Thursday 23 January 2014

Google Chrome as a Media Player

Ever had the problem of using so many different programs simultaneously on your laptop that it doesn't like to respond? Well, that's a common feature for computer science and bioinformatics people. You may have  a browser with dozens of tabs, a music player, an R console, your favorite IDE (text editor), a word document maybe (if you are writing a manuscript/report), probably an excel sheet too.
A nifty feature of Google Chrome browser is that it can double up as a media player for you. I have not yet tested other browsers which may be able to do this but since I am a heavy chrome user, I will focus exclusively on that.

Chrome as a music player-
it ca easily play mp3 files ( i have tested this). Saves me from opening another application (music player) on an already burdened system. I think it might be able to play other formats too (wma, wav etc). If you test/have tested, please add those in comments section.

Chrome as a video player-
I was just wondering if chrome can also double up as my video player? Lo and behold, yes it can. I tried mp4 files downloaded from coursera, an online educational MOOC. It played the files easily. It could also run mkv files but failed in case of avi files. Not too great since most videos we (rather I) have, might be in avi format but pretty good for smartphone/ipod videos (mp4 format).

Try it and let me know !

Update:
1. I forgot to mention that although a good feature of chrome to play media files, it lacks the additional functionality which some of us may want like playing in loop, playing and making a playlist etc.
2. Chrome can also be used to view common image files (JPG, GIF etc).
3. You can use chrome for viewing your text/XML files.

1 comment:

  1. Interesting and hopefully helpful information. Thanks. I will try it.

    ReplyDelete