"Best" Linux Media Player?

[Pogeymanz]

I was just wondering what the "best" or most popular media player is for Ubuntu.

I installed Xubuntu which came with Totem Movie Player ...which also plays audio (good job on naming that :p)

It is not necessary that I can play mp3's, but I'm also not morally against proprietary stuff.

So, what do you use and why? And also what is the most popular? (and why, I guess)

[Henry Rayker]

I use ncmpc for playing music and vlc for playing video files. ncmpc is an ncurses based (text based) client...Because I always have a terminal open and I honestly don't care what my player looks like, it works just fine. vlc is just a great all-around player.

[PeterJS]

This is easy :)
Amarok for music and VLC for video.

[ReverendJ1]

For movies/shows I just use Totem.
For music I use banshee. It can sit in my system tray and just pop up with a little notification when the track changes, which is nice. In regular view, I find it easy to navigate and like the smart playlists.
I think the general consensus around the linux community is Amarok for music. I didn't like it when I tried it though.

[OoooMatron]

SInce i run a streaming server i just use totem or audacious to play the audio through. Used to use Amaraok but i hate KDE (amarok is a great app though) so I don't like having the kde libs on my system.

Totem for movies too.

Mplayer is also handy.

[bbc]

Totem for dvd's/
Rhythmbox Music Player for mp3s

Those are my favorites. Although I haven't tried everything and I'm open to other stuff.

[BatteryCell]

I'm and avid xmms2 user, but it is still in development so I would recommend:
Audio: Amarok
Video: Mplayer and/or VLC

[logos34]

VLC has more features than you can shake a stick at. But I still prefer MPlayer or Totem for dvd playback. (or even kaffeine which I've noticed has the smallest sys resources footprint). For me gxine is the only one that can smoothly play streaming quicktime video. Yes, that's quite a selection to choose from, but some don't have chapter listings or snapshot/screenshot, etc.

Amarok or Audacious for audio. I can't decide which I like the best.

[disturbedite]

my opinion is:
smplayer/kaffeine for video
audacious (winamp "clone")/amarok (sorta like itunes) for audio

[ronmarley1]

This is easy :)
Amarok for music and VLC for video.

+1

[Quash]

Ive just switched from the Movie Player that was inculded in ubuntu to Mplayer. Its leaps and bounds over the stock movie crap. But still is a bit funky. After a few weeks I'll try out Totem.

For audio I use the stock Rhythmbox. Seems to do the trick for now. Amarok is for KDE? can gnome use it? I havent tried it as yet

[XVII]

VLC is the swiss army knife of media players.

[kajillin]

Amorok/Rythmbox are both equal, and either are the best.
And totem is good but i get lagg when running MKV so then i use vlc(which is buggy)

[FuturePilot]

I like Exaile for music and MPlayer for videos.

[GGLucas]

I use Exaile for music (it rocks) and for movies/video I use MPlayer with the SMPlayer gui (the default guy stinks, SMPlayer is awesome :P)

[logos34]

Amarok is for KDE? can gnome use it? I havent tried it as yet

Yes, just need to install some kde libs. Doesn't start up quite as fast, but otherwise works fine on gnome (most of the time).

[t0p]

I've stuck with the Ubuntu defaults: totem for movies, rhythmbox for music. The system was most helpful about installing the mp3 codecs. But totem hasn't been as friendly when it's come to dvds. It used to complain that I was trying to play encrypted movie files, even after I'd installed what I thought I needed through Synaptic. Eventually I found libdvdcss2, and now totem will play most of my discs. Plus of course flash video files from youtube etc. I haven't tried any of the other movie players available.

[Quash]

Eventually I found libdvdcss2, and now totem will play most of my discs.

I completely forgot that I cant play DVD's thanks for this, now I can play dvd's

[atomkarinca]

Define "Best".

To me, the best media player should include:
- podcasting,
- Shoutcast (or Icecast) radios,
- Jamendo (this is a must),
- last.fm radio (scrobbling isn't necessary),
- equalizer (can also be fixed with pulseaudio),
- streaming radio (mms and asx).

Rhythmbox comes very close but sadly it doesn't have a built in eq. Exaile is better than all (including Amarok) but it doesn't have Jamendo support. BMPx has all the features but it's not very stable and eats a lot of ram. Conclusion? I use Rhythmbox for music. For videos I guess the most stable one is VLC.

[VON_CAPO]

SMPlayer for videos, without any doubt. It is a GUI for MPlayer showing ALL the hidden features.

XMMS for single audio files.

And for to handle collections of audio files Rhythmbox.

:guitar:

[bobbocanfly]

Audacious for music. VLC for videos/dvds.

[corney91]

Music: gmusicbrowser (Exaile and BMPx closely following)
Vids: VLC (MPlayer is nice also)

[urukrama]

For audio I use GMPC (and MPD) or occasionally Audacious.

For video I used to use Totem, but am currently fond of Kmplayer.

[jrharvey]

If all I want to do is play music then I really like XMMS. It really has some beautiful skins. It is limited in its option compared to Amorak though. For videos I like VLC.

[AndyCooll]

Amarok for audio
Totem for video

:cool:

[disturbedite]

Ive just switched from the Movie Player that was inculded in ubuntu to Mplayer. Its leaps and bounds over the stock movie crap. But still is a bit funky. After a few weeks I'll try out Totem.

i'd recommend smplayer. it should remove the "weirdness" you're referring to.

[DoktorSeven]

Videos: (g)mplayer
Audio: audacious, which is finally stable enough to replace XMMS in my view

[Kingsley]

I just gave Audacious a try. Anybody have an explanation as to why it's able to play music so much louder than Exaile or Rhythmbox?

[tiachopvutru]

For player: SMPlayer (which is a frontend of Mplayer)
For music: Amarok (sadly, it doesn't play MIDI)

[rabid9797]

Audio: Exaile
Video(and dvd's): VLC

i use exaile over amarok becuase i have found that amarok tends to slow down ALOT and become unresponsive when you have a big collection of music(because of its use of sqlite as its database type), and if you want to speed it up it requires setting up a mysql server or something to that extent. just not worth it when exaile works perfectly with almost no setup.

[imaca]

For me its Amarok for music and Xine for DVDs

Exaile doesn't seem to able to output to spdif so is no good to me.
Amarok has good functionality - the only bad bit is the kde stuff it needs to run.

Totem has never worked for me , vlc seems good but the current version (gutsy) can't output to spdif.
Xine works great, only problem is it requies command line launch to play DVDs from a folder.

[xoai]

I am using Xfmedia for audio and VLC for video. But xmms2 will be really good too.

[smartboyathome]

Right now I use Emotion for playing movies and Audacious for playing music.

[Lostincyberspace]

Amarok music smplayer movies.

[boast]

I use Exaile for music (it rocks) and for movies/video I use MPlayer with the SMPlayer gui (the default guy stinks, SMPlayer is awesome :P)

same

[LaRoza]

I almost never listen to music or watch movies on my computer, but I use VLC for movies and whatever is the default for cd's. I don't rip them or anything, just stick them in and run them.

[open_coder]

I personally don't like any of the media players in Linux. VLC is great for video. But, no application has really solved my music needs. So, I set out to write my own player. I have been working on it for a little while as a class project this past semester. With the semester over, I am looking at rewriting the project in Python and starting over using what I learned from the first attempt to make a better player.

The philosophy of this player is to provide a nice easy to customize interface so the user has control over his/her music experience. I am taking a play off of the Windows application Foobar2000. In Foobar, there is a component called PanelsUI. It lets the user completely customize the layout. PanelsUI uses its own awkward language for scripting the interface. However, for my interface, I would like to use a javascript/html/css combination for making the interface.

Basically, the interface would be a slimmed down browser renderer, Javascript would then make calls back to the streamer and database engine. And CSS and HTML would be used to make the layout.

OC

[imdano]

I just gave Audacious a try. Anybody have an explanation as to why it's able to play music so much louder than Exaile or Rhythmbox?With Exaile the problem is an upstream bug in the gstreamer equalizer (I think it's fixed in their development versions, just not the ones in the Ubuntu repo). If you run exaile with the --no-equalizer command line option it'll play louder.

[MrKlister]

MPlayer with the SMPlayer is the best! It has the best setable user interface. I love that it is possible to set the mouse shortcuts! Been looking for that feature for a long time now. It also remembers info about the movies earlier playd like position, volume, etc.

[ZootHornRollo]

i was favouring Amarok for music but since reading this i am trying Exaile.

It just seems to be a lot quicker in general. Hopefully it will manage my collection ok. (over 4000 tracks and growing)

don't use my pc for dvd or movies (think totem is my default video player but not sure)

[cfeagans]

I've been using Ubuntu exclusively for several months now, having all but abandoned Windows. I'm using VLC for video and have been back and forth between Rythmbox and Amarok for audio. I like the way Rythmbox handles podcasts better (it syncs with my iRiver better than Amarok).

But the one application I miss the most from Windows is WinAmp. I noticed that just about everyone listed a media player for audio and a different one for video. Its too bad there isn't an equivalent of Winamp for Linux.

[Tom Mann]

I'm enjoying cutting edge Amarok 2 and Dragon Player at the moment (xine backend) and everything is working (almost) perfect. (Amarok 2 is still alpha) :KS

[ad_267]

If you miss winamp then xmms or audacious might be worth a look. I use just rhythmbox and totem-gstreamer and they suit my needs pretty well. I've got vlc too for playing dvds. If you want something for audio and video then the new banshee might be what you're after.

[Happy_Man]

Banshee for audio, VLC and Totem for video (depending on what you're playing).

[iamkrazee]

Music : 1. Amarok 2. Songbird
Video : 1. SMPlayer 2. VLC

[iamkrazee]

Not one person saying Songbird?? That's odd.. in spite of having such a huge firefox fan base..

[pistacoppu]

Video: VLC
Audio: exaile

[Zoot7]

Banshee for Audio.
VLC for Video.

Always been my choice.

[doas777]

VLC is the swiss army knife of media players.

exactly. it has a corkscrew that dithers badly, an awl that you never use, and a toothpick that you lose everytime you take it out of your pocket.

[SLEEPER_V]

moovida

[doas777]

ok, it depends on the media itself, and the way I want to view it.

anything that needs a playlist gets totem. the others are really weak on this.
anything that needs the subtitles adjusted, I use VLC.
for 1080p content, or anythign that has trouble playing smoothly, I use mplayer/smplayer.

mplayer is the best backend, but has a really crappy interface (smplayer to a lesser degree). it does not playlist easily, assumes that everything is a rightclick, does not DND, and does not browse samba natively.

VLC is great for the variety of titles it can play, but sound is sometimes choppy, and dithering is a persistent problem for them, even after years of working on it. it too does not browse samba natively.

Totem has the best interface (DnD, Playlists, samba folder browsing, etc)

[GMU_DodgyHodgy]

Banshee for music - It is feature rich and stable. It syncs well with my iPod. It also can play video including DvDs.

For video - I mostly use mPlayer that comes with Ubuntu as it is stable and gets out of my way.

[koleoptero]

I use vlc, and mplayer if I stumble upon a video vlc can play correctly. For audio I mainly use cmus.

[nothingspecial]

I like the old unix rule of do one thing and do it well, or however it`s actually described, therefore cmus (or mpd +client if you want album art etc), feh for images and ........ well, I use mplayer for videos but that plays music as well (naturally, due to the nature of some video formats). Is there a video player for linux that just plays videos (and obviously mp3 etc, but doesn`t get invoved in FLAC etc)?

[crimesaucer]

I use ncmpc for playing music and vlc for playing video files. ncmpc is an ncurses based (text based) client...Because I always have a terminal open and I honestly don't care what my player looks like, it works just fine. vlc is just a great all-around player.


I also use MPD, except that I use the front-end of "ncmpcpp" which has more features than ncmpc: http://unkart.ovh.org/ncmpcpp/


MPD/ncmpcpp is lightning fast at everything, easy to use, and has incredible sound with ossV4.


For movie players I like VLC (with the cvlc command). It also works great with ossV4, and plays DVDs with menus perfectly, plays images, iso, mkv, and VIDEO_TS files.


These are the music players I've use in the past:
banshee (new version)
rhythmbox
Exaile!
audacious
bmp
listen
vlc

..... but once I found MPD/ncmpcpp I would never use any of these ever again (other than banshee for my syncing my iRiver device).

[XavierSythe]

Songbird is the best...but not for devices.

[yester64]

I was just wondering what the "best" or most popular media player is for Ubuntu.

I installed Xubuntu which came with Totem Movie Player ...which also plays audio (good job on naming that :p)

It is not necessary that I can play mp3's, but I'm also not morally against proprietary stuff.

So, what do you use and why? And also what is the most popular? (and why, I guess)

You should have made a vote with most players included. I would like to see the outcome of that.
Personally, i am using Banshee and VLC.

[aviedw]

I like VLC for most of my video especially avi files. But if its a dvd i might use Xine

And for audo i prefer rhythmbox. I tried to use Listen for audio but it just was too buggy. rhythmbox will organize my mp3 and it also has ipod support.

I never tired Banshee, how is it different from rhythmbox?

[SchizmWolf]

Amarok is nice, though it's giving me problems as of late. A very reliable media player that I use most often is Banshee. Simple, easy-to-use, and not a lot of bells and whistles, so it's pretty low-profile.

[koleoptero]

...Banshee. Simple, easy-to-use, and not a lot of bells and whistles, so it's pretty low-profile.

low profile? You're kidding right?