Media Player Classic

Platforms: All Windows Versions
Media Player Classic is not any normal Media Player bundled with the Windows but an Open Source Product for sure.
Features:
MPC comes with a stand alone executable. The interface unlike most other players is much simple. MPC’s menus are modular, so unwanted components can be hidden. The full screen mode can be configured to include or exclude aids like the control bar and seek bar. You can easily change different properties of the video such as contrast, brightness, colour saturation, etc., provided the video codec allows it. Playback rate can be altered (fast forward or rewind) and audio is supported upto 2x speed.

Playing a video source (file or disk) is easy. Just go to File > Quick Open and browse for the video file. If it is a DVD or VCD that you intend to play, choose File > Open DVD/VCD. The control bar allows you to increase or decrease the play rate. To capture images of the movie, use the File > Save Image option. The image will only be saved in the resolution of the movie and not the window. The File > Save Thumbnail option will give you a single file containing many screen grabs the size and lay out of which can be configured. To customize the interface, play around in the View menu. Enable or disable toolbars according to your choice. You can also use the preset styles under View > Presets. If the video appears too dim, increase its brightness using Play > Filters > MPEG 1 (or corresponding Video Codec) Video Renderer option. You can also increase contrast, colour and hue similarly.

Capturing Video

First select the device, by the File > Open Device option. Next use the View > Capture menu (it will remain greyed till the device is selected) to choose the location and the name of the resulting video file. You can also set the compression options here. When all is set then just click on “Record” and then stop it when you are done.

Streaming Video

MPC allows you to create a streaming video site, since it bundles an HTTP server.
Enable the Web interface under View > Options > Web interface. Here enable the “listen to port” option and add a port number. If you want to prevent others from seeing the results let the “Allow Access from Local host only” option remain enabled. This will only accept requests from the PC you are on. Once you are satisfied with the results you can disable this option, so that others from the network can also watch it.

Now you can play a video or view your webcam in MPC and any person can watch it by connecting on to

http://yourip:<portno>

to watch it.

Converting to DSM (Direct Show Media) Format

You can convert any file that MPC can play into DSM format. For this access the File > Utils menu. Right-click on the DSM converter window and add the file you want to convert. Then click on save as to provide a location and name to the converted file. To start encoding, click on start.

Advantages: An excellent video player which can play anything as long as the relevant codec is installed. Being able to hear audio while altering the movie play rate is also a nice thing. Having add-ons like built in capturing capability and HTTP server set it apart from other free media players.

Disadvantages: In the attempt to reduce the size consumption MPC did away with a very important thing- The help file. Though still for routine use the intuitive interface is easy to handle. If in need the user manual can easily be downloaded from their home page.

Even with all that its still a must have and it automatically gets installed while installing the K-Lite Mega Codec Pack.

Open Video

Nothing consumes as much space on you hard disk as videos. While there are many free proprietary tools available for viewing videos, there are hardly any free proprietary video converters and editors. The most capable of these tools are from the Open Source domain.

Before I start with the review all those players, editors etc. I suggest you guys to install all the codecs from any of the codec packs like K-Lite Mega codec pack etc.

dyne:bolic

This is actually an entire Linux distro that’s targeted at the multimedia enthusiast. You will soon see why this distro has a mention of its own.

“ dyne:bolic is shaped on the needs of media activists, artists and creatives as a practical tool for multimedia production: you can manipulate and broadcast both sound and video with tools to record, edit, encode and stream, having automatically recognized most device and peripherals: audio, video, TV, network cards, FireWire, USB and more; all using only free software!”

Basically, it’s a Live CD of a distro that bundles in a lot of open source multimedia software. The reason for not mentioning any Linux based audio software thus far is solely because of dyne:bolic.

The good news for those of you who did not want to switch operating systems, just to use the “Linux Only” open source audio packages that are freely available, is that you no longer need to do so. All you have to do is to download the ISO for this distro, burn it to a CD, and then get started using you favourite open source audio (video, image and 3D as well) software.

So here’s a look on all the audio softwares bundled with the distro (as published on their site).

PLAY AUDIO

Xmms: An audio player with a minimal and intuitive playlist manager that can play
Internet streams and local files and can be skinned or customised with plugins.

Amarok: A fully featured personal jukebox that can handle your audio collection,
automatically download labels and lyrics, search your collections by keywords,
remember your preferences, automatically create favourite playlists, and more.

Timidity: A midi synthesizer that uses GUS patches to render your MIDI files into audio
files, as well as make you listen to MIDI partitures.

PERFORM

Hydrogen: A drum-machine that lets you load sample kits of instruments and compose a
partiture for them to play on a specific rhythm. You can download more drum kits for it
from http://www.hydrogen-music.org/

Jamin: The Jack audio mastering interface can perform professional audio mastering of
any stereo input stream, equalizing signals with an intuitive and advanced interface to
shape all the frequencies in real-time.

Jack Rack: A powerful effect rack that can apply chains of audio plugins (LADSPA) on the sound currently being played by other programs. Using Jack, you can interface it with all other performance tools and add one of the more that 200 effects available in dyne:bolic.

Free Wheeling: A funky application that lets you record and play multiple samples in real-time, so that they loop, and can be overlayed one after the other. You can manipulate, sum and create recorded sounds, but make sure you read the manual before you start using it, because it’s all controlled via keyboard (or midi).

EDITING

Ardour: The fully-featured multi-track studio that offers the most advanced interface for you music recording studio. Combined with other applications (such as Jack), it can resolve all your needs for audio mastering and music production.

Audacity: Read my earlier posts for any knowledge about audacity.

Rezound: A sample editor that lets you manipulate (with precision) your music samples, record, loop and apply effects using an intuitive and complete interface.

Time Machine: A simple tool for recording audio, requiring Jack as a sound engine. It is, quite simply, a big red button: press it, and it starts recording from 10 seconds ago! This is so that you can record what you find interesting in an audio input, just by listening, without needing to rewind to start recording again.

STREAM

MuSE: A software that lets you stream audio on the Internet over various servers (Icecast, Darwin, and SHOUTcast) in MP3 or OGG format, so that listeners will be able to listen to you voice and music using the most commonly available sound player around.
Visit http://muse.dyne.org/ , or http://flossmanuals.org/muse for a lot more documentation on how to use the cool software.



Here’s a list of other bundeled apps:

- MP4Live lets you stream mpeg4 audio and video on a Darwin server.
- HasciiCam, to have a cool (h)ascii webcam, also on low bandwidth.
- TermionatorX, GDam, SoundTracker and PD, to perform with live audio.
- Kino, Cinelerra and LiVES, to edit video and publish clips.
- GIMP, the GNU image manipulation program.
- Blender, a powerful 3D modeling and rendering tools.
- ABiWord and Ted, to read, edit, and save any kind of word file.
- GCombust, to easily burn data on CDs.

And much more, including email clients, games, html editors, etc….Can’t enlist every feature or bundled app. as it’s, you know an entire Linux Distro/OS.