One of my regular readers CC send me a link to SMPlayer about a week ago and I was testing the frontend for mplayer since. SMPlayer is a video player that is supporting the most important video formats out of the box including avi, mpg, mov, wmv and vob plus numerous other formats.
It is also possible to play DVDs and Internet streams with the video player that is available for Windows and Linux. Several ways of displaying subtitles and various subtitle formats are supported including srt, sub and DVD subtitles. I personally think that SMPlayer is a great alternative to the VLC player.
This could be useful for everyone who is having troubles with VLC for example. The only real difference that I was able to spot was that the SMPlayer is Open Source and that it remembers where the playback of the video stopped. Make sure you download the full SMPlayer plus the update.
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does it have frame-advance? thats the one thing that i miss in vlc
“The only real difference that I was able to spot was that the SMPlayer is Open Source and that it remembers where the playback of the video stopped.”
vlc is also open source (was that intended to be listed as a difference?), but i can’t say it remembers playback location…
Thanks for pointing this out Martin.
It has a few things that I always missed on VLC: you can advance forwards and backwards in steps of 10sec., 1 min. or 10 min. that is just invaluable for me. It also keeps a list of recent files which is convenient, and remembering the previous spot is great too. However I think it does not play bin and cue files like vlc can.
I’ve used VLC as well but SMplayer feels more comfortable. It also plays ‘real’ files which is a bonus. It doesn’t play bin files yet but that will probably change soon. It already plays ‘iso’files.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this wonderful piece of software is updated practically everyday so its constantly improving. The author also has a good forum and replies back soon.
Finally, if you’re looking for a bare bones player, there’s another frontend called MPUI which is about 4 mb and can be unzipped and run directly without installation.
http://mpui.sourceforge.net/
I’ve always used just mplayer on linux. This seems like a good windows gui for it finally though. Thanks
Hi,
I tried GOM player and that too is very good .
Particularly in vlc one cant ff or rewind in smoothly and gom has this and more.
try it. i thought vlc is THE best however, i switched to GOM. it plays rmvb rm etc etc etc.
cool player
Try rulesPlayer – in my opinion is the best windows MPlayer gui.
http://www.dsource.org/projects/rulesplayer
http://rulesplayer.lessequal.com/
Have been having problems with VLC in that it seems to load fine and then windows has a problem with it and wants to shut down.
Will this player be a suitable replacement?
I’m a bit new to this sort of thing…
Well it did replace VLC on my computer and I’m perfectly happy with it.
SMPlayer is truly sweet player..
its simple but can be powerful.
I used vlc for the longest time, then i started having problems, and found sm player. i will never go back or to anything else again. doesn’t take as much ram to play sm player either