Do not confuse this KMPlayer with KMPlayer from KDE.org, which was developed for Konqueror / Linux and first released in 2010. The original KMplayer was first released in 2002.

Despite being a powerful tool, KMPlayer has long been an insider among geeks and never gained widespread attention. This may in part be due to its Korean origin and a lack of a professional web representation and English user manual or help files. On the other hand, KMPlayer does have a very strong user base and an active forum. Yet it is notorious for its bad documentation, which is especially discouraging for novice users. However, using KMPlayer is not as challenging as it sounds and this article will shed some light.

First Impressions

KMPlayer has a functional and unpretentious interface.

The basic player controls are located in the bottom left. To its right you can view information about the file and filters, set the audio streams (left, right or both channels), and control playback sections (from point A to point B). The elapsed time (or system time if no file is loaded) is displayed on the far right and you can also set repeat and shuffle options. The volume control is situated in the bottom right.

The Menus

A left-click on the KMPlayer logo in the top left corner opens the basic file menu.

From there you can open the file navigator, as well as individual files, DVDs or Video CDs from your CD/DVD drive, and load subtitles or external audio.

A right-click anywhere onto the player opens the Main Control window.

This menu grants access to KMplayer’s extensive features. Almost every item in the list is a major menu of its own. For example while the basic file menu allows to load subtitles, the subtitle item in the Main Control menu lets the user define every little subtitle characteristic, including its alignment, font size or rotation. It takes a while to grasp the full depth and potential of these sub-menus and gain an overview.

Feature Overview

The endless list of features is what KMPlayer is famous for. It really is a shame that the developers have not released a proper manual for this advanced media player as many features are not self explanatory. Below is a summary of some of the most prominent features, which should give you a taste:

• Screen Controls: extensive control of player screen size, ratios, window transparency, and window on top features
• Pan & Scan: control window and frame position and size
• Playback: move between frames, jump back and forth, set repeat section, control repeat mode, re-sync audio, time shutdown
• Subtitles: search and find subtitles online, add multiple subtitles, control position and orientation of subtitles, re-sync subtitles, modify and merge subtitles
• Bookmarks / Chapter: bookmark positions within a file

Experienced users of KMPlayer will notice that this list only touches the surface. There are far more features and options available than mentioned above. The preferences window alone (> Main Control > Options > Preferences) hosts a myriad of settings, for example filter control, audio, video, and subtitle processing, color controls, and much more. Users can save their settings in presets and launch them as required or exchange them with other users for common projects.

If you are craving immediate access to even more features, you should launch the advanced menu to have many more options available at your fingertips, including audio and video effects, filters, capture options, and skins. To enable the advanced menu, open the > Main Control (right-click on player), go to > Options and check > Advanced Menu.

The Superficial Verdict

The KMPlayer interface is simple enough for the average person to use it as a basic media player. This, however, would be a waste because one thing KMPlayer doesn’t do is save system resources. Playing the same video file requires about 80% more system resources than VLC Player and even a little more than Windows Media Player. But if you are eager to play with your media files and get the best out of them and if you are willing to go through trial and error, then KMPlayer is a dream come true.

If KMPlayer did not convince you, I recommend you give VLC media player a spin. Get started with these articles:

• The VLC Media Player – Does it Really Play Everything?
• 6 Cool VLC Tips & Tricks You Might Not Know About

Although KMPlayer has been mentioned many times over on MakeUseOf, we haven’t written a lot about it. If you’re going to make the switch to KMPlayer or are already using it, however, you might want to know How to Bookmark Movies To Resume Where You Left Off. What other features should we highlight or where do you think documentation is lacking badly?

Do you think KMPlayer may be the best media player, or could become your favorite? If it already is, what do you love about it? If you don’t think it could replace your current favorite, why not?

If you read through and decide you’d rather check out some of the alternatives, have a look at Bakari’s round of streaming and converter apps for OsX, Tim’s collection of linux-based media center distros, or Justin’s list of TV-ready media centre apps last month.

Is it a player? Is it server?

Plex produces a media server and client app for Mac OsX, however there is only a server app for Windows currently available. To view your media on the Windows side of things, you can use a Plex plugin. Since Plex is essentially a fork of the XBMC app, there is very little difference in the client/player side of things.

Both Mac and Windows Plex Media Servers can send data to the mobile clients (obviously, there is no media server for mobile devices).

I’ve made a little diagram to help explain this:

Installation

Download and install the appropriate version from PlexApp.com . During the install, point the app at your directories for movies and TV.

Naming Conventions and Fixing MetaData

One thing that always annoyed me about media center systems in the past has been how utterly incapable they seem to be of identifying my eclectic collection and gathering the appropriate covers / metadata. The secret is to name the files correctly – this helpful page details the process, and though it may be tiresome, it does result in a beautifully unified media collection rather than a mess of folders. For those of you who can’t be bothered to read, name your movies “name of movie (date of release)” like “Steal This Movie (2010)”. I suggest you go through your collection and do a little renaming before you install Plex to give it the best chance of correct identification. If you have odd formats such as .img or .iso, then no worries – just name them and Plex will handle it all!

To launch the media manager and see what it’s found, click the taskbar icon (or right click in windows) and select Media Manager. You can then choose between TV and Movies, as well as Music if you chose to import that.

You may find a few odd matches – in that case you can easily right-click on the item in question, and select Fix Incorrect Match. this will bring up a list of possibilities. In general, I found that if the files were actually named correctly a match would generally be found – it was only when I had files that didn’t follow the guidelines that mismatches occured.

The only complaint I do have is that the poster picture can’t be changed by dragging and dropping – it takes a bit of effort to navigate through the options for that – but then again you shouldn’t need to most times if it’s been correctly identified.

The Plex Player App (Mac only)

When your data is sorted, go ahead and launch the main player app (from Applications or the Start menu, not the icon already running in your taskbar). Bear in mind that you can’t use the mouse, as it’s designed for full-screen – so stick to the keyboard or remote. Hit Apple-F to switch to fullscreen, and start browsing through the options.

The movies and TV menus options don’t need an awful lot of explaining really, except for that you can change the view style to cover flow or grid view (my personal favorite) by selecting “right” on your keyboard or remote to bring up the view options:

Plex Online is the place to find plugins – such as the BBC iPlayer (UK only) – that enable Plex to interface with hundreds more free online video sources.

To access the online media content channels that you install, choose Video Plugins from the main menu. I especially recommend TED for some fantastic inspirational talks:

The app also makes a really good interface to YouTube and other social video sites. Just hit Search and type in your query – local media will appear first, as well as tons of internet videos that you can start streaming instantly. I actually found it easier than browsing the real YouTube site, since’s there’s absolutely no clutter and zero commentary from 14 year old idiots. Bonus!

PleXBMC (Windows)

To view your movies on Windows, you will need to install XBMC, then the add-on for Plex. Tim has covered the ins and outs of XMBC before with a thorough review, so I’ll only be showing you the actual connector add-on. To install it, make sure you use the XBMC interface rather than downloading and installing the zip file manually. Head to the System -> Add-Ons -> Video Add-Ons -> PleXBMC -> Install. If you have the server software running on a remote machine, you’ll also need to configure the IP of the remote server in the Configure option for the add-on. You should then be able to browse your Plex media server using the Add-Ons folder from the main Video menu, complete with covers and meta-data.

Conclusion

I have to admit, having all my movies in one central place with all the metadata correct is incredibly satisfying. If you have a large collection you’d love to browse by DVD covers then I strongly suggest Plex. I’ve tried other solutions in the past, but none have handled my movies particular well, and I find the media manager of Plex to be the best overall. It’s a shame there isn’t a native client for Windows yet, but the add-on for XBMC means I can basically have the same fantastic player interface while we wait for the official client. Plex is going to form the center of my living room now, and I’ve even splashed out on the iPad app which let’s me stream any of my collection without format worries.

If you’re having any troubles setting it all up, then feel free to ask away in the comments or Q&A section, and we’ll see if we can help.

Oh and one last thing – Plex supports streaming over the internet too!

If you’ve not used VLC in the past (and are desperate for a decent media solution) then I’d urge you to download it and give it a go. Those of you who are already using VLC might be surprised to know there’s a few features that don’t really get the recognition they deserve.

Here are a few VLC tips and tricks that will hopefully help you get more use and enjoyment from VLC.

Streaming Capabilities

One use for VLC that not many users are too familiar with is its capacity as a network streaming workhorse. As you can see from the diagram below, using VLC as a streaming solution for your media gives you one of the best cross-compatible media sharing setups around, especially useful if you have a variety of PCs and operating systems in your household.

If you’re looking to stream video from your home PC whilst you’re away then you can also set VLC to stream to the Internet. Dont forget to sort out your DNS settings beforehand for a pain-free connection!

If you’re wondering how to get the most out of VLC’s streaming abilities, check out Angela’s detailed article.

Rip & Transcode Videos

Whilst there are a number of good, free video converters, why download even more software when you can already do it with VLC? Not only can VLC be used to convert video from one format to another, but it can also be used to rip disc-based media (video or music), live streams (television, cable, satellite) or network streams to file.

To get started open VLC and click Media then Convert/Save. You’ll be presented with a dialogue which allows you to choose between converting, ripping and saving to file. Once you’ve added source media (to record from) click Convert/Save.

The next window allows you to choose encoding settings such as codecs and output location. Don’t forget to have patience, transcoding video is resource-intensive and can take a while (regardless of how much the software costs).

Internet Radio & Podcast Management

Reaffirming its role as a multi-use media player, VLC also contains in-built Internet radio listings and a podcast aid to boot. Simply open your Playlist and select Internet on the left. You should then see a number of services pop up including Icecast Radio and Jamendo Selections. It’s all free, and there’s full albums available if that’s your thing.

If you’d like VLC to keep a track of podcasts then hover Podcasts in the Playlist and click on the plus symbol “+” that appears. Enter the podcast’s URL to add it to your database.

Video Effects

Partly useful, partly there for fun; there’s plenty you can do to your video files with VLC to spice things up a bit. Whilst playing a video (this works in real time) click Tools and then Effects and Filters to open the adjustments window.

Choose Video Effects from the first tab, and have a play around. You can adjust useful settings like gamma, brightness and hue should you have a poor-quality (too dark, bad white balance) video file. The other tabs are mostly reserved for fun, with crazy psychedelic and water effects to choose from as well as video rotation, text and logo overlay options.

Snapshots

If you’ve ever wanted, needed or tried to take a still image of a video then you may have had issues using the usual “print screen” methods. Luckily VLC features the ability to take a snapshot and save to .PNG format in a location of your choice.

You can either pause, jog and find the exact scene you want or take your shot during playback. With a video open in VLC, choose Video then Snapshot (or right click on the video and use the context menu). VLC will then show a brief overlay of the snapshot in the top left, and the snapshot will be saved to the location defined in Preferences then Video under Snapshot.

Play Video as ASCII Output

Last on the list as it has absolutely no real use, but will probably bring a grin to your face nonetheless. In VLC choose Tools then Preferences and click on Video. Under Output choose ASCII -art video output and click Save.

Now play a video and enjoy the amazing spectacle that is moving ASCII art. Useless, but fun!

Do you use VLC? Maybe you prefer SMPlayer or UMPlayer? Any of these tips useful? Let us know in the comments below.

Universal Media Player, or UMPlayer for short, is yet another addition to the media player category which uses the MPlayer backend to chew through any media you give it. The app promises to play everything and integrates various web services into one desktop solution.

There are versions available for Windows (XP, Vista and 7) and Linux (Ubuntu and Debian binaries and an RPM) with a Mac OS X version currently in development and destined for release any day now. The version I’m testing here is 0.9 (Linux) on Ubuntu 10.10.

Features & Playback

Thanks to the fantastic MPlayer backend, UMPlayer is able to play a healthy number of digital formats without the need for extra codecs. This includes your bog standard SD content, disc-based media (but no BluRay) and HD files (even in containers, like Matroska video). To quote the UMPlayer team:

“It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies.”

Another benefit to using MPlayer is the vast number of output options offered, including X11, OpenGL and VESA (amongst a ton of others). There’s also support for older, outdated graphics cards which should make UMPlayer a decent app to stick on an old PC.

For an easy-on-the-eyes viewing experience, MPlayer also features shadowed anti-aliased subtitles with support for 12 different subtitle formats (and DVD subtitles too) and various different fonts and scripts. So far, so VLC; and that even goes for the interface (though it does for most media players).

The program is completely skinnable, and there are five to choose from after installation. Despite the Get More Skins link under Options, there’s little to choose from in the official skins gallery so (once again) it’s up to the community to provide the real choice.

Under the hood you’ll find plenty to tweak and adjust in UMPlayer’s options. From custom command line parameters to forcing frame drop to maintain sync, this is a heavily customizable program. Saying that, you won’t find yourself changing an awful lot (if anything) unless you’ve got some specific demands from the software.

Convinced? Well there’s still a couple of extra features that might just persuade you to ditch your current media player yet!

Online Integration

You may have noticed the small search box in the top right of the UMPlayer window in a number of screenshots. This can be used to search both YouTube and Winamp’s Shoutcast service for streaming video and radio stations. Despite YouTube being a bit flaky on my Ubuntu laptop, Shoutcast worked flawlessly.

When you search either service your results are displayed in a separate window. Double click a result of your choosing and UMPlayer will do its utmost to launch your chosen video or radio station. It’s a nice, fast way of browsing for media – with a couple of extra services to choose from (Hulu, Vimeo and so on) it would be a killer feature.

UMPlayer can also fetch free subtitles for you. Simply open up your chosen media, click Subtitles and then Find Subtitles on OpenSubtitles.org. A new window will open displaying all available subtitles for the film or program you happen to be watching. Click Download to download the file and never have to worry about subtitles again.

Conclusion

Is UMPlayer a VLC-beating media solution? Possibly. That totally depends whether you’re hankering for a dekstop YouTube solution, love internet radio or regularly rely on subtitles. Apart from those few features there’s very little to separate the two.

Both are light on system resources. Both can play pretty much everything you throw at them. Both are free! Give it a go for yourself and let us know what you think in the comments below.

One of the things I was curious about however, was which universal video player to install. QuickTime is pretty cool, sure, but I quickly found out its limits after a short time using it. Where can I find a good, lightweight video player that’s capable of playing every type of file?

1. VLC Media Player

Regardless of what operating system you’re using, VLC Media Player is one of, if not the, best video players out there. VLC is an open source cross-platform multimedia player that plays pretty much every type of video file, making it truly “universal”.

You can also use it to play DVDs, CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. No codec packs are needed and it’s completely free. Anyone who is familiar with VLC should not be surprised to see it on this list.

2. DivX

DivX Player for Mac is also a nice alternative for you to play videos, especially if you’re looking to play something in HD. Naturally, DivX Player allows you to play all native DivX videos (.mkv), but it does also support other popular video file types, including QuickTime files. The player also includes a desktop dimmer, window fade, and free full screen playback options.

3. NicePlayer

NicePlayer is a relatively unknown application but it’s a pretty impressive video player for Mac. Jeffry dedicated a post on MUO to NicePlayer back in June 2010. It’s an open source app that was designed for playing movies and it features full screen or border-less floating windows, on the fly playlist creation, and more.

4. Elmedia Player

Elmedia Player is a Flash and media player for Mac OS X that supports playback of FLV, SWF, XAP (Silverlight), RM and RV (Real), AVI, MOV, MP4, and many other formats. It features a built-in web browser, so you can browse through websites and watch movies without leaving the application as well.

5. Windows Media Components for QuickTime

You may be surprised to learn that this even exists, but it’s a viable solution if you’re just looking for a little bit of Windows love. With Windows Media Components for QuickTime, you can play Windows Media files (.wma and .wmv) directly in QuickTime Player and view Windows Media content on the Internet using a web browser. It gives you added support for numerous audio and video codecs, as well as different file formats (like .avi).

With the programs on this list, you should be able to watch any type of file you happen to come across. If you are a Mac wiz and you know of any other great video players, please feel free to mention them in the comments.

To help narrow down the choices for you, we’ve collected a list of Android’s top mobile video players, so you can just get on with the fun of watching your videos.

1. VPlayer

VPlayer is my personal favourite simply because it’s so versatile and can be kept on the SD card, which is handy since it’s over 3MB. It plays all the major video formats, plus it can handle a variety of streaming video types. The free trial is fully featured, and the paid version is only a few dollars if you choose to upgrade.

2. RealPlayer

RealPlayer is an audio player as well as a video player. It has a handy interface to navigate between media types easily and can even display your photos. Sadly, it’s 3MB and can’t be moved to a SD card, so it’s only useful for users without space issues on their phone. It doesn’t say exactly which files it will play, but it couldn’t play my MP4′s. It played my home videos beautifully though.

3. Act 1 Video Player

Act 1 Video Player is designed to play iPhone formats like 3gp, h263, and h264 baseline profile. It also claims to play some baseline MP4 files, but not all (it had no problem with mine). Other files will need converting, but the developer page does point you in the direction of some free software that will do the job nicely. Act 1 is not only a tiny 500KB, but it can also be moved to your SD card.

4. Arc Media

Arc Media player can support a wide variety of video formats, including AVI, DIVX, MKV, MOV, MP4, RMVB, WMV, VOB and XVID. It’s still in beta, but is widely appreciated by testers so far.

5. Meridian

Meridian is a huge 2.5MB, but can easily be moved to the SD card. It asks where your media is kept and quickly finds all of it. Gestures for navigating are intuitive and quick to use.

6. mVideoPlayer

The mVideoPlayer app comes with rave reviews in the Android market. However, this app will only play whichever formats are already supported by your phone. Its 2.6MB install can be moved to the SD card, which is good news. The first search for video files will take a while, but it should load quicker in the future.

7. RockPlayer Lite

RockPlayer is an ad-supported media player which at a massive 13MB fails to live up to the light impression. Thankfully, it can be moved to the SD card. Plays video smoothly and well.

8. VitalPlayer

VitalPlayer’s 5MB install can be automatically installed to your SD card. Sorry, VitalPlayer isn’t yet supported on Gingerbread.

More Android Apps

For more neat Android apps, read these articles:

• Post To WordPress From Your Android Phone with WpToGo
• How To Write Your First Google Android Application
• Introducing The (Highly-Anticipated) MakeUseOf Android App
• 6 Android Websites You Should Check Out
• 5 Best Addictive Free Multiplayer Android Games

If you’ve had a go using some of these mobile video players, let us know what you thought and which ones you think are best!