How to Install Snappy 0.2 (multimedia player) in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 10.10?

Snappy is a very simple (Clutter based) multimedia player front-end that uses the Gstreamer for playback. Although I ain't a programmer thus I don't know much about Clutter but for developing awesome looking programs GUI... Clutter is one heck of a framework without a doubt.

But the only problem with Snappy player at the moment is... it doesn't have a GUI. Basically it's command-line player. Not entirely true though, because although you launch and play a file via the command-line but then, you're greeted with a very simple playback window (a bit similar to the MPLayer's command-line version).

And within the "inside" of the video, you'll be getting a total awesome graphical controls that are transparent and 3D looking, etc which are designed using the Clutter framework ... what can I say, it looks beautiful!.


Main features...

*. Since it's actually a frond-end that uses one of the most successive multimedia framework the Gstreamer, it can play all the multimedia files that these frameworks support.

This screenshot is directly from Luis (the developer himself) (it won't run "properly" in my Ubuntu Laptop, otherwise I would be proudly posting one of me own :D, more below)

*. Play/Pause, progress-bar and volume control (all supports both keyboard and mouse) buttons.

*. Change volume levels.

*. Audio files playback support with Visualizations.

*. DLNA support.

*. Full and remaining playback time ... are the features.

As said, it's a very simple front-end that loads your multimedia files pretty fast and has smooth playback too. But this WILL NOT be able to replace others such as VLC or Gnome Mplayer, etc for instance, that's because it does not have an initial GUI that you can use to open the player without playing any file (rather than those buttons while playback).

So I really can't recommend this for Ubuntu newbies.

Another thing, Clutter by default uses OpenGL for accessing your GPU. So if you have an ATI or Nvidia card, etc without the proprietary drivers installed or just renders OpenGL 3D rendering in general, then Snappy won't run at all. That's also why I cannot give you a real screenshot of mine (having issues with my ATI card, okay, it's really old!).
 
But if you have VGA card that works well with the Unity desktop, then Snappy should work perfectly fine (as good looking as the above screenshot).

You can install Snappy-player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 10.10 by using the below commands.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gstreamer-developers/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install snappy

How do I play a file with it?

Simple, open your command-line window (yikes!) and simply use the below command.

snappy file-path

You can also access few of its options and shortcuts by using the below command as well.

snappy --help

It also has a command-line "playlist" which you can access by the below command.

snappy --recent

As you can see, if you want to play a lot of multimedia file as with Totem, then Snappy is certainly not for you!.

Although we can right-click on the multimedia file and choose "snappy" and make Nautilus remember it for that extension so it'll launch whenever you double click on that multimedia format but ... because it lacks a playlist or a GUI in general, I won't recommend it.

But that being said, although it's nowhere near the power of MPLayer command-line version, but (lots of "but-s" :D) if you usually work with your command-line environment + has a GPU that has OpenGL rendering working in Ubuntu 11.04, then then Snappy can be quite a decent, awesome looking player in its own way, don't ya think?.

But for the "usual users", I did warned you guys! :). Enjoy.