MPlayer vs VLC vs Other

Which video player do you use, and why? I am trying out MPlayer at the moment, and not sure why....number of formats? I've always been big on VLC.

 

MPlayer, just . . . because. LOL

It works for me on the rare occasions when I need it. Actually, on one machine (I can't even remember which one) VLC is installed but I've never used it.

 

Don't forget to vote Rob.....this is for Archeologists to discover in 2500 years.....lol

 

VLC player because:

• It's free (other media players are free as well, but I thought I'd just mention it anyways).
• Comes in a couple of variant versions such as the standard install and a portable executable. Very convienent on machines that I am low in hard drive space.
• Supports various media files and has lots of customizable features to 'enhance' your viewing experience.
• Stable. A very important trait.

 

SMplayer, a superb front end to mplayer.

 

VLC player because it plays whatever I throw at it with searching for new codecs first

 

I use Mplayer because although VLC works pretty fine i have to say it's absolute crap when you want to play 720p videos (in my case, anime) and the built in h264 decoder doesn't give the best quality. I use a GUI with Mplayer just so you know.

 

VLC is not very good on 720 and 1080p playback. Because it relies on the processor more than MPlayer, if you don't have the latest quad pumped up with hyper rams, it will lag and give crappy quality.

 

VLC is absolutely horrible for me. The sound is scratchy, the GUI widgets look out of place in KDE, and soft subtitle support (for anime) is nonexistent. I use Kaffeine for anything that I can, and MPlayer for anime with softsubs and anything that doesn't work in Kaffeine.

 

Wow, guess I'll keep MPlayer.....

 

Mplayer doesn't have full support fo stylized softsubs yet, but there's a work around OS X, do you know of one where i can get my stylizes soft subs back? It sometimes really adds to the anime like in Toki wo Kakeru Shoujo or Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and i miss 'em.

 

Yeah, the support isn't perfect, but I've never found a player with better support on Linux. Do you know of one? I also like the ability in MPlayer to customize the subtitles to the extreme. You can change their position, size, font, etc.

 

Nope, i don't know of one with better support. As far as i know it's planned for the next version though, maybe an SVN version already has it. Do you know how to use the SVN version? If so, check and tell me if it has it, i'd update in a second.

 

Yeah, it's easy. Do

Code:

sudo apt-get build-dep mplayer

Then do

Code:

sudo apt-get install subversion

Then run

Code:

svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer

in the directory that you want MPlayer's SVN code's directory to be in. Once everything's downloaded, cd into the 'mplayer' directory and run

Code:

./configure --prefix=[u]mplayer_install_location[/u]

If you did the previous steps correctly, you shouldn't get any errors from autoconf. Then you do

Code:

make && make install

At this point, you should be able to cd into the 'bin' subdirectory of the directory that you installed MPlayer to, and run

Code:

./mplayer

to use the SVN copy of MPlayer. Remember that if you just use

Code:

mplayer

the shell will find the copy installed by the package manager first, since it's located in a directory that's in the shell's $PATH, and run that instead. If you want to create a permanent shortcut, you could add a line like this in ~/.bashrc:

Code:

alias mplayer-svn='[u]mplayer_install_location[/u]/bin/mplayer'

Using that, you could add any flags you want onto the mplayer-svn command, and the shell would pass those to the SVN copy of MPlayer. If you really want to you, you could alias the SVN copy to 'mplayer', which will override the $PATH variable, but I don't suggest it.

 

Sweet deal, i'll try this later today. Please include uninstall instructions too, have you tried it? Does it fix anything/have any major changes?

 

You don't really have to uninstall anything, you just delete the directory you installed to. If you installed to /usr or /usr/local, where you can't do that, you can run

Code:

make uninstall

in the source code directory.

I haven't tried anything. I don't think I have any anime with stylized subtitles, though I might be wrong.

 

You wouldn't be able to tell because you can't see it in Mplayer.

 

I use mplayer, because I feel cool when I run stuff from the command line.

 

VLC FTW ! hmm

 

That's true lol, but sometimes I get some garbage output, like {\ something}. Maybe that's from the stylized subtitles?

I believe the correct term is not cool, but 1337

 

It might be, i usually just get some strange text when i know that a group is trying to make a softsubs infobox but it just comes out weird. I really do miss the way it used to be with CCCP+MPC. *sigh*

That's one weird fetish you have there.

 

Well CCCP was made for the purpose of watching fansubs, and fansubbing groups don't like Linux, I guess.

Do you know if CCCP's open source? If so, it might be easy to take some of the code for the stylized subtitles from it and add it to MPlayer. I can't seem to find any information on the CCCP source on Google.

 

It's just a filter pack so i think it isn't really open source. Media Player Classic is open source though, that's probably the thing that supports stylized soft subs (maybe). On another note, I'm in despair. This anti-Linux stylized sub culture has left me in despair!

 

The problem is that MPC uses DirectShow, which means it can't just be ported. But if the code for the stylized subs is present somewhere, that would make things a lot easier. Until then, you can try running MPC in Wine (which doesn't seem very stable, but you might as well try it) or in VirtualBox/VMware.

 

Nah, I'm not dying for it to take such a hit. I might live. I might have to dual-boot soon or something so i may get over it. I really just came to Linux to learn and i've done just that, keeping a dual-boot would give me the best of both worlds, although i might be using Windows more (for youtube and my anime which is what i usually do).

 

Just turn off Compiz for Flash ;/

 

I turned off Compiz completely (i cried a little, on the inside) and flash still craps up on me (i want to kill the people at Adobe, ninja style). I'm in despair! Crappy flash support and Compiz that takes up too much CPU power has left me in despair!

 

VLC don't display subs correctly with me when I play mkv files: Theyy pile up on top of each others... So mplayer all the way...

 

LOL did you make that screenshot yourself? VirtualBox + Compiz?

 

Yeah, I used to use compiz fusion all the time, but I've kinda come to the realization that it takes away from actual productivity when using my PC, so I don't use it any more. All the eyecandy was nice, but it eventually got tiring after a while, especially since it was using a lot of CPU/GPU power + many programs ran wouldn't even work w/ it.

Really??? I play mkv files w/ vlc all the time and they work great.... well, in windows at least I use VLC in windows and mplayer in Ubuntu and they both work really well... WMP sucks for playing video files... Even w/ codec packs installed I still didn't like it...

 

Nah, i got it from the Compiz wiki and used the motivation generator to make it.

 

Yeah, this was basically my problem with Beryl back in the day, so I've never bothered to try Compiz Fusion.

Well, I think that's a given

LOL I've never heard of this motivation generator. I'll have to give it a shot some time. It's kind of funny though, that the Compiz wiki has a screenshot with only Windows applications open as their example of Compiz.

 

Calvin, about the stylized subs, have you tried adding this code to the "~/.mplayer/config" file?;

Code:

## Enable stylized fonts
***=yes
embeddedfonts=yes

 

I have to thank you 100 times for that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

For anyone who is interested in knowing what happened exactly here is the story of my long and perilous journey....I saw the post, it seemed way too easy, but i tried it. Didn't work, went over to Google and found a thread over at Ubuntu Forums ( said thread) and people there said it worked but i was still lost, since i have amazing Google skills from all the years of Googling i changed the way i entered the text and found another link ( said link) and this time it worked like a charm for me. I also gave Smplayer a shot and i like it more than Mplayer although i'm still contemplating if i really should ditch it. With this, my flash issue is solved (for the most part, still some tearing but no more freezing or crashing so it's fine for the most part) and now that i have styled subs in Mplayer i am perfectly happy with Linux, i have no more impure thoughts of dual-booting with Vista for my flash and anime needs. I am complete. *passes on to next life* For those wondering how i fixed flash check here.

 

Damn, am I the only one that uses Xine anymore? I use Gxine almost exlusively, but I keep VLC around for that occasional file.

 

Anything to keep you away from Vista.
( Just kidding, people should use whatever suits their needs and makes them happy of course).
Glad everything has worked out A-OK.