AvleaPlay — User Guide

AvleaPlay is a media player for Windows that keeps to itself: your files, your history and everything it learns about how you watch stay on your PC. This guide covers every feature, from opening your first file to the things you will only find if someone tells you about them.

Opening something

Four ways in, all on the Home screen:

• Open file — any video or audio file. AvleaPlay handles MKV, MP4, AVI, MOV, WebM, TS, FLV, and audio from MP3 and FLAC to WMA and Opus.
• Open folder — plays the folder in order and keeps the rest as a queue.
• Open disc — a DVD in your drive, with menus and chapters.
• Open URL — a stream address you paste in.

You can also drag a file onto the window, or use Open with → AvleaPlay from Explorer. Once AvleaPlay is your default player, double-clicking a video is enough.

An ISO image or a VIDEO_TS folder counts as a disc: open it like a file and the DVD menu appears.

Your library

Add the folders where your series and films live, and AvleaPlay builds an index of them. Episodes are grouped into series automatically from their filenames — no cloud lookup, no scraping, no account. Nothing about your library is ever sent anywhere.

The library gives you:

• Series cards with a watched / continue badge, and a sheet listing seasons and episodes.
• Search, which filters series and films as you type.
• Play an episode and the rest of the series becomes the queue.

Continue watching sits at the top of Home: thumbnails of what you have not finished, each resuming exactly where you stopped. Recent shows what you opened lately — and starts from the beginning, because picking something out of Recent means you want to watch it, not resume it.

Playing

The control bar hides itself while you watch and comes back when you move the mouse. It holds play/pause, ±10 seconds, previous/next, chapters, volume, speed, subtitles, audio tracks and everything below.

The seek bar shows chapter markers where the file has chapters. Volume goes above 100% for material that was mastered too quietly.

Mini mode shrinks the player into a small always-on-top window. Fullscreen is F, and Esc steps back out of whatever you are in.

Keyboard shortcuts

Press ? in the player for this list at any time.

Two engines, and AutoFix

AvleaPlay carries two complete playback engines. The default one decodes in hardware and handles everything modern. The second is LibVLC, which is what makes real DVD support possible.

They switch by themselves. If a file stalls or refuses to open, AutoFix hands it to the other engine and carries on from the same second — you see a short message naming the engine that took over, and nothing else changes.

If your machine has trouble with the default engine, Settings → Playback → Compatible engine forces everything through LibVLC. It costs more CPU because it renders through a pixel buffer, and it is the way out if hardware decoding misbehaves on your hardware.

DVDs

A disc, a VIDEO_TS folder or an ISO image all open the same way, with menus, chapters and navigation.

DVD menus are driven with the keyboard: arrow keys move between items, Enter activates one, and Backspace returns to the main menu from a dead-end submenu. Esc also goes back to the main menu. Mouse clicking inside a DVD menu is not supported — that is a limitation of how the video is rendered, not a missing feature.

Playing a copy-protected disc may not be lawful where you live. Please comply with your local law; the terms say more.

Subtitles

Pick a subtitle track from the control bar, or turn them off. External subtitle files next to the video are picked up as well.

AI subtitles

If a film has no subtitles at all, AvleaPlay can make them on your own PC with whisper.cpp. Choose a model in Settings → AI subtitles — it downloads once, checksum-verified — and then generation runs entirely offline. Nothing is uploaded, and the resulting track is clearly labelled AI-generated, because it is a machine's best effort and will contain mistakes.

What did they say?

You missed a line. Press W, or the ear button in the control bar.

AvleaPlay rewinds a few seconds, slows the picture slightly, lifts the volume and switches subtitles on if they were off — then puts all of it back exactly as it was once you have caught up.

• Press it again during a replay to go further back. The toast counts the total, so you can see how far you have gone.
• The length is yours. Hold the button (or right-click it) for a menu of 5 to 30 seconds, or set it in Settings → Playback.

Smart Skip and Natural Break

Smart Skip is opt-in, in Settings: it can skip long silences and detect the intro between episodes, offering a Skip button rather than jumping without asking.

Natural Break answers "I should stop, but not mid-scene". Choose after this episode, at the next chapter, at the next quiet moment, or in N minutes, and the player pauses at a boundary that makes sense instead of wherever the clock landed.

Music ID

Something is playing in the film and you want to know what it is. Press I, or the button in the control bar.

Recognition works in tiers, and the first two need no account at all:

1. Your own library, matched entirely on your device.
2. AvleaPlay's catalogue, built from the open AcoustID database. Only an acoustic fingerprint is sent — integer hashes computed on your PC, which cannot be turned back into audio. Never the audio itself.
3. AudD, optional, if you add an API key of your own. Only then does a short audio snippet (about 25 seconds) leave your machine, and only for tracks the catalogue could not name.

The first time you use it, AvleaPlay asks for your consent and explains exactly what is sent. You can withdraw it later in Settings, after which nothing is sent at all.

Soundtrack Journal

Every song you identify is kept in the Soundtrack Journal, with the film it played in and the moment it played. From there you can open it in Spotify or YouTube, and export the whole journal as an M3U playlist or as plain text.

Favourites

Press ♥ on a track you want to keep. The favourite is tied to the audio, not to the filename — so moving, renaming or re-tagging a track never loses it. Run Music ID on it once and the ♥ is tied to the recording itself, so even a fresh rip or a better download finds it again. Songs you recognise inside a film can be hearted straight from the Journal, where their names already are, and everything you have kept appears in the Favourites row on Home.

Genre

The piano button asks what kind of music is playing. The answer is a ranked guess, not a verdict: three candidates with their scores.

It runs entirely on your device with the CLAP model, which downloads once at your request. Nothing is sent anywhere.

Clips, screenshots and the glow

• A–B loop (L): press once to mark the start, again to mark the end and loop, a third time to switch it off. The marks show on the seek bar.
• Clip export: the same two marks export to MP4, GIF or PNG.
• Screenshot (S) saves the current frame as a PNG.
• Ambient glow bleeds the picture's colours into the bars around it. With an audio file, where there is no picture, it blooms from the middle instead and breathes with the music. Both can be switched off in Settings.

Clip export and AI-subtitle extraction are available for ordinary files only, never for a disc, a VIDEO_TS folder or an ISO.

Avlea Memory

AvleaPlay remembers how you watch each show and applies it to the next episode: playback speed, your preferred audio and subtitle tracks, and volume. Speed is free; the track and volume memory is part of Pro.

If it ever guesses wrong, a small notice tells you what it applied, so nothing changes silently.

Settings, in one pass

• Language — the interface follows your Windows language automatically, or pick one of the fourteen.
• Playback — ambient glow and whether it follows the audio, autoplay next episode, the "What did they say?" length, Avlea Memory, and the compatible engine.
• Smart skip — silence skipping and intro detection.
• Music ID — the consent switch, your AudD key, and the Soundtrack Journal (with a Clear button).
• AI subtitles — model downloads and management.
• AvleaPlay Pro — your Founder status and what it unlocks.
• About — version, open-source licences and the third-party notices.

Privacy, briefly

Your media, watch history, library index, favourites, journal, subtitles and genre results never leave your PC. There are no accounts, no advertising and no analytics. The app goes online only when you ask it to — pressing Identify, or downloading a model — and the privacy policy lists every one of those cases with nothing left out.

If something goes wrong

A file will not play. AutoFix should have handled it; if it did not, turn on the compatible engine in Settings → Playback and open the file again.

The picture is black but the sound plays. Almost always a hardware-decoding problem: the compatible engine is the fix.

A DVD menu does not respond to the mouse. Expected — use the arrow keys and Enter.

Music ID says the key was refused. Your AudD key has expired or run out of requests. The message offers a Fix button that opens the field to paste a new one.

Identify finds nothing. The catalogue is large but not complete, and its coverage of non-English repertoire is thinner. An AudD key of your own extends it.

Questions

Does AvleaPlay upload my videos? No. Video never leaves your PC — not for subtitles, not for genre recognition, not for anything. The only things ever sent are an acoustic fingerprint when you press Identify, and a short audio snippet if you have added your own AudD key.

Do I need an account? No. AvleaPlay has no accounts of any kind, and no sign-in anywhere.

Is it really free? Yes, and during the launch period every Pro feature is included and kept forever on that installation.

Can it play DVDs and ISO files? Yes — discs, VIDEO_TS folders and ISO images, with menus, chapters and navigation. Menus are driven with the arrow keys and Enter.

How do I hear a line again? Press W. It rewinds a few seconds, slows down, raises the dialogue and shows the subtitle, then restores everything. Press it again to go further back.

Where does AvleaPlay keep my data? In Documents\AvleaPlay — watch history, library index, thumbnails, journal and favourites — plus its own app-data folder for logs, settings and models. Both are yours to inspect or delete.

Does it work offline? Completely, apart from the two things that are network features by nature: identifying music against the catalogue, and the one-time model downloads.

What languages does it speak? Fourteen: English, Greek, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Polish, Dutch, Turkish, Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese and Japanese. It follows your Windows language unless you choose otherwise.