You can customize your Elmedia Player settings in Preferences, accessible from the main menu. The options are organized into several tabs. The following sections cover each of them in detail.
Note: Not all options in this section are available in all Elmedia Player editions.
General
Put new downloads in: Choose where your downloads will be saved.
Playlist:
Autoplay files added to playlist: configures whether a file should start playing automatically when you add it to the playlist.
Add downloaded files to playlist automatically: if enabled, all files you download will automatically be added to your Elmedia playlist.
Automatically add files to playlist on opening: if disabled, files you open will play without being added to Elmedia playlist.
Start videos in fullscreen: forces playback to always start in fullscreen mode.
Playback:
Resume playing from where playback was stopped: when enabled, your videos will start playing from the point they were stopped last time.
Disable screensaver while in full-screen mode: when enabled, the screensaver will not start when you watch a video in full-screen mode.
Control playback with media keys: allows using F7, F8, F9 to control playback.
Optional:
Send anonymous usage statistics to Eltima: help improve Elmedia Player by sending the information about the app usage to Eltima (no personal information is collected).
Automatically check for updates: allows Elmedia to check for updates automatically.
Quit automatically: Defines whether Elmedia should automatically quit upon reaching the end of a movie or playlist.
Interface
SWF
Default Flash Quality:
You can specify the quality a Flash movie will be played at: Low, Medium or High. The advantage of low quality mode is that it reduces CPU load and playback becomes very smooth. On the other hand, it essentially decreases movie quality. The specified value will be applied just on the go, if a Flash movie is currently played. In addition, this value will be selected automatically each time any Flash movie is played.
Enable Flash Local Security:
Use this option to specify whether SWF or FLV content that uses older security rules can access the Internet. Using the older security system can be potentially dangerous. If you enable this option, every time when a SWF or FLV file on the web or on your local computer will try to load external resources from the Internet, your will get a warning message, where you can modify security settings. For details, see: What are security settings?
Note:
If you allow access to external resources, you won’t see this warning message again. However, you can enable the Always ask option in the Settings Manager of Adobe Flash Player (at the Global Security Settings panel).
If you do not allow access to external resources, it is possible that SWF or FLV content will not function as intended.
If the Allow to send/receive data over network option is disabled, you won’t get this warning message at all.
The Enable Flash Local Security option is disabled by default.
Go to next playlist item if:
the last frame is reached:
This option allows to find out whether the current movie has been finished. Once this option is enabled, Elmedia Player proceeds to the next playlist item when the last frame of the current movie is reached.
the frame number decreased:
Elmedia Player is able to detect the last movie frame when unexpected or unusual frame sequence happens (the movie was rewound and played from the start). Check this option if you would like to proceed to the next item in the playlist when such movie behavior occurs.
the player stays on the same frame more than…:
When you select this option, you let Elmedia Player jump to the next playlist item automatically if the movie stays on the same frame during the certain period of time. Elmedia Player gives you a possibility to set inactivity time of the movie manually.
Note: These options are applicable to SWF files only.
Capture
Here you can customize the options for taking screenshots:
specify the folder where your screenshots will be saved;
select the preferred image format (TIFF, PNG, GIF or JPG);
set the interval at which the screenshots will be taken, from 0.05 to 3600 sec;
enable frame by frame screenshots capturing;
enable the Always start capturing from 1st frame (1st sec) option if you want screenshots capturing to always start from the first frame. If you are watching a video and click Record a Series of Screenshots, playback will skip to the beginning before Elmedia starts taking screenshots;
check Keep capturing in every next movie in Playlist to tell Elmedia to continue taking screenshots for all files in the playlist.
Video
Repair video:
If the Enable force index rebuilding option is on, Elmedia will automatically repair broken search index for corrupted video files. Force index rebuilding ensures that certain Elmedia movie controls (such as dragging progress slider, or seeking backward/forward) will correctly work for broken files: incompletely downloaded files, badly created files, etc. Force index rebuilding for large files may take some time, so playback may be delayed by some seconds.
Deinterlace method:
Deinterlacing is the process of converting interlaced video, such as common analog television signals or DVDrip, into a non-interlaced form. Deinterlacing is used to get rid of the visual artifacts like edge flicking, line crawling, blur, jaggedness, etc.
The choice of deinterlace method depends on the movie itself. Simply try several methods before choosing the best one for the specific video.
There are several deinterlacing algorithms to choose from:
None: no deinterlacing.
FFMpeg: FFmpeg deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering every second line with a (−1 4 2 4 −1) filter.
LPF5: vertically applied FIR (finite impulse response) lowpass deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering all lines with a (−1 2 6 2 −1) filter.
Blend: linear blend deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering all lines with a (1 2 1) filter.
Image enhancement:
Video image can be improved by means of post processing. Post processing techniques allow to delete MPEG artifacts, smooth the sharp edges, etc. The filter effectiveness depends directly on the CPU speed.
The following filters are available:
None – No filters are applied.
Normal – Default post processing filter combination (hb:a,vb:a,dr:a): horizontal deblocking filter plus vertical deblocking filter plus deringing filter. Switches horizontal deblocking, vertical deblocking and deringing on or off automatically depending on available CPU time.
Fast – Fast post processing filter combination (h1:a,v1:a,dr:a): experimental horizontal deblocking filter plus experimental vertical deblocking filter plus deringing filter. Automatically switches the subfilter off if the CPU is too slow.
Advanced – High quality post processing filter combination (ha:a:128:7,va:a,dr:a).
Cache size:
This slider sets the cache size for videos you watch online. A relatively large cache will ensure smooth playback. However, making it too big will increase load times (because playback will not start until the cache fills up to 20%), so keep this in mind if you are on a relatively low-speed connection.
Performance:
Use cache for local files: Enable caching for slow media, like files of large size, videos on external storages, Flash drives, etc. Turn off caching for badly interleaved AVI files (when audio is slower or faster than the video, the picture is jerky, etc.).
Hardware acceleration: For videos encoded with the help of H.264 (MPEG-4 Part 10) video coding format. By default, this option is selected to improve the quality of playback, particularly the performance of full-screen playback. Hardware-accelerated scaling uses the video card on your computer to display video more clearly and quickly.
Skip frames: Check this option if you experience playback problems, for example, with high definition video. Elmedia will skip video frames to keep video and audio tracks in sync.
Fullscreen monitor: Assign your Mac monitor for full screen videos to be displayed on it.
Interface:
Resize interface to the original video size: Elmedia automatically resizes to show the video at the best size.
Show OSD: When playing a video, this option will bring up the on-screen display for different events like seeking backward/forward, pausing, flipping, rotating videos, etc.
Audio
Audio device: Set the default sound device.
Number of playback channels:
Set the number of playback channels for stereo equipment. Most DVDs and many other files include surround sound. Elmedia Player supports surround playback but does not enable it by default because stereo equipment is by far more common. If you have surround sound equipment it is safe to change the option “Number of playback channels” in Elmedia Player Preferences. For example, to make quadraphonic playback the default, choose 4 channels. Elmedia Player will then output audio in four channels when all four channels are available.
Automatically load external tracks:
Set automatic loading of external audios: all tracks with movie name, same name as movie or all tracks in directory.
Preferred audio language: Specify the preferred language for media with multiple audio streams.
Passthrough for hardware decoders:
Enable passthrough for hardware decoders – AC3 or DTS for surround audio.
DVDs usually have surround audio encoded in AC3 (Dolby Digital) or DTS (Digital Theater System) format. Some modern audio equipment is capable of decoding these formats internally. Elmedia Player can be configured to relay the audio data without decoding it. This will only work if you have a S/PDIF (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) jack in your sound card, or if you are passing audio over HDMI.
If your audio equipment can decode both AC3 and DTS, you can safely enable passthrough for both formats. Otherwise, enable passthrough for only the format your equipment supports.
Virtual surround emulation:
Enable for 5 to 6 channel audio:
Enable virtual surround for headphones (only for 5 to 6 channel audio). Converts multichannel audio to 2 channel output for headphones, preserving the spatiality of the sound. Only works well with 5 or 6 channels. Virtual surround for headphones uses technology called Head Related Transfer Functions (HRTF). HRTF uses information about the physics of your head to create a virtual surround sound experience through your stereo headphones. When listening to music or movie audio with enabled virtual surround, you might feel like the sound is transcending the headphones, providing a listening experience that includes hearing sounds from front to back, as well as side to side.
Enable for stereo:
Enable virtual speakers for headphones to improve headphone listening experience – only for stereo audio.
A typical stereo records are being made to listen by speakers. Therefore, you will be tired during a long time headphone listening more by a superstereo effect than by a poor design of headphones. This option improves the headphone listening experience by making the sound similar to that from loudspeakers, allowing each ear to hear both channels and taking into account the distance difference and the head shadowing effect.
Subtitles
Autoload subtitles: set here the way to automatically load the subtitles file.
Preferred language: specify the preferred subtitle language for media with multiple subtitle streams.
Select first available subtitle: if the video contains subtitles, they will be displayed automatically.
Encoding: if you see wrong characters on the screen, try to change the subtitles encoding (default is UTF-8).
Font: change the font type, size and color.
Use embedded fonts: applies to subtitles with embedded styling; if checked, the font you specified will be overridden with that embedded in the subtitle, when available.
Apply these settings to ASS files: if checked, the predefined subtitles formatting and style of .ass files will be ignored so that Elmedia style could be applied to subtitles.
Note:
You may need to restart Elmedia Player for the changes in this section to take effect.
If you enable the Use embedded fonts option, Elmedia Player will need to index all fonts available in the system, which in some cases may take up to 10 minutes.
AirPlay
AirPlay Service: enables/disables content streaming from AirPlay-enabled devices.
Speaker Mode: forces audio-only streaming. This option should be enabled if you are streaming from a device running iOS 9 and above. (See also the AirPlay FAQ section.)
Broadcast Name: lets you customize the name by which your Mac will be seen by the AirPlay-enabled devices on your network. Check the respective option to use the system name, or type your own.
AirPlay Security: allows you to set a password that will be prompted on any device attempting to connect to Elmedia Player via AirPlay.
On Connection: here you can choose the preferred behavior on connection. Elmedia Player will either connect and start playback immediately (Connect and Play), or prompt you to accept the connection first (Request access).