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 Just Watch
Firmly based on Mac OS X’s QuickTime Framework, yFlicks can play any movie format the QuickTime Player can play. And yFlicks is much less obtrusive if you just want a small window showing a movie — instead of the QuickTime Player’s massive “brushed metal” surface.
 Please Remain Seated
We love Mac OS X’s Front Row feature. Access to movies on our laptop, across the room from our iMac, or pumped through our television set. But try browsing for an Adventure film or find a Hitchcock classic within a flat alphabetized list of files and you’ll immediately recognize a limitation. yFlicks ushers you directly to what you’re looking once you have enabled usher mode — you’ll have complete access to your yFlicks library’s structure via Front Row. Moreover, yFlicks also has its own Apple Remote support to let you choose movies and control playback directly from within the application without having to get up from your cinema chair.
 First Glance
Sometimes, a static preview image just doesn’t ring a bell. That’s why yFlicks starts playing the movie your mouse hovers over automatically; and you don’t have to open the movie first, then play, wait a while, stop, close it, and go to the next movie. Just move your mouse to the next movie’s preview image, and that movie will start playing.
 Spin Me Around
So you’ve shot a video with your digital camera in upright format. Now you’re trying to watch it, and it’s shown sideways. Duh. But never mind — with yFlicks, a perfectly oriented movie is just one click away.
 You’ll Love the Interface
Beauty isn’t just an end in itself. Whenever you find yourself playing around with something because you like the way it works, it really just goes to show that as far as user interface design is concerned, beauty is nothing more than a sign of intuitive, non-obtrusive handling. We strongly believe that the beauty that lies in yFlicks will meet your eye. And by the way: If yFlicks loves you, too, its main window will be full of hearts for you (see the “Appearance” preferences).
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 Stay Organized
Quite similarly to Apple’s iApplications, yFlicks not only lets you arrange movies in static groups — its versatile tags feature lets you categorize your movies any way you want. You can even tag your movie automatically by querying Amazon’s online movie database, which gives you the additional benefit of having the corresponding DVD cover art downloaded automatically. And once you’ve done so, creating smart groups based on your tags and subdividing those smart groups by tag values will let you browse your movie library by Genre, Actor, Director, MPAA Rating, or Year, for instance.
 Finders Keepers
If you’re like us, you don’t just want to watch web clips online. If they made you smile, you’re inclined to keep them. So it’s a good thing that yFlicks supports downloading from video communities such as YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion, CollegeHumor, MyVideo, SevenLoad, ClipFish, and lots of others. And it couldn’t be easier: yFlicks can add a button to your browser’s toolbar, which then triggers a download to your library whenever you’re on one of those communities’ video pages. (Playback requires the excellent free Perian codec.) Or do it the Mac way via Drag & Drop directly from your browser window to the yFlicks library. And you can even export downloaded movies to other movie formats — e.g., for viewing them on your iPod.
 Non-Stop Fun
Every group in your library doubles as a playlist: Just set a sorting order or shuffle the movies for any given group, then lean back and watch yFlicks play them consecutively.
 Clever Enough to Forget
yFlicks doesn’t permanently add each and every movie you watch to its library. Rather, movies that are opened via double-click are added to a special section of your library that gets cleared each time you quit yFlicks. If you want to keep them, just drag them to somewhere else in your library.
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April 22nd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Cool. Been waiting for this since v3 was released.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:39 am
Got this from MacUpdate last year and have been very happy with it. Highly recommended.
April 22nd, 2008 at 3:25 am
This looks fun. I don’t know that I have enough video files to bother, though.
If you want to actually rotate the videos themselves instead of just turning them upon view (which is what I think yFlicks does), Limit Point makes a bundle of small utilities, one of which is a video rotator app:
http://www.limit-point.com/Utilities.html
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:42 am
You’re right, Tommy: yFlicks doesn’t actually change the files (*) — but it remembers the orientation you have chosen.
Oh, and don’t forget that yFlicks includes a free TubiTunes license for all your one-stop movie download/conversion needs.
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(*) We like that non-invasive approach. Other examples are yFlicks’s “Crop” and “Set Aspect Ratio” features, which don’t change the actual video file either.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:10 am
I agree that the non-invasive approach is best for videos you’re just watching.
I’d only actually convert a video if I needed to include in another video or do other editing with it.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:35 am
One of the Slick iMovie plug-ins from GeeThree has a rotate tool, too.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:11 am
I bought a copy of yFlicks either from MacZOT! or MacUpdate about a year or so ago. It’s a really nice application and even if you have only a small library of movies, is very handy for organization.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:49 am
Anyone have this and Leap? Is there really a need for both? I know Leap doesn’t play the movie inside the application, but not sure if that difference is enough to need both programs.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:59 am
Peter,
I bought yFlicks last year and like it very much. However, ever since version 3.2, it crashes on startup on my G4 Mac mini. I sent you a Crash Reporter log a month ago and have not heard back from you. The problem still exists in version 3.3.1.
I sent a new crash log today (to info@manytricks.com, as requested). Please let me know if you don’t receive it (or if you do!) or if you need anything else. Thanks.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Jerry: you should have received my reply by now. :-)
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In other news, I’m glad macZOT is back online. Depending on how many of you missed the opportunity to get yFlicks because of the downtime, we’ll be happy to consider doing a rerun soon.
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:50 pm
Peter,
Thanks for the quick reply. :-) I will try your suggestions and get back to you.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:46 pm
I love yFlicks… only thing I hate is the constant resizing of the screen when you watch a movie. Why, oh why? Please provide an option to keep the window size. No need to resize. I find it truly irritating.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Definitely sensitive about what files it can handle. Lots of yflickscrawler crashing and high memory usage while adding a ~60 file folder containing mostly videos, plus a few images and weblocs. Barely able to kill yflickscrawler and yFlicks processes to regain control of the system (2GHz/2GB iMac G5, 10.4.11).
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:40 pm
gryphonent: Which resizes are we talking about? The ones that occur when switching back from watching a movie to viewing the contents of a movies group?
sjk: Since yFlicks is based on the QuickTime frameworks, we’re limited to what QuickTime and associated plug-ins like Perian and Flip4Mac can digest. What kinds of movies crash your yflickscrawler? If you have an example file that’s sufficiently small, would you consider sending it to me?
In both cases, it’s probably better to further discuss these things via e-mail. Please write to peter at manytricks dot com. Thanks!
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:04 am
> If you have an example file that’s sufficiently small, would you consider sending it to me? … it’s probably better to further discuss these things via e-mail.
I knew at least one of the files didn’t open with QuickTime Player so I was curious how yFlicks would handle it and other questionable ones. But I didn’t expect it to go berserk consuming CPU and memory, which now happens when it’s relaunched so the library may need to be deleted to get it working sanely again. My post was partly to be a warning not to attempt what I did even though I didn’t specifically say it.
I’ll follow up later in e-mail with more details. Thanks for responding here.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:42 pm
A rerun would be great!