What is best media player for what I want to do ?

[ozstar]

Hi,

I need a player for mp3, wav, avi, mp4 etc which has a large control panel.. play, stop etc.

Seems like most are small controls especially on my SP3 with it high res.

Any ideas please maybe how to make the controls larger.

It is for playing back audio tracks to a mixer and PA with video out to a projector.

Need the controls big so no hitting wrong button

Thanks

oz

 

[benjitek]

I'd recommend JRiver Media Center or ZoomPlayer, both are skinnable. They both have 'skin' libraries which you can browse and see if either has the size buttons you're looking for. I'd guess ZoomPlayer might be more in line with what you're looking for. Both have been around for quite a while and are well supported by the developers.

 

[PotatoHole]

I've used Daum Potplayer. Smaller and better than VLC Player and seems to play everything including .MKV files. The setting are a bit more complex and I had to go in there to assign double click as 'make full screen/window' toggle. Over all the sound and image quality seemed better than VLC.

 

[benjitek]

I've used Daum Potplayer... Over all the sound and image quality seemed better than VLC.

How so...? I thought it was just a matter of having the proper codecs installed, which the player install does if not included with the native OS codecs. Does Daum use some special codecs that the others don't? Have the open-source codecs changed, and Daum is the only one that has them? If so, which ones?

 

[PotatoHole]

How so...? I thought it was just a matter of having the proper codecs installed, which the player install does if not included with the native OS codecs. Does Daum use some special codecs that the others don't? Have the open-source codecs changed, and Daum is the only one that has them? If so, which ones?

-edit- Surface pro came up with an error after horrifically slow lag from keyboard to screen and letters missing so last partial message was garbage. Seems to be an Edge fault with this website, chrome is working fine-

Ok, so I've been using VLC on my several desktops over the last few years as well as my Note 4. But recently watching .mkv files on my PC on either my monitor (1080p, also tried 1440p) and on my 1080p TV the quality has been a bit off, it looked like every so often the image would go slightly grainy and looked a little bit blurry. Also the sound seemed to be missing the center channel and sometimes the rear right would swap with the front right and just weird random stuff like that.

I of course completely removed VLC and profiles etc, downloaded the latest version (twice) but the issues persisted. I got sick of trying to change the settings and looked for an alternative. Got Pot player, it's a small program that loads film and mp3 files very quickly and displays them properly with no distortion or weirdness, plus the sound was spot on without me even having to look at the settings. The only thing I had to go into the setting for was to change the double left mouse click so that it either made it full screen or windowed.

It's a shame because I always liked VLC player an I will keep an eye out for new releases of VLC to try and see if the issues are fixed.

Desktop is an i7 4790k, 16gb ram, 980Ti, Windows 10 all up to date along with drivers for everything up to date as of last week.

 

[benjitek]

I don't know why...

Oh, ok -- so it's your opinion, thought you were presenting it as something factual...

 

[PotatoHole]

Oh, ok -- so it's your opinion, thought you were presenting it as something factual...

sorry, had couple of problems replying (see edit to my last post). It's just my experience. I wish I knew what was causing the issues on VLC, I think the problems started when I built my new PC, and used windows 10 for the 1st time, so could be something to do with graphics card/drivers, windows 10, codecs, vlc player, some other issue I don;t know about.

 

[benjitek]

...problems started when I built my new PC, and used windows 10 for the 1st time...

It really depends on the needs of the user. JRiver Media Center, ZoomPlayer, and Daum were all designed with a mouse in mind. ZoomPlayer supposedly has a touch-mode -- when I tried it most of the features I used during playback weren't available, seemed half-baked.

The original poster was looking for a media player with larger controls for use on a touch capable screen (SP3). VLC has separate touch and desktop versions, it also has OS X, iOS, AppleTV, Android, and Windows Phone versions. The native Windows-10 audio and video players are also designed for touch interaction. A Surface Book or Surface Pro user might be looking for something totally different than someone who built their own PC...

Myself, I'm all settled in with Plex -- if I need the check out a video outside of my Plex library, anything will do. Anything I'm going to watch in full is via Plex, a streaming service app like Netflix, or a browser.

 

[Jason Cliche]

I throw my recommendation to ZoomPlayer. It was designed for mouse but even that has a decent touch functionality. THere is a tablet skin you can download too. You may need to customize it to make it more touch friendly but not too much. I've used ZoomPlayer since I had my first Toshiba Windows tablet about 10 years ago.

 

[Eldergeek]

Using JRMC version 21. Has a very good touch interface on my SP3, as well as as a useful 10 foot display mode for the Visio M65 in the front room, and has one of the best databases for adding audio and video. Been using since version 8, and well worth the price of admission. Upgrades can usually be purchased for as little as 18.95. I can also access my music library on my android phone as well. Maybe a bit too much versatility, depending on your usage plans.