Which is your fav multimedia player & why

[wowbuntu]

Dear Ubuntu people

Which is your fav multimedia player
and WHY,

for

Audio -
Video -
Both -

Regards
Wowbuntu

[XDevHald]

Dear Ubuntu people

Which is your fav multimedia player
and WHY,

for

Audio -
Video -
Both -

Regards
Wowbuntu
Totem. Why? It's easy, soft to use to the desktop, doesn't crash or glitch at all, visualization/equalizer is easy to use and probably tweak as well ;)

It's just great :D

[mtron]

Audio: madman & xmms is for me the perfect combination for a large mp3 colletion (with good tagging capeabilities) , and for sure streamripper and streamtuner are an absolute must.
Video: mplayer plays every format, very stable, easy to compile (better preformance) and uninstall
both: i don't use an audio tool for playing video.

[SparkyDawg]

I like rhythm box just because it's like ITunes. But for Windows/Mac media players, I would have to say ITunes for its easy of use and ripping speed, etc.

[ow50]

Video: MPlayer
MPlayer plays just about everything. Unlike in other video players, the subtitle autoloading works and the subtitles look good. Keyboard configuration can be customized. After reading MPlayer's man pages, you can do just about everything. For example sounds can rerouted across the speaker channels any way you like.

Audio: Muine
For mp3/ogg playing I'm not that demanding. Simplicity and easy song/album browsing is most important. Muine does that well. The GUI is quite simple and easy to use.

Both: -
If some app is a good video player, it's not a good audio player and vice versa. If some app is good at both, it's bloated.

[sapo]

Xmms for Audio
Totem for video

why? cause its simple and they "just work" i dont like those kind of softwares with a lot of useless stuff [-X

[fng]

audio : beep-media-player
video : totem

[pdk001]

audio - xmms
video - xine
why? because there are installed first in my machine, mplayer still doesnt work so far

[ssam]

i am not completely happy with any music players. muine or rhythmbox come closest.

muine is good for quickly find a song or album and the play queue. but it cant really do play lists.

the sources and browsing in rhythmbox is nice, but it takes up a lot of space. and the database doesn't hold enough infomation

http://www.sacredchao.net/quodlibet is quite interesting. but i am not sure about it.

might have to work something up over the summer that fits my needs. might try out python + gstreamer + sqlite and see what i can do.

[minio]

Audio - Jamboree, because it's UI is close to rhythmbox and don't hangup like rhythmbox when importing my music collection
Video - Totem, because it's simple

[Juippisi]

Audio: XMMS & Easytag
Video: MPlayer

Well, those were my first multimediaplayers when I started using Linux ~2 years ago. So, it's like I have gotten used to those. I also tried BMP while ago. It wasn't my thing.

[RastaMahata]

audio: rhtyhmbox. It's just there, and I have a big collection of albums ripped in ogg, so It suits my needs. But I'm still waiting for (mass) tag editing. :(
Video: totem (xine). Easy to the eyes, no codecs problem, gtk2 based, nice.
Both: Totem. If I just want to play a music file there in my hard drive, I use totem so It doesnt mess with my library in rhythmbox.

[Kyral]

Audio: XMMS because it is the default player for Streamtuner :P
Video: Totem-Xine because its lightweight, and resembles Media Player Classic from XP (Yes I used Windows before, I'm ashamed of myself)
Both: N/A

[darkoptix]

music:beep-media-player
video: combo between vlc and totem-xine
both: nah, one or the other for me.

[Ironi]

amaroK for local music and kaffeine for streams, videos, and DVDs.

[poster_nutbag]

XMMS for audio - easy to use, likes my music (I use Flac files mainly, or stream off the internet).

Xine for video - Just got used to it over the years

Which just goes to show that decent software starts with an 'X'!

[poofyhairguy]

Gxine for video, ole rythmbox for audio.

I LOVE gxine. Looks so nice and plays my dvds like a pro.

[UbuWu]

Rythmbox is great, amarok is very nice but looks ugly on gnome. On windows I use musikCube, which will probably and hopefully be available for linux soon.

[Lovechild]

Video: Totem
Audio: Muine

Those are the two best in my mind.

[kassetra]

Video: gxine
Audio: bmp (beep-media-player)

The iTunes look-alikes are ok, but they aren't iTunes... and most of the features that I like about iTunes isn't in any of the lookalikes.

I've used mplayer and xine, and I just really prefer xine/gxine.

For both though, I tend to prefer bmp (with xine plugins et al)

[nobodysbusiness]

I'm just trying Beep Media Player and I love it. I'm a long-time XMMS user, but Beep rocks. Any of you XMMS users out there should give it a try!

[rpgcyco]

Audio: Beep Media Player
Video: Totem-Xine

- Rpg Cyco

[ruben_b]

I'm just trying Beep Media Player and I love it. I'm a long-time XMMS user, but Beep rocks. Any of you XMMS users out there should give it a try!

i tried it, but everytime i´m trying to play a mp3 it freezes!?
whats the advantage of beep over xmms?

[xristos]

Audio : XMMS simply because all other players refuse to play my mp3s ](*,)

[benplaut]

Audio (when i listen to it): Beep
Video: Totem
Both: :roll:

[foxy123]

amaroK for audio, it's great and with gstreamer engine can play everything
kaffeine for dvd and video... I would prefer mplayer, but it refuses to play dvds on ubuntu in my case and does not resize picture in Full screen mode.

[nobodysbusiness]

i tried it, but everytime i´m trying to play a mp3 it freezes!?
whats the advantage of beep over xmms?

I can't help you with the freezing. It works fine for me. I just used "apt-get install beep-media-player" and it worked as expected. Perhaps you should choose a different output backend like ALSA or eSound?

As for what's better, BMP just seems like a nicer, more recently updated XMMS. The dialog box in XMMS to open a playlist looks old and doesn't display well with my monitor set to a high resolution. Everything works pretty much the same in both programs (making the switch easy), but BMP is better.

[Poul]

Audio: beep-media-player (xmms clone) - because most of important plugins for xmms work (mplayer plugin ,status plugin, etcc) and because it is nice gtk2 looking
I hate it when good apps lack gtk2 - wrrrrr
Video: Mplayer and Totem xine, totem is nice looking simple and works after few adjustments out of the box +intuitive shortcuts. mplayer's lack of gtk2 gui is ******* me off , but it's speed and support for various formats is just incredible , it has so many useful features that other software lacks, and it's mozilla plugin (2.80)is the best - i stays inside window, support's everything and allows you to save files on your hard drive, also has working timelinebar and working pla/pause/ buttons

[Juippisi]

Last days, I have been using amarok (http://amarok.kde.org) audioplayer and I must say that it rocks. Yes, I admit that it's quite heavy for my 1,3 GHz 512 MB RAM -machine, but still it's beatiful and powerful.

I still watch my videos with MPlayer, I think that nothing will ever change my mind with this. Mplayer is just the best :-).

[Perfect Storm]

Audio: Xmms
Video: VLC with vlc browser plugin.

[Ampersand]

Audio: I use beep media player quite a bit, it works with Japanese song titles and can be controlled from the contol line easily. Since it doesn't seem to be working in 5.10, I use Rhythmbox mostly, although I've started trying Eclair after getting enlightenment dr17. Still a lot of work to be done on that one, it seems.

Video: VLC where available, although still not installable on 5.10 again. Totem-GStreamer seems to play most things, and I use MPlayer for everything else. I can't seem to get MPlayer to do fullscreen properly, it has the same sized video window with the rest of the screen black.

Both: XFmedia works well for dvds and the common forms of video.

[doclivingston]

Video: totem-gstreamer for most things, and vlc for some WMV files. I like totem's interface and how it fits in with the gnome desktop. In contract to what everyone else seems to have, GStreamer work reasonably well and xine doesn't - I have no idea why.

Music: Rhythmbox - again because of the interface, and it does most of the thing I want it to do.

[Sliced]

Audio: amarok I like for the amount of features it brings and it doesn't mess up my mp3 tags.

Video: xine for me. I somehow can only get everything to work on xine and nothing else.

[liquidtenmillion]

Audio - Xmms Sometimes Rhythmbox(gstreamer).
Video - Totem-xine It's lightweight, will play anything i throw at it, looks good and blends in with other apps, and is well integrated with Gnomevfs(play files over ssh even!)

[pmj]

Media Player Classic, which unfortunately is a Windows only app.

For Linux, my vote goes to Totem. It's simple and single window, which is important to me.

[cutOff]

Audio: Beep-media-player with WMA and Audioscrobbler plugins.
Video: Mplayer of course. Compiled myself.

[KingBahamut]

Dear Ubuntu people

Which is your fav multimedia player
and WHY,

for



Regards
Wowbuntu
Audio - mp3blaster - Because Ncurses is just cool
Video - VLC - Nothing more wide ranged than VLC
Both - Xine - just cause.

[Jason-X]

Audio: Beep Media Player
Video: VLC & Gxine

Would love to Mplayer working on my Hoary PPC, but no joy so far:(

[xterminus]

Audio: mpd (http://www.musicpd.org). It's incredibly convienient to simply setup a few hotkeys to manage it and just let it run in the background. I also have mpd send it's output simultaneously to the soundcard and to an icecast server, which is kinda nifty. On top of that, a ton of 3rd party software supports mpd. For example, iMPD is an irssi script that allows you to control and manage your mp3's from irssi (irc client). conky shows your current mp3 playing status on your desktop, etc. Neat stuff.

Video: mplayer (http://wwwmplayerhq.hu) It's not as slick as totem or gxine, but I never have had problems with it. It seems to support every codec on the planet without problems, has a neat mozilla plugin, and doesn't rely on gstreamer or any other third party codec/audio subsystem to make things work. For me, that's mostly important because I like to be able to watch my DVD's with DTS/AC3 surround without a lot of hacking and gimmickry.

[TristanMike]

Audo: Rhythmbox for sure. Installed by default, let's me sort my cd's and have a library, the interface is simple yet powerful, does pretty much everything I'll ever need a music player for. Pretty much the same reasons as everyone else.

Video: Totem is usually my first choice, but I really do love VLC. I grew fond of VLC in windows and finding out I could get it in Ubuntu, made me that much happier.

Both: Probablly Totem, but for audio it's mostly just stuff I stream on the net.

[jimcooncat]

Audio: mpd (http://www.musicpd.org). It's incredibly convienient to simply setup a few hotkeys to manage it and just let it run in the background.

Thanks for this link! I'm going to get a little FM transmitter, and this might be the right software to push internet radio to it. I'll have the only Smooth Jazz station in Central Maine -- but you'll have to be parked in my driveway to listen to it.

:rolleyes:

[jerome bettis]

Audio - mp3blaster - Because Ncurses is just cool

lol i thought i was the only one that used that. it's actually pretty nice once you use it for a while. plus i spend a lot of time in just the console, so i can have music playing without having to start X.

[Goober]

VLC. Totem doesn't work with any of my .avi movie files, neither does RealPlayer. MPlayer does, but not Xine. I found VLC during my ******* days, and, well, loved it. It is lightweight, easy to use, and plays, literally, everything (I have yet to see VLC not play something for me.) And its yet to crash.

VLC is the best option for me.

[colours]

Audio: amaroK, for all its features, and in spite of its cluttered interface. xine or Helix as a back-end.
Video: mplayer used from the command-line, because without its abysmal GUI, it's just really, really good. I also like VLC and totem-xine.

[PatrickMay16]

For audio, XMMS in Linux. In Windows, Winamp and Windows Media Player (that is, mplayer2.exe. Not that bloated junk Windows Media Player 9.)
XMMS because it works nicely and has a lot of support with other people writing plugins for it. The same goes for Winamp, and Windows Media Player (mplayer2.exe) is nice for playing midi files with.

I don't watch video at all.

[Arktis]

I'm probably alone in this, but I use mplayer for both audio and video. This is done through PyMP, which is merely a scrollable playlist window/app with file drag and drop support, a seekable play status bar, and play controls. It plays audio through mplayer and when playing videos, will open up an mplayer window. Simple, light, easy, perfect. No totem, no rythmbox, no xmms, no xine, no beep, no buggy skinned gui or anything else is required, and it's liberating. Now if I had an iPod, that would be a different story. I also should note that at least for me, when playing dvd's gmplayer is preferable, though pymp can handle them just fine.

[frodon]

Audio : XMMS, because it's lighter than beep-media-player and i never get problems reading mp3. Also if i used KDE i think i would use amarok which is for me one of the best music players for linux, i'm still looking forward muine and banshee.
Video : Totem-xine without any hesitation, wonderful interface, support all format (exept some small problems with some .wmv), and with the latest version a really nice plugin for mozilla and firefox is now available.

[graabein]

Right now I'm using beep-media-player but I really want to try out Banshee (http://banshee-project.org/index.php/Main_Page) when I upgrade to Breezy. I am longing to combine all my music tasks -- playback, ripping, tagging, iPod support -- in one application and it looks real good! :D

I have not really decided on video playback. I either use Totem or xine. I have yet to try MPlayer and VLC...

[jeffreyvergara.NET]

I have tried different Music players, but defenitely aMarok is on top of them. it has all the tools I need. if only it have video playback...

I also havn't found any good video player yet... but im using Totem... no choice, mplayer for me is buggy and VLC

[doclivingston]

I have tried different Music players, but defenitely aMarok is on top of them. it has all the tools I need. if only it have video playback...

I've never quite got the "music player doing video" thing. To me a music player should let me choose the music I want to listen to efficiantly, and then get out of the way.

The only situation I can think of where you would actually want to watch what your music player produces would be at a party, where you are otherwise using visualisations. In this situation, I think that most of the features that a proper music player has that media players (e.g. Totem) don't have, aren't particularly useful. But that's just my opinion.

[JELaVallee]

Audio:
Rhytmbox - for MP3 Library managment and playback. It's simple, it works well, it recognises my iPod Mini (formatted in win32-compatible mode). I also like the iTunes-style browse interface a lot. GTK+ makes me happy.

Goobox - for CD playback and ripping. It's just easy to use and GTK+.

Banshee - I can't wait to try it.

Video:
MPlayer - do yourself the favor in Hoary and follow the build-it-yourself how-to's that are floating around out there. Would like to use Totem, but I've had perpetual codec issues on my system with it crashing a lot.

cheers,
Etienne

[JELaVallee]

Audio:
Rhytmbox - for MP3 Library managment and playback. It's simple, it works well, it recognises my iPod Mini (formatted in win32-compatible mode). I also like the iTunes-style browse interface a lot. GTK+ makes me happy.

Goobox - for CD playback and ripping. It's just easy to use and GTK+.

Banshee - I can't wait to try it.


Oh yeah... almost forgot...

Neutrino/LibNJB2.2 - for managing my Nomad Jukebox Zen 2.0 MP3 Player. It's a bit clunky libnjb stability, but it's a much more userfriendly app than Gnomad 2.


wordup,
Etienne

[blueturtl]

Video:
xine for DVDs because it has good functionality, looks and sounds awesome
MPlayer for all other video because it can

Audio:
xmms for mp3, ogg and wav, because it keeps things simple, it works and it's fast
pmidi for the occational midi files

[qalimas]

GNOME
Audio - Rhythmbox
Video - VLC

KDE
Audio - amaroK
Video - Kaffeine

[vayu]

Can I ask a few related questions here or should I start a new thread?

What's the difference between xine xine-ui totem-xine and gxine?

What music players have plasma like screensaver type graphics while playing audio?

[Cirkus]

audio: xmms/winamp because I can quickly and easily make a fairly decent playlist by pointing it at a few directories. I doubt it has a monopoly on that, but since it's what I know, it's what I use. ;) I've played a little with totem and I can see using that to zone off on a visualisation while I'm listening to music (but that's something I don't do that often)

video: no opinion as far as *nix goes; I can use xine or mplayer; whatever's handier.

[Brian McConnell]

Can I ask a few related questions here or should I start a new thread?
What's the difference between xine xine-ui totem-xine and gxine?


good question, I've been wondering the same myself.

So far, I'm not 100% satisfied with an audio and / or video app with GNU/Linux. However, I do really like Rhythmbox (hey, it's always worked well for me!) and for video I go with VLC since I also use it with OSX. What I'd really get excited for is a program like Rhythmbox, but with cd ripping built-in. Or if Apple would just allow iTunes to support FLAC and GNU/Linux
:D

[Cyber Hunter]

Audio - XMMS because its easy to use and has a great default theme
Video - NONE i havn't found the right one for me

[Pobega]

Audio - XMMS. It's small, doesn't get in my way, easily skinnable (If skins aren't available) and combined with KDocker I can dock this so that no matter what desktop I'm on I can change the track/volume.

Totem - Very good stability with codecs, it's the only player I could get to work with the Win32 codecs (Which I need, as much as I hate installing non-free things).

[Rhubarb]

Totem - Very good stability with codecs, it's the only player I could get to work with the Win32 codecs (Which I need, as much as I hate installing non-free things).

I presume by Totem you mean totem with the gstreamer backend, not with the xine backend.

I haven't experimented much with different multimedia software, but I use:

Rhythmbox - simple, plays anything, DAAP works nicely to share my playlist with other PCs on the network

Totem-gstreamer - Works fine for most video

VLC - for when I have to review any media with better control over playback (seeking works better, more codecs supported, displays stream info nicely, can encode / stream video too).

[dorcssa]

amaroK for audio, it's just great. But I can't get mysql to work(I think I messed it up)
vlc and mplayer for video. Vlc is the default, and I use mplayer for firefox plugin and viewing video for ksubtitle. Vlc is very customizable, and I like it very much. :D

[Kateikyoushi]

Mplayer for video, needs no GUI, can be controlled just by keyboard plays everything and fast and light.

[Mateo]

Rhythmbox for music and VLC for video. I'd probably use mplayer more if there existed a decent frontend but I haven't found one yet.

[SunnyRabbiera]

audio:
I highly favor XMMS, very winamp like and I like it better then BMP (BMP does have a bug in it that renders my playlists to gobbledygook)
Video:
XINE and Mplayer, sometimes Totem too... I usee all three in combination sometimes when its concerning DVD playback, sometimes XINE works best, sometimes MPlayer works best, sometimes totem... its a roulette wheel.
Both:
This is a toughie, but I will have to give this one to totem.
Its really good with my media, the playlist feature is nice and it makes things really simplistic.
Its very simular to windows media player in that sense, though Totem runs circles around WMP for sure.
Its biggest weakness I found is with DVD's, sometimes it will load my dvd's sometimes it will cough up on me.
With XINE and mplayer this doesnt happen as much.

[Dragonbite]

Xfmedia.. because Rhythmbox and Banshee are both not able to play music for some reason (an error I cannot recall right now) and Totem has trouble opening up just about any video.

Xfmedia came when I downloaded Xubuntu and it has worked playing everything I toss at it (providing I have installed the proper codecs), complete with sound pretty much since the get-go.

But for Audio, since the fan in this PC is loud, I use gtkpod to synch up my iPod and then just use the iPod to listen.

[mcduck]

MPD, no question about it :D

It's so fast and lightweight. And handles my music collection way better than any other library-based player I've tried this far. And I just love the fact that it doesn't even matter if I'm logged in, the music will continue playing anyway. Even if my desktop crashes at least I still got some music ;)

Only bad thing about it is if I forget to stop it and then start my laptop somewhere where I should be quiet and it starts playing music.. It takes a while before the computer is fully booted and I can log in and stop MPD.. (I've done that mistake couple of times)

My favorite clients are NCMPC (because it works in CLI and I can control it with keyboard only) and Sonata because it's simple and beautiful.

[Rhapsody]

For audio, I use Amarok. I've used Winamp and foobar2000 back on Windows, and Amarok seems to combine the best of each. It also integrates well with my KDE desktop and Wikipedia (which is good).

For video, MPlayer. I tried loads of video players on Windows (eventually settling on Media Player Classic) but was never properly satisfied. MPlayer has been able to play just about everything first time every time, which is the biggest factor to me.

[amar]

Audio: Amarok: I almost cried the first time i saw it link up to wikipedia to tell me about the band i was listening too

Video: kaffeen : works well with tvcards

[MkfIbK7a]

Audio:quod libet

Video:mplayer

[shining]

Music library : amarok (a few others are also very nice, like quodlibet, or MPD + ncmpc)
Single audio file / stream : xmms / bmp / mplayer
Video : mplayer
DVD : xine

[Mateo]

the thing I dislike about mplayer is that the gnome frontend is one of those 2 windows players and I absolutely hate when a program takes up more than one window.

[drfalkor]

Video: VLC Media Player, because it is the best
Sound: Beep-Media-Player, because it is a fast player (fast in song switching)

[kd7swh]

I use VLC because it is simple , small and cross platform. It supports a ton of formats and it rocks.
:guitar:

[kd7swh]

the thing I dislike about mplayer is that the gnome frontend is one of those 2 windows players and I absolutely hate when a program takes up more than one window.

Sorry this is off topic, but thats why I hate the GIMP

[Omnios]

Currently I seem to like Totem Xine as it seems to work the most

[Mateo]

Sorry this is off topic, but thats why I hate the GIMP

me too, but I can live with it with gimp because I don't use it often (unlike media players) and I don't multitask while using it (unlike media players).

[ButteBlues]

My Favorite overall Client: iTunes
Favorite GNOME Client: Rhythmbox
Favorite KDE Client: Amarok

[jdhore]

for Video, VLC Player cuz it has a small screen presence and it's pretty light on the CPU, it plays every format and it's fast

for Audio, Rhythmbox because it syncs with my iPod easily, it's light and fast, and it has Last.fm support

[pissedoffdude]

audio: amarok

video: mplayer

[glabouni]

audio: foobar2000 (through wine) and for a full linux answer mpd (http://www.musicpd.org/)
video: kaffeine/mplayer/vlc (I miss media player classic + ffdshow)

[awakatanka]

Audio : Amarok
Video : i can't decide, i like VLC but use all players and can't find one i realy like. Would be nice if there would be a amarok for video's ( got large hdd's with movies ;) )

[fuscia]

kaffeine for everything. it does what i need, quickly.

[Longer]

Audio: amarok \\:D/

Video: Koffeine or Mplayer... But mostly koffeine...

[sophtpaw]

one word


SONGBIRD

[RAV TUX]

Video: Kaffeine & *******
Audio: I have yet to determine a fav yet. I honestly like the purevolume.com player for streaming music.

[SKLP]

Video: Totem
Audio: Banshee

[grte]

Video: Mplayer. It's an extremely powerful command line player.
Audio: mpd/ncmpc, for the low-overhead, and because I like the interface.