EasyData Media Player/Converter

On the MG front page a few days back, I saw the app Easy-Data Media Player which is actually a full player/converter. Well, saying it's a media player is a bit of a stretch, and here's why: every time I tried to play any video files, a 2nd window would open behind the 'main' window making viewing of the video almost impossible. The 'main' window does not minimize and it stays on top of EVERYTHING! So, the player sucks (at least for video, I didn't try it with audio). The fact that the window stays on top of everything and that it doesn't have a minimize button is really lame. If you try to drag-n-drop a file in to the window, the program crashes with a "memory cannot be read" error. If you try to do anything else while this program is running, you have to drag it all the way to the side or bottom of the screen, otherwise it stays on top of whatever you're trying to do: I tried surfing the web while converting a video and my browser opened behind the Easy Data main window. However, the media converter is OK. It's not super fast, but it's not super slow either, it's free, and it's one of the few that I can think of that has a "Pause" button to temporarily stop converting if you need to free up resources for a little while. I converted a 1gb MKV video to a 740mb Xvid AVI file in about 35-40min on a single core AMD64 3800 with 1gb RAM, so it's not bad. However, if you're not knowledgeable in the video converting arena, you may have some problems: the default values used are a bit strange (200k as the default video bit rate is WAY too low and the end result would be unviewable; 64k for the default audio bit rate is about half of what it should be; and no 48000hz sample rate for the audio is weird, but they do have 44100 which is OK). But other than that, the video converter is OK, but the player is basically not even useable. I attached a partial screen shot to illustrate what I was talking about above about how the active video window is permanently stuck underneath the 'main' window. It's weird 'cuz the main window has the control buttons for pause, play, etc, but the video is stuck behind that window so it doesn't matter..... weird. :confused So I'd give the player 1 star because it does play the video, but only one star because the video cannot be seen in it's entirety without moving the main window out of the way, which, in turn, causes the buttons to be moved out of the way, and therefore they can't be used. The video converter is OK, and I'll give it 4 stars; it's OK for a free product but I would not recommend it to someone who isn't familiar with converting video files. So, this averages out to 2.5 stars, which we'll round up 3 stars. Maybe a future version will fix some of the problems (like the memory errors that crash program after converting a video file).

 

Hi, i am the author of the player. Thanks for your post. Without them it would be much harder to correct bugs.
Anyway, Just have to explain e few things regarding your post.
The window you get is an Active Movie window. The reason that you get it is simply my own stupidity. When installing the application there was a broken link to a important redistributable file and without this file the Active Movie window shows up on some computers. This is now fixed.
The window stayontop issue is now selectable from a new preset menu. Not a prefered sollution, but until i find something better......
This is the first release. It will probably have lots of bugs, but i prommise i will get it all done. The settings in the different tools is also in an unfinished state.
The updated version is now downloadable from MG.
Would be happy for a notice on how it works now.

 

Updated link on front page: http://www.majorgeeks.com/Easy-Data_Mediaplayer_d6684.html

I'll download it and give a run-through in the next day or two.... I do like the converter end of the program, and I see myself using it again. A 'minimize' button on the main (or first) window would be greatly appreciated, and if there's a way to make the main window to not be on top of everything all the time, that would be nice too. Also, does the program support drag-n-drop? Earlier today I tried to drag-n-drop a file in to the main window and the program crashed to "memory cannot be read" error. Having a drag-n-drop interface would be very cool; just drop the file, then watch it, or convert it, or drop a few files for a playlist or batch convert or whatever....

Thanks for input and QUICK response! I'll post in this thread what I find out with the new release. Keep up the good work!

 

Thanks again, and i will try to get most of the corrections done within next week. The drag and drop is what i am looking at now. If i drop a file onto the program icon (on desktop or explorer) it works just fine, but i have the same error as you when dropping it onto the main form. Think i have a fix though.
Will post furter uptades here.

 

I've just installed the latest version of EDM, and so far so good. It is no longer on top of everything at all times which is nice. However, there are a few changes that I think many users of video converters would like to see:
-> Frames Per Second: using 30 as an option instead of 29.97 is not a good idea. With long video clips, this can end up causing audio sync problems since due to the difference of .03 frames per second. It doesn't sound like much, but that's a full frame difference for every thirty-three frames, and many full length videos have hundreds-of-thousands of frames, which would result in huge audio sync issue by the end of the video. The same applies to using 24fps instead of 23.97. However, the "Auto-Original" setting will be used 99% of the time, but there are rare occasions where using a frame different from the original video will be required.
-> Video/Frame Size (or Resolution): having many preset options is nice, but it would be great to also be able to set a custom resolution instead of being forced to use one of the preset options. Most people will be using "Auto-Original" most of the time, but there are times when a custom resolution is preferred.

And thanks for your time and effort in bringing EDM to us for free!!! I think that as it 'matures', it can truly become a great all-in-one media utility.

(BTW - Just this morning I installed EDM on my home PC running Win7 and it looks visually excellent!! Before now, I had only run EDM on PCs running WinXP, but on Win7, the GUI is very, VERY nice!!! Good job!!!!)

 

I just finished converting a 520mb MPG video to XVID AVI; it took about 12min and the quality is excellent! The AVI file is also quite a bit smaller at only 335mb!! :-D

 

Yeah.... I like EDM. the more I use it, the more I like it. I had a group of 5 videos in MPG format. I hate MPG format. Why? No reason. I just don't like MPG. In used EDM to convert this group of 5 MPG videos to XVID AVI files. The whole process took about 35min, and the total size went from about 1.4gb to about 685mb; a bit less than half the original size! The quality is the same (XVID has higher compression than MPG so you can get the same/better quality in a much smaller file). I can now put these 5 videos on a single CDR and play it in my home DVD player (it has DivX/XviD support) and I'm stoked!

If the resolution and frame rate changes can be addressed (the stuff I mentioned above), I'll likely use EDM on a very regular basis....