Media player software

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Media player (software)
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MPlayer, an example of a cross-platform media player

Media player software is a type of

media control icons known from physical devices such as tape recorders and CD players, such as play ( ▶️ ), pause ( ⏸ ), fastforward (⏩️), rewind (⏪), and stop ( ⏹️ ) buttons. In addition, they generally have progress bars (or "playback bars"), which are sliders
to locate the current position in the duration of the media file.

Mainstream

Samsung
may bundle custom software.

Functionality focus

Clementine v1.2, an audio player with a media library and online radio

The basic feature set of media players are a seek bar, a timer with the current and total playback time, playback controls (play, pause, previous, next, stop), playlists, a "repeat" mode, and a "shuffle" (or "random") mode for curiosity and to facilitate searching long timelines of files.

Different media players have different goals and feature sets. Video players are a group of media players that have their features geared more towards playing

subtitle support are only useful for video material such as films and cartoons. Audio players, on the other hand, specialize in digital audio. For example, AIMP exclusively plays audio formats. MediaMonkey can play both audio and video formats, but many of its features including media library, lyric discovery, music visualization, online radio, audiobook indexing, and tag editing
are geared toward consumption of audio material; watching video files on it can be a trying feat. General-purpose media players also do exist. For example, Windows Media Player has exclusive features for both audio and video material, although it cannot match the feature set of Media Player Classic and MediaMonkey combined.

By default, videos are played with fully visible field of view while filling at least either width or height of the viewport to appear as large as possible. Options to change the video's scaling and aspect ratio may include filling the viewport through either stretching or cropping, and "100% view" where each pixel of the video covers exactly one pixel on the screen.[1]

pinch zoom on touch screens, and moving the field of view may be implemented through scrolling by dragging inside the view port or by moving a rectangle inside a miniature view of the entire field of view that denotes the magnified area.[2][3]

Media player software may have the ability to adjust appearance and acoustics during playback using effects such as mirroring, rotating, cropping, cloning, adjusting colours,

VLC Media Player.[4][5]

Still snapshots may be extracted directly from a video frame or captured through a screenshot, the former of which is preferred since it preserves videos' original dimensions (height and width).[6] Video players may show a tooltip bubble previewing footage at the position hovered over with the mouse cursor.[7]

A preview tooltip for the seek bar has been implemented on few smartphones through a stylus or a self-capacitive touch screen able to detect a floating finger. Such include the Samsung Galaxy S4, S5 (finger), Note 2, Note 4 (stylus), and Note 3 (both).

buffered segments of the media in the seek bar.[8]

3D video players

method itself is old enough, dating back to the mid-19th century, but it is only with recent advances in computer technology that it has become possible to apply this kind of transformation to a series of frames in a motion picture reasonably fast or even in real-time, i.e. as the video is being played back. Several implementations exist in the form of 3D video players that render conventional 2D video in anaglyph 3D, as well as in the form of 3D video converters that transform video into stereoscopic anaglyph and transcode it for playback with regular software or hardware video players.[citation needed
]

Examples

Well known examples of media player software include Windows Media Player, VLC media player, iTunes, Winamp, Media Player Classic, MediaMonkey, foobar2000, AIMP, MusicBee and JRiver Media Center. Most of these also include music library managers.

Although media players are often multi-media, they could be primarily designed for a specific media. For example, Media Player Classic and VLC media player are video-focused while Winamp and iTunes are music-focused, despite all of them supporting both types of media.

Home theater PC

Main article: Home theater PC

A home theater PC or media center computer is a convergence device that combines some or all the capabilities of a personal computer with a software application that supports video, photo, audio playback, and sometimes video recording functionality. Although computers with some of these capabilities were available from the late 1980s, the "Home Theater PC" term first appeared in mainstream press in 1996. Since 2007, other types of consumer electronics, including gaming systems and dedicated media devices have crossed over to manage video and music content. The term "media center" also refers to specialized computer programs designed to run on standard personal computers.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Fix Stretched Video in VLC by Changing Aspect Ratio". VLC Help. 16 February 2016. Retrieved 7 November 2021.
  2. ^ "How to Zoom into Videos in VLC Media Player". VLC Help. 13 September 2020. Retrieved 7 November 2021. You will see a small picture-in-picture like video on the top-left section of your media window. There will be a rectangle on it that denotes the area that is magnified. Use the mouse to click and drag the rectangle. Moving the rectangle around will change the area that is being zoomed.
  3. ^ "How do I use the Video Player on my device?". Samsung hk_en. 23 April 2018.
  4. ^ "How to Edit Video, Apply Effects & Filters and Save Them Permanently in VLC". VLC Help. 21 October 2016. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  5. ^ Awasthi, Abhishek (6 February 2016). "How to turn any video into an interactive puzzle in VLC media player". TechWorm. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
  6. VLC Media Player. Latter: Media Player Classic
    .
  7. ^ Media Player Classic – Black Edition
  8. ^ "Media buffering, seeking, and time ranges - Developer guides | MDN".
  9. ^ Won, Brian (8 December 2010). "Ars Technica HTPC Guide: December 2010". Ars Technica. Condé Nast.
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