VLC Alternative for fine review media with possibly frames control and detailed codec informations Some people around the web say that VLC is the cinderella of the video players, they say it make too much automatically picked video filters and conversions that not decode properly the media in the best way.

While I'm not sure about what this persons are talking about the reason why I use VLC is without doubt the capability of being able to play audio/video with almost every codec and in whatever container without extra setup even by running just VLC in portable mode from a folder.

The same folks suggests XMBC but I don't need a full screen remote style video player, what I would like instead is a program capable of:


play practically everything without codec installation
fine playback controls to move across frames and keyframes ( a nice interface )
fast and handy codec informations to read in "one sight" Container, Streams, their Codecs and Bitrate used, then all the other useful info
if there are uncertain condition like a color conversion or something like that have a menu that allows you to try various options without force the user to have a certain choice.
free but highly appreciated OPEN SOURCE and MULTIPLATFORM
well optimized
No fancy Skins, possibly no skin support at all, this is to be intended as pro users program we like the os standard windows.


Bonus:


metadata full edit and managing
video proofing with gamut warnings and settings like photoshop for display in rec 709 or other color spaces
if the video is in a RAW supported format es: RED, CinemaDNG, ArriRAW would be nice have some minor extra controls to shift the exposure during the play and check also for clipped areas with red (highlights) and blue (blacks)


In short a VLC with Steroids for media review, able to show you all the flaws and things to check after you exported a video from your common tools/apps.

Would be cool if a program like this would exists :)

PS: Vlc has a codec info windows, but it could be improved, also the bitrate is not calculated in the same better way of ffprobe. Also vlc have not a nice and handy frame browsing interface, it also doesn't allow stuff like scrubbing on the timebar holding shift like you do in VirtualDub and so on. I'm searching for a program that offer the best sides of all this softwares.
I haven't used VLC as my primary player since 2007. I switched over initially to KMPlayer and then Potplayer. Potplayer allows fairly flexible splitter and codec assignment for decoding. It also sports a whole host of video and audio processing filters. In fact, I believe that one can use Avisynth filters to process the video during playback, too.