Macs can be extremely powerful when used correctly. Many use them for projects heavy in graphics and videography. Others use them as a powerful desktop publishing machine that supports a wide variety of industries. However, Macs are not just good for work – you can take advantage of the power they wield when the work day is done – by watching a good movie or video.
Macs come equipped with QuickTime. It’s free, but it will only work with file types dictated by Apple. Let’s say your friend sent you a link to the latest episode of a series you’ve been trying to keep up with. Well, if it’s an AVI or WMV file, you are out of luck.
Not if you have Elmedia.
Elmedia is player that runs on Macs, but surpasses the boundaries that hold QuickTime back. There are two versions to choose from. The free version supports almost every media format that’s out there. If you upgrade internally from the app, you get the added bonus of being able to play YouTube content, manage playback settings, and snag stills from videos so you can save them as images.
Let’s delve deeper into what you can do with the free version of Elmedia. You can natively play all sorts of files, including SWF, XAP, DIVX, FLV, and DAT. Without leaving the app, you can surf the internet. As you collect more media, you can organize them through playlists. You can also adjust brightness, contrast, sharpness, saturation, and noise. You can even change the image layout and use custom and pre-defined presets to adjust the audio to your liking, powered by a 10-band graphic equalizer.
The app cleverly executes software in a way that leverages the maximum speed of the hardware, to support playbacks that are quick and clean – devoid of skips.
As mentioned above, Elmedia allows users to browse the internet from within the app, by opening a separate window. You get a bit more out of this feature if you go with the Pro version. You can also download content with just one click. You can Download All or select just the ones you want from the page.
Extracting and saving frames is a snap. You can do this from either the Movie menu or by using a keyboard shortcut (Control-Command-S). Frames can be saved as TIFFs, PNGs, or GIFs.
For playback tweaks, the Pro version allows you to choose a default output and setup a number channels for quicker access to what you want to see.
From a newbie standpoint, I really couldn’t find anything horribly wrong with the app. It did take a while for me to find where to go to update settings and get videos to show the way I wanted them to. After a little digging around, I was able to figure things out.
Elmedia Player has now become our family’s go-to app to watch videos on our Mac. There are no more worries about whether or not the file will play, and we can all find what we want once we have saved them. The Pro version is definitely worth the purchase if you frequently download content and want to organize it.
Reviews for other Mac apps – MacX MediaTrans, Macx DVD Ripper Pro, MacX Video Converter