Chroma Player for Mac2009.1

good app but seems to be discontinued (website is down for some time)

I have just downloaded it for trial. Could not use the demo : it says "trial period is over". Bad sign.

If you have a faster computer, VLC, or Perian with Quicktime will do almost everything for free, but if you have a old g3 machine this app is a must. It's the only application that runs considerable well xvid movies in my old iMac G3 450 with correct running subtitles on it. It's very watchable and the most smooth of all apps I have tried in this machine! Great for PPC!

After bringing this "home" to try on my mac, I was very disappointed. Right at the start it states that it plays matroska and has a better method of displaying subtitles. Funny, "out of the box" it couldn't play ANY matroska file. It kept trying to send me to web pages (and without an internet connection on that mac, that's not possible) for plug-ins. If it has to search for a plug-in to even play a matroska file, that it CANNOT play a matroska file and should not state that it can. It should say, "after hunting for dozens of plug-ins it might be able to play matroska files." Even playing basic quicktime supported stuff it had problems, like continuously showing the beachball and preventing any interaction. Found out this was due to it's literally unending attempts to phone-home for something (again no internet connection, and even so, it shouldn't be trying to infinitely call home for anything -- is this installed spyware or improperly implemented logging/registration and update checks?). Even after finding and loading a couple EXTRA codecs (including Perian a known conflict problem generator) it still couldn't play matroska. Of the five files I provided, the audio in all was choppy, the best video I got played only 1 single frame on average every 20 seconds. And the subtitles are worse than VLCs by all regards, they were soft and transparent, very difficult to read even on a still image. VLC works better and faster, and though I couldn't actually get Chroma to crash (like VLC does), locking itself from interaction with a 1-2 minute beachball display is actually worse than a crash, which can be recovered with an instant re-launch. The ONLY reason I would ever use this is if they can actually write an efficient matroska code set for it, so that I can actually watch matroska files (needed for many newer fansubs). Otherwise I'll stay with VLC, which, while not able to efficiently work with matroska, actually works faster than this. Heck for basic Xvid, VLC works without skipping frames while my computer is doing many other things concurrently, like video compression, downloading, burning DVDs, AND compiling code. Chroma couldn't even play the matroska files, when that was it's ONLY ltask. (QT Player, I gave up on 2 system updates back, when opening many videos took up to 5-10 minutes, they played fine after, but taking that long to open, somebody at Apple should have been fired.)

Oh, I forgot to say that, although being the best quality subtitles I've seen so far, I dont know why but they seem to be in a strange format. I tried to resize and etc but most of the times dialogue lines would not display one above the other but beside the other, which didnt occured in VLC and QT.

I like VLC, but not its interface. Chroma has a cool look, very much like other mac apps. i liked the command t function for stabilize, dont know if it really works though since I'm always on a stable surface. The subtitles are really beautiful. I just wish it was more customizable and had more commands like VLC. I had problems using DVD, it kept asking me to change my DVD region when it was playing normally with DVD Player...

After years of using VLC as my video player of choice I came upon Chroma Player. This is how a video player for the mac platform should look and act like. Used it for the full 15-day trial period and never had a crash. Much more stable than VLC but the best part is how it renders subtitles using the native resolution of the monitor instead of that of the video file (like VLC). The result is crisp text that doesn't strain yor eyes. Also try using the transparent background subtitle style (the animation of the text box is wonderful). I love Chroma and use it a lot so I wrote a Sofa Control script for that (it's in the new version of Sofa Control). I only hope the next versions will add playlist support. If you like me are anal about type (and if you're using a mac you should be) and view a lot of movies with subtitles then Chroma is the player for you.

Some ppl say its bad but i have mac osx 10.2.8 and avi dosnt work with the best QT for my os and chroma does it QT does not. I tested it with SWII and it did well.

This apps interface is TOP notch... in theory. To bad they didn't back it up with ANY kind of functionality. It's color is off, and there's not preference to change it. When you skip forward, the audio gets thrown out of sync with the video. And then it freezes up and wont respond. And I was running it on new stable hardware. I tested it with AVI's only, it was preformed SO POORLY I didn't bother with any other format. This app needs ALOT of work before it'd be worth money. And even then I would pay maybe $5 tops. Maybe. As is, I wouldn't use it for free. In the end, it's pretty to look at, but no fun to use. Don't bother. VLC, MPlayer, and good ol' Quicktime (with the DivX plugin) are where it's at.

For a brief minute I thought this would finally be the OSX app that played INDEO codec avis. Shot down again :-(

My sister has an iMac G3 graphite with an internal slot loading cd burner and an external DVD burner running Tiger. It would be nice if Chroma Player would allow her to play dvds from her external DVD Burner.

Add in WMV support so I can drop Flip4mac, and it'd be worth paying for.

I understand that it seems confusing someone is charging $30 for the proverbial "yet another player". Let me therefore just share my experience with Chroma: this app ROCKS. And that's because Chroma is the _only_ player able to play a lot of movies on my (I admit) aging G3-Powerbook, where other players (notably Quicktime Player Pro 7.x, but also VLC, MPlayer, etc.) give up, ie. drop frames to a degree, where watching is going pathetic. So maybe Chroma seems to perform so admirable just because the other players perform so poorly - it's true: Chroma does nothing special: but this nothing-special it does unbelievably good. Bottom line: if the other, free players work for you there is probably no reason to try (and buy) Chroma. If, on the other hand, you're desperately looking for a player that just plays those movies which your G3 refuses to play since you updated to Tiger (and QT 7), then Chroma comes to you like your very own saviour. And, no: no affiliation of whatever kind with Mirailabs. Just an user, that is amazed what is good ol' Pismo can do the right software provided.

I'm a little confused, this is just a player right? There are at least a handful of applications that do the same thing but for free. VLC and MPlayer are good choices for playing just about anything so what is so special about this program?

A few of the developer's claims: "This is not a ported application or front end for some command line tool" "It contains built-in codecs for MPEG4, DivX, XviD, 3ivx, MS-MPEG4v1 and MS-MPEG4v2." Built-in you say? Excellent! Then under the terms of the "GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" included with the libavcodec.framework which you borrowed from the ffmpegX command-line tool, I'd like the source code for this entire program. I'll look forward to seeing it included with the download. Thanks! Excerpt from the "GNU LESSER GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE" which is included in the Chroma Player download as part of the libavcodec.framework (borrowed from the ffmpeg project): " 6. As an exception to the Sections above, you may also combine or link a "work that uses the Library" with the Library to produce a work containing portions of the Library, and distribute that work under terms of your choice, provided that the terms permit modification of the work for the customer's own use and reverse engineering for debugging such modifications. You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If the work during execution displays copyright notices, you must include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as a reference directing the user to the copy of this License. Also, you must do one of these things: a) Accompany the work with the complete corresponding machine-readable source code for the Library including whatever changes were used in the work (which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2 above); and, if the work is an executable linked with the Library, with the complete machine-readable "work that uses the Library", as object code and/or source code, so that the user can modify the Library and then relink to produce a modified executable containing the modified Library. (It is understood that the user who changes the contents of definitions files in the Library will not necessarily be able to recompile the application to use the modified definitions.) b) Use a suitable shared library mechanism for linking with the Library. A suitable mechanism is one that (1) uses at run time a copy of the library already present on the user's computer system, rather than copying library functions into the executable, and (2) will operate properly with a modified version of the library, if the user installs one, as long as the modified version is interface-compatible with the version that the work was made with. c) Accompany the work with a written offer, valid for at least three years, to give the same user the materials specified in Subsection 6a, above, for a charge no more than the cost of performing this distribution. d) If distribution of the work is made by offering access to copy from a designated place, offer equivalent access to copy the above specified materials from the same place. e) Verify that the user has already received a copy of these materials or that you have already sent this user a copy. For an executable, the required form of the "work that uses the Library" must include any data and utility programs needed for reproducing the executable from it. However, as a special exception, the materials to be distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable. It may happen that this requirement contradicts the license restrictions of other proprietary libraries that do not normally accompany the operating system. Such a contradiction means you cannot use both them and the Library together in an executable that you distribute."