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Portable FLV Player Freeware From Martijn de Visser

Copyright © Walker 09 Jul 2009 00:47
FLV-Player-133If you have been using FLV Player 1.3.3, Martin’s Flash video player freeware shouldn’t be odd or needs more words to describe this little freeware.
For those who are new to it, this FLV Player is a portable, standalone Windows application to view or play back Flash video files ended with .flv file extension. (Not fully portable, as it requires Internet Explorer 5.5 or higher to run and it’s only available to Windows, including the Windows Vista and supposedly Windows 7 too).

Adobe should be the best provider of this player but it’s only available as web browser plugin to play FLV video embedded in HTML code (strictly speaking, it’s the path of video in HTML code).

If you’ve copied too many YouTube video clips cached by the web browser for offline playback, you need such a player application to view it right away or write a simple HTML code to embed the local Flash video so it can be rendered in web browser.

Apparently, it’s easier to view local Flash videos with a player application than writing HTML and I personally like this freeware offered by Martin than others. Indeed, Martin’s FLV Player has been downloaded over 18 million times from CNET Download.com

The latest FLV Player 2.0.25 released on Oct 2008 appears with better look and feel user interface than 1.3.3:

FLV Player 2.0.25 - A freeware to watch high definition Flash video encoded in H.264 codec format.

1) Press right / left arrow key for forward / backward, or up and down arrow key to increase / decrease volume.

2) Simple player settings include automatically check for update, remember last use position on screen / volume and mute settings, video smoothing when scaling, maintain frame-rate in full screen mode, etc.

3) Some useful keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys to control the Flash player:
  • CTRL + ENTER to toggle on and off the full screen mode.
  • CTRL + . to shrink the video display size by half
  • CTRL + 1 to zoom in video display by 100%
  • CTRL + I to view the video metadata, e.g. codec, frame rate, etc.
  • CTRL + W to close the player
  • Tab to toggle on and off the window-less mode.
  • Space to toggle between play and pause mode

4) Capable to play back lengthy video as well as high definition Flash video encoded with H.264 codec. So, if you wonder and ask why the old FLV Player 1.3.3 cannot play back YouTube video downloaded recently, try the latest 2.0.25.

Tips – You can extract the flvplayer_setup.exe file (I use 7-Zip) to a folder and copy only FLVPlayer.exe (the player application, just 1.82MB, that play back FLV files in local hard disk). If you’re not sure I am talking about, just double click the setup file to proceed installation as usual.


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