Install Rosa Media Player (ROMP) In Ubuntu

Rosa Media Player (ROMP) is a media player forked from SMplayer, used by default in ROSA Desktop, a Linux distribution based on Mandriva that comes with some special features. Besides being able to play almost any audio/video formats (it uses Mplayer), Rosa Media Player can also extract audio from videos, trim videos or record the desktop.

Unfortunately, the desktop capture feature doesn't work properly in Unity because Rosa Media Player is minimized to the tray when the recording starts and you need to click its tray icon to stop the recording which is not possible in Unity, where all Qt applications tray icons are converted to appindicators (unless you uninstall the sni-qt package), which don't support actions on click.

To trim a video or extract audio from a video, click the green arrow on the right - this will open a sidebar where you'll find the "Trim video" and "Extract audio track" options in a drop-down:

Install Rosa Media Player (ROMP) in Ubuntu

To install Rosa Media Player 1.0 RC1 in Ubuntu 12.04 or 11.10 via the main WebUpd8 PPA, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install rosa-media-player

Arch Linux users can get Rosa Media Player via AUR (though the pkgbuild is kind of old at the time I'm writing this). For other Linux distributions, you can download it via GIT or from HERE.

Thanks to Rodislav Moldovan for the tip!

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XBMC Media Center 11.0 Released, Install It In Ubuntu

XBMC Media Center is a free and open source (GPL) digital media hub and HTPC (Home theater PC) software, available for Linux, OSX, iOS and Windows.

XBMC 11 "Eden" has been released recently and comes with speed increases, better and simpler library, better unencrypted BluRay support, default skin improvements, better networking support, AirPlay support, upgraded weather service with geoip lookup and much more. The new version also brings support for Apple TV2 and iOS.

Changes in XBMC Media Center 11.0:

• addon rollbacks so you can install previous addons versions
• GPU video decoding on Linux to "some extent" for AMD graphic cards
• support for direct playback of ISO image files for Blu-ray Disc as well as video library integration
• addons can provide their own web interface
• improved mouse support, add better control for dragging of seek / slide / scroll bars, and click handling
• improved touch interface API and gesture support for XBMC's GUI Engine for all platforms
• new custom JPEG decoder which is at least 2x faster than the previous implementation
• support for SSA/ASS subtitle tags; italics, bold, and color for SubRip (.srt) subtitles as well as MP4 embedded subtitles
• upgraded ffmpeg
• improved Blu-ray Disc and harddrive playback support of unencrypted bdmv and mpls files without menus
• support for NFS virtual file server
• support for AFP (vfs)
• Airplay support for Videos, Pictures and Music
• asynchronous threaded background loading of metadata to XBMC's VFS (Virtual File System)
• improved TheMovieDB.org movie scraper by adding themoviedb.org posters scraping
• Linux: support for Texas Instruments OMAP4 (OMAP4430 and OMAP4440 with video decoding on IVA 3)
• dynamic runtime detection of CPU features (MMX, SSE, 3DNow, etc.) implementation for Linux
• improved ARM processor architecture support for embedded devices and embedded system platforms

For a complete changelog, see THIS page.

There's also an XBMC ISO based on Ubuntu called XBMCbuntu which is built upon a full LXDE desktop environment, so when you exit XBMC, you'll get an Ubuntu-based LXDE desktop with applications such as Chromium, Synaptic or a file manager. To login to XBMCbuntu, use "xbmc" for the username, don't enter anything for the password and just click "login".

XBMC Media Center 11.0 "Eden" screenshots:

XBMCbuntu

Install XBMC Media Center in Ubuntu

To add the stable XBMC PPA and install XBMC 11.0 in Ubuntu 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 or 10.04, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

The official XBMC PPA doesn't provide any packages for Ubuntu 12.04 for now but if you use Precise, you can use an unofficial PPA to install the latest XBMC 11:

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:nathan-renniewaldock/xbmc-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xbmc

For other Linux distributions, Mac OSX, Apple TV, iOS, Windows or XBMCbuntu, see the XBMC Media Center download page.

via ubuntips

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Audience: A Slick, Minimalistic Linux Media Player

Audience is a new media player written in Vala that "brings the lessons learned from the web home to the desktop".

The application uses a slick, clutter-based user interface and is designed to play videos without getting in your way, with controls displayed in a semi-transparent overlay that uses autohide and a seek bar that shows a thumbnail preview for a given mark in the video, eliminating the need to manually seek to see what happens at a certain point in the video. For the menu, Audience uses an elementary-style AppMenu instead of a classic menu bar:

Audience doesn't have any settings and the only thing you can configure are the subtitles (language), though some options like lock / unlock window resizing to the aspect ration of the current video, enable/disable video resuming and others are available in Dconf.

Here's a short video I've just recorded with Audience media player in action:


(direct video link)

Install Audience in Ubuntu

Before installing, please note that Audience is not stable yet! The application is available in a daily PPA, for testing purposes only. To install it in Ubuntu 11.10, you'll also have to add a PPA that provides Granite and the one for the latest Vala (this isn't required for Ubuntu 12.04).

Granite is available in the elementary testing PPA - add it using the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementary-os/testing

To add the Vala PPA (not required for Ubuntu 12.04), use the following command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:vala-team/ppa

And finally, to add the Audience PPA and install Audience media player in Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:audience-members/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install audience

At the time I'm writing this, the Ubuntu Precise 64bit package failed to build. Hopefully it will be fixed soon.


Arch Linux users can install Audience from AUR.

For other Linux distributions, you can get the code via Launchpad.

Audience is currently under heavy development and you will find bugs! Report them @ Launchpad.

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SMPlayer 0.7.0 Brings YouTube And Mplayer2 Support

SMPlayer may have been dead for a while, but it seems very active now, with two releases in just one month. The latest SMPlayer 0.7.0 brings basic support for YouTube and MPlayer2 as well as other new features.

What's new in SMPlayer 0.7.0:

• Mplayer2 support
• Use precise seeking with mplayer2. It can be enabled/disabled from Preferences > Interface
• Basic support for YouTube which allows you to open urls via Open > Url, or as a command line parameter. You can also drag and drop a link from a browser to the smplayer window.
• You can select the desired quality for YouTube videos under Preferences > Performance
• New favorite menu, where you can add your favorite videos, music, streams, etc. It's also possible to add submenus.
• New command line option: -disable-server which is used to disable the server used to communicate with other instances. You can use this to launch multiple SMPlayer instances

To install / upgrade to SMPlayer 0.7.0 in Ubuntu, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer

For other Linux distributions and Windows, see the SMPlayer download page.

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Install MPlayer2 And SMPlayer2 In Ubuntu

MPlayer2 is a fork of MPlayer that "contains significant further development and supports a number of features not available in other Unix players".

Improvements included in MPlayer2 that aren't available in the original MPlayer:

• better pause handling (In MPlayer executing any commands forced the player to unpause; in MPlayer2 you can change settings, seek, or run other commands while paused)
• better Matroska support, including support for ordered chapters and editions
• It's easy to build MPlayer2 with FFmpeg-mt support which gives a big performance increase on multicore machines
• better support for VDPAU functionality on NVIDIA cards
• support for precise seeking (seek to any frame in the video)
• support for gettext-based translations
• no longer depends on embedded FFmpeg tree or internal FFmpeg symbols
• improvements in audio/video sync handling
• support for gapless playback of audio files
• support modifier keys in command bindinds
• OSS4 volume control
• lots of bug fixes

You can read a complete comparison between MPlayer and MPlayer2, here.

Unfortunately, there's something missing too: MEncoder is not available with Mplayer2 because "MEncoder codebase was in very bad shape". There is, however, a MPlayer2 development branch that adds some of MEncoder functionality and it will likely be merged with MPlayer2 sometime around the 2.1 release.

Using existing MPlayer front-ends with MPlayer2

It is possible to use existing MPlayer front-ends like UMPlayer, SMPlayer, XT7 Player and GNOME Mplayer with MPlayer2, because it uses the same binary filenames. However, some of the MPlayer2 features may not be available when using these players.

Install MPlayer2 in Ubuntu

MPlayer 2 is already available in the official Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise repositories so you can easily install it using Ubuntu Software Center, Synaptic, etc., however, if you want to install a newer version, you can use the MOTU Media MPlayer Daily Builds PPA.

To add the PPA and install MPlayer2 (only available for Ubuntu Oneiric and Precise), use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:motumedia/mplayer-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mplayer2

The last command above removes mplayer and installs mplayer2.

If later on you want to go back to using the original MPlayer, simply run:

sudo apt-get install mplayer

This should remove MPlayer2 and install Mplayer.

Install SMPlayer2 in Ubuntu

There is a SMPlayer fork called SMPlayer2 which lets you take advantage of some of the features in MPlayer2 that are not available in the original SMPlayer, like precise seeking, better Matroska support, etc.

To install SMPlayer2 under Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot or 12.04 Precise Pangolin, use the commands below (only use it if you've installed MPlayer2):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:smplayer2/daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer2

Note: The SMPlayer2 PPA recommends using the latest MPlayer2 from the MOTU Media MPlayer Daily Builds PPA (see above).

Thanks to Eric Appleman for the SMPlayer2 tip!

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SMPlayer 0.6.10 Released With Minor New Features

SMPlayer is a popular front-end for MPlayer and can play videos, DVDs and VCDs, featuring configurable subtitles, audio track switching, video equalizer, filters, playlist, audio and subtitles delay adjustment and much more.

After almost 2 years, a new SMPlayer version has been released: 0.6.10. The new version only brings some minor new features like:

• New vdpau configuration dialog
• New menu to select the closed caption channel (requires mplayer >= r32607)
• Possibility to select the seeking method (absolute or relative)
• Possibility to sort the items of the playlist
• Port for eCS, OS/2

SMPlayer could already use VDPAU (VDPAU allows video programs to offload portions of the video decoding process and video post-processing to the GPU video-hardware - Nvidia graphics cards only), but the new VDPAU configuration dialog lets you select the vdpau codecs to use:

Install SMPlayer 0.6.10 in Ubuntu

If you use Ubuntu (Precise, Oneiric, Natty, Maverick, Lucid) and want to install the latest SMPlayer 0.6.10, you can do it by using the SMPlayer official PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer

Extra tip: for a newer mplayer you can use the MOTU Media Mplayer PPA.


For other Linux distributions and Windows, see the SMPlayer download page.

via LFFL.org

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Xt7-Player Is A Fully Featured Mplayer GUI

Xt7-Player is a graphical user interface for Mplayer with a huge list of features, "while trying to keep usability in mind". Among the most important features are YouTube and Shoutcast integration, dvbt, library and playlist management, local and global hotkeys, "stackable" Audio and video filters managed via drag'n drop, audio and video equalizers and lots more.

It can even watch your /tmp folder for Flash videos and play them (like a tweak we've posted a while back, but fully automated).

At first, I was a bit skeptical because Xt7 Player is written in Gambas / Qt (I was influenced by other applications written in Gambas which don't look too pretty), but I've decided to give it a try after reading a lot of positive comments on its forum. And I must say, I was impressed! Yes, it doesn't integrate too well in GNOME, but it has all the features (and can play most video formats since it uses mplayer) I want and of course, it's fully customizable: you can easily move the tabs from top to left or show/hide the left panel with a click and so on.

Here are a few more Xt7 Player screenshots:

More screenshots (under KDE) here.

Install Xt7-Player

Xt7-Player is available in a PPA for Ubuntu 12.04, 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 users.

To install Xt7 Player in Ubuntu, use the commands below (the first PPA is required for the latest Gambas 3):

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nemh/gambas3
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:eloaders/xt7-player
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xt7-player

The YouTube integration depends on YouTube-dl, which is outdated in older Ubuntu versions but you can download the latest youtube-dl .deb from HERE.


Arch Linux users can install the latest Xt7-Player via AUR.


For other Linux distributions, get Xt7-Player from HERE (note: the latest Gambas 3 is required).

Last (KDE) screenshot in the post via Xt7-Player forums.

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UMPlayer PPA

UMPlayer is a new cross-platform Mplayer front-end that supports CSS skins, easily searching, watching and downloading YouTube videos, lots of ShoutCast radio stations and more.

A quick update: UMPlayer has been available in the main WebUpd8 PPA for a while now but I've decided to create an UMPlayer-only PPA for those who do not want to upgrade all the packages available in the main WebUpd8 PPA.

There's also a new UMPlayer version available (both in the new stand-alone UMPplayer PPA and the main WebUpd8 PPA) which comes with lots of bug fixes. There's no changelog available, but you can take a look at the SVN log if you want to see what's new.

So to add the UMPlayer PPA (available for Ubuntu 11.10, 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04) and install UMPlayer, use the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/umplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install umplayer

If UMPlayer doesn't work or you have issues with the subtitles, you'll need to upgrade MPlayer - this can be done by using the MPlayer daily builds PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:motumedia/mplayer-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

For bugs reports, see the UMPlayer page @ Sourceforge.

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Install VLC 1.1.10 And Pidgin 2.8.0 In Ubuntu

I'm sure many of you know about GetDeb but maybe some of our new readers don't. GetDeb is a very popular (for example, in July 2010, there were about 25144 unique Ubuntu Lucid users per day installing packages via) software portal that comes with an Ubuntu repository which you can use to install applications that are not available in the official Ubuntu repositories - this includes updated versions for various applications.

Until now I didn't really needed to use GetDeb in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, but the Pidgin PPA hasn't been updated yet with the latest Pidgin 2.8.0 (released about 3 days ago) so I though I'd check GetDeb - and indeed, GetDeb provides the latest Pidgin 2.8.0 (for Ubuntu Natty and Lucid - no Maverick it seems) as well as VLC 1.1.10 (for Natty only).

• VLC 1.1.10 changelog
• Pidgin 2.8.0 changelog

So if you want to upgrade to the latest Pidgin and VLC (as well as many other applications like FileZilla, Unetbootin, etc.), download this .deb file and install it - this will add the GetDeb repository -, then run an upgrade:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

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