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I've never understood why so many people dislike VLC. The anime pirates didn't like them because they were slow at introducing 10-bit decoding, but they at least make sure their features work properly in beta before adding them to the mainline release.

It's clunky and slow to use IMO, not in the way programs are usually slow, the interface feels like it's lagging a couple of beats behind like a shitty drummer.
 
It's clunky and slow to use IMO, not in the way programs are usually slow, the interface feels like it's lagging a couple of beats behind like a shitty drummer.

My main problem is the video quality is okay but generally actually visibly much worse than if you use mpv on the same video. Or even legacy mplayer. VLC just seriously has performance issues, maybe exacerbated by my old hardware.
 
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My main problem is the video quality is okay but generally actually visibly much worse than if you use mpv on the same video. Or even legacy mplayer. VLC just seriously has performance issues, maybe exacerbated by my old hardware.
ok but how long is your mpv.conf?
 
0 characters, it doesn't exist. I think I have some aliases in my bash profile but I usually just use -fs so I don't even remember them.
You know "f" is keyed to that as well right?
 
I would like to share my endorsement of ShareX:
It's open source and provides a ton of configurable features for screen capture and recording:
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I use streamlink to watch twitch inside of VLC. GUI is also available for people who hate CLIs.
Combined with chatty I never need to be on twitchs shitty site. Its styled like IRC and allows easy logging.
Also twitch leecher to download VODs because its has video trimming via beginning and end timecodes.
 
Blokada for Android. It blocks ads and doesn't require a rooted phone to do it. It is open-source and was developed by a poster on XDA developers. It works by setting up a VPN connection on the device and doing AdBlock style blacklisting. The default list 'Energized Blu' seems to block about 95% of ads without breaking anything. However, if something does break you can always deactivate Blokada.

The best way to install is to install F-Droid, an app store for open-source apps, and install it from there so you get updates. F-droid is kind of handy anyway because if you install stuff from there you're less likely to install something which has malware in it. E.g. it has been pointed out that flashlight apps on Google Play are infested with adware. It seems to me if F-droid were doing this, someone on XDA would notice the file they're distributing is not what you get if you build the source code off Github.

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.blokada.alarm/

You can also download a version from Google play but all that can do is set your DNS server to one that doesn't resolve hostnames for servers on a blocklist. In the full version, you can decide what blocklist to use. Though, admittedly, I just left it on Energized Blu which is the default.
 
MPC-HC is still better than PotPlayer, change my mind.
I use MPC-BE with K-Lite Codecs, with included LAV Filters and madVR. Gives me some nice looking videos.

Also, if you're looking for a nice free file manager for Windows, I recommend Far Manager.
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Yes, it is a CLI program, but don't get scared by that fact. It's highly customizable and expandable by plugins, which can make it also a registry editor, software uninstaller, or even an audio player. And keep in mind that you will have to learn a few keyboard shortcuts to use the program effectively. But after that, you will manage your files with a much, much higher efficiency compared to the default Windows Explorer.
And to accompany Far Manager, I'd recommend using ConEmu. It's a console emulator, which enhances the looks and functionality of the console terminal, as well as Far Manager, giving it a few more useful features, such as thumbnail view, custom backgrounds and more.

Some more recommendations:
Keypirinha - A very useful fuzzy search launcher, which after some configuration is a very useful and snappy tool for quickly launching a program, converting units, currencies, doing basic calculation, translating phrases and more.
Barrier - A FOSS implementation of Synergy, which allows for using multiple systems with a single keyboard and mouse. Very useful if you're working on a PC and a laptop simultaneously.
TeXstudio - A great LaTeX editor, which makes the best looking documents around, better than that stinking Microsoft Word or it's free derivatives. You'll need to learn some basics of LaTeX, but it's not too hard and worth the hassle.
 
Also, if you're looking for a nice free file manager for Windows, I recommend Far Manager.
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Yes, it is a CLI program, but don't get scared by that fact.
Accept no substitutes for QDOS:

Alas, it only kinda-sorta worked in Win95's DOS mode.
 
Accept no substitutes for QDOS:

Alas, it only kinda-sorta worked in Win95's DOS mode.
And yet, the concept of the OFM was the one that managed to survive on modern platforms. Total Commander, Double Commander, Far Manager, Midnight Commander etc.
 
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KeepassXC is an amazing password manager and integrates easily into a browser, including Vivaldi, Brave, and Opera.

Edit: I should say what it actually is.
 
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I've never understood why so many people dislike VLC.
It sucks at playback. If you seek to anywhere but a keyframe it's a blocky, garbled mess until you finally get to one. With PotPlayer, or even Windows Media Player you get good video immediately.
I like these Norton Commander style file managers. They've been around since before Windows.
Fact check: true. The first computer we ever had at my house growing up was this old ass Tandy with a monochrome amber screen. This computer was so old the only disk drive it had was a 5.25". But it still ran Norton Commander like a champ though.
 
It sucks at playback. If you seek to anywhere but a keyframe it's a blocky, garbled mess until you finally get to one. With PotPlayer, or even Windows Media Player you get good video immediately.

That is weird, skipping to the nearest keyframe should be fast and without blocking.

Stupid question but what do file managers do, really? Never understood what they were about.
 
It sucks at playback. If you seek to anywhere but a keyframe it's a blocky, garbled mess until you finally get to one. With PotPlayer, or even Windows Media Player you get good video immediately.
I do see this sometimes, especially with .ts files (as seen with older DVDrips), and especially with video files that are compressed within rar's or zip's. Improvements have been made in the 3.x releases.
 
Is it a Chromium fork or a Webkit browser? Either way it's better than every other Chromium fork I've seen. FireFox is super fucking fast right now though.
if this hasn't been posted already, Chromium now uses Google's own engine called Blink which was forked from WebKit some years ago.

And yet, the concept of the OFM was the one that managed to survive on modern platforms. Total Commander, Double Commander, Far Manager, Midnight Commander etc.
If you like VIM, you'll really like the Ranger file manager. It is a Miller column-based file manager made using Python and ncurses with VIM-like keybindings, file previewing (including images, if your terminal emulator supports it), and lots of other features that I don't use.

I do most of my file management in Bash, but I do find myself using Ranger from time to time when browsing my meme directory, browsing old drives, and looking at new codebases

It seems not a lot of people know about qutebrowser. It is the best browsers out there with vim like keybindings that recieves security updates. It has an inbuilt adblocker and support for password managers. Also it doesn't have a botnet as seen here https://spyware.neocities.org/articles/qutebrowser.html
Also mpv for media playback is god tier.
If you are a Linux or a macOS user you can try using ranger as a file manager. Really efficient once you get the hang of it.
+1 for MPV, Ranger, and Qutebrowser. Qutebrowser is good enough that I sometimes use it for Discord
 
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