Mandrake Linux 8.2: Installation And User Guide | ||
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Prev | Chapter 13. Audio, Movie And Video Applications | Next |
This section will discuss movie players available with Mandrake Linux. It will introduce the subject (i.e: codecs problem[1]) and suggest resources to get it going.
Video players exist under GNU/Linux, but they are still quite limited as to what they may accomplish. The main problem is that most popular video codecs are proprietary and to implement them in a free software application (mainly due to the cost of licensing), the codecs have to be reverse-engineered. Which is very complex and not always legal.
For example, you will have lots of trouble playing Quicktime files or DVDs. Actually, it's not so complicated, but you will have to download the plugins from the Internet to complete your installation.
![]() | In some countries, the status of the DVD playback and reverse-engineered codecs is still under review. That is why MandrakeSoft does not include all the plugins to those codecs. The information included in this section is meant to help Mandrake Linux users who know that, in their country, using these is legal. MandrakeSoft does not encourage law violations and you should verify with local authorities before you download these codecs and plugins. |
This is one of the most interesting video application for GNU/Linux. It supports a wide range of formats and offers interesting customization of the GUI (skins). It's fast, flexible and extensible. Version 0.9 is quite stable and you can extend it to support all popular formats.
This software is tailored to playback high resolution movies such as MPEG1, MPEG2 and AVI files. It is really not made to playback compressed files such as Quicktime, but supports MPEG2 streams.
Another quite interesting application, MPlayer has the advantages of supporting multiple output drivers, even old video cards. Like the previous applications described above, it supports DVD, AVI, VideoCD. Unfortunately, you will also probably have to download and install winDLLs and proprietary codecs to make it work properly.
Finally, there are other video applications for GNU/Linux such as vlc, Ogle and RealPlayer (which is a proprietary software). We encourage you to discover them as they might answer your specific needs.
[1] | coder/decoder |