SMPlayer

SMPlayer is a very popular open source video playback application that provides a wide range of features. It is based on the MPlayer command-line application and it’s fully compatible with the GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The application is basically an advanced GUI (Graphical User Interface) front-end for MPlayer, allowing users to watch movies, TV shows, DVD-Video discs, as well as listen to radio stations, playback music files and view YouTube videos.

Features at a glance

Key features include audio track switching, seeking by mouse wheel, built-in video equalizer, multiple speed playback, filters, audio and subtitles delay adjustment, playlists, automatic updates, and automatic download of subtitles for films.

It provides users with a familiar user interface, especially if you’ve used the KMPlayer application. While they are both written in Qt and use the KDE runtime libraries, the main difference is that SMPlayer is more advanced than KMPlayer.

Thanks to its built-in codecs, the software can playback various audio and video files formats, including MP3, AVI, MKV, FLAC, OGG, WMV, WMA, MP4, MPEG, MPG, VOB, as well as DVD-Video, VCD, and Audio-CD discs. In addition, it can play TV, radio streams or custom URLs.

Users can quickly choose an audio or subtitle track (if multiple are available) for the currently playing video directly from the main toolbar. Works MKV and AVI files, as well as with DVD-Video discs.

Another cool feature is the ability to seek a video with the mouse wheel, quickly navigating backward or forward in any video. Furthermore, it is possible to adjust the gamma, contrast, brightness, saturation and hue of a video files from the integrated equalizer accessible from the Video menu.

Bottom line

Summing up, SMPlayer is a really great and powerful multimedia playback application, specifically designed to be used on Qt-based desktop environments like KDE or Razor-qt, but the truth is that our favorite video player is VLC Media Player.

What is new in this release:

• New option in Preferences -> Network to select the preferred quality for streaming sites such as DailyMotion, Vimeo and so on (all those which are handled by youtube-dl).
• The audio equalizer is now disabled by default on Linux to prevent a no sound problem for users with old versions of mpv.
• Fix some problems with the letterbox filter (the 'add black borders' option).
• The HDPI support is now also enabled on the portable package for Windows.
• Fix: now the time is correctly displayed in the thumbnail generator pictures when SMPlayer is built with Qt 5.

What is new in version 17.9.0:

• Now it's possible to the search for subtitles using the filename instead of a hash.
• Fix for the OSD when using SMPlayer with mpv 0.26.

What is new in version 17.4.2:

• New option (menu View -> OSD) to display the times with milliseconds.
• New fix for the thumbnail generator that works also with older versions of mpv.
• Bugfix: the position of the video is remembered when it's opened by drag & drop.
• The Windows installer won't install mpv on Windows XP since mpv is not longer compatible with Windows XP.
• New option to use the mplayer ffhevcvdpau decoder (Linux only).
• Avoid some crashes from mpv.

What is new in version 17.1.0:

• Experimental Chromecast support.

What is new in version 16.6.0:

• Support for 2 in 1 computers with touch screens:
• SMPlayer includes now a 'tablet mode', available in the menu Options. When the option is turned on it makes some changes in the interface so that it would be easier to control SMPlayer by touching the screen.
• the size of windows and fonts are increased
• sliding vertically in the video changes the volume, sliding horizontally seeks in the video
• tapping while in fullscreen displays the floating control
• When the user changes the tablet mode in the Windows 10 action center, SMPlayer will detect it and ask if it should switch to the SMPlayer's tablet mode as well.
• Send video to an external screen:
• Now it's possible to send the video to a second screen connected to the computer, while controlling the application in the computer's screen.
• There's a new option in the menu Video: send video to screen. It shows a submenu with all connected screens.
• One of the screens is labeled as 'primary screen', which is the computer's screen. If you send the video to another screen the video will be displayed on that screen in fullscreen mode. The SMPlayer interface will remain in the computer's screen where you can control the video (seek, change volume, subtitles, playlist, open another video, etc.) while the video is displayed on the second screen. If you send the video to the primary screen the video will be re-attached to the SMPlayer window.
• Note this feature requires the desktop to be set as 'extended'.
• Support for high DPI screens:
• On high DPI (dots per inch) screens SMPlayer looked very tiny. Now the interface is automatically scaled so it looks correctly. There are also settings in Preferences -> Interface -> High DPI where you can adjust manually the scale factor or turn off this feature.
• Global shortcuts:
• Now it's possible to use the media keys (play/pause, stop, volume+/-, etc.) as global shortcuts. That means that those keys will work even when SMPlayer is in the background. You can activate this option in Preferences -> Keyboard and mouse.
• Settings are remembered for online streams too:
• This means that, for example, SMPlayer can resume playback or set bookmarks on YouTube videos or other online streams (as long as they are seekable).
• Other changes in SMPlayer 16.6:
• New themes: Masalla, Papirus and PapirusDark.
• Built by default with Qt 5.

What is new in version 16.4.0:

• Fix for YouTube.
• The screenshots work again with older versions of MPlayer/mpv.
• Possibility to add bookmarks (menu Browse), which allows to mark your favorite parts of the video for a quick access.
• New option 'Prevent window to get outside of screen' in Preferences -> Interface.

What is new in version 16.1.0:

• Fix for YouTube.
• The screenshots work again with older versions of MPlayer/mpv.
• Possibility to add bookmarks (menu Browse), which allows to mark your favorite parts of the video for a quick access.
• New option 'Prevent window to get outside of screen' in Preferences -> Interface.

What is new in version 15.11.0:

• Support for the 3D stereo filter.
• We added support for mpv, which is a player based on mplayer with new features and bug fixes.
• Now it's possible to select a secondary subtitle track which is displayed on top of the screen (mpv only).
• New option to set a template for screenshots (mpv only).
• Now it's possible to play videos from streaming sites (besides Youtube) like DailyMotion, Vimeo, Vevo and many more (mpv only).
• Option to step back one frame (mpv only).
• The Windows installer now allows to choose the playback engine to install: mplayer or mpv.
• Better support for YouTube (VEVO videos).
• Possibility to set a proxy.
• New action (assigned by default to key "I") shows the current playback time, total time and percentage, for 2 seconds on the OSD.
• Add the possibility to use the mouse buttons for "next chapter" and "previous chapter".
• New option to delete a file in the playlist from the filesystem.
• Support for MPRIS2.
• Possibility to compile SMPlayer without MPlayer or mpv support.
• The new H2O theme is now the default theme.

What is new in version 14.9.0:

• Fix for Youtube.
• New option to shut down the computer when playback has finished.
• The themes and skin icons are loaded from resource files (*.rcc).
• New fix for searching subtitles from opensubtitles.org that should return more results.

What is new in version 14.3.0:

• The control for fullscreen mode has been rewritten and improved. Now it is displayed over the video.
• (Windows) New option in Preferences -> Subtitles to enable or disable the use of the Windows font directory. Disabling this option prevents the annoying font scanning.
• Some presets have been added to the audio equalizer.
• (Experimental) Possibility to play (non-protected) blu-ray discs.
• Better support for multimedia keys. This can help control SMPlayer with a remote control.
• New option in the playlist preferences for adding automatically other files in the folder to the playlist.
• The option "Move the window when the video area is dragged" has been fixed.
• (Windows) Now it's possible to open Windows shortcuts (symlinks).
• Better support for Youtube.
• (Windows) Better screensaver disabling.
• Many bugfixes.
• Possibility to compile with Qt 5.

What is new in version 0.8.6:

• SMPlayer can now update its internal Youtube code so it's not necessary to update smplayer everytime Youtube makes a change.
• A section "Updates" has been added to the preferences dialog, where it's possible to configure or disable the update checker.
• SMPlayer could still fail to find some subtitles from opensubtitles.org. Hopefully this is fixed.
• Several other bugfixes.

What is new in version 0.8.5:

• Due to changes in opensubtitles.org, smplayer couldn't find subtitles anymore. This has been fixed.
• The interface with support for skins is now the default.
• An option to enter url(s) in the playlist has been added.
• The options to change the size of the main window work now even if the autoresize is set to never.
• Two new options for Audio -> Stereo mode: Mono and Reverse.
• The option "Move the window when the video area is dragged" is now disabled by default because it has some issues that need to be addressed.
• (Linux) The problem with mplayer2 and the -fontconfig option has been fixed (sort of).
• New translation: Malay.
• Some configuration options are changed to new defaults after installation to ease upgrade from old versions.

What is new in version 0.8.4:

• New option to select the fps for external subtitles.
• The video equalizer dialog has been rewritten.
• Now smplayer checks for updates automatically and notifies the user if a new version is found.
• Support for encoding ISO-8859-16 for subtitles.
• New translations: Thai and Hebrew.
• Some bugfixes.

What is new in version 0.8.3:

• Fix for Youtube playback.

What is new in version 0.8.1:

• Fix for Youtube playback.
• Other minor changes.

What is new in version 0.8.0:

• A toolbar editor has been added. Now it's possible to select the buttons and controls that want to appear in the toolbars.
• New video filters: gradfun, blur and sharpen.
• Now it's possible to change the GUI (default, mini, mpc) at runtime, no restart required.
• sub files from opensubtitles should work again.
• (Youtube) Recognize short urls (like this one: http://y2u.be/F5OcZBVPwOA).
• Better support for chapters in video files.
• Bug fix: remote m3u files work from the favorites menu or command line.
• Internal changes in the single instance option (switch to QtSingleApplication).

What is new in version 0.6.10:

• New vdpau configuration dialog, which allow to select the vdpau codecs to use.
• Port for eCS, OS/2 (by Silvan Scherrer).
• New menu to select the closed caption channel (requires mplayer >= r32607).
• Possibility to select the seeking method (absolute or relative).
• Possibility to sort the items of the playlist.

Requirements:

• MPlayer
• Qt