Elmedia Player Editor's Review

Play any video on your Mac with this cool media player

Many people have asked me over the last 12 years, "Chris, why did you switch to a Mac as your daily driver when you're a Windows expert?" The answer, is really very simple – multimedia. The Mac is so much better at handling, playing, organizing, etc. multimedia with native tools than a Windows machine. Besides, I use an iPhone and an iPad on a daily basis. Yeah... plus one or two others. This is one of the reasons why apps like Elmedia Player are really important to me. This app gives me multimedia options I don't get just anywhere else.

Elmedia is a free media player for Mac that supports various audio & video formats, including, but not limited to, FLV, SWF, MP4, AVI, MOV, MP4, DAT, AAC and MP3. The app features a built-in web browser that allows you to watch online videos directly from the app, while Open URL enables you to do it without any of the noisy ads that often are found with the videos you want to watch.

The app has a 10-band Equalizer to shape your audio tone, a video tuner to help improve video playback quality, the ability to change a video's aspect ratio so that it appropriately fits your monitor of choice, and the ability to optimize your video viewing by adjusting playback speeds. Elmedia can play video in full screen mode or pin player window on top of other running apps so you do not miss a moment of a movie. The player has its own volume control, the ability to allow you to edit subtitles, and more.

App Pro's: Supports all the standard audio and video formats and codecs, free

App Con's: Better features lie within the Pro edition

Conclusion: Elmedia Player is a strong third party media player that offers a number of different options to Mac users who don't want to use either iTunes or QuickTime to play media. Its small, fast and easy to use, and best of all – free. Its Open URL option enables accessing YouTube videos directly from the app without the need to first bring up a browser. If you know the URL, you're all set.

Videos can be viewed in full screen mode and allow you to both show and hide the control panel; and will deactivate your screensaver during full screen playback. If you need to work while you watch, you can also make the video player window float over everything else. Elmedia Player also has specific SWF settings that allow you to set playback quality as well as activating local Flash security to keep your Mac safe in case you're not exactly certain if the file contains malware or not.