As long as you are using Debian Sarge or better then playing video media files like mpg's and avi's is easiest using the set of libraries found in the Debian package "libxine1". This is really just a set of libraries to play all sorts of media, but no actual graphical program is included (p.s. yes, I have used mplayer, but frankly the lack of menu support while playing DVD's is primitive. Other than that, mplayer is pretty robust).
Indeed, there are MANY frontend GUI's that fundamentally use libxine1 as a basis for playing video media. I have tested several of them, and here is (are) my two cents (at time of this writing - May 25, 2005). The KDE project Kaffeine has a seemingly nice user interface, and I really like how it tries to bundle everything together into a friendly program, but frankly it crashes constantly. In fact, the only reason that I have it installed is because (as far as I know) Kaffeine is the only libxine1 project which also interfaces with my web browser (mozilla firefox) so that I can watch streaming video. If you just want it for this, then install the Debian packages "kaffeine" and "kaffeine-mozilla". (note: I have had better luck with mplayer for this purpose - see below)
Now, for actually watching movies off of your hard drive, or playing DVD's or whatever, then you will want to use the "official gui" as provided in the Debian package:
xine-uiAlthough some like the user interface of totem-xine, kaffeine, and several others better, xine-ui provides all of the functionality and actually doesn't crash - often.
If you want to play DVD's then xine does this for you (in libxine version 0 you were forced to download special plugin libraries, but now it's all included). Unfortunately, as usual, the scumbag production companies, record companies, etc. (let's throw publishers in the scumbag pile, too) don't want you to use Open Source software to view their junk. Hence, encrypted DVD support is not OUTRIGHT included with libxine1. Fortunately, as usual, there is a package of "unclear legal status" hanging out there called libdvdcss2 which allows the encryption on these DVDs to be broken. To get a hold of this, just add the line
deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org/ unstable main # YOU SHOULD ALSO KEEP a NORMAL DEBIAN (UNSTABLE/TESTING/STABLE) # SERVER LISTED HERE TO MEET SOME DEPENDENCIES
to your /etc/apt/sources.list file, type "apt-get update", then type
apt-get install libdvdcss2That should do the trick!!! (By the way, thank the gods for this Debian server. You can get a lot of "stuff" from there like Adobe Acrobat Reader, mplayer, lame (an mp3 encoder), dvdrip, and LOTS of other goodies. Check it out).
Now you are NOT QUITE finished yet. You need to install a bunch of CODECS (basically proprietary specifications for the millions of different crappy Windows formats out there). Go to the site http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html and grab either the "all" or the "essential" tarball. Unzip this junk into the directory /usr/lib/win32 (create it if it doesn't exist). Now, go ahead and load up "xine-ui" and go to Settings->Setup. In the "gui" tab make sure that the "Configuration experience level" option is set to "Master of the known universe". Then, go to the "decoder" tab and type the /usr/lib/win32 directories into both entries (Realplayer and Windows codecs). Hit Apply and off you go. By the way, let this be a lesson to everybody. When you are ripping a DVD (or CD or whatever), don't encode the result in proprietary garbage WE-OWN-YOU formats. Use the OpenSource formats!!!
Update: these codecs are now bundled into
a Debian package
w32codecs
on www.debian-multimedia.org!
An important tip: If you don't like how the volume varies in a
movie (music is too loud, voices are too soft) then you can use a "midnight
mode" in xine by doing the following. I placed the following in a script
file called /usr/bin/myxine
#!/bin/sh
xine "$1"#compression:500
Then I made it executable (chmod +x /usr/bin/myxine) - now I open everything
with "myxine" rather than with "xine" (I set all of my KDE and GNOME file
associations to open with "myxine"). It's MUCH MUCH better for my crappy
ears anyway.
Tipping my hat to MPLAYER
At I said above, the only xine-based project that supports viewing movies
from mozilla is kaffeine (as far as I know). Unfortunately, as I already
stated, I have had BAD luck with kaffeine as far as stability is concerned
(I really hope that it gets better).
For this reason alone it is worth installing mplayer. Besides, you may want to use it for other things anyway - it's always good to have 20 ways to do things! To install mplayer in Debian first make sure that you have www.debian-multimedia.org (listed above) in your /etc/apt/sources.list file. The package that you want is
mplayer-586You should replace "586" with whatever your processor is - I recommend looking at the actual ftp site to see all of the choices.
Debian itself doesn't include mplayer for legal reasons, but there are plenty of PLUGINS for mplayer included with Debian. If you want the mozilla plugin, just install the package
mozilla-mplayer(this plugin is available from the standard Debian distribution). Then you'll be watching movies from your browser without any problems (almost). If you have choppy audio/video then try to change your audio output by right-clicking on the plugin->Configure->Audio Output. I have had good luck with aRts (when using KDE, of course). These settings are also located in a plugin config file located in your .mplayer directory (in your home directory).
Since you have mplayer downloaded, you might want to use it. The program "mplayer" itself (run from the command line) is just that - a powerful command line video player. Most of us want a gui, so you can just run instead "gmplayer". Note that you can play DVDs and VCDs from mplayer, but there is NO DVD menu support (what a shame)!
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