Am I even burdened with choosing where and how to decode my video?

Question

Whenever I setup K-Lite codec pack, like during an MPC install, this step of K-Lite always trips me up:

It is never clear to me what is going on. No matter what I choose I will first have to decide what software package I am going to use to handle decoding and splitting.

The defaults seem to work but it is not made clear why this is important enough for me to care about.

Then comes hardware acceleration:

If I choose the "Simple" setup mode then I don't see this screen and I don't get to know if it is choosing software decoding because it is the first option in the list or because it is the best option for my system. Likewise if I choose a different setup mode I don't know if it is choosing software decoding because it is the first option or if it's the best option. Even further the options I am given to choose from have cryptic names. Am I given these options because my system supports them or because K-Lite does? I have no way of knowing.

As a layman I would just want video decoding to work optimally for my system. As someone with some technical knowledge I would want it to be decoded via hardware if I had it available and if I was an advanced user I would know exactly where I wanted it to be decoded.

Is it possible for software to detect what my system is capable of? Is the K-Lite installer already doing this?

What exactly is going on here?

Answer 1

The additional settings impact video/audio quality and system resource utilization during playback. Some people want to control how their videos are decoded on their systems - this is mostly a matter of preference.

It is not likely to be practical for these selections to be simply based on one's hardware configuration. I cannot speak to whether or not the K-lite installer is detecting hardware.

Users who don't need this level of control can just click-thru and use the setup defaults.