With Linux making huge strides on desktops, the biggest proof is in the media capabilities of Linux. With a couple of applications, your Linux box can now play any media format you throw at it. And with MythTV, you can convert your computer into a Tivo! Let's check out some of these applications
Introduction
While Linux isn't the most popular OS on the desktop, it's taking huge strides towards making itself simple and useful enough to be used in homes and by the normal public. One of the most important things which Linux has to get right, if it wants to be considered a serious contender in the desktop scene, is the ability to be used as an entertainment device. Whether it's playing music or movies, Linux has to be as good at playing them as Windows is.
Luckily for us, a few teams of developers have been developing many applications which, in some cases, are better than their Windows counterparts! We take a look at a few of them in this article.
MPlayer
MPlayer is a free and open-source media player which runs on multiple operating systems like Linux, Windows and OS X. MPlayer has been one of the best players for playing media in Linux, since it supports a large number of codecs and includes lots of features. Here are the codecs and formats it supports:
- Physical media: CDs, DVDs, Video CDs
- Container formats: 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia
- Video formats: Cinepak, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV
- Audio formats: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, FLAC, Intel Music Coder, Monkey's Audio, MP3, Musepack, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA
- Subtitle formats: AQTitle, ASS/SSA, CC, JACOsub, MicroDVD, MPsub, OGM, PJS, RT, Sami, SRT, SubViewer, VOBsub, VPlayer
- Image formats: BMP, JPEG, PCX, PTX, TGA, TIFF, SGI, Sun Raster
- Protocols: RTP, RTSP, HTTP, FTP, MMS, Netstream (mpst://), SMB
MPlayer should be available in your distribution's repository and you should be able to install it using your distro's package manager.
VLC media player
VLC is another cross-platform free and open-source media player. It is also a lot more powerful than MPlayer, allowing you to stream all sorts of media across the network. Proof of it's awesome-ness is in the fact that version 0.8.6 alone has been downloaded over 100 million times. Here are the media formats and codecs it supports:
- Container formats: 3GP, ASF, AVI, FLV, MKV, Musical Instrument Digital Interface (.mid/.midi), QuickTime, MP4, Ogg, OGM, WAV, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), AIFF, Raw audio, Raw DV, MXF, VOB.
- Video formats: Cinepak, Dirac, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo 3, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, VC-1, VP5, VP6, WMV.
- Subtitles: DVD, SVCD, DVB, OGM, SubStation Alpha, SubRip, Advanced SubStation Alpha, MPEG-4 Timed Text, Text file, Vobsub, MPL2, Teletext.
- Audio formats: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, DV Audio, XM, FLAC, MACE, MOD, MP3, PLS, QDM2/QDMC, RealAudio, Speex, Screamtracker 3/S3M, TTA, Vorbis, WavPack, WMA.
Output formats for streaming/encoding
VLC can transcode into several formats depending on the operating system:
- Container formats: ASF, AVI, FLV, Fraps, MP4, Ogg, Wav, MPEG-2 (ES, PS, TS, PVA, MP3), MPJPEG, FLAC, MOV
- Video formats: H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, VP5, VP6, Theora, DV
- Audio formats: AAC, AC3, DV Audio, FLAC, MP3, Speex, Vorbis
- Streaming protocols: UDP, HTTP, RTP, RTSP, MMS, File
VLC will also be available in your distro's package manager.