Top 3 Media Players for macOS 11: Big Sur Free Download

Top 3 Media Players for macOS Big Sur Reviews

No.1 QuickTime Player – Apple’s Own Mac Media Player

As is well known, QuickTime Player is built in every Mac computer as the default Mac media player and is people’s first choice to play media files on Mac. Every time macOS gets update, QuickTime Player will also be updated automatically. So, it is always the first choice for some basic media playback on Mac.

As the number one go-to option for you Mac users, this macOS Big Sur video player lets you play, record, edit and share audio and videos files easily.

Media playback: Compatible with a number of media file formats, like iTunes DRM files, QuickTime movie files (MOV), most MPEG-4 files (MP4, M4V, M4A, MP3), MPEG-2, DV Stream, and some audio files like WAV, AIFF and AAC, QuickTime Player satisfies the basic playback requirement. On macOS Big Sur computer, playing H.264/HEVC 4K high resolution videos is also a piece of cake. Besides, basic playback controls in any media player including play, pause, rewind, fast-forward and adjust volume are available on QuickTime Player as well. No one is perfect, however, QuickTime won’t play MP4 sometimes because of the missing codec pack and won’t play WMV and MKV as it doesn’t natively support the formats. Another downside is that QuickTime Player cannot play .srt files. If interested, you can stream videos from Mac to Apple TV through this player.

Screen recording: QuickTime Player on macOS Big Sur is also a powerful screen recorder to record movies from built-in and external cameras, record the screen of iPhone/iPad/iPod touch, record audio from a microphone and record the Mac screen.

Edit videos: No matter downloaded movies, self-made videos or recorded clips, QuickTime Player offers the possibility for simple and quick post processing. You are allowed to cut a video to remove the unwanted part, split a file into multiple segments that can be manipulated later, remove audio from a video or remove video to keep the audio only, and flip or rotate a video clip.

In addition to what are mentioned above, the newly-designed QuickTime Player supports Picture in Picture mode to allow you to enjoy movies while working on other things, and it also improve its Movies Inspector to let you view more media information about the currently played file, like color space, HDR format, bit depth, scale and aspect ratio.

Pros:
Built in macOS Big Sur. No need to install.
Play iTunes DRM files.
Easy to use interface.

Cons:
Won’t play WMV, MKV and sometimes MP4.
Can’t play .srt subtitle files.
Won’t play output files including MOV generated by itself on OS before macOS Catalina.

No.2 VLC Media Player – The Most Popular Open-source Media Player for macOS

With over 3 billion downloads, VLC media player is surely the big boss in the media player world. Combining media playback, download, stream, convert and record functions into one, it’s no wonder it becomes almost all people’s choice when discovering it among the rest media players. When playing media files on macOS Big Sur, it will offer you a lot freedom. Besides, starting from version 3.0.12, you can use VLC player on current M1 Macs and any future Macs with Apple Silicon chips.

Play everything: Firstly, files (including zip files), discs, webcams, devices and streams (m3u8/IPTV, RTSP, HTTP) are on the list of VLC’s supported contents list. Secondly, no need to download external codec packs, it plays most codecs including MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.264, HEVC, AV1, etc. Thirdly, it is also a DVD player to play encrypted and multi-region DVDs. Compared to QuickTime mentioned above and 5KPlayer below, the better playback ability of this macOS Big Sur media player is it supports the playback of damaged, incomplete or unfinished files that are still downloading. With the inbuilt Hardware Decoding method, VLC also handles highly compressed 4K, HDR, 360°, etc videos very easily frame by frame.

Stream contents: VLC media player can be used as a server and a client to stream and receive local and internet network streams. To name a few, you can stream local videos from VLC to Chromecast and DLNA stream files from your Mac to DLNA-certified devices. As for online streams, this Mac media player let you subscribe to Apple Podcasts, listen to online radio, stream M3U8/IPTV links and play YouTube videos.

Download online videos: VLC is really a great media center that provides unlimited video resources for enjoyment by downloading videos from online media files. Anytime you want to play a specific clip offline, you can use VLC media player to download it and play it thereafter.

Record videos: As powerful as QuickTime Player, VLC also provides the possibility to record videos, including webcam videos, desktop videos, online radio streams and offline playing videos.

Other function of this macOS 11 media player also include files converting, downloading and adding subtitles, video audio loop, video rotating, deinterlacing video and playback speed control.

However, nothing is perfect. VLC audio video out of sync, VLC crashing when playing 4K files and VLC color distortion during HDR playback have been headaches for a long time. Luckily, these problems don’t occur at the same time to a same user.

Pros:
No external codec needed. Huge range of file compatibility.
Multifunctional.
Support vast number of plug-ins.

Cons:
Bland user interface.

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