Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

[HalationEffect]

Sorry DragonPlayer and Kaffeine, but you're both ugly as sin. Tried a few others too, such as KMPlayer, KPlayer, SMPlayer, VLC, and while they all have their virtues, not one of them appeals to my aesthetic sensibilities.

A bit of googling led me to Bangarang... silly name, but it looks good in windowed mode, and has the functionality I want. In particular, how it handles playlists is exactly what I'd been looking for - a playlist sidebar (not a separate window, and showing the playlist doesn't hide the video you happen to be watching at the time). The only other player I'd found that handles playlists like that was Totem, but I disliked the fact that it was a Gnome app, and also that the only backend currently available for it is Gstreamer.

The bookmarking feature is nice too; you can manually bookmark a particular point in a video, but it will also auto-bookmark if you close the player when a video has only been part watched, allowing you to quickly and easily resume from where you left off.

It uses Phonon, so it can play anything that whatever backend you've configured Phonon to use can handle. It also uses Nepomuk, but thankfully doesn't complain if Nepomuk has been disabled. IIRC, it's available from the Universe repository.

I have nothing whatsoever to do with Bangarang's development, I'm just a very satisfied user, and wanted to evangelise it a bit

[woodsmoke]

Bangarang you have my attention!: a native KDE video player plays .pls

Bangarang! You HAVE my attention! Front and Centre!

HalationEffection

Thank you VERY much for this post.

For some on the forum here, they know that I am a LONG TIME study of all the media players, music, movie and "both".

Most of them have been lacking in one thing or another.

aside:

But, THE one thing that "separates out" "Linux" from "Windblows/Mac was....notice the WAS.... the advocacy and playing of FREE, as in you should make a DONATION!!! , streaming media.

Thanks to the RIAA the number of stations in the United States that actually are able to be supported by donations is basically down to Soma FM.

But to get back to media players in general.

A) "lot" of the "new" media players that cropped up the last few years would only play mp3s or OGG or whatever that were in the file system(local). MOST would not play a cd in any shape form or fashion. Bangarang was just another in a long line of music/video/media players that got some of the job done.

Amarok is the only one that has stood the test of time although Clementine will also now allow one to navigate to a .pls file and play it.

B) the presently advocated media players are skewing off into very, UNinteresting, pathways for me, like defaulting to paid media or being ONLY a "social" player.

C) NONE of this long line of players that would do part of the job would do what SHOULD be a very simple, and I think of PRIME importance, thing and that is to be able to:

NAVIGATE to a .pls file and play it.

Bangarang does that.

Now the Caveat: Because, I think, it is integrated with nepomuk/strigi, it spends quite a bit of time "gathering it's skirts", that is, finding all possible files and also the information about those files.

Note: Bangarang not only found the ".pls" file it also went to SomaFM and found the url and also a "firewall friendly" .pls. Now just HOW COOL is that!

Because of that, on my Kubuntu desktop manually put onto Oneric, it takes up to a minute or more to "get things figured out", and then it does it.

NOTE: playing a .pls file when actually AT the media player, one sees the wheel spinning, and it just will keep spinning. After a while one has to click the "play arrow" and then it just works.

After this, when one closes the player and re-opens it one needs merely to go to the "playlist" at the top right and click the desired item and it plays immediately.

Knowing absolutely nothing about the devs at Bangarang, I am reasonably confident that for them to have gotten this far ...that tweaking of the code to integrate with Nepomuk/Strigi will greatly reduce the search time, or it may be that it is poor integration between the manually installed Kubu Desktop and Oneric on my install.

Anyhoooooo BIG THUMBS UP to the devs at Bangarang

http://bangarangkde.wordpress.com/
And again HalationEffect

Thank you very much for this post.

woodsmoke

[vinnywright]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

yes Bangarang is a nice one .........it's been on my boxes even back to the 10.04 installs.

I usually have a plethora of media players on my box's from the exotic (XBMC) to CLI (mpg123) depending on my moods 8)


☢VINNY☢

[woodsmoke]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

FOLLOW UP POST:

Hi Vinny, I had seen it several years ago, but it was one of the "can only do this" group.

FOLLOW UP POST:

Bangarang rocks on "Kubuntu", which, of course, is fully integrated with Nepomuk/strigi.

The slowness of Bangarang noted on the previous post "had" to be merely because I was using my "manual install of Kubuntu desktop over "Oneric".

The indexing, and playing of a .pls is as fast, or faster, than with Clementine and/or Amarok.

NOTE of something really different in Bangarang.

Instead of the "integrated in windows" or the "drop down by click" things like the file structure, it uses, what is, to me, a not much seen before different method.

One clicks the "media lists" button at the bottom left to flip back and forth between the plain screen of the player which is showing what is playing and what is, by other players, shown in panels or as a drop down panel.

Very elegant.

I, PERSONALLY, would recommend that the devs for Kubuntu at least consider using Bangarang as the default media player, IF everything else works as well as this does.

woodsmoke

[blackpaw]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Trying it out .... How do I tell it where my music folders are? its seems very short on config options

[ScottyK]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Never heard of this program, but thanks for the recommendation. Off to check it out.

[vinnywright]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Trying it out .... How do I tell it where my music folders are? its seems very short on config options

bottom left corner media lists............... thare is an audio and video tab.

play around with it for a wile to find all it's options ...........you can even eddit track tags

VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Never heard of this program, but thanks for the recommendation. Off to check it out.

+1

[woodsmoke]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

I've been putting Bangarang "through the paces" and have not had a problem yet.

woodsmoke

[HalationEffect]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

It's still my default player for video files, but there is one feature that I wish it had, that (as far as I can tell) it lacks: the ability to enforce only one running instance.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Thought I'd give this program a whirl. I'm stuck already. The Bangarang blog shows feeds and streams as potential sources:



But my list of sources is, well, rather sparse:



Installed on my mini running Precise, version in the repo is 2.1. Anyone else noticing this?

[woodsmoke]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

+1
woodsmoke

[SteveRiley]

Re: Finally found a native KDE video player with a good looking UI

Thought I'd give this program a whirl. I'm stuck already. The Bangarang blog shows feeds and streams as potential sources:

Figured it out. My hacky way of removing Nepomuk was the culprit. I'm building up my machine yet again, and haven't removed the Nepomuk files. Sure enough, when I open Bangarang, I see the full expected UI.