Starbuck's FreePlayer 1.0 for Windows is released (1.0.0.0)

[Starbuck2010]

FreePlayer 1.0 Starbuck's FreePlayer a simple and complete audio/video player based on the powerful MPlayer project (as well as MPlayer2). FreePlayer is gratis (free of charge) and its code is open-source. FreePlayer runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X platforms:

• play audio and video files (Xvid/DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, MPEG-2, FLV, MP4,
• WMV, AC-3, AAC, DTS, MP3...),
• play DVD and Bluray discs, ISOs and folders,
• play files from the network, using the HTTP, FTP, MMS or RTSP/RTP protocol,
• play external subtitle files,
• browse the internet to play audio and video media (Youtube, Dailymotion,
• Music Addict, CBS News, Fox News, Lego City ...),
• save network medias to local disk.

Windows installer: freeplayer-1.0.0.0-win32.exe
Source code: freeplayer-1.0.0.0-src.tgz

FreePlayer source code should make a difference but I've also integrated a multimedia web browser to easily navigate, found, play and eventually download video and audio streams from the network.

FreePlayer sources compile successfully with Visual Studio 2010 Professional and Qt 4.8.4 libraries. This very first public release for Windows is fully functional and has passed testing showing strong stability. I strongly recommend to download it and compare with your usual media player, and to post feedback on this forum.

You might ask "why another media player?":

• the very first reason is that I want to have a bunch of powerful multimedia C++ libraries compiling on Windows/Mac/Linux which I can use for all my software projects, starting with DVDx 4
• second reason, almost all my projects needs a video player widget, so a media player is the best start for my C++ library project
• third, DVDx 4 really needs a good video player widget, so I'll soon start working on DVDx 4.1, using my new Starbuck's multimedia C++ libraries
• fourth, I tried but eliminated Phonon libraries because I'd have to write a lot of wrappers and their technical directions won't suit well mine
• fifth, sory to say that but MPlayer doesn't benefit from a very good Windows/Mac/Linux GUI while MPlayer is my preferred choice as a video backend
• ..., using libvlc would require a lot of wrappers too, however, FreePlayer should be able to use alternative backends (libvlc/phonon/ffplay) with a reasonable coding effort
• to make the difference with other GUIs, I've develop a powerful hyper-console concept, so GUI developers and MPlayer/MPlayer2 developers may like FreePlayer very much

The multi-platform framework i use is Qt, and to permit a large adoption of my libraries I decided to release them under LPGL 2.1, eventually GPL v3. Therefore open-source projects can rely on Starbucks library as well as commercial proprietary software.

No, I've to go working on FreePlayer with Mac OS X compilation and packaging....

Merry Christmas to all!

Starbuck
http://www.labdv.com/dvdx/
http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer/

[Bjs]

Might consider changing it's name ... copyright issues from similarity.

But nice work.

[petesimon]

how is it better than SMPlayer?
http://smplayer.sf.net

[Starbuck2010]

I guess MPlayer process control is better, video web browser with media detection and stream download. As well as log (more precise event control so support and improvement).

Maybe more responsive interface.

This is just my opinion so far and I will be pleased to discuss it, feel free to argue...

[jman98]

Might consider changing it's name ... copyright issues from similarity.

I agree. NOBODY is going to take this seriously if you put Starbuck in the name. Not to mention that you've potentially got TWO sources of legal problems for using that name (Battlestar Galactica and Starbucks Coffee).

[petesimon]

The stock download of SMplayer for Windows, including Mplayer SVN Sherpya or Redxii builds for Windows does NOT support Unicode / UTF8 characters such as Chinese. Does your Starbuck player for Windows support Unicode/UTF8? I normally use MPC-HC for Windows.

*EDIT* Also had trouble with Unicode (Chinese) characters in FILE names.

[Starbuck2010]

FreePlayer 1.0.0.0 is bundled with MPlayer and MPlayer2, I guess MPlayer2 supports Unicode / UTF8 characters such as Chinese.

So I suggest you give a try and you post your feedback.

You can choose to set FreePlayer to run only MPlayer2 as backend, see menu Options... MPlayer2 selection...

[Starbuck2010]

MPlayer/MPlayer2 selection screenshot

[petesimon]

What build of Mplayer2 is bundled with your Freeplayer? I got a copy of Mplayer2 from http://mplayer2.srsfckn.biz site. I found with some builds of Mplayer2 such as "d0305da", at least one (sometimes two) options are needed when displaying unicode or utf8 subtitles, such as those with special symbols like ♫ ♪ or the occasional Asian characters thrown in an mostly English language movie. I use the following together.

--subfont-encoding=unicode --utf8

I saw mplayer1.1 released. How/where can I get a working binary for Windows?
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.announce/66

Here are good tips about those options (based on mplayer1)
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2002-May/014645.html
http://marc.info/?l=mplayer-users&m=119480472726616

[Starbuck2010]

Chinese, unicode or utf8 subtitle display isn't trivial on Windows and so far I can't make it working.

I'm deeply in the Mac port but I will work on Chinese, unicode and utf8 subtitles as sson as I can release Mac OS X version.

BTW, I've published FreePlayer PROS/CONS pages to help user adoption:
PROS: http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer/features/pros.php
CONS: http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer/features/cons.php

Feedback will be appreciated...

[petesimon]

Okay, I see... Well, do you have a site for issue/bug tracking? I found your labdv forum http://www.labdv.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4 but I was looking for a site like googlecode, sourceforge or github.

[Starbuck2010]

Project is hosted by SourceForge, I've enabled the tickets tool:
http://sourceforge.net/p/starbucksfp/tickets/

And updated the developer page:
http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer/dev/

[Starbuck2010]

Displaying unicode or utf8 subtitles as well as non-Western code-pages (which are most commonly downloaded): Arabic, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Japanese, Korean, Persan (Farsi), Russian (Cyrillic), Thai, Vietnamese, etc, are now supported by FreePlayer 1.0.1.0 release for Windows and Mac OS X.

http://www.labdv.com/freeplayer/download/

Enjoy!
Starbuck
follow me on twitter @StarbuckLabs

[petesimon]

Looks great so far! Are you planning support for "mpv" player http://mpv.io backend in case the mplayer and/or mplayer2 code becomes too funky ?

Again about Mplayer 1.1.x - I found the source code but no binary of that version for Windows. What do you think?
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/MPlayer-1.1.1.tar.xz

I still and have been using some form of MPC or MPC-HC (media player classic) in Windows for years because of good H/W acceleration of MPEG2, WMV and x264-AVC videos.

[Starbuck2010]

I guess MPlayer 1.1.1 binaries are available from subjunk (SB): http://www.spirton.com/mplayer-mencoder-subjunk-build/

See http://spirton.com/svn/MPlayer-SB/Changelog

MPlayer2 is supported for its LUA binary support, no advantage in MPlayer2 sources so I may give up when LUA support in MPlayer binaries will become available.

MPV, I'm still guessing... Could you tell me if it has good support for LUA? for Bluray titles?