The Application Interface:

There are no installation steps for Media Player Classic; it is a stand alone application that runs by itself without any need to have any shared files with the operating system.

The application interface is very simple such that all kind of users can interact with it easily without any difficulties, as it may express something about it; it is a classical application that is almost a necessity for almost all users.

There are some times that other media players does not support the data types of certain files being played, at that time we will for sure consult and try Media Player Classic;  the lovely and friendly application that will care of the case and run the file in most cases.

As shown by the about option in the help menu, the application is a freeware application, everyone can use it with a GNU general public license.

The Application Features:

Media Player Classic interface is expandable, a user can stretch it to expand it horizontally, vertically and diagonally until it will show up as a strip of control buttons, even the user may use the view menu to hide every thing then minimize the interface to the last extent to reach its minimum size which is something about half centimeter squared, then can right click it to reverse the steps back again, the next table show the minimum size of Media Player Classic, this option gives the user the flexibility to resize it and dock it wherever as needed. And can be set it to be always on top or just when playing something or never to be on top at all.

It is controlled through a set of menus and fast buttons appearing on the lower area such as Play, Pause, Stop, Skip Back, Skip Forward, and Step.

The application menus are File, View, Play, Navigate, Favorites and Help each of which has its own submenu options; as usual every thing is categorized as the menu name tells.

Good Features:

1. Media Player Classic can step animate any video clip such that you take the proper snapshot at a certain position. This feature is critically important for making an exact action snapshot at any situation for any artist or speaker out of a video clip.

2. Media Player Classic does not need too many resources to run, a simple test has been made to show how much memory and CPU time is needed, 7% GB of the memory and 3% GB of the CPU usage for video streaming of .dat video file of 253 MB size on disk, the response of retrieving the video clip was very high. As a result running Media Player Classic while doing some other tasks will not degrade the PC performance for sure.

3. Media Player Classic supports variety of audio files and video files formats and capable of VCD, DVD and SVCD playback: WAV, WMA, MP3, OGG, SND, AU, AIF, AIFC, AIFF, MIDI, MPEG, MPG, MP2, VOB, AC3, DTS, ASX, M3U, PLS, WAX, ASF, WM, WMA, WMV, AVI, CDA, JPEG, JPG, GIF, PNG, BMP, D2V, MP4, SWF, MOV, QT, FLV

4. There are some useful extra settings that can be utilized, such as setting Media Player Classic to automatically play video, or audio or both, or even select from video, Music, DVD, Audio CD, these settings can be made by selecting view menu then options.

5. Media Player Classic supports variety of additional features, most of them are available in the view menu, as an example; repeat forever can be picked to let some video or Music be running repeatedly, this feature is good for several applications such as running music or video in a show room for several hours.

6. The play list as an external toolbar can be dragged then docked into the application interface to appear as if it is part of it. And of course can be dragged out off the interface to be located some where on the screen as the user prefers.

7. Media Player Classic supports almost all known languages and any of them can be set to be used as the language of the DVD navigator and external OGM splitter.

8. More additional settings on filters can be set, incase of any replacement to the default filters being used by Media Player Classic.

9. Is capable of some advanced features; that are not for ordinary users, only advanced users can practice it through the options available in the view menu.

10. It can interact with variety of hardware resources connected to the PC through open device from file menu, such as the web cam, Microphone and video Cam.

11. Media Player Classic can be called through scripts and batch files or DOS prompt. For example if a user likes mplayerc.exe to run with DVD option set on; then a command line might do it as shown in the snapshot next. A list of the commands is available through the command line switches in the help menu.

12. Media Player Classic does not interfere with Windows Media Player as if both are concurrently working together.

Bad Features:

1. Media Player Classic does not support “Recently opened files” as usually available in variety of application types. Some applications may support up to 9 recent opened files.
2. Unfortunately the first two options of the help menu are not functioning properly; they are “home page” and “Documentation (sf.net)”, the sn.net site is there and you have to reach it through the Internet browser manually.

Conclusion:

Media Player Classic appears to all as a simple media player application, although it is an advance application in which a wide range of options are built into the application’s interface.

And despite the fact that most users are using some other fancy interfaced media players, still they have it a side for emergency cases having troubles of running any new file format that is not supported by their preferred media player. Many other users are sticking loyal to the usage of media player classic as their preferred media player application.

As a result Media Player Classic is a necessity for most of the users who are in need to run different types of file formats. And will always be available for educational purposes as well; since it is tolerant with scripts calls through variety of programming languages and web browsers.

As shown in the snapshot Media player classic offers a list of command line switches; each of them have a certain functionality to do while calling the application through the code of the script, or even through the DOS prompt or batch files.