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View Full Version : [all variants] Production quality video player needed.


rylleman
August 21st, 2009, 07:22 PM
Nowadays linux has a large variety of video production tools. We got animation softwares (Synfig, Blender Pencil etc.), capturers (Kino), editors (Kdenlive, OpenShot, PiTiVi, Blender etc.),compositors (Ramen) render farms (DrQueue) etc.
Agreeable all of these are in various stages of usability, some have just started and some are really robust.

Pretty much all areas are covered but there are however one area left where there is a white spot in the linux video creativity world and that is a production quality video player.

When you work with video you want to browse your material, really scrutinize it. However, there are no video player in linux that let you frame step backward and apart from in video editors you can't scrub your material.

There are many video players in linux but if you look at them they are basically the same. They play your material, you can sometimes step forward in your material (never backward) and they are all overloaded with effects and bling-bling you can pimp your material with as you play it. But, as I said before, none let's you play you material with any grade of control.

What I would like to see in a player suited for production and not just consuming video material is;

• Frame stepping, both forward and backwards
• Immediate response to play/pause command. Not half a second or a few frames later.
• Scrubbing; drag timeline and video updates as you drag.
• video and image sequence playback.
• Comparative playback; open several clips and control them either together with one controller or separately. This is a more than basic feature and can wait until later.

I'm not a programmer and can't create this myself. I do however want to hear other peoples thoughts on this and ideas on how to proceed to reach a player like this.

macunixfan
August 21st, 2009, 07:29 PM
Hi, have you tried Avidemux? I am not sure if it will meet all of your needs, but i think it may have some of the features you are looking for.

rylleman
August 21st, 2009, 07:48 PM
Hi, have you tried Avidemux? I am not sure if it will meet all of your needs, but i think it may have some of the features you are looking for.

Yes, thanks, I'm using it rigth now as it is the closest to what I want.
It is an amazing tool but it is unfortunately a bit to complicated to use (for just playing video), it's interface is very cluttered, it takes too long to start up and it often have troubles playing different material.
I want a player that does one thing, and does it well; play your video files and lets you have control over the process.

zombiepig
August 22nd, 2009, 09:01 PM
For what it's worth, totem movie player now has support for frame stepping, so it'll be included in ubuntu 9.10

http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyseven/ReleaseNotes

rylleman
August 23rd, 2009, 08:08 AM
For what it's worth, totem movie player now has support for frame stepping, so it'll be included in ubuntu 9.10

http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointTwentyseven/ReleaseNotes
Also backwards? I can't find anything on that more than "Add frame-by-frame stepping (press "." to activate)" - One key suggests one direction (forward).

zombiepig
August 23rd, 2009, 10:50 PM
yeah, you're right, looking deeper it seems that "." will progress forward one frame, but no way to jump back a frame.

rylleman
August 24th, 2009, 04:04 AM
Thank you for your responses here. However, there are no player on linux that is production quality so you don't have to suggest different ones. I've already tried them all.

You people working with video on linux, what do you use, what is your workflow? How do you examine your material? Why that solution?

Am I the only one that want control over my material when working with it?

bumanie
August 24th, 2009, 02:29 PM
I have found "Lives" to be a good video editor. It allows stepping frame by frame (forward and backward). Not sure I would call it a video player as such, although it obviously plays video as part of its function as a video editor. Might be worth a look. Think it's available at getdeb.