If something crazy, weird or difficult in the media field needs to be played, we like to refer to the proverbial Swiss army knife VLC Media Player. But there has been a new star in the sky for a while: Soda Player. Changing of the Guard?
On the Soda Player website can you get a version for it Windows or Mac download.
Pay attention during the installation, because Windows Defender Firewall must be told that some network traffic is allowed to pass through. When Soda Player starts for the first time, you will be faced with the main playback options: opening one (1) regular video file, one (2) .torrent video file, one (3) URL to a video file, one (4) magnet link to a video file or an (5) AceStream link to a video file.
And now also the totally unexpected news: “That’s it …” Soda Player is only a video player and there is no way to play with program options any more. You specify which video to play and Soda Player does the rest for you. Nothing more and nothing less. What versatile now?
Behind the scenes
Soda Player may look very sober, but behind the scenes the program is very versatile. You just have to indicate what you want to play and Soda Player will handle all the side issues for you. And isn’t that exactly what we want: software without unnecessary frills? Behind the scenes we find support for Chromecast and Apple TV, among other things. In fact, this is the most important option for us, as it turns the PC into a remote playback device. Other options include the ability to play BitTorrent videos. If you provide the link, streamed playback will start immediately. That is not completely legal, that must of course be said, but Soda Player does offer the possibility. You can also use all types of subtitle files and add them to the player while playing. With a lateral link with the web service OpenSubtitles.org to check whether subtitles (in Dutch) can be retrieved. It doesn’t matter which video you feed to Soda Player, the player supports all major and modern video codecs. H.264 and HEVC / H.265 can even be decoded through hardware.
Some examples
To show what Soda Player can do for you in concrete terms, we give a number of examples below. We will use a few video files (specially downloaded for this occasion) in various formats, some of which have embedded subtitles. For others we add the subtitles separately.
MKV with SRT
We will start with an MKV video file with an SRT subtitle file already included. For example, we will drag the MKV video file to the Soda Player icon on the Desktop. And see: the player automatically starts and plays the movie. If you click on the subtitle icon at the bottom right of the screen during playback, you will see that you can make the SRT subtitles visible. This is probably the type of playback that you will use the most: MKV in combination with SRT.
Chromecasting
Then of course being able to play a video file on the Chromecast elsewhere in the house. As said before, is an essential wish! The condition is that Soda Player must be able to find a Chromecast, so you will have to set it up in advance. You can check that again via Google Chrome, after which Soda Player can immediately pick up the same Chromecast via the monitor icon at the bottom right of the screen. Subsequently, Soda Player will neatly pass the subtitled (!) Images to the Chromecast, while it itself keeps the control of the video file under control.
Find subtitles elsewhere
The website www.opensubtitles.org has already been discussed. With a little luck you can find the Dutch subtitle files you need on that site. And now pay attention, because OpenSubtitles.org mentions specific file names! On the one hand, you need those file names to be able to independently download the correct and matching (read: the just right synchronized) subtitles for your films. On the other hand, Soda Player can use those same filenames to reason which subtitles may be able to be automatically retrieved and shot.
No VLC Media Player
In the meantime, one thing has become clear: “Soda Player is not a VLC Media Player!” They are two completely different players, it must be said that Soda Player is a lot easier and faster to operate than VLC Media Player. The main advantage is that Soda Player can Chromecast great and is very versatile with subtitle files. So just install both programs, don’t you think?
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