Setting up MPC-HC for Video Playback in XBMC

Configure XBMC to use MPC-HC

Now that you have MPC-HC installed, let’s configure XBMC to use it. In order for XBMC to recognize and use an external player, you will either have to create or modify your playercorefactory.xml file.

To locate the file or create the file you can use the start menu, the run command, or windows explorer.  Enter the following to navigate to the folder:

%USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\XBMC\userdata

If you already have a playercorefactory.xml file located in this directory, right-click it and choose the option for edit.  If you don’t have one, you can either download the one attached below or create one to edit by right clicking a blank space in the explorer window and choosing the option under New for Text Document.  Rename the document playercorefactory.xml , then edit it.

Download playercorefactory.xml

The contents of the file should be:

[xml]

C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC-HC\mpc-hc.exe
"{1}" /full-screen /close
false
false
none

[/xml]

If you are running Windows 32-bit, you will need to modify the line

[xml]C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC-HC\mpc-hc.exe[/xml]

to

[xml]C:\Program Files\MPC-HC\mpc-hc.exe[/xml]

This will tell XBMC to open any MKV file in our newly installed MPC-HC video player.  If you would like to set some limitations on directories or file types that XBMC will use MPC-HC for, you can add a couple of quick bits of information.  For instance, if you would like to have MPC-HC play more media formats just edit the following line and include the file formats you want:

[xml][/xml]

To something like

[xml]<rule filetypes="mkv|avi|mp4" player="MPC-HC"/>[/xml]

Personally, I limit MKV file playback in MPC-HC to a certain directory for my library

[xml]<rule filetypes="mkv" filename=".*/HD/.*" player="MPC-HC"/>[/xml]