There are some video portal aggregators that allow you to search multiple sites at once. Likewise, there are various sites that allow you to download internet videos, convert those video files and play them offline and on your computer.

ClipFinder HD combines these functions under one roof. It’s a stunningly beautiful and innovating desktop application by Ashampoo that does everything you’ve ever dreamed of, and so much more.

ClipFinder HD

ClipFinder HD is not Ashampoo’s first try at making a great piece of software. In the past, they’ve launched a multitude of applications, ranging from burner suites to Windows optimization tools. So chances are you’ve already had your hands on a piece of their software.

What’s out of the ordinary here is that Ashampoo normally charges for their software. It’s like The Joker said: “If you’re good at something, don’t do it for free”. Does that mean this software doesn’t fit Ashampoo’s regular quality label? – absolutely not. So, as much as it pains me to say, I’m not a hundred percent sure ClipFinder HD will stay free in the future.

If you want to ‘unlock’ Clipfinder HD beyond the 10 day trial you initially get, just give your email address and you’ll be mailed a working serial code. You won’t need your registration ‘afterwards’, so you might want to use a temporary email account to avoid any unwanted mails.

ClipFinder HD is an intuitive desktop application that allows you to search, stream, download and even convert video files from numerous (read: fifteen) different internet video sites. If you’re as fed up with the hundreds of download-from-YouTube sites, and want a real application that’s got the stones to try some innovation, ClipFinder HD might be for you.

Intuitive Interface

As you saw in the YouTube demonstration above, ClipFinder HD has an incredibly flexible and highly intuitive interface. You can pan and scan over a vast landscape of thumbnails like you’re using Google Earth, and flick through them with the graphical beauty of Cooliris.

If you want, you can limit your search to one or more of the video portals. Initiate multiple search queries at the same time, and view them in different tabs. Once you get the hang of the Clipfinder HD interface, you’ll feel like the coolest kid on the block, and you’ll definitely wonder how you ever survived browsing in the past.

Stream, Download and Convert Video Files

Once you’ve located a video you’re interested in – and I’m sure you will, click it once to enlarge. Another click, and the video will start streaming. You can zoom in or out on the video using your scroll wheel, even during playback. A third click will make the application switch to full screen.

Another advantage to the software is that you can create video playlists to watch later, or to benefit from continuous playback.

Downloading a video is as easy as right-clicking your mouse. You can download multiple videos at once and view the progress in the DownloadManager, as demonstrated in the screenshot below.

Upon downloading a video, you can choose to convert it to another file format. MP3 and FLV (standard flash video file) are supported for all of the video portals. MP4 (recommended) works for most of the sites, whereas 3GP, MOV and AVI files are reserved for a much smaller clique.

Do you love internet video as much as we do? Tell us about the sites you visit, or the tools you use, in the comments section below. Got a great tip for an article? – don’t be shy, we’d love to hear from you!

Get ClipFinder HD.

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But how about one site that aggregates all the others and lets you watch them via one program interface that you could run on say your media center station showing on your TV or your laptop on the bus?

I have lots of AVI files of various shows that I watch but what about when I want to find stuff that I don’t know I want to see? Like long forgotten television shows from my past? Or how about movies I have never even heard of? What do I do then?

Well I think I’ve found a good place to head over to and download their player to watch TV on my PC for free.

According to their site :

Kiteplayer is the first TV player to include HQ TV streams online. Free TV on your PC. Get instant access to over 1,000 full featured films, 500+ TV shows, full-length movie channels, sports, news, music channels

No Spyware – No Hardware Required. Kiteplayer software is free to download and you can always get the latest version by clicking here.

So I grabbed the downloadable and installed it. After a little next next next action I was looking at the screen below. It is very simple to understand even your grandparents could use this. I mean, you click on a category and then a show and it plays – I mean could it be easier? Sure they could pick the show for you! But what fun would there be in that?

I started clicking around all excited – like a kid in a virtual candy store. And what do I see after only a few clicks?

I saw ALF. Now I had not see this in about 20 years so I immediately clicked on it and blam just like that it was playing. I continued looking and saw other gems like Family Guy and the Simpsons.

I was about to move on and check out the movies when something else caught my eye:

Yup it was almost every  episode of X Men Evolution. Something I have been meaning to catch up on. And now that I take the bus to work in the morning this is all I need to make my commute pleasant!

So off to the movies:

I was expecting name after name of old movies I had already saw and I was pleasantly surprised with a list of titles I had never heard of. Let’s see what else we can find.

I jumped into music – specifically hip hop. This one was showing a little Cyprus Hills.

All in all there is a lot of entertainment here for everyone no matter what you like or hate.

What do you use to get your TV watching on – on the go? We would love to hear about it in the comments.

Editor’s Note : what you see on KitePlayer may vary depending on your IP address (where you are in the world).

Get KitePlayer.

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Windows Media Player 12 is streaming in with a lot of improvements but as with everything in life, most of the old tips will hold good for the new too. We all have our favorite media players. For some it’s the one which plays music best, for others it’s all about the movies. Windows Media Player 11 is no slouch in both departments. But its feature set needs getting used to. So let’s poke around and discover cool Windows Media Player 11 tips and tricks and ‘upgrade’ our experience with this popular media player.

1. Go from full screen to compact with a click

Windows Media Player 11 offers three choices of looks – the default Full mode, the Compact mode and the Skin mode (with choice of skins). While listening to music, you can just click on a tiny arrow and switch to compact mode. Press Enter to revert back to the Full mode. The Skin mode can be applied from Menu – View – Skin Mode. The better option is to become quick fingered with the keyboard –

For Full Mode – CTRL + 1

For Skin Mode – CTRL + 2

2. Keyboard toggles for volume control

Three quick and easy to remember keyboard taps to control volume instead of reaching for the mouse.

Increase volume: F9
Decrease volume: F8
Mute sound: F7

3. Resolve codecs and play it all

With the hundreds of codecs in use today, Windows Media Player isn’t bundled with them all. Fortunately, freely available codec packs fill up this lacuna and let us play everything from Real Media to DivX.

To find out the codecs installed, go to Help – About Windows Media Player – click on Technical Support Information. A browser page opens up with all audio and video codecs listed.

You can play almost everything with the K-Lite codec pack. Other must have downloads include the XP Codec Pack and Vista Codec Pack. Even watching hi-definition DivX movies is not a problem with the freely downloadable codecs. If there’s still something not right then check out these previous posts:

- Downloaded an Unplayable Movie – Gspot & Klite to the Rescue!
- 3 Ways to Play Unplayable Videos on your PC
- Audio File Formats Explained in Simple Terms

4. Search – get two birds with one search

You can search your library for audio tracks using a combination of search terms. The + or AND operator lets you search a song using two values. For instance, search by song and singer – Pink Floyd AND The Final Cut.

Use the OR operator to search across two attributes – Jazz OR Blues. Songs can be searched according to length, ratings, whether it is protected or not etc. The results depend on the media information that’s available with the song.

Look at the help file (Help – Organizing your digital media collection – How do I perform advanced searches?) for more search operators.

5. Play songs according to musical eras

Do you like the golden oldies or the more current hip-hop? WMP 11 lets you play songs according to the period mentioned in the tracks. Type in the year range, like 1980..1990 for all songs in that period. This gives you a short cut to particular songs without trawling throughout the library or creating period playlists.

6. Go Bass with the SRS WOW effects

SRS WOW Effects let you increase the bass (i.e. the lowest part of a musical range) of a track for richer quality sounds. The SRS WOW Effects can be found under Menu – View – Enhancements. Turn on the effects and choose your speaker type. Slider movement sets the TruBass between high and low. The adjacent slider increases or decreases the WOW effect.

7. Smooth the flow of streamed music

Streaming content relies on buffers to smoothly playback a movie or music track. To compensate for the stop gap of internet bandwidth due to slow speeds or packet drops, WMP stores a few seconds of content before it starts the playback. As the streaming proceeds, some content continuously gets stored in the background (that’s the buffer).

The buffer size can be changed if you feel that the streaming is not smooth enough. From the Menu (or right click on title bar), choose Options – Performance tab. In the Network buffering section choose the bullet option for Buffer and enter any value between 0 to 60 to buffer that much of content before playback. Click OK. Too much buffering can slow downloads.

8. Tweak speed for podcasts and speech audio

Don’t let your interest flag with the slow drone of an audio book or podcast. Some simple settings allow you to change the pace of the voice. With the audio playing, from the Menu choose – View – Enhancements. Alternatively, right click on the WMP title and select. The Play Speed Settings shows a slider which can be dragged to the left for slow playback and to the right for faster play speeds. Or you can choose from the three presets – Slow, Normal or Fast. You have to trust your ears as not all files will sound well with change in playback speeds.

9. Shed light on dark movies

Enhancements include another setting which helps me out with making light corrections to particularly dark movie scenes. From the Enhancements sub-menu choose Video Settings. Lighten up the scene by slightly increasing the Brightness (drag the slider to the right).

10. Censor Movies by Ratings

In my wonder years, it was ‘Blue Lagoon’. Now, I am not sure what’s PG and what’s not! But you can prevent DVD movies with ‘not suitable for children’ ratings from being played through the WMP. Windows Media Player 11 allows you to block certain movies which have higher playback restrictions using a simple dropdown. Navigate to Tools – Options – DVD tab. Select the restriction from the dropdown. (Umm…but I guess your child will be smart enough to sidetrack this lockdown).

There’s a lot we can explore under the hood of Windows Media Player to further enhance our listener experience. I have purposely avoided getting into ways to tag your tracks and manage your library with playlists as they require tutorials on their own. For tagging your music collection, lot of specialized tools like MP3Tag editor are handy .

How do you feel in general about the Windows Media Player? Is it your preferred jukebox or do you have a more specific choice? Let us into a few Windows Media Player 11 tips and tricks of your own.

Image Credit: Sabrina Campagna

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Choosing the best YouTube video downloader among that crowd could be troublesome. But for Mac, there’s one name that keeps popping out as the preferable choice: MacTubes.

The iTunes for YouTube

This app often dubbed as the iTunes for YouTube because the interface gives you the familiar look of – well, you’ve guessed it: iTunes.

The first time you launch MacTubes, you’ll get a blank interface. Even though it seems very logical for some that the first thing to do is to search for videos, some other might get confused because of the “non-online look” of the app.

The search results will be shown on the main pane of the window with small thumbnails for a quick glance. Hover your mouse over any item and a description box will pop out. If you click and choose one of them, the thumbnail will appear on the small box on the bottom left corner.

Click the Play button at the bottom of the main window and the play window – which look very similar with YouTube’s – will appear as if you were playing a video file from your hard drive.

You may get a warning window telling you that the video can not be played from the embedded URL as some YouTube videos are set to be played only from the site. MacTubes then will suggest you to open the video using your web browser.

There is another pane at the left of the main window. You can add and remove folders, playlists, searches and feeds here. Arranging and re-arranging the position of each item can be done easily by dragging and dropping. MacTubes also allows you to add videos from the main pane to one of the the playlist or folder.

Downloading the Videos

When you find videos that you like, it’s possible to download them just by right-clicking on the items on the list and choose Download from the pop-up menu.

The cool thing is that you can download the videos as FLV, MP4 or HD. While the size of HD video makes it a no-no for people with slow connection, the preferable format for many would be MP4 as iTunes and iPod can play this format with no problems.

The download window is similar to Safari’s and will show you a list of downloaded videos and their progress. Very convenient if you ask me.

I don’t consider myself a YouTube person but after fiddling with this app for a while I think I would convert to one.

Have you tried MacTubes? Do you have other preferable alternatives? Share them using the comment below.

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But the coolest thing about Adobe AIR apps is that they often add new functionality to web apps and allow you to interact with those apps just like you do with desktop programs. Adobe Air Apps often make those websites even more useful.

For media junkies like myself, this is fantastic. Watching movies gets easier, as does looking for photos and listening to music. Here are three of my favorite media-based AIR applications.

Bookmash

Bookmash does a little bit of everything – it’s got media on the Web pretty well covered. It’s basically a multi-platform search engine that lets you search through YouTube, DailyMotion and Metacafé for videos, Last.fm and Seeqpod for music, and through most social networks and news sites to find what’s going on around the Web.

The social stuff is great, but the media is where Bookmash shines. The search is impressive, and everything can be watched, listened to or downloaded right from within the Bookmash interface. I wish it offered more search possibilities, but between YouTube and Last.fm, you’re pretty set for most of your media needs.

My Media Player

One of my favorite sites on the Web is Hulu (unfortunately, it’s only for the US at this point but you can learn how to access it from other countries here). It’s a fantastic portal for legally watching TV shows, movies, and clips of great shows like Saturday Night Live that have historically been unwilling to share their material on sites like YouTube.

My Media Player plugs into Hulu, and doesn’t offer playback of anything that Hulu doesn’t already. But what it does do is: make it a separate window, with no toolbars or anything like that, that appears just like any other media player and can be resized or docked to fit your needs. It makes watching Hulu videos (particularly if you’re a multi-tasker without a huge screen) a much easier proposition.

Stefan wrote about Hulu Desktop, even if it isn’t an Adobe AIR application, you should give it a whirl.

My Media Player also hooks into Twitter, which means you can tweet about what you’re watching – making TV and movies a lot more social.

(A bit of warning: Hulu appears to have made a change that is causing some issues with My Media Player. I’ve used it with no problem, but it sounds like some have. If it doesn’t work immediately, that’s why – stay tuned! I’ll find announce a workaround in the comments if I know about it)

zflick

According to all three browsers I use regularly, Flickr is the site I visit most. I use it for blog posts, wallpapers, and a whole host of other things as well. It’s a great tool, but isn’t the easiest to navigate.

zFlick makes finding and downloading images easier than ever. Search for an image, or browse through the impressively attractive interface of photos, complete with awesome transitions. Once you’ve found the photo you want, you can just drag-and-drop to download it. You can drag it straight to a number of other applications as well – Photoshop, AIM, and the like – if that’s where you’re using the photos. The more I use Flickr, the more I appreciate how simple, quick, attractive and useful zFlick is.

For a more powerful Flickr search tool, Ann Smarty has the lowdown with 16 Flickr Search Tools That Are Fun to Use.

Increasingly, I’m watching, listening, and viewing my media on Adobe AIR, using a growing number of applications. These are the three I couldn’t live without, though – I need my music, my zone-out videos, and the incredible resource of pictures that Flickr has become. Adobe AIR makes all of those better.

What’s your favorite AIR app? Share with us in the comments.

Photo: YngveNilsen

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A rather interesting justification for developing this project is available on the website and for the first time in a long time, I can actually relate to what they’re talking about:

We feel that just like you don’t use a different browser for every web site you visit (Firefox to read the NY Times, IE to stream Hulu, Chrome to browse YouTube, etc) you shouldn’t have to use iTunes for Apple products, Nokia software for Nokia phones, Sony software for Sony products, etc. The typical household today has many such devices and there is a need for a simple and powerful software that connects them.

Indeed, everything these days comes with some sort of social networking features – but doubleTwist actually puts them to good use. After you invite friends to install doubleTwist on their computer, they will appear on the left side sidebar.

After that, sending files to them is just a click away. They instantly receive the file in their doubleTwist feed and it’s downloaded to the computer.

doubleTwist plays all the major audio formats (AAC, MP3 and WMA) as long as the files aren’t digitally protected by DRM (Digital Rights Management). If you have a large library of media files bought from iTunes Store using the old protected format, you’re out of luck – the same goes for Rhapsody or Napster fans. (Thous you may try reading MakeUseOf article on how to remove DRM protcetion from music files.)

The music player is not as developed as iTunes – no EQ, no Sound Check, only two viewing modes. They will surely add more features like this in future releases – after all it’s in beta.

It also plays videos – with upload support for Flickr and YouTube – as well as integrating a barebones photo viewer.

doubleTwists’ strength isn’t in the integrated playback functions, yet. It vastly compensates with the ability to sync with all the iPods, a large number of Blackberry devices, the Sony PSP, Nokia phones and the list goes on. They estimate that the application is compatible with hundreds of devices. I invite you to watch this short video explaining most of the functionality offered by doubleTwist, then grab the beta while it’s fresh from here.

Don’t forget to come back and post your comments and thoughts about the product. You can also check out some other posts related to music here.

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Now, while you are downloading the movies, wouldn’t it be great if you can preview it, check out its quality and then decide if you want to continue the download?

VLC

We all know that VLC is a versatile media player that can play almost any media format you throw to it. Well, another thing that you can get it to do is to repair and playback the partially downloaded video.

Open your VLC and load the video file. It will automatically detect that this is broken file and will prompt you to repair it. For instance, it can open broken avi files.

Click the Repair button to start the repair process. It could take quite some time depending on the file size of your video.

Once the repair is finished, it will automatically playback in the player.

To avoid damaging the integrity of the partially downloaded torrent file, it is best to first duplicate a copy of the video file, then use VLC to repair and playback the duplicated copy. When you are done previewing, simply delete the duplicated copy.

DivFix++

DivFix++ is complete rewrite of the “DivFix” application simply because the developer feels that the original DivFix program is too slow and take up plenty of CPU power. What DivFix++ is capable of doing is to fix broken AVI file, rebuild the index of the video and allows you to playback in a media player.

Indeed, after using DivFix++, I do find that it is much faster (than DivFix and VLC), not CPU-intensive and able to reproduce the AVI file in good shape. The best thing is, it doesn’t require any installation. Karl has written a well explained article about DivFix++, so I will not  go into great detail here.

One thing that I like about is the ability to fix a file to a temporary location so you won’t hurt the original file. Similarly, you can preview the fixed video with a media player and then delete it once you are done.

Like VLC, DivFix++ works in Linux, Windows and Mac and it is a great software worth trying out.

GOM Player

On the frontend, GOM player looks just like any of the media player in the market. It allows you to play videos (of various format) and have great subtitles support. However, what really distinguishes GOM player from the rest is its patented technology that allows you to play broken AVI files on the fly.

Don’t ask me how the patented technology works, I know nuts about it. The only thing that I know is that when I playback the partially downloaded file, it doesn’t show any error message, nor a prompt to ask me to repair the file. What it does is to repair the file quietly on the backend and playback when it is done. It is just like streaming video on the Web, the initial process might be slow, but if you pause the video and wait for the streaming (backend repairing) to complete, you will get smooth playback in no time.

GOM Player is currently available only for Windows platform.

The above three software have helped me a lot when I was downloading bitTorrent videos. What about you? What software do you use to preview partially downloaded video?

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Especially with a television series like House MD, if I want to keep up when they start throwing around names like pneumothorax or retinoblastoma.

Today we’re going to look at a few different ways of how to add subtitles to a movie or any other video file. We’ll be discussing both the soft and the hard way – overlaying subtitles by means of software, or burning them directly into the videos.

Add Subtitles To A Movie File Using via Overlay Method

We’ll start out with the overlays, as this will be the fastest and most easiest way of using subtitles with your movies. We’ll show you a few alternatives, because contrary to popular belief, I do think people want things to choose from.

DirectVobSub

Available for Windows

This is an external, minimalistic application that runs from the taskbar and uses a DirectShow filter to overlay subtitles. This means that you can use it with nearly all video players, ranging from Media Player Classic to Real Player.

The wonderful thing about DirectVobSub is how little you need to do, and how little you notice it. By default, no additional set-up is needed.

DirectVobSub automatically looks for subtitles that show the same name, both in the videos as in a \subtitles folder. Of course these settings can be tweaked further in the program settings, if thought necessary.

Nowadays DirectVobSub is a standard addition in most decent Codec Packs, like K-Lite. Otherwise, it can always be found here.

VLC media player

Available for Windows Linux Mac

VLC media player is thought to be one of the best media players available.

One of the great things about the VLC media player is its standard ability to overlay subtitles. Besides, the application can be used on Windows, Linux and Mac systems.

There are a few ways to get our subtitles. The first, and probably easiest way, is to put them in the same folder under the same name – VLC media player will then automatically load them when the video is opened.

Additionally, you can always add subtitle files through the ‘Advanced File Opening’ or the ‘Browse for Subtitles…’ options – located respectively in the File and Video dropdown menu’s.

The application can be freely downloaded from the site. There are also portable versions of VLC media player available. You can find the Windows version here, and the Mac version here.

Subtitle Burning (AVI)

Tutorial for Windows

Burning in subtitles means that we’ll put them directly into the video source. This has the advantage of being playable on every platform (even PSPs and iPhones), but the process takes a lot longer and you won’t be able to remove the subtitles afterwards.

Usually, subtitles are burned into AVI files. We’ll show you how to add subtitles to avi movie file in the tutorial below.

Files you’ll need:

• VirtualDub
• VobSub (not to be confused with DirectVobSub)
• Decent video codec, like Xvid

Step One: Installing Software

Let’s start out by installing the software.

VirtualDub doesn’t have an installer, so it can be unzipped right on your desktop or in another folder of your choice. No special options are required during the Xvid installation either.

During the VobSub installation, please make sure that you’ve selected both “VobSub for VirtualDub” and “TextSub for VirtualDub and AviSynth” under plugins.

You’ll also need to specify the directory where you’ve unzipped VirtualDub.

Step Two: Preparation

Start by opening the VirtualDub application – open the VirtualDub.exe file in the unzipped folder – and open your AVI file.

Next, we’re going to be enabling the TextSub filter. Navigate to Video -> Filters -> Add… and locate it in the list.

Select the TextSub filter, and press OK.

In the pop-up window, press “Open” and browse to your subtitle file. This file must be in one of the supported subtitle formats (srt, sub, smi, psb, ssa, ass).

When You’re ready, press OK.

Back in the video dropdown menu, make sure you’ve got Full processing mode selected, and go to Compression.

Here you need to select one of the available codecs. Xvid does a great job for a free codec, and that’s the one I used. You can alter some settings, and tweak the quality of the video if you press Customize – however, if you don’t know what you’re doing, you’d best leave it be.

Accept everything when you’re done.

Also make sure that the program’s set up to do a Direct stream copy of the audio; this doesn’t need any processing.

Finally, save the video somewhere on your computer, and wait for the process to finish.

This can take quite a while and is quite memory extensive, so you might want to leave your computer alone for an hour or two, and do something else for the time being. If you’ve got big files to process, you can run the application at night.

I hope you found this guide helpful and were able to learn something from it. If you’ve got any hints and tips, or unanswered questions, you can find the comments section below.

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Today, we will be looking at some of the best media players on the web for Windows. (There have been a couple of MakeUseOf polls on best audio players and video players as well.)

Ready? Let’s go.

1. VLC Media Player

VLC is one, if not the, best media player ever created. It is lightweight, portable, and can play almost any media format out there (incl. videos downloaded from sites like Youtube). VLC can even be used as a streaming media server, can play DVD’s, can be used as an audio decoder, and doesn’t require external, extra codecs to run.

VLC can also accompany customizable skins, as well as nearly every operating system that exists (Mac, Windows and Linux). I highly recommend trying it out.

2. Media Jukebox

Media Jukebox is an all-in-one media player, music collection organizer, iPod connector and music store with extreme tagging techniques. This music player can pretty much do it all. While not as small as VLC, it definitely does have a bunch of features. It can even be used to sync your phone, while finding tags for your newest imported songs, and simultaneously downloading the newest plug-in to customize your user experience. Sweet, right?

You can further maximize Media Jukebox’s abilities by adding playlists to download automatically and creating or using a custom skin. Media Jukebox deserves to be on this list for sure. For complete feature overview see Organize your Music Collection Effectively With Media JukeBox.

3. Songbird

Songbird is one of the most customizable media players ever created. Besides being created by Mozilla, and being open source, it allows users to create add-ons/plug-ins for added user experience. Built-in options include: Last.fm playback history plug-in, support for the iPod, available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, metadata management, etc.

To get a feel on what can be done with Songbird extensions check out our earlier article on Songbird extensions. Songbird truly shows what media players need to become with regard to customization.

4. Winamp

Many music fanatics are familiar with Winamp as being one of the most widely used media players in the world. It has developed into one of the most feature oriented media players ever created. Features include: lots of customizable skins, built-in internet radio, support for a wide variety of audio and video formats, flash support, customizable plug-ins, support for multiple languages, ability to sync with your iPod, etc.

There is a free version, of course, but you can upgrade to the PRO version for even more features.

(Note: Winamp has been previously talked about on MakeUseOf here.)

5. KMPlayer

KMPlayer, while not as widely used, is one of the best, free, media players. While supporting numerous different formats, languages, skins, etc, it is relatively lightweight and can be used for numerous different media related material.

The application itself is extremely customizable by it’s own settings, but can be further customized to fit your own needs as well. Features include: Compressed album support, multiple file formats, numerous decoders, support for subtitles, plug-ins, etc.

Stay tuned next time for more cool Windows tips and tricks! In the meantime, why don’t you tell us in the comments which media player you have installed on your Windows system and why you prefer it over all others? What features are the deal-clincher for you?

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• Sync All of Your Media Files in One Place with doubleTwist (12)
• Organize And Manage Your Music Collection With MediaMonkey (33)
• Eight Great Songbird Extensions Worth A Test Drive (12)
• 10 Great Windows Media Player 11 Tips and Tricks (13)
• Using Your Linux Computer As A UPnP AV Server (Part 3) (5)

YouPlayer is an innovative Firefox extension which further adds to the joy of watching those videos by letting you play them in your Firefox sidebar. Afterwards you don’t need to go to the site again and again – you can just play a video in the sidebar and also carry on some other work, like checking emails. It lets you create a playlist of videos and the playing order can be customized.

After installing YouPlayer you’ll notice a small ‘ YP ‘ symbol in the Firefox status bar. Clicking on it lets you open or close the YouPlayer sidebar. This an awesome extension which comes with a host of features.

1. Support For Many Sites

Apart from supporting Youtube, it also supports Google Video, Daily Motion, Metacafe and MySpace. There is a small search option in the lower right hand corner of the sidebar and you can easily change to one of these sites and play videos on them.

So those of you who love watching videos on other sites apart from YouTube can utilize this extension too.

2. Drag And Drop Links

You can easily drag and drop links from the website onto the sidebar playlist. Once you hit the play button or double click the link, it starts playing. This drag and drop works vice versa as well, which means that you can drag a link from the playlist window to the browser address bar or right click to open it in a new tab.

3. Play Other FLV files on the Hard Drive too

YouPlayer goes one step further and allows you to drag and drop FLV files from your hard drive and play them in the sidebar playlist window. You’ll need to check the ‘Use new player (experimental)’ option from the player options when you want to play an offline flv video. However, it doesn’t support playing of other files like .mp3 or .avi .

4. Customize the Playing Order

Yes, you can easily customize the playing order in the YouPlayer playlist. Whether you want to play the videos in succession – one after the other – or you want them to be played in a random order, you can easily achieve this in one click.

5. One-click Download of the Videos

Here comes the icing on the cake. When you right click on an item in the playlist, you find these options – Add URL, Edit item, Open new item… and Download ! Yes this is another quick way in addition to the 4 quick ways to download Youtube videos which I discussed before. In fact this also lets you easily download a MySpace or Metacafe video easily. Cool!

I’m already enjoying this add on. I haven’t had any errors or troubles and it works just perfect. Like Winamp, it also allows you to choose from a few skins. So overall, this is a great add-on to play multiple online videos and also multi-task at the same time. Give it a shot !

(By) Abhijeet Mukherjee is addicted to the internet and loves blogging and freelance writing. He blogs about tech tweaks, blogging tips, productivity hacks at Jeet Blog.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 4 YouTube Tools you Probably Don’t Know About (48)
• Play and Download YouTube Videos On Your Mac with MacTubes (8)
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• 11 Firefox 3 Extensions That I Can’t Live Without (40)
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Lets first see what all is required to play a video file and then we will look at how to overcome the problem.

To play any video file that exists in the wildest corners of the web you only need 2 things:

• A media player (or the software).
• A codec.

We are all familiar with media player but the term that needs a little attention is "codec". In simple terms codec is nothing but an "something" that knows how to convert the video to 1s and 0s and back from 1s and 0s to the video that we all can see.

Looks pretty straightforward right? Not until you dive a little deeper into the world of codecs. There are many codecs out there that can be used to encode the video. In some sense the codec is like the key and your video file is like the lock, so you need the same key or the codec to actually view the file that was used to encode the file. This situation causes problems to most users if they don’t have the proper codec on their system. You can view the installed codecs by doing the following:

Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices Properties -> Hardware – > highlight VIDEO CODECS -> push Properties button -> select PROPERTIES tab.

You can do the same for audio codecs as well.

So, How To Play Those Unplayable Video and Movies

Here are some suggestions to ensure that your video plays fine.

(1) Install a media player that can support large number of formats. VLC is a good choice. It’s not the only good video player out there, make sure to check out MakeUseOf Poll on the Best Free Video Players.

(2) The second solution if you like to stick with the Windows Media Player is to install codec packs. These are packs that install the required codecs on your system for playing the common video formats. To figure what codecs the video needs check out MakeUseOf review of Gspot.

(3) Finally, you can use the MakeInstantPlayer, it converts your videos into self running executables that you can give to your friends or take to other computer. The executable is all that you need to watch the video. No software or codecs are required on the other system.

More on MakeInstantPlayer

MakeInstantPlayer offers other benefits as well like

- Adding a custom logo that will be displayed as the splash screen when you run the file.
- Ability to include the codecs as a part of the executable.
- Ability to make the user go to your homepage or site when the video finishes playing.

How To Make your Videos Executable on Any Computer

First, download and run the makeinstantplayer.exe . The software doesn’t add any registry entries and only extracts the files to your chosen location. Then, run the makeinstantplayer.exe from the location you provided while installing. You will see this:

Next

• Choose the path to the video file you want to make executable by clicking on the source file entry field
• Choose the output file path and name by clicking on the Output File text entry field

Some Optional Settings

- Enter a URL to direct the user to the after the playback finishes.

- Enter the path to your custom logo if you want that to be displayed as the splash screen when the video starts (JPG, JPEG, GIF, ANI, BMP, ICO, EMF are acceptable formats). I used the following:



- You can specify to keep the video fullscreen in the resulting exe or keep in on top of other windows or make it auto quit after playback ends or choose to start it all over again when it ends (check loop). You can also include codecs in the resulting exe.

- Preview it if you like or just hit Make it! to convert the video to executable.

It logs all the activities on the screen so you can see what it is upto. I tried and successfully converted DivX format, VOB, AVI, MPEG, MP4 and even WMV. Its was reasonably fast, on my 1GB RAM computer it took about a minute and a half to convert 700MB DivX file to executable.

Once you have the executable all you need to do is send the file and run it to view the video on any computer irrespective of the fact if it has the required codecs or not.

Do you know of some other ways to get rid of the codec chores? I would like to know them. Put them in comments please!

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• MUO Polls : Free Video Players. What’s your Favorite ? (61)
• Downloaded an Unplayable Movie? Gspot & Klite to the Rescue! (11)
• 10 Great Windows Media Player 11 Tips and Tricks (13)
• Watch Free TV Channels On The Go With KitePlayer (18)
• Top 5 Internet TV Players + TV freebies (26)

What video player do you use to play movies and other video files? If you’re a regular MUO user, there is a good chance you have a nice video player on your system. Something that is capable of playing pretty much any movie. So like we did in the past, we are asking you to tell us about it. Help us find the best video player out there.

I did my best not to miss any popular free movie player for Windows, Mac or Linux. Most of the below mentioned players are capable of playing pretty much any popular video format. Though I am sure there are some good video players that are missing. Probably more from the Linux side than Windows. If you’re aware of any good one that should have been listed then please tell us about it in the comments. If you’re looking for a free video player that supports lots of video formats proceed to the download links below.

Update: VLC Player was added to the poll. A small clarification though. IT’S a GREAT Player and I DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT IT. I thought it was included in the poll until I saw the comments. This was abt 2 hours after the poll was published. My bad.

Please vote ! (you can select up to 2 options)

Video Player Download Links. All Free!

• Windows Media Player
• DivX Player (Win, Mac)
• Winamp
• BS. Player (Win)
• Media Player Classic (Win)
• GOM Player (Win)
• QuickTime (Win, Mac)
• VLC Player (Win, Mac, Linux)
• Mplayer (Linux) / Mplayer (for Windows)
• AVS DVD Player (Win)

Please share your thoughts in comments.

Did you like the post? Please do share your thoughts in the comments section!

New on MakeUseOf ? Get cheat sheets and cool PDF guides @ www.makeuseof.com/makeuseof-downloads/

• 3 Ways to Play Unplayable Videos on your PC (12)
• Quick Overview: Free Media Players (17)
• Downloaded an Unplayable Movie? Gspot & Klite to the Rescue! (11)
• An Introduction To Codecs, Converters and Rippers (19)
• 10 Great Windows Media Player 11 Tips and Tricks (13)