This is a guide to setting up a video playback chain which will properly play all the common video file container and codec formats without installing a whole lot of unnecessary junk on your machine, and pointedly without VLC, as it has a long history of many problems with correct playback. This guide uses MPC-HC and madVR to achieve a playback chain which uses the latest in video container format and decoding technology. Since I am personally a Windows user, this guide is meant for Windows users.
Uninstall any codec packs you have. They will not be necessary.
Install the MPC-HC nightly build from here: https://nightly.mpc-hc.org/ ("x86" or "x64" exe installer (choose depending on your OS: "x86" for 32-bit Windows and "x64" for 64-bit windows); should look something like "MPC-HC.1.7.10.236.x64.exe" with possibly a new version number)
Install madVR from here: http://madshi.net/madVR.zip (Extract somewhere permanent* and run install.bat to register the filter. The folder you place these contents in will be where madVR runs from. Unlike most installers, you can't delete these files after use if you still want to use the installed software.)
Run MPC-HC.
In MPC-HC menus, navigate to "View" -> "Options" -> "Output".
Click the dropdown box immediately below "DirectShow Video" to expand it and click "madVR". This sets the renderer MPC-HC will use to be madVR.
In the left pane, click "Internal Filters".
Under "Internal LAV Filters settings", click "Video decoder" to open its options menu.
In the "Output Formats" section, disable all the checkboxes except "RGB32" and "RGB24", then set "RGB Output levels (for YUV -> RGB conversion)" to "PC (0-255)", then set "Dithering Mode" to "Random Dithering". The result should look somewhat like this: http://lex.clansfx.co.uk/image/screenshots/lavoutputformats.png.
Click "OK".
Click "OK".
Open a video file with the version of MPC-HC you now have installed.
In the system tray (bunch of icons on the right side of taskbar), right-click the madVR icon (looks like some beige lettering that says "MAD") and click "Edit madVR Settings...".
On the left, expand the "rendering" menu and click "general settings".
Disable "enable automatic fullscreen exclusive mode".
Click "OK".
When that's done, you should have excellent video playback for almost every modern video-related format and codec available. To keep updated, simply check the sites linked at the beginning of this guide and run the newer installers.
Rationale for madVR: madshi (madVR's developer) has taken playback smoothness research to extreme depth to minimize frame drops. This is especially helpful for high framerate video, such as output from video game consoles; video which is abundant on TASvideos. Minimizing frame drops helps encoders ensure their final resulting video will look good to the general public. This also helps for personal pleasure viewing of most content. This is without mentioning that madVR is relatively high-performance with subtitle rendering in particular, so playback of high resolution soft-subtitled content is usually less choppy on slower computers.
Rationale for RGB step in LAV Video Decoder options: For those curious, the reasoning behind having RGB output through LAV Video Decoder is because the color conversion employed by LAV Video Decoder is known to be good and all renderers accept RGB as input, so you will be able to easily swap renderers if something funny is happening with madVR and still have good color output. This has helped me before.
For those who have seen my previous guide, the main difference in this new guide is that the MPC-HC devs have opted to replace the original internal MPC-HC playback filters with LAV filters for greater compatibility. This is great because it makes the setup process much shorter and simpler! Also, since LAV Splitter now supports ordered chapters in matroska video, the Haali Splitter step is no longer necessary.
To forum mods: Please don't merge this with the "Ask a question, get an answer" thread like you did the last time I posted a guide. It makes it very difficult to link this to people who need help. Also, nobody asked a question and this is not an answer to that question. This guide is meant to improve playback chains for more people so we can avoid having encoders using Windows with broken playback chains.
Unless many many things were rewritten from scratch by an expert, VLC is a cancer. Avoid it.
* By "somewhere permanent", I mean a path on your hard drive you plan on keeping intact during video playback. MadVR uses the path of those extracted files to run, so don't delete or move them after installing madVR or else it won't run. I personally put them in a madVR folder in my MPC-HC directory.
