DVD Snap can take snapshots of any movie playing in your Mac DVD Player. Because it's built specifically for this, it's much easier to use than a traditional screen capture application. Just configure the program, launch the Mac DVD Player and then take your shots. You can grab one image or decide to create a sequence, by setting the time interval. DVD Snap can bet set from 0.5 to 600 seconds intervals.

The application stores and numbers your shots, making them easy to find and exports to a number of image formats, including JPEG, PNG or GIF. The program window is very discreet and can be resized so it doesn't obstruct you when playing back the DVD.

DVD Snap works flawlessly with the Mac DVD Player, a huge plus but also it's only true limitation. We would have loved to see it being associated to any other media player and not just to DVDs, as you may want to take shots from other movie formats. That said you're sure to get an excellent image quality from a DVD.

DVD Snap allows to take unique or sequential shots from movies played in the Mac DVD Player. A discreet program with good settings.

Download DVD Snap 2.1.0 in Softonic

There was a time when video files all conformed to some basic requirements and could be played without protest using any media software. As technologies change and licensing becomes more restrictive and specific, simply playing a video file has now become a challenge and thanks to the plethora of obscure proprietary formats now available, finding a media player that works for the majority has become more hassle than it’s worth. Thankfully the open source community have come up with a solution in the form of VLC, otherwise know as VideoLAN.

This cross platform player doesn't strike as particularly good-looking when put side by side with Windows Media Player or Winamp, but you'll appreciate its far superior usability within moments. Its power can be demonstrated with any video files you happen to be downloading, which can be played in whatever form they exist, be it an actual video format or an unclassified temporary one. As you preview a video, it will skip the parts that have yet to be downloaded and let you see the rest – Media Player in comparison, can't preview files in this way.

Apart from playing incomplete videos, because lets face it not many people want to do that anyway, VLC has support for a huge range of video formats. If it doesn't recognize the file type it will try playing it anyway often successfully or if it's an encrypted file it will display the scrambled video in its raw form. The interface is stripped down to the bare bones, with the apparent objective of making it as unobtrusive as possible. With superb hotkey support, you can do practically everything you want without touching your mouse.

Put simply, VLC is a video player that doesn't stray in to other areas. You won't find any media catalogs or fancy visualizations thrown in and although there is one alternative skin available, all it will take is one look and you'll quickly be switching back to the default.

This free player should appeal to true cinephiles who want as little distraction as possible from their viewing experience. Being open source it's free to use and thanks to a small file size and a friendly installation process, we would recommend it to absolutely everyone as their "backup" or "catch-all" video player.

Download VLC Media Player 0.9.3 in Softonic

RevolverHD is supposed to be used in conjunction with VoltaicHD so that you can play back your edited high definition movies from iMovie08 on the Playstation3.

In addition though, it allows you to create Blu-ray compatible DVDs so that you've got a complete HDTV editing and playback suite. This is fantastic for all those that don't have or can't afford a Blu-ray burner or simply don't have any Blu-ray disks.

RevolverHD is a very lightweight program and burning AVCHD clips straight from your camera to HD format is very simple. Simply open RevolverHD and add the required MTS or m2ts files. The just set your preference to "Blu-ray" DVD's and click burn. The result is a DVD that can be played on most Blu-ray players although it should be noted that there's no guarantee it will work on every single manufacturer.

With Blu-ray still taking off and HD editing an increasingly important aspect of video production, RevolverHD gives Mac users professional processing power in a remarkably lightweight utility.

Download RevolverHD 1.2 in Softonic

With the multiplication of Apple devices, which allow you to enjoy your media pretty much anywhere, you need to be able to convert and play your media files to any format. Roxio Crunch lets you do just this. Most users will probably be interested in converting unprotected DVDs and VIDEO_TS files to play on their Apple TVs or iPods, but Crunch also allows you to make video files playable on Sony PSP, DivX or 3GP formats. Just drag and drop any video file on the interface to convert it. Roxio Crunch has custom settings to quickly find the format you need.

More advanced users will be disappointed that Roxio Crunch does not actually allow you to convert encrypted DVDs. In terms of performances, Roxio Crunch is on par with similar applications, which means that some users might prefer going with free alternatives instead, like HandBrake or MacTheRipper. Similarly, converting media files to the iPod format is not exclusive to Roxio Crunch as you can easily do that with iTunes or QuickTime.

One the whole, Roxio Crunch is a good tool to convert a wide variety of media files to any format. While some users will be frustrated by the lack of advanced features, a simple drag and drop interface and DVD conversion make this an attractive Mac application.

Try out Roxio Crunch if you're looking for a simple tool to play your media on any support.

Download Roxio Crunch 1.0 in Softonic

DV Backup lets you backup any file to your DV camera. As stated by the developer on his website, technically a low cost 60 minutes tape could store around 17.5 Gb of data, much more than any DVD.

If not somewhat dated, DV Backup's interface makes it easy to handle your saved data, as long as your DV camera is well connected. All the regular controls on your DV camcorder, such as ejecting or playback can be carried out through DV Backup.

Click on 'Hard Disk' and you'll open a window showing all your backups and the amount of space used. DV Backup also lets you compress backups and schedule them regularly, just make sure your DV camcorder is connected and turned on!

One of the main drawbacks of DV Backup is the format itself. It may be able to store more than a DVD, but it unfortunately will not be as fast handling the data. Patience is the key...

DV Backup makes for an alternative solution to saving data, but I'd still stick to DVDs or best, an external hard drive.

Download DV Backup 1.4.3 (Standard Edition) in Softonic

MacDust is a small and lightweight application designed to clean up your computer. MacDust performs many tasks that could easily take you another five seconds if you weren't using MacDust. The application also removes hard to get at files, and even files you forget about. The Caches folder can get rather large, so using MacDust at least once a week can save you hundreds of megabytes!

Firefox

• Eat (Erase) Cookies
• Erase History
• Erase Download History
• Complete Reset

Safari

• Eat (Erase) Cookies
• Erase History
• Erase Download History
• Complete Reset
• Empty Icon Cache

Camino

• Eat (Erase) Cookies
• Erase History
• Erase Download History
• Complete Reset
• Empty Icon Cache

Chats

• Erase Adium Logs
• Erase Colloquy Logs
• Erase iChat Logs
• Erase Yahoo Logs

Finder

• Empty Caches
• Empty Logs

Torrent

• Remove Azureus Active Torrents
• Remove Azureus Inactive Torrents
• Remove Azureus Logs
• Remove Azureus Temporary Files
• Remove Transmission Torrents

Third Party

• Aquisition Incompletes Cleaning
• ARD Cleaning
• Internet Explorer Cleaning
• XSlimmer History Removal
• YummyFTP Recent Connections Clearing
• DVD Player Cleaning
• Stuffit Deluxe Cleaning
• Warcraft Cleaning

Download MacDust 2.74 in Softonic

Firestarter FX is a burning application with an original-looking disc-like interface. In terms of features, you'll find Firestarter FX relatively similar to most other burning apps out there. You can copy a disc, burn data or an image and erase data from a disk.

Firestarter FX handles both ISO and CUE/BIN files. You can create toc and fast-toc files, read RAW and use CDDB for audio CDs. When burning an image, Firestarter FX lets you set RAm cache size by way of a slider. If you have inserted a CDR-W, in your disc slot, you'll find that erasing its contents with Firestarter FX is very easy.

The tabbed interface, and the limit in the amount of settings available make Firestarter FX a simple burning application. Windows users will find it of interest because it can burn CUE and BIN files.

Firestarter FX is a disc burner with an original interface and CUE/BIN handling capabilities.

Download Firestarter FX 1.0 b7 in Softonic

Until now, your DVD was like a treasure chest you could not open. Sure, you could duplicate the entire DVD using copy tools, but there was no easy way to extract specific scenes out while preserving the high quality of the original.

Cinematize is the key to open that treasure chest quickly and easily. Select a favorite DVD movie clip, then extract and save it in formats ready for use in popular applications, including QuickTime, iMovie, FinalCut, Windows Movie Maker, Premiere, PowerPoint, or even PSP (PlayStation Portable) and your iPod. Cinematize is the new must-have tool for anyone working with DVDs, whether from a DVD camcorder, a DVD recorder, or a professional production studio.

Download Miraizon Cinematize 2.07 in Softonic

Microsoft seem to be taking file synching very seriously with File Mesh recently released and this older offering, FolderShare also belonging to the synchronisation line of software.

FolderShare gives you the ability to create a private peer-to-peer network that will help you to synchronize files across multiple devices and access or share files with colleagues and friends. This obviously removes the need to send large files via email, burn them to CDs/DVDs or upload them to a website - simply sync them with FolderShare.

FolderShare allows you to share and sync important information with anyone you invite but the drawback is that they must have a Windows Live account. If you've already got a Windows Live Mail account, then this is no big problem but if you haven't, you'll have to go through the laborious signing up process to use FolderShare.

The FolderShare interface is extremely simple showing you at a glance, everything you need to sync devices, information with other people and even access your files remotely - a much better solution than carrying them around on an external drive.

FolderShare is a useful way to sync your devices and information with other users although Microsoft's Live Mesh is a much better product.

Download FolderShare 2.6.6 in Softonic

Web2 Delight is a tool to download photos and videos from a collection of well known websites, organize them in collections and then play them in other devices.

The application offers a very sleek interface by which you can preview and organize content. The program includes sites such as Flickr or YouTube that you can browse straight from its interface, instead of opening up your browser. Downloading is easy and can be scheduled automatically. You'll have to make sure you have a good connection though so you can download videos quickly.

The best way to organize content is by creating your own collections. Web2 Delight also offers four different view modes and a very handy search feature to quickly find your content.

Once your videos and pictures are stored in Web2 Delight you can send them to another program, like iTunes or iPhoto or a device like the iPod or iPhone. You can also leave your photos in Web2 Delight and create slideshows with transitions.

Despite the name, I wouldn't say there is actually anything Web 2.0 in Web2 Delight. Still, it's a smart way of downloading photos and videos and organizing them before sending them to another application or device.

Download Web2 Delight 1.1.93 in Softonic

If you've been labelling your burned DVD and CD discs with a marker pen then stop - use Discus instead to create some truly original CD covers.

Discus allows you to create and print CD and DVD labels, CD case covers and inserts, DVD box covers and inserts, and more. Discus supports all direct printing onto discs via printer but this depends on whether your own printer supports this option. The great thing though is that Discus allows you to import your own photos and artwork or use one of the many predefined templates provided with the program.

The key thing you'll notice with Discus is the speed at which it does everything. It loads instantly and requires no installation - Discus can be run directly from the EXE file. As regards design and control, there's not a great deal of creativity that it allows itself. It's better to create something in Photoshop and then import it into the program. However, you can perform special text features such as curved and angled text to fit the contours of the disc.

A super fast and easy way to create your disc covers, Discus is one of the quickest ways to give your CD's and DVD's a personal touch.

Download Discus 4.06 in Softonic

Although the MacBook Air inaugurates what we can imagine as a disc free future, we still find ourselves burning CDs rather regularly. Dragon Burn offers nine different burning types for you, from audio CD to DVD copy, data or picture CDs.

Thanks to these presets, you don't have to worry about getting every setting right. Click on one and Dragon Burn will open up a new window, from which you can select the files to add to your disc and start the burning process.

Dragon Burn also handles most image formats like .dmg, .cue or .bin. The application includes a progress bar which lets you know how far you've gone in the burning process.

It's a shame that the application hasn't been update a little while, and the interface does look a little old when you compare it to more modern Leopard applications. However, Dragon Burn still remains a good choice for people new to burning, as they can easily choose from one of the nine presets.

Although not updated in a while, Dragon Burn is an easy to use disc burner for Mac.

Download Dragon Burn 4.1.20 in Softonic

Looking to index all your media? Media Catalog may just be what you're looking for. The application works extremely quickly and indexes everything you throw at it: CDs, DVDs, folders, just drag and drop onto its interface and Media Catalog will index it.

Making use of the latest Apple technology, Media Catalog offers a powerful search tool, which comes in extremely useful once you've been cataloging a good deal of media. You'll also notice the Quick Look tool at the bottom, to get a fast preview of elements.

I enjoyed how Media Catalog always seemed to keep everything well organized. Even better was the statistics section, which gives you extra details on files like size, update or number of volumes.

Now Media Catalog can take some time cataloging your media, especially if you're throwing at it big sized files, however in general its works extremely quickly.

Media Catalog is an excellent and fast application to index all your media.

Download Media Catalog 4.0 in Softonic

With DVD2one you can make movie-only and full disk copies for personal use on a single DVD-Recordable. Key features include:

• Process a movie to fit on a single recordable in a matter of 15 to 30 minutes (depending on the speed of your computer)
• Why waste space and image quality on unnecessary intros, menus and language tracks
• For those who want to keep those fancy menus and intros
• Useful for putting multiple episodes of a (tv) series or joining both sides of a flipper on 1 disk
• Written from scratch, it's not based on any old code, libraries or existing opensource projects
• Time critical parts written in assembly, for the highest possible speed
• Burn the movie with your favorite recording software

Download DVD2oneX 2.2.1 in Softonic

Labeling a CD or DVD can give it your own personal touch as long as you do it right. DiscLabel takes you through it in an intuitive interface and offers loads of templates to work with. The program can import images and track lists from pretty much any source, like iTunes, iPhoto or Toast, giving you complete freedom as to the content you use to assemble your labels.

With the release of the latest version, DiscLabel has made more 1,300 clip art items available via download, which can be browsed by tag and keyword. However users will also find a huge range of different templates in the program itself. DiscLabel makes a few editing tools available at the bottom. Users can add text, draw lines and shapes and add a few effects. These felt a little bit limited compared to all the templates and clip art items made avalaible.

After you've created your label you generally want to print it out. DiscLabel makes this easy to do on any sort of paper or paper type and you can even print directly on a CD. For those of you that don't want to bother with creating labels, the program even offers access to its own DiscLabel store, where you'll be able to purchase labels, cases and blank media.

DiscLabel is a no-fuss solution to making and printing out labels for your CDs and DVDs.

Download DiscLabel 5.2.3 in Softonic

What I look for in a video converter is that it handles a lot of formats, is simple to use and converts quickly. VisualHub achieves all of these.

Whether you're looking to convert to iPod, PSP, DVD or any other format, VisualHub will offer the presets you need. Converting is also very easy and simply a case of dragging and dropping your file, selecting the correct setting, and letting the program do the hard work. VisualHub also includes a number of advanced settings to improve the quality of your videos and handle elements like framerate, bitrate, width and height. You can batch process files for quicker conversions.

VisualHub is also very good for fitting videos onto DVD, up to 18 hours it claims, but you'll have to check that the video quality is good. The program features a preview window to make sure conversion was successful.

The major drawback is the volatile audio quality when it comes down to conversion. You might need a few tries before you get a video with proper image and audio quality. Also, it's a bit of a surprise that VisualHub doesn't feature subtitle support.

VisualHub makes converting videos easy and quick and is a great program to prepare a DVD. It only lacks subtitle support and better audio conversion.

Download VisualHub 1.34 in Softonic

To save you time and effort, DVDpedia retrieves all DVD information from the Internet and lets you arrange your DVDs in any which way you like. Using DVDpedia comes naturally because of its familiar iTunes style interface.

DVDpedia lets you retrieve information about your movies (both VHS and DVD) from various sites on the Internet. The main info generally comes from the Amazon sites (US, UK, Germany, Canada, France, Japan) but DVDpedia also gives you access to the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) as well as an additional Spanish, French, Italian, Australian and German movie site.

You can search using pretty much any keyword - from a director to the movie title or an actor's name. Or use a combination of them all. If you have a scanner, you can find your movies even faster. Just open a search window and scan the UPC of the movie. DVDpedia does the rest for you. Cuecats, modified or not, are supported too. (At the moment, scanning works best with the Amazon US site.)

Once you have gathered all the info for your DVDs, organize them any which way you want. Set up collections; for example, one for your favorite director, one for comedies and one just for Cameron Diaz. Once you've created a collection, you can simply drag and drop to add DVDs. Or create smart collections that update themselves automatically everytime you add a DVD. Just set the criteria for the smart collection and DVDpedia will organize itself. You can also make a wish list for DVDs you don’t own yet and a borrowed list to remember who borrowed what movie at what date and when it is due back.

You can export your library, or just a collection, using the HTML templates that come with the program. Or, if those are not enough, you can write your own templates. Check out the Help file on how to. Of course, there are also other export formats available, like tab delimited, comma delimited and .dvdpedia, a unique format which works very well if you want to make a backup of your library or send a collection to friends.

Download DVDpedia 4.3.0 in Softonic

Even if you aren’t interested in defragmenting your hard disk, if you produce products on CD-ROM disks, iDefrag will be of use. Seek times on CD-ROM and DVD-ROM disks are many times slower than those of hard disk mechanisms, so fragmentation really hits performance, in some cases adding many minutes to read times. iDefrag can defragment disk images before they are burnt onto CD or DVD-ROM, optimizing access time and significantly reducing install or read times.

And, unlike other products, iDefrag provides a wealth of information about your files, so you can see which ones are most fragmented and even look where they are on the disk. The screenshots on this page are from a perfectly normal 120GB hard disk, installed in a PowerMac G4 that is used for software development, wordprocessing and other everyday tasks (writing this web page, for instance). Look how fragmented it has become; most of that is actually down to one or two large files—like /usr/bin/emacs, shown on the right, with 96 fragments—but there are a substantial number of less fragmented files, over 3,000 in fact.

Download iDefrag 1.6.6 in Softonic

Kinemac is a 3D Real Time Animation & Presentation Software for Mac OS X. It allows you to create your own professional 3D Animations with the simplicity of a 2D presentation tool. See the animations in our Gallery.

Just drag your images, texts, movies and songs onto the Kinemac stage to get them into your animation. Kinemac allows you to apply images and movies onto the ready–to-use objects like cubes, cylinders, spheres, tubes, pies, rectangles, disks... which you can easily animate by setting key frames. Also, it lets you quickly create 3D Text and 2D scrolling text (RTF and RTFD) with any kind of font, color, size, shadows, embedded images...

A powerful animation control system based on Bezier curves allows you to carefully control any aspect of the movement such as translations, rotations, resizing, fading, speed, acceleration and deceleration of any object on the stage. The result is a professional and smooth animation which you can play in Real-Time/Full-Screen or export to a QuickTime movie file.

Kinemac uses the latest technologies like the OpenGL engine, QuickTime and the Cocoa frameworks, making it the ideal application to create Advertising for TV, trailers for movies, video-clips, instant scrolling messaging to put "on air" in real time, video content for CD, DVD, web sites... Also it has been said "awesome" to illustrate concepts through 3D animations at conferences, schools and universities. Kinemac is for Mac OS X only.

Download Kinemac 1.6.6 in Softonic

Just launch QuickTime Player, and there’s no telling where you’re likely to land. The Player may whisk you to the Moon or perhaps to an exotic location on this planet. Take you on a virtual field trip to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. Or treat you to the latest news, movie trailers, music videos, HBO series or PBS specials.

QuickTime 7 Player takes advantage of the latest video compression technology. It’s called H.264, and it’s an important new industry standard that’s quickly garnered widespread support. Chosen as the industry-standard codec for 3GPP (mobile multimedia), MPEG-4 HD-DVD and Blu-ray, H.264 represents the next generation of video for everything from mobile multimedia to high-definition playback.

Ultra-efficient, the H.264 codec compresses video tightly — resulting in much smaller files — without sacrificing any quality. So you can watch video of astonishing quality — crisp, clear and brilliantly saturated — in a window up to four times the size you are currently used to seeing. You also have the option of using the Player’s new audio playback controls. With them, you can easily adjust volume, balance, bass or treble response till your heart’s content.

The new QuickTime 7 Player not only delivers startling quality, but it’s easier to use than ever. It requires no set up for content that streams over the network. Instead, QuickTime 7 Player automatically determines your system’s connection speed and chooses the highest quality stream for the amount of bandwidth you have available. And if you ever lose a connection while watching streaming video, QuickTime 7 Player automatically reconnects. Now, that’s convenience.

Download QuickTime 7.4.5 in Softonic