media player decision

[SteveRiley]

Yeah, I just tried X264/H.264 with Kaffeine -- you're right -- it doesn't play, even if libavcodec53 or libavcodec-extra-53 is installed! (That is a serious limitation these days.)

IIRC, Kaffine, being based on Xine, can't take advantage of LibAV. I could be wrong about this, though.

[flamboyant]

video - VLC [on Qt]
http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

audio - DeaDBeeF [on GTK, though there were once a Qt interface plugin]
http://deadbeef.sourceforge.net/

[claydoh]

As to Amarok's bloatiness, I have discovered that if I turn off all of the scripts and plugins I don't use memory usage drops significantly - from 400 mb down to around 75. I have to restart it after disabling things to see the saving, so I have not yet pinpointed which components(s) may be to blame.

[SteveRiley]

turn off all of the scripts and plugins I don't use memory usage drops significantly

FWIW, the same can be said for KRunner and Lancelot. Perhaps debloating Amarok would be a useful addition to kubuntu-lowfat-settings?

[ScottyK]

Audio - Amarok. Plays all of my MP3's with no problem, and also recognizes my Creative Zen, and allows me to copy files to it.

Video - VLC. like above posters said, plays all sorts of video files.

How about during installation have a easy/advanced decision?

Want the "easy" setup? selecting yes will install all codes and restricted extras automatically. Plus automatic iPod support.

Advanced setup would install none of that, allowing the user to pick and choose what they want.

A lot of people like the "hand holding", but as we learn, we want to get away from the Microsoft "we'll do it for you" wizard system.

[woodsmoke]

Let's keep the suggestions going folks so that the devs can have some input in the decision making process!

woodsmoke

[tek_heretik]

You know, way back when...I was trying my kabillionth text install of Debian, I remember they had choices like 'typical desktop', 'multimedia', 'server', etc. So why not have those choices during the install, 'multimedia rich' should include a good photo ap, music player, video player, etc, and all the dependencies, codecs, etc, automatically installed with one check mark. Same goes for an office check mark, other apps besides Libre, a decent simple calculator, a good dictionary (one that doesn't always have to go online). Even a games check mark would be nice, pinball, chess, etc etc. Its very time consuming and tedious to find the best of the best and install them with every new install. Then again, this is coming from somebody that has used 100GB of 1.2TB and has the luxury of loading my system. Even a Space/Science check mark would be nice, Stellarium, etc, installed. If the user has limited hard drive space, they can judge if they have the room by a stated approximated size of any given category installed.

[JontheEchidna]

You know, way back when...I was trying my kabillionth text install of Debian, I remember they had choices like 'typical desktop', 'multimedia', 'server', etc. So why not have those choices during the install, 'multimedia rich' should include a good photo ap, music player, video player, etc, and all the dependencies, codecs, etc, automatically installed with one check mark. Same goes for an office check mark, other apps besides Libre, a decent simple calculator, a good dictionary (one that doesn't always have to go online). Even a games check mark would be nice, pinball, chess, etc etc. Its very time consuming and tedious to find the best of the best and install them with every new install. Then again, this is coming from somebody that has used 100GB of 1.2TB and has the luxury of loading my system. Even a Space/Science check mark would be nice, Stellarium, etc, installed. If the user has limited hard drive space, they can judge if they have the room by a stated approximated size of any given category installed.

You will also note that Debian releases on 20 CD-ROMS. ;-)

[tek_heretik]

You will also note that Debian releases on 20 CD-ROMS. ;-)

You will also note that you need an internet connection to install Kubuntu, you get the non-free and update options already...installed from the net, not 20 CD-ROMS, lol, back then it was only 8. That was part of the reason I gave up on it, every install is frozen in time for a year or two plus it didn't like my Raid. There is the net install version of Debian, one disk.

Edit: Correction...you don't NEED an internet connection, just better install with one.

[oshunluvr]

for once...i'll keep this simple!

lol...

[apachelogger]

I recognise that Dragonplayer is modular to the KDE framework (and is desirable for this reason). Heck, if it could even add the user interface capabilities of Kaffeine I'd be reasonably happy with it... For me, though, it currently is crippled compared to VLC.

What you call crippled is in fact simplicity by design.
The first incarnation looked like this:
http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005/10/v...ays-video.html

In fact only yesterday we bounced around the idea of taking out features and/or fiddling with the UI so it becomes less fat again. It's interface is meant to not get in the way of using it while also not "sticking out" by breaking with the appearance rules set by the rest of the workspace.
Don't get me wrong though, simplicity does not mean lack of features, they are just done right. For example a prototype I have lying around has a feature called "smart playback" which in fact renders playlists useless for the majority of use cases by learning on the job what you tend to do often and enables you to do those things from inside the player. Imagine it like youtube's recommendations on steroids. One immediate example is watching a TV series, given appropriate information smart playback can detect a video to belong to a series of files and then suggest that you might want to watch the next episode. Just random research for now though.

[apachelogger]

FWIW, the same can be said for KRunner and Lancelot. Perhaps debloating Amarok would be a useful addition to kubuntu-lowfat-settings?

Even with everything turned off Amarok is too heavy for the low-fat use case. It's much more reasonable to use dragon (in fact I'd even install phonon-backend-vlc and remove phonon-backend-gstreamer as vlc's pipeline tends to be more efficient) or vlc in a low-fat setup.

[apachelogger]

FWIW. Using VLC by default was discussed with the VLC project lead. He deemed it more sensible to build a great player using KDE technology, which is what the KDE multimedia crew is doing these days.

[SteveRiley]

I use VLC player for one reason only: variable playback speed. It's a boon for quickly plowing through videos of TED talks, Intelligence Squared, and whatever else. If we had a proper KDE-based player that included such functionality, I'd switch immediately.

(I've already adopted the process of removing the GStreamer backend and replacing it with VLC.)

[SteveRiley]

He deemed it more sensible to build a great player using KDE technology, which is what the KDE multimedia crew is doing these days.

Would Bangarang be a useful foundation to build upon?