Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

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Sewie
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Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Sewie »

I've just quickly tested Potplayer, it's a free media player which seems to be able to scroll through media files frame by frame, forward AND backward.
Apart from the Quicktime player I haven't been able to find any other software that can do this. And because it can often be very helpful for animators I wanted to mention it here.

Here's an extensive user's guide.
Here's a list with shortcuts. The frame by frame buttons are 'd' and 'f', btw.

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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Elodie »

Thank you for sharing !
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Sewie »

You're very welcome.

If anybody is tempted to try this, please let me know if this works for you. Like I mentioned, I was only able to test this quickly and I would like to know what, if any, it's shortcomings are.
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Paul Fierlinger
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

This is great news and thanks for posting your discovery here, Sewie. I am playing with it right now. It doesn't seem to come with presets and takes a bit of exploration to get all the settings from the plethora of possibilities, thus I have hopes that this just might be the winner of all players.

The interface is pleasant in its black austerity; always my preference for sure. The back and forth advancing almost works. Forward as expected and common for all players. Backwards does the job alright, yet is still a bit quirky in the way it needs to take its time to refresh. But that said, once one remains in the same area (not jumping all over the place as when trying it out) the increments will work, so I'd say it's practical and almost there but not quite.

This is as far as I have gotten, but it's a keeper for me, that's for sure. Will post more once I spend more time with it in practical usage.
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Fabrice
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Fabrice »

seems unfortunately Windows only :(
but good news anyway.
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

I've been following the QT discussion in the QT thread and came back here to confirm that this player is continuously working very well for me; has anyone else tried it out yet? I indeed do like it a lot!
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Sewie »

I've set it up as my default video player and I'm very happy with it as well. I haven't had time yet to extensively test it but so far I've had no problems. My processor never goes above 10% even when scrolling rigorously. That's because it uses the graphics card for some tasks, I believe. I think I saw some options for that somewhere in the settings
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

Fabrice wrote:seems unfortunately Windows only :(
but good news anyway.
It seems PotPlayer does work in Macs as well, but I haven't tested it of course --
just happened to stumble over this page.
https://www.google.com/search?q=potplay ... channel=sb" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Sewie »

One disadvantage that comes to mind is that you can't do edits or save your file as another screen/dimension format or in another compression, which the pro version of Quicktime does allow for.
Last edited by Sewie on 14 May 2014, 22:04, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by Sewie »

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Re: Potplayer; frame by frame mediaplayer

Post by momo »

Here is another one that can also frame step forward AND backward:

http://mpc-hc.org/

Just press CTRL Right Arrow to step forward and CTRL Left Arrow to step backward.

Sadly windows only...

Another way is to use VLC's advanced control which lets you play a loop between two chosen points in time. This is pretty handy to see what's going on in a sequence. Unfortunately no frame numbers like in Quicktime player.
VLC advanced toolBar.JPG
VLC advanced toolBar.JPG (39.46 KiB) Viewed 39338 times
momo
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