Kantaris Media Player

There is a very large variety of media players on the Internet, but you can never know which one is more comfortable to use, if it works better with subtitles or if it works at all. Most of the players either feature too many functions or too little. In either case, it is difficult to handle them. Kantaris Media Player will meet most of your demands. It is a lightweight, open source player with better support for subtitles and it is easily extensible.

You can download the player for free and it should not take too long to finish, even on a slower Internet connection. Installing it is a straightforward process. The wizard will offer to install a voice recognition engine, but this is optional and you can skip this step.

The largest part of the interface is where your media will be displayed. You can find a series of menus on the top edge of the window and the playback buttons on the lower edge. Besides the playback buttons, you can find other ones for displaying a playlist and accessing a tabbed general settings window. A media file can be imported in the playlist either by clicking a button beneath it and browsing for it, or by clicking and dragging it over any part of the interface.

The Subtitles menu, on the top edge of the window, contains a series of options which will make it easy to load a subtitle. You can load one either from a file or from the Internet. Simply click the Online options in the Subtitles menu and the program will automatically search the web for subtitles and it will list them directly on the interface. Also in the Subtitles menu, you can find an option for synchronizing subtitles. This can be very useful for those moments when a movie is ruined because the subtitle is ahead or falls behind the video playback.

Plugins can be installed just like you would install them on a web browser. You can switch between the playback view and a plugin manager by clicking one of the buttons, placed beneath the top menus. The manager will display a list of available plugins and all you have to do is click one to enlarge its entry and click an install button. In a few seconds, a new button will appear under the top menus and you can use it to access the installed plugin. This way you can have additional functions such as a video gallery, podcasts, song search, movie trailers and more.