remove the filetype from the mediaplayer, in the default Windows version you can select the filetypes, however if you switch the one's from EAW off then actual mediafiles of this type will not automattically be included in playlists, which I think is hardly a problem since they're very old, almost ancient mediatypes anyway and hardly used nowadays. Besides that it's always possible to open the file with the player by rightclciking it and selecting ''open with'', where you again have the choice to permanently associate the filetype with the player.

VonBeerhofen

I'll take that as a "No" for my original question. At the risk of de-railing my own thread, are you, as a musician, able to tell the difference between the same piece of music being played on the same (good) sound system with a full-sampling CD, or a commercial CD?

I cannot. I admit that as I age, my ears are not once what they once were, but as against that, I was never able to tell the A/B difference between good transistor/tube amplifiers either.

Let me add that I have NO financial interest in VLC player. I ought to have said that initially.

I installed VLC, and designated it as my default Media Player. I assume that's the reason for the icons changing.

When you install VLC you need to uncheck the file asscociation tick box for 'other files' otherwise it will do what you have seen which is pretty annoying.

Just re-run the VLC installer, and at the 'Choose Components' page,de-select 'other files'.

OK, why is that a problem? Why is it annoying? What are the benefits (pro/con) of doing as you suggest?

If I'm going to use VLC as default media player, why should I care?

Not arguing, just asking. Looking forward to your response.

The confusion here is my fault for not reading your initial post properly. I thought you had VLC icons appear on files that were not media files. This can happen with a default installation. Ignore my previous post.

My bad. Carry on

I'll answer your previous question but it's just a personal view. When you allow another mediaplayer to take away file associations, your previous player will loose that association. Also some players have an annoying habbit of taking control of your sound mixer, for me that's particularly annoying since I rely on the settings I make myself manually. When I record something and don't hear anything then very likely the selected input source got changed and that means more work for me.

It can be pretty annoying when flying online using Teamspeak if the recording source is no longer set to microphone. As I said it's personal preference, my preference is to not let any software make decisions for me, when I do things myself I'm in control. In most situations you can asign file associations your self to multiple mediaplayers or at least tell windows the file type is an option to be opened with another program. So in most cases you could manually asign 1/2 of the filetypes to one player and the other 1/2 to another.
In your case that's obviously not very usefull but for a musician it might have benefits.

As for listening to various players, it's more what usefull visional aides some players provide then relying on audio quality. I mostly record .wav files in 16 bit at 44.100KHz and the best quality is more determined by the soundcard and speakers then the mediaplayer. Some visual tools like graphic equalisers or analysers can help me overcome what my ears may no longer hear but I wouldn't rely on my ears only, a 2nd opinion or preferrably more carries more weight as you get older. Most programs will use direct sound or hardware accelleration for streaming sound and inspite of slight differences in the software there will hardly be any audible difference on modern computers.

As for gaming in general, whatever media player you use shouldn't affect any games unless you want to record them. In this respect an additional running program will take away FPS, which is why I run a minimum of tasks.

VonBeerhofen

VLC is a very good video program in my opinion. I've used it for years having purchased a UK DVD and having it recomended to play it on my computer's disc drive. The benefit being the VLC software will decode any video standard without changing the drive region code. Windows only allows a small number of swaps before locking it. And, you can reconfigure the association list picking and choosing the file types you want it to use. (MKV, MP4, AVI and a zillion more) VLC does not effect playback of EAW. But, it does open up the whole world's DVDs for you to see. With your computer connected to your tv things look very nice.

Sorry if I wandered a bit off topic there...

I was unaware of the VLC player's ability to play DVDs from other regions. I have a variant of the IL-2 game, called Barbarossa, which DVD is German in origin, hence not decodable by Win MP. Maybe I'll give it a try.