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I remember a day in late 2004 when I almost cried for the happiness when I discovered a standalone utility for playing Flash Video files (FLV). It saved me a lot of time because it allowed me to playback immediately videos in FLV format, without even opening the Flash editor: it was just a double click on the file name or a drag-and-drop over the utility. That could have been somehow handy for a common user, but for a developer involved in Flash projects with video was super useful: it became immediately one of my most used Flash companions.

The utility was FLV Player by Martijn de Visser, developed with mProjector (a tool for enhancing capabilities of the standalone Flash player). Maybe not perfect at the beginning, but Martijn has been working on it in the spare time and he was offering it for free. Actually is still free, but now is sponsored by Applian Technologies: it means that the installer proposes you (only once) to evaluate other programs. You are allowed to skip the messages if not interested.
Anyway, the good things are yet the same: it has a quite simple interface and it’s pleasant to use. Not a single useless function, no spyware or any visual distraction. These are the commands in overlay when you go in fullscreen mode:

In the meanwhile other standalone players appeared, but I’ve never found a better option either for missing features or for inferior interface. Just to mention some of them:
- Flv-Player S (Mac & PC): good for playlist and functionalities, really bad for interface.
- Wimpy Desktop FLV Player (Mac & PC): nice interface, bad for not resizing automatically.
- Sorenson FLV Player: (Mac & PC) good for metadata, bad for the squishing interface while resizing the window.

The recently updated FLV Player 2.0 continues to be my number one without any doubt. I guess that it’s the number one in absolute, since the counter on download.com is totalling 5,247,269 downloads today. I don’t know the numbers for other programs, but I think FLV Player is the most diffused standalone player of FLV on earth. I’m not considering VLC Media Player (installer of 8Mb) because it’s not a specific tool for FLV, even if it’s a good robust free multi-platform player with FLV support since release 8. In any case, FLV Player shows evidently a better and cleaner interface then VLC.

Adobe Media Player is already in public beta and it won’t take a lot of time for being on many computers, but I think that it won’t necessarily substitute FLV Player. I see the first as a strong competitor for iTunes and the second as a handy alternative to Quicktime player. Adobe Media Player offers many more functionalities, the installer weighs only 863 KB and is multi-platform, but it requires AIR (around 10Mb) and it isn’t a final release right now. The installer for the FLV video player weighs 2,2Mb, doesn’t require AIR but it’s only for Windows.

I will go in depth with Adobe Media Player as soon as the final version is released, for now I conclude my review on FLV Player 2.0:

Pro:
- clean, simple and usable interface
- same keyboard shortcuts of QuickTime Player
- it reads any metadata
- absolutely free
- light to download

Cons:
- only for Windows
- missing a playlist management
- performance issue in fullscreen

Wish list:
- recent played files feature
- playlist management

Conclusion
If you have ever wondered why nothing happened after clicking on a .flv file on your PC, FLV Player is the best solution for having an immediate video playback.

Requirements:
FLV Player is compatible with Windows 2000, XP and Vista. I’ve tested the version 2.0 build 22 on a Dell Vostro desktop with Vista Business and a 24″ monitor at 1920 x 1200. I’ve just reproduced a known issue in full screen mode: controls freeze if the options “maintain framerate in fullscreen mode” and “Use video smoothing when scaling” are both enabled (it’s an issue of performance, that might be solved with future updates of Flash Player and/or mProjector).