Video Playback Options

• Tools > Options > Video
• Player > Playback Options

See also: Playback Options and Video Customised Playback - "Playback Info"

General Video Settings

Video mode

This allows selection of video mode options including:

• Red October Standard
• Red October HQ
• Advanced - Custom - options for configuring video and audio decoders and renderers and more for each file type.
• Advanced - Windows merit based (not recommended)

For more information see Red October

Hardware accelerate video decoding when possible

This option allows certain video processing operations to be offloaded to the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit), reducing demand on the CPU.

Bitstreaming

This option allows setup to send the encoded audio data stream directly to the sound device. Selecting this option will exclude use of many of Media Center's audio processing capabilities.

VideoClock

This option enables VideoClock which is a key part of Media Centre's solution to smooth video playback.

For more information see VideoClock

Normalise volume

Subtitles & Language

Subtitle mode

Allows configuring subtitle behavior for video playback.

Default subtitle language

Selects the subtitle language or none, if preferred.

Default audio language

Allows setting the language used for video playback when a video has more than one language.

Subtitle size

Subtitle font

Display Settings

This subject covers the configuration of Display Settings under:

Tools > Options > Video > Display Settings

Correct configuration of these settings is key to getting smooth video playback. It is very important that the frame refresh frequency for your display matches (or is a multiple of) the frame rate (frames per second) at which the video was created. When the file is played, MC inspects the fps setting and uses it to change the refresh rate which the GPU uses to set up the communication with the display.

There are several settings:

• Enable Automatic Display Settings changing - select this for MC to automatically change the display refresh rate and resolution settings dependent on the fps (frames per second) setting of the video file and the display resolution;

For the next five options, clicking the down arrow will display all of the settings available. Each is made up of four numbers separated by an x:

- display horizontal resolution (pixels) 
- display vertical resolution (pixels)
- colour depth (bits) - set to the maximum available, usually 32
- frame refresh rate (Hz) - select the rate appropriate for the fps of the video type

• FILM (23.976 fps) - select a frequency of 23 if available, otherwise 24;
• FILM (24 fps) - select 24;
• NTSC (29.97/59.94 fps) - select 59 if available, otherwise 60;
• PAL (25/50 fps) - select 50;
• Default - select the rate at which your display normally runs when not showing videos, usually 50 or 60 depending on which country you live in.

Advanced

Non-DVD Video

Aspect ratio

Allows controlling the aspect ratio of playback (16x9, etc.).

Crop edges

Trims a little from the edge of the picture. Useful for HDTV broadcasts that sometimes have junk in the overscan area of the picture.

Use WMV acceleration if available

Turn this off to disable WMV hardware acceleration. This is only needed for WMV files with DRM played on problematic hardware.

DVD

Swap fast play and jump commands

If you like to fast forward and rewind instead of jump when pushing left / right during playback, enable this option.

Use bitrate monitor

Enables JRiver bitrate monitor filters, which shows the playback bitrate in the player display area of the program.

Use FFDShow video decoder for post processing

Allows performing advanced video processing using FFDShow.

Notes

Many settings on this page only take effect when playback is stopped and restarted.