People usually have their choice of media players. For me, it was Winamp for audio and VLC media player for video. Winamp is still my favorite audio player, but VLC isn't anymore. Recently, I downloaded GOM Player out of curiosity. 30 minutes later, it was my new default media player.
GOM Player, like VLC media player, is capable of playing almost any type of video files without installing any codec. Additionally, it can play FLV files which VLC cannot. The best thing about GOM Player is it's aesthetically designed interface and the clever incorporation of so many features into the player without making a mess out of the interface. I had always disliked VLC's crude menus. GOM Player is sleek.
GOM Player has a one click access to it's control panel. Video quality settings like brightness and contrast, audio settings like equalizers, playback speed and some more options are readily available through the control panel. You can also adjust font size, spacing and position of subtitles which is so cool.
The bulk of the settings in GOM Player is in the context menu. Right click on the player and a huge menu will pop up bringing you countless features. One feature that I liked is the Easy Browser under the Open menu. The Easy Browser makes browsing through your hard drive for media files easy. Just hover the mouse pointer over a drive and it will open automatically; no clicking is required. Folders open with a single click. It's actually easier to browse your files since it requires minimal mouse clicks.
The screen capture tool allows you to take screen shots of videos, and you can adjust the image format and quality of the screenshot. You can also schedule the player to take screenshots at definite intervals.
Then there is the Preference window which will allow you to fine tune your player even more. I tell you, there is nothing in GOM Player that you can't tweak. I wonder why I didn't try GOM Player earlier. It has so many features and yet it's so simple to use. GOM Player is skinnable too!
You should try kantaris (kantaris.org) or smplayer.
ReplyDeleteI have taken note of your suggestions.
ReplyDeleteWinamp + Gom is also my choice :D
ReplyDeleteThis weekend I've discovered The KMPlayer, another great media player (for audio and video)
GOM player is best player for audio files. Convert mp3 file with Format Factory software to Ogg Vorbis & listen with GOM player & feel the difference in sound quality
ReplyDeleteVLC is open source and can be used on non-microsoft operating systems. VLC also has better support for most video codecs (and does play FLV files contrary to your review).
ReplyDeleteI have tried GOM Player, but my mouse does not seem to work on the DVD menus. Any suggestions?
ReplyDeleteYou should really try KMplayer. its definitely more than worth trying :)
ReplyDelete@Rohan: Yes, KMPlayer is fantastic but I'm sticking with GOM. I should probably write about it too.
ReplyDelete@Chris: Never tried to access the DVD menu on GOM so I can't say. But why do you need the menu? Just load the required VOB file into the player or load all the VOB files on the DVD into the playlist.
@Rohan: Thanks for the tip on KMPlayer. That seems to work quite well.
ReplyDelete@Kaushik: Thanks for the advice on GOM. The problem with that approach is that one does not know where episodes are within the VOB files.
@Chris: OK, I see your problem. I checked it and the mouse indeed does not work on the menu, but there is a solution. Press D to open a small menu and from there you can select a few menu options. But I still couldn't access the Chapter menu which makes it useless.
ReplyDeleteMaybe I should give another look at KMPlayer.
VLC can play FLV files. Do some research.
ReplyDeleteI was using an earlier version of VLC. My bad :P
ReplyDeleteThen why not correct your article instead of leaving the part about VLC not playing FLV files in there??
ReplyDeleteMEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteActually, I ditched GOM for VLC.
ReplyDeleteOh no, you are all wrong. If you are lazy (a.k.a. don't want to configure MPC-HC) use KMPlayer. It has excellent encoding and plays all the formats out of there. It's everything that VLC should be.
ReplyDelete*laughs at all the people saying use kmplayer*
ReplyDeleteSeriously?
You might as well use GMplayer, or just plain Mplayer, seeing how KMplayer is a frontend for both the Xine and Mplayer media players.
Personally, I'm not a huge fan of GOM I find that it takes up to 10-15 seconds to open, even if it's a 10 mb video file. The main reason I use VLC is because I find it much quicker and crashes less than GOM or WMP.
ReplyDeleteVLC will allow you to adjust out of sync sound to match the video on downloaded files. Will GOM do that too?
ReplyDeleteI've downloaded it but all I got was a ".exe" file what is that? my mac does'nt seem to know what it's good for.
ReplyDeleteBut seriously. I've booted parallels just to check it out. Sleek design but an alternative to VLC???
Did you ever took a view at the advanced settings of VLC? GOM seems to miss over 100 features if you don't like the design load new skin. Do you want to look at the design of the media player or do you want to watch a movie?
DO:
there is open source software
there is good software
there is free software
Don't
there is proprietary software
there is bad software
there is expensive software
thats why I don't use Microsoft and why I use VLC
this guy obviously doesn't know what he's talking about.
ReplyDeleteOther people do that so we can watch it on our computers and pretend it is us. Dummy
ReplyDeleteall of you are crazy!
ReplyDeleteMedia Player Classic is by far the greatest! KM, GOM, VLC can't play high-end .mkv and other high end formats like MPC can!
GOM has everything that VLC has. I couldn't find any additional advantage of using VLC, other than yes, it's less prone to crashing. But that's always because the video file is faulty. Though, I agree it shouldn't have taken the player down. I play such videos on KMPlayer.
ReplyDeleteI don't like VLC's seek bar. It's erratic and difficult to smooth seek the video.
And GOM can play .mkv files and sync out-of-sync audios.
KMPlayer or zoom>>>>>all . both have everything + more than every other media player and are much easier to use and view subtitled (or not) and take screenshots with. KMPplayer i think is slightly better because more features for free, but is a bit more confusing. Either way, VLC is epic fial of a player in almost every way...it amazes me ppl still even bother with it
ReplyDeletekmplayer is the absolute best. the nly thing it can't play is iso.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a decent player. But for music I HIGHLY recommend Banshee its simply the best. It does not have a stable release for windows or mac (might be wrong on mac) but its linux version (which was the org) is amazing. And its open source
ReplyDeleteI use VLC media player I am by no means an expert but I do download a lot of stuff via various torrent sites. Yes VLC plays FLV files yes VLC isn't pretty ..but it works.
ReplyDeleteThe main thing I like with VLC is that you can alter the sound playing in relation to the pic (this means if a cam is out of sync i can rectify it) GOM may be able to do this but VLC isn't broke so I won't be fixing it. Peace to all!!!
Foobar2000 is waaay better than winamp. believe you, me.
ReplyDeleteOne thing VLC has that GOM doesn't; the ability to be installed without administrator rights. That's pretty much a deal breaker when I'm trying to install a player on my work computer.
ReplyDeleteLooks like it's VLC for me. :/
VLC has skins as well if you don't like what you see.
ReplyDeleteMPC-HC and Foobar2000.
ReplyDeleteLOL. Gom can do everything VLC can? You obviously havent dug into VLC. For instance, can you do live screencasts with GOM?
ReplyDeleteVLC has more features than god.
Maybe if you like GOM so much u could make a little donation.
ReplyDeletevlc player does play iso files, gom doe not. this is most important feature of vlc player that no others do.
ReplyDeleteI found GOM a few months ago and have since removed VLC from my laptop. It's a fantastic player. Save for the fact it can't play DVDs.
ReplyDeleteIm Currently using Songbird and VLC and haven't had a reason to use anything else yet.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered who would ever use closed sourced windows only media player (MPC is not closed sourced). Well finally I have an answer. I personally prefer players which are ported to more than one platform, so that I do not feel lost even if I have to boot something different. That said, SMplayer/VLC/even Totem(with Xine backend) does do job for me. Never heard about GOM player and after reading their web page I do not feel like using it anytime soon. If you want to talk about media support, when something is built on ffmpeg or mplayer(maybe xine) backend, you know it will play just anything. Mplayer lacks some decent UI, but hey, that's why we have SMplayer.
ReplyDeletethe person here who mentioned foobar2000 deserves a pat on the back
ReplyDeleteone of the best audio players out there
Maybe GOM Player is not so popular because it is closed source, but I found it when I was looking for a proper player for mkv files and it worked well. I'v also used Media Player Classic (old version and Home Cinema) and VLC in the meantime, but after playing around with the picture settings, I'll probalby use GOM again for the next time.
ReplyDeleteVLC has a lot of features, but the interface still looks too "geeky" and there still seem to be some slight problems with it.
Vlc also doesn't use much resources like Gom.
ReplyDeletei just use gomp for all video format and WMP for mkv file,never use other yet.
ReplyDeletegomp are sleek and seem HD with my normal huge monitor and i love the full screen ,which i would pop-up if we scroll to it and instancely close back when scroll out,it play FLV with is obviously good, although i still need to find more on how to tweek the quality of screenshot since all i get is 89kb instead 200kb
I've known about GOM for years and used it along with VLC back when I had XP. Now that I have Ubuntu 9.04 (best version) installed VLC is the best option that I know of.
ReplyDeleteI can't believe that, years later, nobody has commented on the single most idiotic thing anyone in this thread has said:
ReplyDelete"GOM player is best player for audio files. Convert mp3 file with Format Factory software to Ogg Vorbis & listen with GOM player & feel the difference in sound quality"
Converting from one lossy format to another lossy format is colloquially referred to as "fucking retarded". You are not improving the sound quality in any way. The conversion from lossless to mp3 sliced off some portion of the waveform, and the conversion from mp3 to ogg is just going to slice off more. If you want to see any improvement in sound quality, you need to convert from a lossless source.
sorry, im gona stick with VLC up here in the LBC.
ReplyDeleteYou can sync audio with GOM. I was thinking of using the hated VLC because you could sync the audio with it. Now I know how to to do it with GOM so I don't have to use that crappy VLC.
ReplyDeleteRight-click the player window and choose Audio and then 0.1 Seconds Faster if the audio is behind what is happening on screen, or 0.1 Seconds Slower if the audio is happening too quickly.
E.g. if dialogue is occurring before actors open their mouths, then it needs to be slowed down. If there is a delay before you hear what actors are saying, then it must be sped up. Keep adjusting until it syncs up.
use opensource VLC media player or use the
ReplyDeletegom player which pops up an add everytime you close it after watching a movie and there is no way to disable it.
I watch movies on pc bcoz i hate ads now i dont want a player which shoves ads after, before or in the middle of watching a movie
Best part of GOM is handy controls. With GOM multimedia is just so easily controlled through simple most keyboard strokes. The keyboard controls are really the deal.. they picked up too easy keys and eliminated combination keys.
ReplyDelete