Paid media players on Mac have a lot of free competition, the leading example being the native Quicktime player that comes with every Mac. Quicktime used to be a lot more fully-featured and rich, but over the years, since Quicktime 7, a lot of the buttons and features have eroded away. There are other free players with more features than QuickTime like VLC, but VLC’s more advanced features can be a bit hard to use or at least hard to find. Also, being open source, it’s user support is patchy. So where does that leave you as a Mac video user? Perhaps there is an alternative with an upgrade path which provides features you would want in a player which aren’t offered by any of the totally free players. Of course there is.
Versatile Media Player
Elmedia Player is a fully-featured player for Mac which takes the basic functionality you’d expect but adds some additional 21st Century improvements that are missing from your basic Quicktime. The free version of Elmedia adds features you don’t get with the other free players, but when you stump up a little money for the pro version, it really flies.
Elmedia Player adds proper subtitle support, something sorely lacking in Quicktime, plus playlists, tools to delay subs to fix sync issues, streaming video support, both Chromecast AND Airplay support (you rarely have both), automatic online search for subtitle files which match the film you are playing, plus the ability to download videos and audio within the app. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Quicktime.
One for feature seekers
The software has a few features you will really like, and I think truthfully that it only has features you will actually use. The player has a clean look, like Quicktime, which makes for minimal distraction while playing. Users who object to the cluttered and nerdy appearance of VLC will like Elmedia. It’s elegant, but like VLC, it has added playlist functionality.
If you play a lot of streamed videos, or better yet project them, then the screen-flipping features of Elmedia will appeal. If your projector is ceiling-mounted or are back-projecting your videos, even more so. Users for whom English is a second language will enjoy the subtitling options and formats it supports, superior to Quicktime in every way. Plus you get all the online subtitle-searching features of VLC but in a more streamlined and easy-to-find format.
Fast and Versatile
Playing videos is easy and fun, the menu controls are precise and you can play back at different speeds, even in slow motion. Unlike Quicktime, which can take ages to buffer and play large videos, Elmedia was instant play. I suspect it compresses the files a little for smooth playback, or perhaps it doesn’t wait for the whole video to load into memory before it plays and streams it instead. Elmedia Player is fast.
There are some real-time manipulations you can apply while playing, too, and these are processed instantly. For example, with horizontal and vertical flipping of the image or even rotating it while playing, the playback doesn’t even slow down. Most impressive. The pros of upgrading to the paid version is that you get additional features, like downloading online videos, extracting MP3s from YouTube videos, broadcast to Chromecast, DLNA-enabled Smart TVs and Apple Airplay and various other playback enhancements.
The only features I’m missing, and this is not even really a con, is some form of file conversion as you had in Quicktime 7. But as this player plays all file types seamlessly in real time without conversion, you really have no pressing need for that feature.
Conclusion
Elmedia Player is available for free download, and many features are available in the trial version. But to unlock all the advanced features you have to pay, but it’s a very reasonable $19.95, so it won’t break the bank. Follow the link above to get your free copy and start your journey to a whole new world of controllable video on your Mac. As always, if you have any comments or questions about Elmedia Player, then please leave them below in the comments.
