15-Minute Reviews :: SolveigMM WMP Trimmer Plugin v1.0
Hello all and welcome to another 15-Minute Review! Today’s review is on SolveigMM WMP Trimmer Plugin version 1.0 by Solveig Multimedia – A plug-in for Windows Media Player to aid you in trimming WMA, WMV, AVI and MP3 files to the desired size, without re-encoding degradation.
Software Description
As Giveaway of the Day states:
“SolveigMM WMP Trimmer plugin is a fast and small tool to losslessly cut AVI, WMV, ASF, MP3, and WMA files loaded to Windows Media Player.
No quality degradation. No out of sync problems. No AVI size restrictions.”
Quick Pros
- Very easy to use – Select start, end and click ‘trim’
- Resulting file is same quality as original
- Works with a wide range of formats
Quick Cons
- Has to be ran in Windows Media Player (Not standalone)
- Trim start/end buttons not overly accurate on clicking
- No ability to adjust ‘trim’ start/end once set without restarting
- Lack of ‘preview’ trim section before trimming
Expansion
This product’s concept is simple; Provide a quick and easy way to butcher out a portion of your audio or video within Windows Media Player. I found the application very simple and very easy to use (It pops up right under the visualization or video in the main window) and provides you three buttons and two text boxes. The three buttons are ‘Set start time’, ‘Trim’, and ‘Set end time’. The two boxes are simply for telling you the timing. The file is the same quality as the original since essentially it butchers the file instead of re-encoding. While this may be great, it does rely on the closest keyframe at tbe beginning for video, so your start might be slightly shifted, but the end should be spot-on. The application works with a lot of common formats; AVI, WMV, WMA, ASF and MP3. While this does not cover all formats, it does cover the most common that might be trimmed through WMP. This application is, unfortunately is not the standalone version – It must be ran in Windows Media Player.
A few small quirks – With MP3s, I found the trim start/end buttons weren’t greatly accurate at all. I ended up launching the resulting MP3 in WinAMP to see how far I needed to adjust it and then redoing it again to hammer out my timing. There is no way to manually enter adjustments either – You have to try your luck at hitting your timing again. With this said, there is no preview of what you are trimming either, so it is a bit of hit and miss. When I finally got a good resulting file length, it was fine quality – I tried with 2 MP3s and 1 AVI I had and all seemed to work okay.
Final Verdict
While this application does have its potential uses, it is limited and not very powerful. While free, it may be fun for those who want to toss up a quick vid to YouTube, chop up YouTube videos or work on making your own MP3 ringtones for your cell phone. As for paying $14.95 for this plug-in, I’d likely move to a standalone such their own VideoSplitter ($20.00 – Found through the ‘Start Pro’ button in the plug-in) or go for a little more with video and use VirtualDub (Open Source – One I use) or mp3DirectCut (Freeware – Haven’t tried it) – This plug-in just isn’t very powerful.
Posted by BladedThoth on Sunday, June 17, 2007
