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Video Playback

Overview

Because Microsoft and Apple have competing video solutions (Windows Media Player and QuickTime), neither operating system offers you the ability to play the other platform's proprietary video formats out-of-the-box. However, Microsoft and Apple both offer their players for the competing platform—Windows Media Player is a free download for OS X users, and QuickTime Player is a free download for Windows XP users. Mac users can also download the free Flip4Mac plugin, which will play Windows Media Video (.wmv) files within QuickTime Player, negating the need to use a separate player.

Both Windows Media Player and QuickTime Player support third-party plugins to play other video formats not supported out-of-the-box. When Windows Media Player attempts to play a video format it doesn't recognize, it will connect to the Internet and attempt to locate an appropriate plugin. If a plugin is found, it is downloaded and installed. This process is automatic and seamless. QuickTime will present a dialog asking the user to check for updated components.

Mac OS X

OS X ships with QuickTime 7 Basic for video playback.

QuickTime's interface is clean and well laid out. In addition, it supports "live scrubbing" of video. That means that as you drag the playhead left and right over the timeline ("scrubbing"), the video will keep updating itself to correspond with wherever your playhead is. Scrubbing quality is general excellent — you can even live scrub MPEG-4 streams with virtually the same quality as if the video was on your hard drive. Minimize a video, and it will continue playing live in your dock.

VCDs and SVCDs can be played directly in QuickTime by selecting their .dat file from the File > Open File... menu item. SVCDs require a separate MPEG-2 component, which costs $20.

Apple provides 100 free QuickTime Script Menu scripts, enabling workflows like SMIL creation, Export to DV stream, HTML Embed Tag Wizard, and much more.

Annoyingly, QuickTime Basic doesn't have a full screen command, making it one of very few free video players to lack this feature. The lack of a full screen feature is an artificial limitation; Apple simply disables it in the free player to create incentive for you to buy QuickTime Pro for $30 (which includes full screen amongst many other higher-end features). Fortunately, there are workarounds, and iTunes will play QuickTime movies full screen, although it doesn't support as many video formats as QuickTime does.

Worse still, QuickTime licences do not carry across major versions. For example, if you had purchased QuickTime 6 and then upgraded to 7, your license would be rendered invalid. You'll need to spend an additional $30 to upgrade to QuickTime 7 Pro.

Additionally, the player "reminds" you to upgrade to QuickTime Pro in multiple ways:

• The first time you launch QuickTime Player after installing it, an "Upgrade To Pro" message appears


• Annoying "Pro" icons are embedded next to each pro feature in the application's menus. Apple could have opted to remove these menu items from the free player instead of reminding you that they're not available:

QuickTime 7 Basic's File menu

Ironically, iTunes also supports video playback, presumably for music videos bought through the Music Store (and for video podcasts). While this means that you can create playlists of video (a feature QuickTime lacks), iTunes' implementation in general is sub-par:

• Control-F (the standard OS X shortcut key to switch into full screen mode) applies to iTunes' visualizer, not the currently playing video. Users will need to click the full screen button at the bottom left of the window instead, which only appears once a video is playing. Furthermore, it is not clear how to exit full screen mode (a single click)


• Many video controls (half size, set poster frame, etc.) are available only through contextual menus on the video itself and not through iTunes' menu bar, breaking the rules of Apple's own Human Interface Guidelines


• The controls for switching between list and "icon" view when viewing your video library are embedded in iTunes' search bar; this means that this UI element is always visible when viewing your video library. This is inconsisent with iTunes' behavior elsewhere, where by default the search bar only appears to help refine an initiated search

Finally, because iTunes is designed primarily to be an audio player, it does not support many video formats that QuickTime can handle easily. For example, a standard .avi file taken with a digital camera will play without a hitch in QuickTime, but an attempt to drag it into iTunes' library will fail. In addition, even if iTunes does support the video you are dragging, you must drop it onto the Library item in the source list — it won't work if you try to drop it on Videos (which may make you think the video file isn't supported). These limitations, coupled with the ones listed above, make iTunes a fairly impractical video solution.

Windows XP

XP ships with Windows Media Player for watching videos (playing audio is covered in another section). In addition to the numerous video formats WMP supports out-of-the-box, MPEG-2 support (and therefore, VCD and SVCD support) is included free. Full screen video playback is also included for free.

WMP's mini mode conveniently supports video playback in addition to audio playback. Click the double-headed arrow in the upper-right hand corner of WMP's mini-mode, and the currently playing video will pop up in a small window attached to the taskbar. If you hover over the bottom of the video, a playhead will appear to allow for scrubbing.

Video playback in WMP's mini mode

Windows Media Player doesn't support live scrubbing. To find a specific section of video, you need to drag the playhead and release it in order for the screen to update (Mplayer2, however, has limited live scrubbing support. Invoke it by typing "mplayer2" in the Run dialog).

Because WMP is a full-featured media player, its audio playlist capabilities also extend to video, so you can create playlists of video files. In addition, it includes built-in controls to adjust hue, saturation, brightness, and contrast. Its full screen mode is versatile — move your cursor to the bottom of the screen while the video is playing, and playback controls will appear.

OS X and Windows XP support the following video formats out-of-the-box:

Conclusion

While WMP lacks live scrubbing and support for MPEG-4, it makes up for it with its numerous other abilities, such as free MPEG-2 and full screen playback, video mini mode, playlist support, and video display controls. QuickTime 7 Basic lacks all of these features.

• Live scrubbing
• Bass/Treble/Pan control
• Video updates live when minimized
• No free full screen support (without resorting to workarounds)
• No "true" mini mode (minimize to dock instead)
• QuickTime licenses (to enable full screen support) do not carry across major versions
• No free MPEG-2 support (therefore, no free VCD and SVCD support)
• No playlist support (unless you use iTunes, a poor solution)
• Tint, brightness, color, and contrast controls are only available on Core Image capable hardware
• Annoying "Upgrade to Pro" message appears after first run; "Pro" icons litter QuickTime Basic's menus

• Free full screen playback
• Free MPEG-2 support for VCDs and SVCDs
• Video mini mode
• Hue/saturation/brightness/contrast controls on all hardware
• Built-in equalizer
• TruBass SRS Wow sound
• Video playlists
• No MPEG-4 support
• No live scrubbing

Mac OS X: 4
Windows XP: 9

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