Linux Multimedia Hacks

Try xine-Based Video Players

Use xine and xine-based players to view a number of video formats.

When it comes to multimedia programs under Linux, there are a number of alternatives to choose from and, in the case of xine, a back-end multimedia playback engine that is used by a number of frontends, such as Kaffeine and Totem. Although the selection of a media player is largely a matter of taste, a number of other factors apply as well. Even though in most cases the major media players under Linux all rely on the same codec libraries, I’ve noticed that some media players are able to play videos that cause other players to crash. Because of this, even in the cases where I choose other video players for files, I still have xine at the ready. This hack covers the major features of xine and discuss some of the frontends that are available.

Some people might associate xine with the video player, but xine actually refers to the portable multimedia engine that can play a number of audio and video files as well as support a number of different multimedia features. There are a number of different frontends that make use of the xine engine with the xine-ui frontend being the default frontend most likely associated with the project.

xine is a relatively popular library and most major distributions should package not only the xine-lib itself, but also the default xine-ui frontend. Otherwise you can download both xine-lib and xine-ui from the official xine page at http://www.xinehq.de and extract ...