Play, inspect, QC and correct all your media.
The most powerful, multiformat video player & encoder with inspection and correction.
Switch lets you play a variety of web and professional media formats, inspect and adjust the properties of the file, and then export a new file. Designed for media professionals, Switch enables visual file inspection, single file transcoding and is a complete software solution for professional media Quality Control.
Everything you need in one application
High-quality QC
With features such as professional audio meters with loudness monitoring, HDMI/SDI Output to an external monitor, easy media file comparison feature, and support for playback of captions, Switch Pro provides a complete software solution for professional media Quality Control.
Caption playback and verification
Play CEA-608 & CEA-708 captions, as well as SCC, DVB, TTML (iTT and SMPTE-TT) and WebVTT, SRT and STL subtitle files to verify timing and accuracy. Switch is the only software player with full support for CEA-708 caption decoding, including advanced 708-only features like Unicode character support. See CaptionMaker for caption creation.
Deep file inspection
Switch gives you frame-accurate playback of all your media and lets you see detailed information about it in an intuitive, well-organized interface. See metadata (including DPP), bitrate, video essence and codec, audio channels, speaker assignments, and loudness levels. Also compare multiple files in a single window – great for ABR workflows.
Windows Media Support
Enable playback and conversion of Windows Media content on your Mac! Switch is a fully licensed Windows Media playback tool for Mac and is able to convert Windows Media content into other formats compatible with your equipment. Switch Plus and Pro allow you to convert other media formats into Windows Media files for applications that require this format.
IMF/DCP Playback
Switch Pro now supports the playback of simple and complex IMF/DCP assets. Just load your CPL file, and let Switch do the heavy lifting. Your content will be automatically stitched together and played back seamlessly.
Powerful, professional production features
Play It
Trust Switch for frame-accurate, smooth playback of all your media files, including captions and subtitles. Includes SDI out for external preview.
Plays any file format professionals care about
Trust Switch for frame-accurate playback of all your professional media files, including embedded captions and subtitles.
Multi-format playback support includes MXF, IMF, GXF, MPEG-2 Program Streams and Transport Streams, and formats such as MOV, MP4, WMV, and more!
Switch can also play HEVC and 4K files, DNxHD, and JPEG2000 (requires Switch Plus or Pro).
All the playback controls you expect
Switch has all the playback control features you’d expect in a professional player such as JKL navigation, fast forward and rewind, slow motion, as well as single-frame forward and back.
“Jump To” allows you to jump to a specific timecode, frame or time in your video.
Full caption support
Switch will play back embedded CEA-608 & CEA-708 captions, as well SCC, DVB, TTML (iTT and SMPTE-TT captions) and WebVTT, SRT and STL subtitle files. Switch is the only software player with full support for CEA-708 caption decoding, including advanced 708-only features like Unicode character support.
Switch will also decode captions from virtually all wrappers and formats, so you can verify captions within your MXF or Transport Stream file.
Check It
Inspect video properties, audio properties, captions, and subtitles. Includes loudness monitoring, compare media feature, and Timeline view showing video GOP structure.
Inspect all the properties of your media file
Check video and audio properties such as audio channels, speaker labels, aspect ratio, clean aperture, bitrate, frame rate, metadata, encoding formats and more.
Add secondary files
You can also load secondary audio or closed caption files to check sync.
Audio Meters
Use the Audio Meters to solo or mute audio channels, and inspect true peaks and momentarily loudness values. Switch Pro adds a loudness panel that calculates gated (BS.1770-3) or ungated (BS.1770-2) loudness levels.
Compare Alternate Media
Compare Alternate Media lets you open additional media files to compare with your primary media file. Up to sixteen alternate media files can be opened. Once opened, all of the files are listed on the View > Alternate Media File menu where they can be shown in Full View, Split View or Difference View. Great for checking your multiple adaptive bitrate files in ABR workflows or easy comparison of multiformat media.
Timeline
Use the Timeline feature to view the GOP structure of a video segment, highlighting the I, P, and B frames. You can also see the data rate information associated with the video.
Preview to external monitors
Preview your files on a broadcast monitor or other devices. Switch Pro supports HDMI/SDI hardware output via AJA or Blackmagic Design devices for preview and quality check. Switch supports the Blackmagic Design SDK, and AJA Kona 4, Kona 3G, T-TAP, Io 4K, and Io XT.
Switch also adds the ability to view Vertical Ancillary (VANC) data on an external monitor.
DPP/AMWA Certified Player
Switch Player lets you visually QC DPP files on the desktop, playing back the files as well as displaying DPP AS-11 MXF metadata.
Switch was among the first players to achieve DPP/AMWA certification as part of the DPP (Digital Production Partnership)’s Compliance Program.
Enough information but not too much
Switch displays all the relevant media information about your file in an intuitive, well organized interface. The inspector is deep enough to be meaningful, without giving users so much information that it becomes cumbersome.
Fix It
Make changes: trim, scale or crop your media; rearrange audio tracks; change speaker assignments and rewrap or encode your media.
Make changes to your file and export
By switching to edit mode, users can modify settings and export a new file. Switch lets you specify a new file format; a new video or audio codec; trim, scale or crop the video; add metadata (Pro only), and much more. Export to Apple ProRes*, Windows Media, H264, MPEG-2 Video, MP4, MPEG-2 program streams and transport streams.
*ProRes export on Windows only possible in iTunes packages using Switch Pro.
Rewrap files
Switch includes the ability to pass-through audio and video on export, or omit the video and export as an audio only file.
Powerful audio editing
In the audio tab, you can split or join different audio tracks, rearrange audio tracks; change speaker assignments, then change the audio format and sample rate. Switch also supports downmixing: take a file with eight channels and mix it down to stereo.
Deliver It
Export your corrected media as an iTunes Store package.
Streamlined creation of iTunes store packages
Choose the iTunes export preset to create packages ready for distribution to the iTunes store. This creates an asset-only iTunes package file (a .itmsp file) which includes the media content, secondary subtitle or audio files, chapter information, and an XML file.
Windows Media Support
WMV and WMA Playback
All levels of Switch are able to decode and play back Windows Media Video and Audio (WMV and WMA).
Convert Windows Media to MP4
Switch Player is able to convert and export Windows Media content into an MP4 file using H.264 video and AAC audio. Once converted, these files will be natively supported on all devices without the need for a 3rd party tool.
Export to Windows Media
Switch Plus & Pro are able to convert and export other media formats into Windows Media files. These files will be natively supported on Windows but will require 3rd party software to be compatible with Mac computers.
QuickTime & Switch
QuickTime Video Codec Support and More
Switch supports all of the commonly used QuickTime video codecs, plus adds support for additional containers and codecs not used in the QuickTime media framework.
Media Inspection
Inspection of media properties, metadata, and encoding with greater detail than is possible in QuickTime Player X.
Captioning and Subtitles
Full caption and subtitle support for all professional video formats.
MOV Metadata Inspection
Switch can display the same QuickTime metadata found within MOV files as QuickTime Player, plus includes greater detail and additional inspection capabilities.
AJA and Blackmagic Support
Switch is able to play back all supported content through AJA and Blackmagic playback cards to external displays and monitoring equipment.
Windows Minimum* System Requirements
Operating Systems
- Windows 10
- Windows 8.1
- Windows 7 SP1
CPU- 2.4 Ghz Core 2 Duo or faster.
- Any Core i3, i5, or i7
RAMGraphics- Any graphics adapter that supports Direct3D feature level 10.1 or better
- 256 MB or more graphics memory
Display- 1280 x 768 or larger
- 50 Hz or faster
*Note: Minimum specifications are the required hardware for playback of standard definition content.
Playback of demanding content such as 4K, HEVC, and high frame rate video may require more powerful hardware. Try using the “Reduced scale decoding” option, which you can find in the Preferences menu.
Display Languages Supported- English
- French
- German
- Japanese
- Spanish
Playback Format SupportContainers:
- AAC
- AC31
- AIFF
- ASF1
- AVC (AVC Elementary Stream)
- AVI (OpenDML)
- DV
- GXF
- HEVC2 (HEVC Elementary Stream)
- IMF/DCP3
- LXF
- M1V (MPEG-1 Video Elementary Stream)
- M2V (MPEG-2 Video Elementary Stream)