best all around movie player?

Berkz · Posted: Sat Feb 15, 2003 5:46 pm Post subject: My preference is Kplayer

I've tried KPlayer.. and I must say it work's quite well for me... although I didn't get it to run Real media files... Looks to me that Mplayer is probably the most used player out there... Just by counting the posts..

Thanx for all the answers...

Regards, Berkz

TenPin · Guru Joined: 26 Aug 2002 Posts: 500 Location: Kansas City

mplayer is good in that it can play everything. Xine can't play sorenson v3 video files wheras mpalyer can. Also I have found a few files that xine can't play or can play but gives artifacts.

Xine is better for dvd playback as it has very good menu support. It also has a better user interface as you can toggle things like deinterlacing on the fly.

Ogle seems ok for DVD playback but is nowhere near as advanced as Xine in support for deinterlacing and surround sound.

I always have both mplayer and xine installed and between them I can play everything. I always use xine for DVDs.

Also as some else mentioned Xine will maintain the aspect ratio of the video even if you change the window size where is mplayer doesnt (which strikes me as being really really stupid).

An advantage of Xine over mplayer is that it is modular and multithreaded. Although there is a slight performance overhead for this it does mean it is easier to develop new plugins for it and in theory it will playback more smoothly than mplayer under heavy system load.

loco · n00b Joined: 20 Nov 2002 Posts: 29

i normaly use mplayer but i have some mpeg4 avi's where it starts lagging and i can play them perfectly in xine =)))
but both are way better then any windows player i have seen

maor · Guru Joined: 28 Aug 2002 Posts: 323

both xine & mplayer r good the only diff i see is that xine has a better gui.

Jowilly · Guru Joined: 22 Jun 2002 Posts: 319

What Xine is missing is the right mouse context menu.

This is why I use mplayer...

Its much more convenient and faster to use the menu if you are playing something in fullscrenn than to click to make the gui appear, look at the *small* button on the gui where the option you are looking for is, be precise with the mouse to click on the small thing and not miss it... etc...

When will xine have the right mouse menu so that it can get usable ?

Jowilly · Guru Joined: 22 Jun 2002 Posts: 319

Ahh... and I forgot...:

MPlayer is the ONLY media player I have found with PowerDVD on Windows which has the PANSCAN feature (Windows media player doesn't have it...). You access it in preferences -> video.

This allows you to make the movie bigger without deforming it (ex: reducing the 2 black lines). The left and right borders are cut out, so you miss a bit of the whole picture, but the movie can use part of or the complete screen to play, without eggheads.

This is a great feature for 16:9 movies !

Xine can adapt a movie to the screen by stretching it out (with the A or S key I think), but then it is deformed... unusable again.

m3thos · n00b Joined: 09 Apr 2002 Posts: 46 Location: Portugal

mplayer in my ibook sucks big-time.. can't compile it with any kind of usefull codecs..
xine.. plays almost everthing and well..

a consider both to be head to head in terms of codecs support and proper playback of severall of them..

although I find the mplayer GUI better, even extremelly under developed..
GUI of XINE is A MESS.. 3 windows are needed to open a AVI file.. or MPEG ..or whatever.. WHAT THE HELL!! this is CLEARLY A BAD THING
xine really need to get a proper GUI.. like.. for instance.. totem.. the one I use in the ibook now.

has for mplayer.. the resize without maintaining the aspect ratio is DUMB .. plain DUMB... and so is the fact that the GUI is allways in the lower right corner and allways hidden behind my kde bar... or any other window...

and come on ppl, we need to be fair and imparcial when it comes to silly things like theese... proper user interfaces are needed.. I don't use them mutch.. allthough they are usefull when I want a playlist of small videos to play or for some other minor stuffs... but that me.. and maybe a lot more geeks..
when it comes to ORDINARY PPL, or less geeky ppl, it would be so good to show them a player not only with good playback support for several codecs but some DAMM DECENT USER INTERFACE.. is it all that dificult?
Is it that NOBODY WHEN TO A class of "human-machine interfaces" where they explicitly stress the importance of a good GUI ?

btw, gentoo really rocks! .. and linux is the future.. hehehehe
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guidodev · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 5:37 am Post subject:

Xine for DVDs, mplayer for everything else. Xine's DVDnav support is excellent, mplayer's versatility hard to beat.

dylix · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 9:06 pm Post subject:

ice_cool · n00b Joined: 13 Aug 2002 Posts: 42

I user Avifile and mplayer.

darktux · Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2003 10:18 pm Post subject:

Ogle for DVDs
mplayer for everything else

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Berkz · Posted: Mon Feb 24, 2003 9:03 pm Post subject: I'm gonna check out

I'm gonna check out that ogle prog..

Thanx

Krookednek · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 78

I have been running gmplayer, however whenever I try to make the window larger it starts to skip frames and tells me my system is too slow, which I know isnt true (running a Athlon XP 1700+ at 10x201 and a gf3 ti500). Has anyone else experienced this? Perhaps I should try xine....
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TheMole · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 3:27 pm Post subject:

cbreaker · Posted: Sat Mar 01, 2003 7:59 pm Post subject:

I like the way xine is designed to be a "media library" that you can draw on in many different ways.

Also, as a KDE user, the Gnome feel to gmplayer doesn't fit into my desktop. I like how xine-ui uses it's own skinning for things.

Someone mentioned Windows media player being better.. I need to agree. Although xine and mplayer are very good, and it's fantastic that I can play all sorts of media on Linux now, I don't really have much need for older or exotic codecs that maybe xine supports out of the box. Really, if I can play DV, DivX, MPEG, I'm good.

Windows Media Player also has some really easy features to copy media to your own little library. It Just Works.

But, I do like xine very much and I'm glad to have it. When the interfaces become a little more mature and add some cool features like media libraries, I'll be more happy with it.

It all depends on what you want to do. mplayer and xine are both very comparable. I like xine; the developers seem to be more friendly and the mailing list is very helpful.

bitMat · n00b Joined: 05 Feb 2003 Posts: 10 Location: UK

Well I use both mplayer and xine. This is the great thing.... CHOICE...two great programs competing on technology not marchitechture. Long live Linux

Krookednek · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 78

xv is in my video preferences, so I assume it is enabled but I am not sure. How would I check to be sure?
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htpc101 · n00b Joined: 09 Feb 2003 Posts: 19

I just love vlc-0.5.1 for its ability to easily output dolby digital ac3 passthrough on my SBLive card with only menu clicks. It is a pity that this player is not in the portage tree yet. The only caveat is no DTS support yet, so I use Xine for that.

dl1vr8r · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2003 Posts: 39 Location: SLC

Xine is by far the best in my experience. It plays everything I throw at it, including quicktime, DVD, VCD, streaming .asf, you name it. It would be nice if there were more skins available, but a couple of the default ones are nice enough.

Mplayer has given me a lot of trouble. I insists on starting in full screen mode despite telling it not too. Lately it insists on playing all quicktime movies at double speed, even when using mplayerplug-in.

jetblack · Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2003 3:47 pm Post subject:

VolcomPimp · Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2004 4:32 am Post subject:

anyone know how 2 install the WMP9 codecs for Xine?
On their site it says you can externaly install them but they don't
provide them. I've got my winxp partition mounted if it's possible to extract
them from there.
thanx

stateq2 · Apprentice Joined: 11 Sep 2003 Posts: 242 Location: us

to tell the truth, i enjoy xine and mplayer equally.....but xine has more minor bugs to be worked out.
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soda_popstar · Apprentice Joined: 03 May 2003 Posts: 177

I used to be all for MPlayer, but then it started being mean to me on my laptop (in the form of locking up the sound output until I restarted), so I started to look to alternatives. I really like Xine with the Totem frontend. It can play my DVDs well! And I like how I can open a new movie in Nautilus and have Totem start the new video.