I’ve received some email lately concerning media players for the Mac. The more you surf the Web, the more you run into music, video, or animation content that requires a player or plug-in other than Apple’s QuickTime. Here’s a run-down of the popular players and plug-ins.

QuickTime. More than just a movie player, QuickTime is what’s referred to as a “media layer”. Everything your Mac does with video and audio originates from within QuickTime. Video editing applications like iMovie and Final Cut use the video and audio components. iTunes and Garageband use the audio component. Because it pervades the entire operating system, it can be incorporated into many diverse applications with ease. The QuickTime player can play movies and audio in many formats, as well as animated GIFs and Flash animations. By upgrading to QuickTime Pro ($29.95), you can do simple movie and audio editing, add visual effects, play full-screen video, easily create slideshows with soundtracks, save movies from the web, and import/export media from more than a dozen video, audio and image formats. Plus, the QuickTime Player can do one thing neither Windows Media or RealOne Player can do – you can “scrub” through a video or audio selection, moving forward and back in real time.

Windows Media Player (WMP). Plays Windows Media Audio and Video, either in a standalone player or through a plug-in that works in Safari, Internet Explorer, or Netscape. Available as a free download from http://www.microsoft.com/mac/. The more you use Windows Media Player, the more you’ll appreciate how good QuickTime really is. You cannot edit or combine WMP files, as you can with QuickTime. WMP for the Mac can only play Windows Media file formats (asf, .asx, .wax, .wm, .wma, .wmd, .wmp, .wmv, .wmx, .wvx).

RealOne Player. Available as a free download from www.real.com. One caution – use the small, grey, “Free RealOne Player” link in the upper right corner of the web page. Any other link will try to get you to buy the $9.95 RealOne SuperPass. RealOne Player supports .au audio files, .GIF and .PNG image files, .WAV, .MP3 and .au audio files, .SWF Flash files, and all the .ram, .ra, and .rm RealAudio formats. The RealOne plug-in is not compatible with Safari, but is supported in Netscape and Internet Explorer. RealOne Player offers no editing capabilities.

Should you download these players? You bet. And, unlike Windows users, you needn’t worry about them taking over your computer.

© 2004 Peter F. Zimowski