It always frustrated me that there wasn't a good media player like this, which left the average desktop video experience in bad shape. Now that there finally is one, it seems worth it to give as much feedback as possible to help it improve. There doesn't seem to be any real competition, so best make the most of Splash.
Here are some things I noticed:
1. The first time I clicked on a video after installing Splash Pro, an MSI wanted to run which average users might find a bit alien as it doesn't explicity look Splash related. I'm sure if I had just run Splash Pro directly and seen this I would have thought nothing of it, but since it popped up as a result of clicking on a video it was unwelcome. I can imagine a new user not even knowing Splash Pro is installed on their machine clicking on a video for the first time and thinking that the video itself may be trying to install something. As a result, they might decide to cancel it and instead be frustrated that they can't play videos.
2. The clock in the lower right hand corner could look a bit more like a clock. It's sitting right next the video time/run length which just seems like a bit of a mess. Adding an AM/PM indicator next to it or adding the date near it might make it more intuitive.
3. The Playback Options dialog is somewhat hidden for how ridiculously important it is. There's only one way to get there aside from knowing the hotkey, and that's a little faded dark button to the left of the Stop button on the control bar. You can't even use the right click context menu on the video to get to the Playback Options. I love minimalism, but I could see a lot of people downloading the Splash Pro trial to find out what all the buzz is about and never seeing the Playback Options. Aside from the slick application style/interface, that single dialog is one of the major things separating Splash from everything else out there and I think it needs to do a better job of making its presence stand out.
4. I think the Playback Options could benefit from some good presets. Not all people care enough about setting up perfect presets, so what they end up doing is fiddling with the Playback Options every time they watch a different video. Even then, they might settle on settings which don't provide an optimal viewing experience. Perhaps people could suggest their favorite settings for different video types and some sort of balanced list of presets could be distilled out of it?
5. It could be nice to have a way to quickly switch between presets without having to open the Playback Options dialog. Perhaps there could be a dropdown list or just arrow buttons for switching between them with the preset name listed somewhere on the video control bar?
6. It's good that the audio boost setting isn't remembered to reduce the chance that someone starts up a video and unexpectedly gets their ears blasted, but I do think there should be some sort of more global audio boost option that stacks and persists with the other options. Perhaps next to the audio latency settings? There might also be a note there, that they should adjust their system sound settings first before toying with those and provide a button which opens the system sound mixer? Also, the way the Audio Boost setting shows up in the Playback Options, you would expect it to be remembered by a preset. It could either be fixed/moved or better separated so it doesn't appear that way. Another option is to just blend the audio boost feature into the volume control slider on the control bar in an intuitive way.
7. Motion2 at 60p was excellent for most things aside from heavy action. I understand that currently Motion2 disables itself for sets of frames where too many artifacts would be produced and that contributes to a distracting experience in scenes with heavy action. It sounds like in future updates this issue will either be resolved or minimized. For now, a reduced Motion2 setting did manage to provide a better experience than otherwise without causing distraction, partially due to the framerate drops being much less pronounced.
8. I was experiencing some periodic stutter in windowed applications which becomes more noticeable with more fluid motion. Enabling the Video Overlay option solved this, though I haven't tested whether it was due to the Video Overlay itself or the disabling of DWM. I suspect the DWM. I forget what commonly causes this minor stutter, but it may be due to that 59hz vs 60hz gap? If this is the case, then perhaps if there is an odd refresh rate Splash can suggest a solution?
9. I haven't thought much about the existing format support, though I figure y'all are on top of it. Thus far it has played everything I care about, but I would like to see WebM support added at some point. I can't imagine it's a high priority given its current obscurity, but it would be a pleasant addition. Hard to tell this early on, but it has the potential to become one of the most widely used formats.
Hopefully some of this feedback is useful.
