Media Player

[LittleJohn]

Hey obviously I am new at linux so here goes. I want a better player than Totem, I hate totem. Any ideas? I run a dual system (windows and linux) All my music files are on the windows side. Any way I can transfer those over to the linux side? I love windows media player so if there is one that is comparable to that please let me know.

 

 

Edit: Moved from Everything Linux by spinynorman

[Darkelve]

I would try Mplayer first.

 

Or Xine, which is actually the engine Totem is based on. And play around with skins a bit until you find a good one for you.

 

Kaffeïne would be another one, also based on Xine.

 

 

As for your files, you can access them directly to open or copy them. Your mount point (directory to which the windows partition is 'bound') should be located in '/mnt' and should look something like "win_c". A mount point basically tells Linux where to look for a partition and what kind of partition (for windows normally vfat) it is.

 

E.g. my lay-out:

 

/mnt/win_c (my C:)

/mnt/win_d (my D:)

/mnt/win_e (my E:)

 

You can browse to this location from Konqueror or from the 'playlist -> add Dir' option in Xmms. Just browse to it or type "/mnt/win_c" (without the quotes) in your location bar.

 

You should keep your local files in /home/YOURUSENAMEHERE and its subdirectories.

Edited May 5, 2004 by Darkelve

[LittleJohn]

Okay forgive me but I forget how to install. My local guy who helped me get started in linux has vowed to take two months off. He says that is why he bookmarked this page for me. Nah I'm sure he would help but would rather not HAVE to ask him. So could you refresh me on it.

Edited May 5, 2004 by LittleJohn

[Darkelve]

You can edit your posts instead of starting new ones.

 

Look in the FAQ's for information on 'urpmi' to install mplayer. I would give you more detailed instructions, but I'm going to sleep now. It's all in the FAQ/tutorial sections on this board anyway.

 

Or maybe someone else will answer while I'm snoring

 

Darkelve

Edited May 5, 2004 by Darkelve

[tyme]

Mandrake Control Center -> Software -> Install Software

 

for purely mp3's XMMS is just like winamp

for videos and mp3's, check out mplayer/gmplayer

[Gowator]

LittleJohn

One apsect of linux that is different to windows is that parts of it are heaviliy reused.

 

In windows for instance WinAmp is completely standalone and Media Player completely standalone....

(its easier to think of this in say CD recording SW - imagine in windows Nero or whoever write the MP3 ripper, the actual low level driver stuff etc. --- everything if ANYTHING is reused from windows it might be dialog boxes, icons etc. )

 

In linux its completely opensource so a programmer can take a part of one programme and integrate it into their programme (so long as they recognise the orginal software) ... hence media players are composed of different parts which are interused ...

 

A media player consists of CODECS to decode a media type, whether its avi, mp3 or a DVD disk. These tend to be common and reused.

 

The next level is implementing these CODECS and intepreting the data as sound. This is largely interface

 

Finally the sound is played but this is again optional, OSS - arts - alsa are all sound outputs.

 

So XMMS uses a MP3 reading codec and gives a nice interface which then pipes this to your output plugin....

 

Why is all this relevant....

 

Well firstly you need to check you have the right codecs and the right output plugins. For instance arts is the KDE one and usually a good choice if your using KDE. But the xmms-arts RPM s not installed unless you choose to install it. In other words you install XMMS but have no output plugin ... so its useless.

 

When using add software make sure to look at the 'modules' - these might be extra skins or extra input/output plugins.

 

 

Also these different applications reuse each other. For instance XMMS has a plugin which uses mplayer to play avi's etc.

 

So far as I know the only media player that allows DVD menus to be used properly is Xine. With mplayer you need to choose the track.

 

Look at the choices and then look at what packages are available, if you click the more detail tag in install software it USUALLY helps... to see what the packeges actually are.

 

good luck on some experimenting....

[!nkubus]

i jsut discover amaroK a couple days ago and the player is awsome, some bugs in teh interfqace but it's a Beta, i'm looking forward the next release. In my thoughts this player will be the long awaited iTunes replacement for linux, ok i know about lSongs from linspire but i did'nt like the fact that the payer copy all tyour mp3 to is own folder , it matters when you have around 20 gigs of mp3 ;)

[spiedra]

I believe Ogle will also give you proper use of DVD menus.

[iphitus]

XMMS

 

Rhythmbox

 

Beep Media PLayer (GTK2 port of XMMS - much much better)

http://beepmp.sourceforge.net

[bvc]

gxine

It's the best, most consistant and stable video player I've use. Somehow, it's video quality exceeds all others. :unsure: (same libs)

[!nkubus]

i must vote for kaffeine to et the most of xine it even support Xinerama, so i can expand a movie in a secon screen and still work while my favorite dvd is playing in the other sreen that is the only player to do such thing :)

[SurfahBoy808]

mplayer has been buggy to me. While it works with a lot of formats, DVD discs still give me a problem. I use VLC and I'm very happy with it. From what I hear, VLC uses the codecs from other players such as mplayer. VLC plays anything.

[sellis]

On much the same theme, I have been using Totem for a while, but it's huge on screen and was looking around for a player with more modest real-estate usage. So, I installed XMMS from the MDK 10.0 distribution disks (I forget which version of xmms it is for the moment - I'm posting from work...).

 

I found that it doesn't like my .m3u playlist files, probably due to the # comments that EZ-CDDA Extractor put in there (I transferred them from my old Windows drive). Fair enough, but it won't play the .ogg files either, despite saying that it has the .ogg plugin installed when I display the list of installed plugins.

 

OK, I think. I'll go back to using Totem for now.

 

But! Totem now doesn't like my .m3u files either! It basically complains that there is no codec for them. :huh:

 

Has anyone seen similar behaviour? I've done a few searches both here and on Google and there doesn't seem to be anything obvious.

 

Next stop, mplayer...?

 

Edit: Just had a thought - what's the MIME type supposed to be for .m3u files?

Edited September 17, 2004 by sellis

[Marvel]

I use Kaffeine, has everything I need, Nice GUI. It's fast and plays the most know formatsand It uses Xine as base for the player.

Edited September 17, 2004 by Marvel

[AussieJohn]

I find a lot of these comments interesting.

 

To play DVDs in Mandrake 9.0, 9.1 and 9.2, I struggled with ALL the then media players and finally had to settle on mplayer and then only after working out how to get it to start playing the DVD.

Then when Mandrake 10 came out and I had been using it for many weeks, one night I popped in a DVD and expected to have do the usual start play routine. I took no notice for about a minute or so and was amazed by the sudden burst on screen of the DVDs film intro.

The only time I had ever had that experience in the past was in windows with PowerDVD.

Totem had automatically started playing the DVD and I found I had full access to all the DVDs preliminary choices. The only thing that I had to click to set was "Full Screen".

Later I tried ALL the other installed DVD players and they were just as big a pain in the +++++ as they had been in the past.

I have now enjoyed watching over a dozen DVD movies with not a trace of noise, streaks, shimmer, missed frames, instability or anything else that could spoil a movie. And I have been able to select all the extras on the DVDs from the DVDs own on-screen Menus. As well I was able to get the FULL surround sounds.

 

As the result of all this I find the earlier posters hatred for totem quite amusing.

 

I also find this fascination with the likes of Windows Media Player which seems that everything media should be playable in one unit, to be even more hilarious.

 

A bit like getting a double decker bus and putting a swimming pool on top, then building a huge flat tray on the back to load up cycles plus motor bikes plus jet skis, fitting it out with all terrain suspension plus tyres plus drive, and do not forget the catterpillar tracks and skis in case of snow. Ridiculous ???? I don't think so. To me they are one and the same.

In Linux you have a choice of numerous video/dvd players for moving images, xmms and others to play sound and a number of other programs to view still images. Namely a tool for each job which does the job in superior fashion than the so-called all-in-one or universal tool. Horses for courses.

 

I have discovered that a majority of the video stuff which is not DVD is mainly Porno. And before anyone starts flaming me, I can state right now that I have no basic opposition to the stuff, even I don't mind some of it, But I could care less that totem or any other Linux video player can or cannot play some these video formats.

 

Now I can play a DVD easily, per TOTEM (thanks to all on the totem team), play all my MP3s and OGGS per XMMS, and all my music CDs per KsCD. These do their tasks extremely well and most of the others are interesting for what their originators saw as their reason for the apps.

 

Ease of use, reliability and stability is what determines broard CHOSEN adoption. In Linux this is always the case. In Windows it is never the case.........Ever noticed that in the Windows world, ALL the very, very best individual applications are also freeware or just free. Examples :- Ad-Aware, AVG, Zone Alarm, the brilliant CDEX, to name just a few.

 

Makes you think doesn't it.

 

Cheers. John.

Edited September 17, 2004 by AussieJohn