SMPlayer 0.7.0 Media Player Now Available

One of my favorite media players of all time, SMPlayer, has recently been updated to version 0.7.0. SMPlayer is a front-end for MPlayer making it a player that supports nearly every video format out of the box without the need to go codec hunting before you can start watching the video or movie you are dying to watch.

SMPlayer, as always, comes in different release versions. Users can download a portable version, a web installer, or an offline installer. Existing users can simply copy or install the new version over the old one.

One of the big new changes in SMPlayer 0.7.0 is support for MPlayer 2, a fork of the original MPlayer project, which adds features to the video player that the original MPlayer does not support. This includes precise seeking, seeking while the video has been paused or ordered chapters support in mkv videos.

To integrate MPlayer 2 the following needs to be done. You first need to download the MPlayer 2 binary from the website linked above. Open the options menu in SMPlayer afterwards and select Preferences from the menu. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-p to open the preferences directly.

Switch to the General > General tab if it is not displayed. Change the MPlayer executable path to the MPlayer 2 path to use it instead of the original MPlayer.

Another change is support for playing YouTube videos right from within the media player. Just paste in a YouTube video via the Open > Url menu to watch it right within the desktop video player. You can alternatively drag and drop video links right from a browser into the SMPlayer window to play the videos in there.

The developers have added a new favorites menu accessible right from the new heart icon placed in the player’s main toolbar. This opens a menu with direct access to favorite videos on the computer, and options to add or edit videos in the new favorites window.

The changes introduced in this version of SMPlayer all make sense. Especially support for MPLayer 2 can improve the video experience significantly.

Get Ready For VLC Media Player 2.0

VLC is one of the most popular third party media players. If you check the download stats on portals such as Softpedia or Betanews, you will notice that it is always listed in one of the top spots. That’s not because of the player’s pretty name but the functionality it provides. VLC plays nearly every media format out of the box, without codec hunting and installation. There are other players, like the excellent SMplayer that offer that functionality as well, but none managed to reach the popularity of VLC.

The developers of VLC Media Player have just announced on their Twitter account that they will release the first release candidate of VLC 2.0 at the end of the week. The latest release version right now is VLC 1.1.11 which is available for Windows, Mac OS X, popular Linux distributions and even other operating systems such as Android or OS/2 (anyone still using that?).

Windows 64-bit version of VLC Media Player running the Spin Demo

Once a suitable release candidate has been found, VLC Media Player 2.0 will be released for all operating systems. Existing VLC users likely want to know what they can look forward to in version 2 of the player. Here is a list of important changes taken directly from the latest nightly build of VLC 2.0.

• Major Video Core and Outputs rework and rewrite: Subtitles, subpictures and OSD can now be sized and blent inside video outputs x11 (Unix), OpenGL (Unix) and Direct3D (Windows) are such video outputs.
• Almost every video filter can now be transcoded
• Port to Android, iOS, OS/2 and Win64
• Multiple files are now supported inside RAR files
• Experimental Blu-Ray Discs support using libbluray
• You can now use ffmpeg-mt in conjunction with vlc, to split decoding load on multiple cores. H.264, VP3, VP8, JPEG-2000, Mpeg-4 ASP/DivX and RV3/RV4
  are notably concerned.
• C64 SID file playback support of using sidplay2
• Support for WMV Images, aka WMVP and WVP2, as used by Photo Story
• New video output based on Direct2D for Windows 7 and Vista (with Platform Update), New video output for iOS platform

Probably the biggest improvements are the 64-bit version for Windows, the port to mobile operating systems and Blu-Ray playback support.

You can get a taste of things to come by downloading the latest nightly build from the VLC build server. Remember that nighly versions are not necessarily stable, as they are development builds. (Thanks Mike)

While we are at it: Which media player are you currently using?

Configure Your Own Media Player Hotkeys

Media player hotkeys allow you to control the media player with the keyboard and even if the program window is not the active window on the system. That’s handy if you are working in fullscreen applications or do not want to switch regularly between the window you are working in and the media player window.

Some media players support global hotkeys either by mapping global hotkeys or by supporting media keyboards that ship with keys to play, pause or skip media.

Media Player Hotkeys (MPH) is a free portable software by Donation Coder member Skwire that adds hotkey support for a variety of media players.

The program supports more than 20 different media players, including Winamp, Windows Media Player, Foobar, AIMP or Media Player Classic.

The supported players page lists all player names, process names and compatibility information. The information indicates if certain commands are not supported by the selected player.

New hotkeys are created in the Hotkeys tab. Start by selecting an action from the pulldown menu at the top. Available actions that can be mapped are play, pause, stop, previous, next, volume up, volume down, mute, show / hide player, and show popup menu.

The Add hotkey button opens a configuration menu where the selected action can be mapped to a global hotkey. Available for selection are modifiers, standard keyboard keys but also special keys only found on some keyboards.

The new hotkey is displayed in the program window afterwards. Please note that hotkeys control all supported applications. The order there determines the application the hotkey is submitted to.

Hotkeys are functional right after they have been created, and for as long as the program is running in the background. Please note that configuration information are saved in the same folder the program is started from.

Media Player Hotkeys is a great lightweight program for Windows users who’d like to use global hotkeys when playing media on their system.

The program is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Microsoft Windows operating system. It can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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© Martin Brinkmann for gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials, 2011. | Permalink |
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Post tags: donation-coder, hotkeys, media-player, windows software