xine vs mplayer

phrakture · 2004-10-04 14:49:26

Yeah this question is probably asked alot:
which is better of the two?

I like xine because it seems more mature and the UI is much cleaner looking. By contrast, the mplayer menus look terrible...

Also, xine detected my audio setup just fine and has huge amounts of options... mplayer, however gives me lots of alsa errors because my devices are weird (i blame udev!) and there is no way to change it...

I am curious about developement, and codec support - which one has better codec support (or do they use the same libs)? and which one do you all think will go farther?

just looking for opinions and comments... I'd like to know why people use what they use...

sarah31 · 2004-10-04 15:40:14

it is all preference. i prefer xine because it is cleaner in menus, controls, etc. It supports all video codecs I use (dvix or xvid) and dvds. IT's playlisting works.

mplayer is ok and i do use it on rare occasions but i just don't like it as much. They do have slightly better codecs support and even provide certain codec libraries within their lib files (such as AAC).

i try not to use mplayer though because i generally don't like their developer's and some communiyt members attitudes.

zeppelin · 2004-10-04 15:47:28

I use gxine. the best

phrakture · 2004-10-04 16:14:28

Right now I'm in the same boat as sarah... and my qualm was actually the codec support - let's say I had a divx5 video with ac3 sound or perhaps an ogm or something like that... ok, let me rephrase - let's say I come across something that I cannot play in xine due to some obscure format or audio encoding... is it easy to get the codecs? is xine modular like that so I can just go download someone's library and play? can it use mplayer's codecs?

I apologize if I sound like a rambling lunatic...

robot5x · 2004-10-04 16:32:59

I'm a massive mplayer fan - it's easily the best thing I've ever used. The community is not exactly helpful, but hey I'm just a newbie anyway!
I remember compiling xine a few years ago and their docs told you to go to the mplayer site to download their codecs! Maybe things are different now, but it made me think at the time...
Mplayer can be a dark art, but if you read the docs very carefully there is absolutely nothing it won't do. I think the GUI is ok, you can get quite a few skins for it, but the comand line is preferable anyway. Plus, you get mencoder too for ripping dvd's, and encoding to any codec you want with a million options. I even got my dad using it now on XP cos media player won't play his silly mpeg2 files...
Best of all I can use cvidix with my nvidia card and get video playback without even starting x!

I need to go wipe that foam from my mouth now....

phrakture · 2004-10-04 16:44:31

yeah, that's kinda what I was getting at:
mplayer has a really nice backend and everything, but usually, playing movies = running X = using GUI (at least for me).... and I just think the menus and non-skinned GUI screens look terrible (i.e. the EQ and right click menu)... xine-ui has fully skinnable gui and the preferences and right click menus look much cleaner and user better looking fonts....

is there perhaps a way to change the fonts and look-and-feel for the mplayer gui portions? wait a sec... does it use the current gtk theme? that might work... dunno

sarah31 · 2004-10-04 17:09:16

fyi mplayer does not maintain most of the codecs available on their site. in fact most codecs there used to be developed by the people that developed avifile.

personally i think mencoder bites but that is just opinion. and for me who has countless smaller video files a playlist and comfortable gui is everything which is why i use xine or vlc.

not from a lack of knowledge but from lots of testing/use mplayer is just not reliable. for me. i craps out a whiole bunch and is not very portable even when small system changes are made.

but ultimately it boils down to piss poor attitudes. i don't condone it as there is just too much of it in the open source OS world.

phrakture · 2004-10-04 17:16:28

let me extend my question a bit:
which front ends do you all use when running either program (as both are technically just backends....)? gmplayer? xine-ui? totem? kmplayer? etc...

robot5x · 2004-10-04 17:17:07

I like GUI's as much as the next man, but I really see the mplayer menus as unnecessary and a bit of a time-waster. This isn't really helpful (sorry!) but you can set up any options you want in the mplayer config file, then pass a few options on the command line in a fraction of the time a right-click and blahblahblah will take.
I have about three options in my config - to use rtc, to use xv as default video out, and to stop the screensaver. Other than that, it's just a case of
mplayer bambi.avi
easy peasy.
I did have a look on the mplayer site, but it seems the only way to pretty it up is using a different skin, which doesn't change the menu situation. I thought yuo might be able to recompile with gtk2 enabled but it seems not.

by the way, I wasn't implying that mplayer maintain those codecs - just that when I went to compile xine they said to visit the mplayer site to grab them. It made me think - hang on, why don't I just compile mplayer. Just seemed kind of weird, that's all.

phrakture · 2004-10-04 17:25:53

yeah command line is fine and all, but when it comes to tweaking audio output while playing... skipping around and things like that it's nice to do with a gui.... i mean even if i don't use it, it's nice to know that it's there.... being pretty... like some sort of trophy or medal... they don't do much but hang on the wall and look nice....

and mplayer has some different front ends.. IIRC like kmplayer... dunno.

actually my main problem with mplayer is that it's detecting my alsa devices wrong (which xine does fine, out-of-the-box).... sound plays but i can't adjust volume and i get spammed with "cannot find mixer" popups... like 2-3 per second when it should be playing audio.... there's no where tos et these options and i started getting disgusted with the menus and UI while trying to find the audio output options...

paranoos · 2004-10-04 18:40:42

phrakture wrote:

i mean even if i don't use it, it's nice to know that it's there.... being pretty... like some sort of trophy or medal... they don't do much but hang on the wall and look nice....

lol Except, gmplayer is not pretty. It's not even functional. I don't find it helps me play videos at all. Not because gmplayer is bad in any way, but...

My reason to use mplayer (from the cmdline) has always been If I want to watch a video, I want to watch a video -- not a fancy GUI, no window borders, nothing. Just full screen video.

mplayer acheives this perfectly. My config file just says to use fullscreen, and that /dev/hdd is my dvd player. If I need to pause, just hit the spacebar. If i need to fastfoward and rewind, the cursor keys help out. Slidebars get in the way. Those tiny pause, ff, rw buttons are hard to use, and also just get in the way.

I guess I just work differently from you guys, because I don't even see the point of a playlist in a video player. Even if I'm playing lots of small files. It's too much of a hassle to open up a playlist, and add all those files. Simply mplayer *.avi works perfectly fine.

Anyway, I tried xine in Mandrake once years ago, and then I tried mplayer. I compiled it myself. I used to do that a lot, since the pre-packaged versions for mdk and deb really weren't great. But I digress, I've been a hardcore mplayer user ever since. It plays almost everything I throw at it... and if it doesn't work in mplayer, it doesn't work in any other player I've tried either.

phrakture · 2004-10-04 19:04:07

Well, I tend to download lots of fan subebd anime... so I do use playlists often enough (103 episodes of Naruto baby!)...

I agree that gmplayer is not pretty - which is why I'm looking into xine

lanrat · 2004-10-04 21:57:29

phrakture wrote:

actually my main problem with mplayer is that it's detecting my alsa devices wrong (which xine does fine, out-of-the-box).... sound plays but i can't adjust volume and i get spammed with "cannot find mixer" popups... like 2-3 per second when it should be playing audio.... there's no where tos et these options and i started getting disgusted with the menus and UI while trying to find the audio output options...

It's a bug in mplayer. You have to use oss (alsa oss emulation is ok) until a new mplayer release comes out. Or you can download a patch and rebuild it. Search other forum threads for more info (I posted a link to the patch).

I usually use mplayer from the command line and sometimes gmplayer. I don't agree that mplayer gui is useless. Maybe it's not the prettiest in the world but it helped me to setup font, subtitles and other things when I started to use mplayer some time ago. I like how mplayer starts in a second (or two) and works in fullscreen mode on my tv while I can still work with my crt monitor. I like it's low cpu usage. I like that it works with strange files (for example recorded on a digital satellite tuner) without problems (this of course thanks to the codecs too). I tried to use xine, xine-ui and gxine some time ago and I really didn't like it. I know it's a great program but it didn't feel any better than mplayer/gmplayer. In my case it was slower and less elastic than mplayer. And I never really was able to use subtitles correctly with it.
Gmplayer skins are not that bad. My favourite is CornerMP - aqua which is nice looking on the tv. There are others like plastic that change the look of gmplayer completly. Osx skins make it look more simple and usable. And it can even pretend to be windows media player (who cares?) :-) or use xmms as a playlist.

But most of all I like the choice that we have :-)

phrakture · 2004-10-04 22:01:34

sigh... I was really hoping I didn't have to fall back on oss emulation... even though it's the simplest thing in the world, it's legacy crap that I don't need (bleeding edge, schmeeding edge)

guess I'll enable it and mess with both... ATM i like xine.... i just wish there were more skins... none of them are that fabulous

soniX · 2004-10-04 22:27:17

I find that xine is way better at playing dvd's... where mplayer sometimes have synch problems bwith video and sound, xine behaves just like a dvd-player should.. perfectly...
on the other hand.. mplayer will play anything you throw at it...
Use them both... where xine fails, start up mplayer and enjoy your film/videoclip

phrakture · 2004-10-04 22:29:05

interesting... I was planning on keeping both around.... I'll skin them and make everything pretty later (I need a good weekend of grabbing wallpapers, skins, etc to make everything purty!)

Arch Linux

#1 2004-10-04 14:49:26

xine vs mplayer

#2 2004-10-04 15:40:14

Re: xine vs mplayer

#3 2004-10-04 15:47:28

Re: xine vs mplayer

#4 2004-10-04 16:14:28

Re: xine vs mplayer

#5 2004-10-04 16:32:59

Re: xine vs mplayer

#6 2004-10-04 16:44:31

Re: xine vs mplayer

#7 2004-10-04 17:09:16

Re: xine vs mplayer

#8 2004-10-04 17:16:28

Re: xine vs mplayer

#9 2004-10-04 17:17:07

Re: xine vs mplayer

#10 2004-10-04 17:25:53

Re: xine vs mplayer

#11 2004-10-04 18:40:42

Re: xine vs mplayer

#12 2004-10-04 19:04:07

Re: xine vs mplayer

#13 2004-10-04 21:57:29

Re: xine vs mplayer

#14 2004-10-04 22:01:34

Re: xine vs mplayer

#15 2004-10-04 22:27:17

Re: xine vs mplayer

#16 2004-10-04 22:29:05

Re: xine vs mplayer

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