14 DAY TRIAL // The native media support on Mac OS X is limited to QuickTime’s capabilities, so it’s no wonder that using media players that integrate 3rd-party libraries and codecs is a common practice. MPlayerX takes advantage of two popular open source projects, FFmpeg and MPlayer, in order to help you play almost any type of media file on your Mac.
The difference between MPlayerX and any other media player that it is built around the FFmpeg and MPlayer projects is represented by the ease of use with which the end user can perform almost any task. What’s more, the minimalist design ensures an efficient manipulation of your desktop space.
The most obvious drawback is the fact that MPlayerX does not come with playlist support: it can identify successive episodes if placed in the same folder, but you need to use a naming and numbering pattern for the media files. On the other hand, the importing process is reduced to a simple drag and drop on top of the MPlayerX Dock icon.
To make the most out of the space available on your Mac’s desktop, the entire MPlayerX window is used to display the video content. To control the playback, you can use hotkeys, trackpad gestures, your Apple remote, or the control bar that becomes visible on mouse hovering.
MPlayerX integrates most capabilities one would expect from a media player: you can change the video aspect ratio, mirror or flip the image, increase or decrease the playback speed, adjust the volume, add subtitles and modify their delay. In addition, MPlayerX comes with a Video Tuner and a Sound Equalizer which will allow you to fine-tune the output until you are satisfied with the rendering quality.
Keep in mind that, if your are running MPlayerX on OS X Yosemite, you might have to use a 3rd-party app to pair the Apple remote with your computer, such as Candelair, RemoteBuddy, or Sofa Control. Once connected, the Apple remote will allow you to seamlessly control the MPlayerX app.
Interesting enough, if you are using the Go Back / Forward buttons in the MPlayerX controller panel, the app will actually try to find either the next or the previous “episode” in the folder. On the other hand, using the same buttons on your Apple remote will actually help you navigate throughout the current video.
Even though the MPlayerX app should be able to parse and play media content hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, Youku, or Instagram, this function does not seem to work for some time now (we have installed older MPlayerX versions, and the issue persists). The app will either fail to parse the URL or display an error message saying that mplayer has quit without playing the media.
Most of the heavy lifting is done by the open source mplayer movie player program, which means that the MPlayerX app will not need more than 8% CPU power and 60Mb of RAM on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with 6GB RAM running OS X Yosemite.
However, the resources usage is also influenced by the size and quality of the media you want to play: while dealing with a 6.5 MB MP3 track, mplayer used about 3% CPU power, but while rendering a 16.13 GB MKV spiked the CPU usage to 140%. Similarly, the RAM usage stayed around 25 MB when playing the audio, and at 200 MB while rendering the video.
These values are comparable with the resources needed by other media players, but when using MPlayerX we also sometimes experienced an audio delay that was not present when opening the same MKV file with another OS X media player.
The Good
The media player is also able to identify successive videos placed in the same folder: simply make sure you are using a pattern when naming your videos, and MPlayerX will play all of them, just like in a playlist.
The Bad
Furthermore, even though MPlayerX claims to be able to parse and playback YouTube, Vimeo, Youku, and Instagram videos, the app could not complete the process and would display error messages.
