PotPlayer 1.5.41065 Beta

Winner Best software in 2014 - Media Players.

Overview

Daum, a Korean company, offers a comprehensive, versatile and skinnable media player PotPlayer. This free, yet exhaustive player features in-depth opportunities very few free media players can offer. While technically advanced users will find the features and tweaking suitable for ultimate control and exploration, novice users will be able to use this player as a very convenient and lightweight playback application for music and video.

Even though media players’ niche is overcrowded nowadays, Daum PotPlayer makes its way satisfying requests of all users strata.

Installation

Both technically savvy and beginning users will find the convenient installation process. Depending on your preferences, Daum PotPlayer offers a complete or custom installation when a user gets to choose which functions he would like to configure.

While setup is in the progress, novice users can simply follow the wizard prompts to install the app. There is no bundled software here. The advanced users can choose file associations, specify the sound system and the like settings.

Interface

The interface in PotPlayer is intuitive, yet offers ground for exploration of some of the non-obvious features and button behavior. There is only one thing that can confuse at the beginning – PotPlayer lives in the notification area, which means when you minimize it you do not find it in the taskbar. Having to go to the notifications area each time you need to pause and restart playback can be annoying, but considering this is probably the only flaw in a versatile and powerful player, we can live with that.

You can skin the app to your preferences; you can even skin the app to change its looks according to different file types; hide the window border; make the window transparent.

The buttons behave differently when left- and right-clicking them. Even though the interface seems simple and transparent at first glance, the more you use it, the more features you discover. Nonetheless, all buttons are perfectly clean cut and integrated where they belong. Buttons can be hidden or displayed depending on your needs. Overall GUI impression is that of a powerful, versatile and simple instrument.

Features

Exhaustive features leave very few advanced requests unanswered. PotPlayer supports a wide range of audio and video file formats. These include but are not limited to WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG, M4A, AAC, RA, FLAC and MOD; AVI, WMV, ASF, MPEG, M2V, MTS, DPG, WebM, AMV or DivX; and several playlist formats M3U, ASX, PLS, WVX or CUE.

PotPlayer offers users the features to modify video speed, audio volume, adjust contrast, brightness, skins, select audio tracks for video, select subtitles and manage them.

Pros

PotPlayer is an excellent media manager that handles a large number of file types. It gives detailed information about playback and file; it supports subtitles and a subtitle management; it offers screen capture.

While image quality depends on your hardware specifications, PotPlayer plays both HD mov files and camrip in avi. File information can be displayed in detail with CPU usage. The subtitle support of .ass and .srt files is accompanied by subtitles On/Off functions if the subtitles are l;located in the same folder with the video files. Both advanced and novice users will be able to get the most of this player with and without customization.

PotPlayer is also excellent at audio files playback. There is the native visualization effect, but more are available from online downloads, if you are interested in those. The player displays extensive information on audio files as well: bitrate, file type, the number of channels. Equalizer has audio presets, too.

There are a number of keyboard shortcuts that users can take advantage of, especially for some frequent manipulations with the playback. This helps avoid opening menus and windows for frequent actions. You can also assign functions to the mouse and each button on it.

Cons

So far, we could only complain about PotPlayer minimizing to the notifications area. Other than that, we could not identify any cons.

Alternatives

Winner Best software in 2014 - Media Players.