Kantaris Media Player a free player

Kantaris is a software that based on VLC Media Player, it can play any file type you can imagine pretty much. The best thing about Kantaris is that it is suave for playing both videos and audio files. The inbuilt last.fm plug in will appeal to all the music lovers who already obsessed with this great website. Kantaris has almost all the features that you find in VLC Media Player while it tries to give a hard battle to iTunes in audio department.

Kantaris Media Player can play almost anything you can throw at it - AVI, MPEG, MGEG-AVC, WMV, MOV, MKV, quicktime, matroska, divx, xvid, H264, MP3, WMA, OGG files and more. It can also play DVD's and audio cd's. The player also displays some of the most beautiful music visualizations ever seen. All this is completely free.

Features:

Subtitles: The media player connects to OpenSubtitles.org and finds the subtitle that is perfectly synced with the video being played. No more searching subtitles manually! Subtitles can also be synced with the playing audio.

Visualizations: This is one area of Kantaris that demands a special mention. It offers 4 super cool and extremely colourful visualizations (Acidspunk, Cosmic Belt, Rabitt Hole, Xoo) that adds a touch of exquisiteness to your music.

Skins: It has a cool and modern default skin that stands out. The development team is planning to implement a new feature to design skins rather easily so that users don't have to code anything at all and skins can be made using just Photoshop.

Add-On's: Users with programming skills can easily add new features to Kantaris in the upcoming version.

Pros

Good looking interface
Many formats supported
Nice visualization effects
Plays video files inside RAR archives
Sutitle matching from OpenSubtitles.org
Organise local movies with 3D effects
Watch videos of latest movies from Apple Move Trailers
Search and play music directly from web from user created playlists

Cons
No short seeking button available
Only few configuration options available
Assigning tags and creating intelligent playlists.

Related reading: The windows movie maker converter provides the best solution for playing back MTS on Windows Media Player or convert video to windows movie maker: convert MTS to WMV-the most compatible file format for PC applications. And it will help to convert MOV from EOS 60D to Movie Maker.

What is HandBrake? What can you do with it?

HandBrake is an open source video conversion program. It can read from DVDs, video files, and other video sources. It also produces video files in a wide variety of formats.

Supported Sources:
Any DVD-like source: VIDEO_TS folder, DVD image or real DVD (unencrypted--protection methods including CSS are not supported internally and must be handled externally with third-party software and libraries), and some .VOB and .TS files
Most any multimedia file it can get libavformat to read and libavcodec to decode.
Outputs:

File format: MP4 and MKV
Video: MPEG-4, H.264, or Theora (1 or 2 passes or constant quantizer/rate encoding)
Audio: AAC, MP3, Vorbis or AC-3 and DTS pass-through (supports encoding of several audio tracks)

Features

Encoding
Users are able to customise the output by altering the bit rate, maximum file size or bit rate and sample rate via "constant quality".
HandBrake supports batch encoding through the Mac OS X, Linux and Windows graphical user interface (GUI) and command line interface (CLI). Third party scripts and UI’s exist specifically for this purpose, such as HandBrake Batch Encoder and VideoScripts. Both make use of the CLI to enable queueing of several files in a single directory.

Video filtering
HandBrake also supports deinterlacing, decombing, scaling, detelecine, and cropping.

DVD
HandBrake’s developers removed libdvdcss (the open-source library responsible for accessing and unscrambling DVDs encrypted with the Content Scramble System (CSS)) from the application in version 0.9.2. Removal of digital rights management (DRM) in HandBrake is possible by installing VLC, a media player application that includes the libdvdcss library.
Blu-ray Disc

As with DVDs, HandBrake does not directly support the decryption of Blu-ray Discs. However, HandBrake can be used to transcode a Blu-ray Disc if the digital rights management is first removed using a third party application, such as MakeMKV. MakeMKV is a popular application for decrypting Blu-ray Discs and is often used in conjunction with HandBrake.

Unlike HandBrake, MakeMKV does not transcode; it removes the digital rights management from a Blu-ray Disc and creates an exact copy, at its original frame size and data rate, in a Matroska (MKV) multimedia container which can then be used as a source in HandBrake.

Video Workshop:A digital video editor for home video processing

Video Workshop is really a video converter/ editor for home video processing and for those who are simply getting began with video editing. Video Workshop offers an easy-to-use interface and is made for the everyday user. The primary purpose of Video Workshop would be to convert video clips in one format to a different, extract single frames to image files, cut part of file into new video file, merge several files in a single, rip sound files from video clips to mp3 or wave files, and mix audio recordings (mp3 or wave) right into a new video file.

More Features:
Free video player
Export video frames to split up image files.
Video Ripper tools, (support AVI, MPEG, Wmv file, ASF, RM, MOV, QT ...)
Making MPEG Movies for VCD, SVCD and DVD
Extract sound files from video clips and save these to separate mp3 or wave.
Video Cutter, split part of video file into new video clips by choosing the beginning time/frame and finish time/frame.
Video Joiner, merge selected video clips into one video file
Video / Audio Mixer: Mix mp3 or wave file into video file, and save to a different new format video file.
Easy To Use & Specifically Created For Customers.

More reading:
If you have want to edit you video and the video if not supported by video Workshopyou can read this:

Video editing sofrware application of CyberLink PowerDirector

CyberLink PowerDirector is a video editing software application for non-linear video editing, published by CyberLink Corporation. PowerDirector allows users to capture, edit and output from within the software and has semi-professional features suitable for the consumer level. Its main competitors are Adobe Premiere Pro and Elements, AVS Video Editor, Ulead VideoStudio, Pinnacle Studio,and Sony Vegas Movie Studio. The program most resembles, but does not compete with, Apple iMovie, on Mac OS X. PowerDirector software can be purchased online or in popular computer retail stores.

Features of CyberLink PowerDirector:
TrueTheater HD upsampling-(enhance your older standard definition video… a great feature when you are mixing SD and HD content for output in HD)
Image stabilization – fix your shaky videos
Video noise reduction – fix video shot in low light
Auto white balance – just click a spot in your video that should be white, and everything will be adjusted automatically
Audio noise reduction
TrueTheater Motion frame rate conversion (creates new “in-between” frames for smooth slow motion)
GPU Computing – tap the power of your graphics card, including full support for NVIDIA CUDA and ATI Stream video encoding, and 20 GPU-accelerated effects
Facebook video upload
Access thousands of menu templates and custom effects for free on DirectorZone
New design tools for creating unique effects, animations, titles, and disc menus (including a particle editor)
Pro effects – slow/fast motion, rotation, scale/crop
Great photo slide shows, timed to the beat of your music (and you can customize slide show templates)

Sorenson Squeeze:A compression suite for video

Sorenson Squeeze is a compression suite for video. It encodes to multiple formats including QuickTime, Windows Media, Flash Video, Silverlight, WebM & WMV. It uses multiple codecs, including the Sorenson codecs SV3 Pro and Spark, H.264, H.263, VP6, VC1, MPEG2, and many others. Squeeze operates on the Apple Macintosh and Microsoft Windows operating systems. Squeeze offers native plugins to Avid, Apple Final Cut Pro and Adobe Premiere (CS4, CS5) NLEs. The latest version is 8.5, bellow you will learn the new formats and features of Squeeze 8.5.

Squeeze 8.5 Formats & Features:

New Formats
Adaptive Bitrate Standards: MPEG Dash (NEW), Apple HTTP Live Streaming (HLS), Microsoft Smooth Streaming (H.264) and Adobe Flash Dynamic Streaming (Windows only). JPEG2000 (MXF, MJ2, Elementary Stream, MP4).
Pro Edition Formats: Avid DNxHD, Apple Pro Res, Dolby Pro Audio; Including 5.1 Surround.

New Features
Up to 3x faster encoding for MP4, MOV, MKV, and WebM
Fine grain quality control with custom compression system load settings
Intel QSV H.264 support
Accelerated Adaptive Bitrate Renditions (parallel encodes for HLS, Smooth, Adobe DS, MPEG-DASH)
Best x264 integration and optimization for any H.264 encoding
Greater than 8-bit support (10-bit dithering)
64-Bit compatibility

Learn something about the video editing software Corel VideoStudio

Corel VideoStudio (formerly Ulead VideoStudio) is a video editing software package for Microsoft Windows distributed by Ulead Systems (a division of Corel). The latest version of the software is X5 released in the first quarter of 2012.

Main features:
Basic editing
The software allows both storyboard and timeline-oriented editing. Different formats are supported for source clips, and the resulting video can be exported to DVD, AVCHD, HD-DVD and AVI. VideoStudio also supports direct DV and HDV capturing to disk.

Video filters
A variety of video filters either perform basic color adjustments (e.g., brightness and contrast), blurring or sharpening, and special effects such as kaleidoscope (which simulates a kaleidoscope). Chroma key provides blue screen/green screen type effects.

Professional Content
One of the best features of Corel VideoStudio is the professional content that is included with the program. Corel VideoStudio comes with over $500 worth of high definition templates from RevoStock that you can use to edit your videos with. Corel VideoStudio even comes with high quality titles, music, real time effects and transitions.

HD Video Editing
Corel VideoStudio makes it easy for you to perform high definition video editing. Corel VideoStudio is able to import HD video files from most camcorders, including JVC HD camcorders and Blu-ray disc camcorders. Once you are done editing your video in high definition in Corel VideoStudio, you can easily burn it to a Blu-ray disc or DVD with Corel VideoStudio. If you are looking to display your video on the web, Corel VideoStudio provides H.264 compression, which makes the file size smaller.

Input Formats Supported
Video: AVI, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, AVCHD, MPEG-4, H.264, BDMV, DV, HDV, DivX, QuickTime, RealVideo, Windows Media Format, MOD (JVC MOD File Format), M2TS, M2T, TOD, 3GPP, 3GPP2

Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, MP3, MPA, WAV, QuickTime, Windows Media Audio
Images: BMP, CLP, CUR, EPS, FAX, FPX, GIF, ICO, IFF, IMG, J2K, JP2, JPC, JPG, PCD, PCT, PCX, PIC, PNG, PSD, PSPImage, PXR, RAS, RAW, SCT, SHG, TGA, TIF, UFO, UFP, WMF
Disc: DVD, Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD)
Some format support may require third-party software.

Output Formats Supported
Video: AVI, MPEG-2, AVCHD, MPEG-4, H.264, BDMV, HDV, QuickTime, RealVideo, Windows Media Format, 3GPP,3GPP2,WebM, HTML5
Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1, MPA, WAV, QuickTime, Windows Media Audio, Ogg Vorbis

Images: BMP, JPG

Disc: DVD (DVD-Video/DVD-R/AVCHD), Blu-ray Disc (BDMV)