Nice Player: The Best Looking Video Player on Mac OS X
Many say the only video player you need on Mac OS X is VLC, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Having said that I am really starting to appreciate Nice Player, an application designed from the ground up by people who enjoy watching movies.
What I like in a video player is an unobtrusive video window first and then support for as many file formats as possible; Nice Player fits the bill on both accounts. Here’s what you need to know.
The video window is borderless (VLC can also be made borderless but it’s still a two-piece UI) and can be configured to float on top of all other windows. In addition, it remembers its last position before you quit, adjusts itself to fit the size of the video being played back, and of course it can also be resized to accomodate the space you have available. This is what mine looks like on the top left corner of my (17″ Powerbook) screen.
The coolest trick is when you hover your mouse to the top or bottom of the window, it will respectively make the title bar or the control bar appear. Talk is cheap; install it and you’ll see what I mean. Here’s a screenshot of a video being played back.
As far as file support goes, Nice Player supports a bunch from the get-go; if in doubt, you can always install Perian and you’ll be all set. You can use a playlist to queue up several videos to.
Nice Player was written by Robert Chin and Jay Tuley and it’s available on their Sourceforge page for free. If you enjoy using it, consider donating to encourage development.
Niceplayer with Perian installed is what became the final solution for watching videos on my Mac. I was always somewhat disappointed by Quicktime (even with Perian) and VLC and MPlayer always seemed to lack something.
Niceplayer with Perian was the ultimate solution.
Especially if you watch things with subtitles - it renders softsubs excellently (especially stylized subs).
actually, subtitles are a bit difficulty imho…
from what I know, there are no preferences in NicePlayer, for example, to be able to set up font encoding and size would be very nice
also what bothers me is the interference of perian subtitles…
the screenshot is veeeeery out-dated.
Download and installed in minutes, play a MKV with subtitle smoothly.
Love it, good bye VLC!
If you got $22 to spare, I highly recommend CHROMA. It’s such an underrated player, yet it delivers fantastic video quality. I just recently switched from VLC to CHROMA. Chroma’s options are simple. The interface is simple. You have the option to use the Chroma movie codec or divx codec. But best of all is that their movies run smoothly. With VLC, I would have my video freeze for a split of a second before it plays again normally and this happens every 10-15 mins.
Chroma also updated their player for new Macbook Aluminums and allows it to override screensaver and energy saver settings for uninterruptive movie watching. Oh and did I mention it supports subtitles as well