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.

How to Install Beatbox in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

As many knows GNU/Linux has its fair share of Apple Mac OSX :/. Starting with the classic Gnome, Gnome 3, XFCE and even the all new Ubuntu Unity desktop which is heavily "obsessed" with Apple's way of doing things are just a few to mention. Although I have never used a Mac before but when looking at the user "feedback", oh it should be something especial, I guess (never thought MS was such a horrible GUI developer :D).

Anyhow, there "was" another team of cool dudes who closely followed "Apple Philosophy" who were devoted in giving Ubuntu users the ability to convert the Ubuntu Linux OS into a Mac OSX desktop and they were known as the "Elementary desktop team". They had few applications (web browser, e-mail client, etc), customized Nautilus version of their own  + a theme (for which they're quite famous), etc. 

Now the reason that I put "were" and "was" not because they're dead or anything ;-), but sometime ago they decided to start an OS (based on Ubuntu of course) rather than sitting in their Launchpad page (they still do though), which recently became known as the Elementary OS!.

As said, in all of their apps and themes, they make sure to carry a certain identity which resembles a certain GUI ... which is closely related to Apple thus all of their programs will comes with a highly simplified GUI, loads fast (thanks to little features, etc), easy to use and look awesome as well.

Anyhow, for their upcoming OS version named Luna, they have few new applications that are still developing at the moment. One in particular was a multimedia player that resembles the iTunes (is it called?? :)), few weeks ago the developers showed-off the original mock-up and named it Beatbox.  

To be honest I never thought this will happen any time sooner, but did you know that two days ago they actually released the first ever version of Beatbox music player 0.1 for Ubuntu! and the main developer is Scott Ringwelski (pretty cool app dude, nice).

Main features...

*. Highly simplified interface.

*. Library and smart play-list support (playing similar songs, manually add a folder or add the entire HDD, or drag-n-drop to manually add files, etc).

*. Equalizer (save, edit, create, disable, etc) with automatic preset changing according to song genre! (awesome :D).

*. Not just audio, but it can play videos, although I'm not entirely sure but I think it's based on the Gstreamer framework. 

*. Tag editing. 

*. Three main views (album with art, simple GUI with a playlist and a more advanced window with songs are arranged in genre, etc). 

*. Last FM integration (automatic album art fetching, etc).

*. Play, shuffle and queue.

*. Rate multimedia files.


Let me quote the original developer here which explains why it looks so simple and doesn't even have a menu-bar!...

"... the most important part in my opinion is BeatBox's great speed, simplicity, and looks."

That's exactly what it does!. For instance in comparison with the Banshee, Beatbox launch itself pretty fast nonetheless. But then again, there aren't that many features which should help it to maintain a low profile, I guess.

Anyhow, you can install Beatbox 0.1 in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal and 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot by using the below commands in your Terminal.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sgringwe/beatbox

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:elementaryart/elementarydesktop

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install beatbox

The reason for the latter PPA (elementary desktop) is because Beatbox has a dependency called sqlheavy (programming library) which is can be installed thorough the Elementary desktop PPA. The player is very small in size (about 300+ kb) and doesn't require any other dependencies.

Although they've just released it and some features such as device synchronization, online music store, powerful tag-editing, etc are yet to come according to the developer.

But the rest assured, for its first ever appearance I did not encounter any errors while using and it was very stable and quite fast for which the developers do deserve some credit. Excellent stuff, well done dude. Enjoy!. 

How to Install Parole in Ubuntu (a GTK+ Written Media Player for GNU/Linux)

Although Totem media player (actually a front-end for the Gstreamer - multimedia framework) is widely in use because of its ease of use and clean GUI... but I don't think the more experienced GNU/Linux users will be using it all the time because it certainly lack a lot of features (advanced options such as - fixing audio/video syncing related issues, add video effects, etc).

But as said for everyday use ... the GUI is impressively "clean" and many like it. So if you have a "thing" for that type of GUI in a media player and looking for a similar replacement then you might be interested in the "Parole" media player. It's actually a multimedia player written for the XFCE desktop (a lightweight GTK desktop) thus doesn't take a lot of system resources on the bright side as well :).

Main features...

*. Well, it's based on the Gstreamer framework thus plays almost all the popular formats by default.

*. A clean GUI with right-side play-list (which can be hidden).

*. Built in plugins which enable it to disable suspending the PC/Laptop while watching a DVD, shows advanced information about video/audio files (title, artist, codec, etc), system tray icon and another plugin to set the window title to the currently playing file's name.

*. Enable/Disable visualisations.

*. Automatic subtitle loading (change font size, font).

*. Change display hue/brightness/contrast/Saturation.

*. Play DVD/CD directly from an ISO file.

You can install Parole in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal (may work in 10.04 and 10.10) by entering the below command in your GNU/Linux Terminal.

sudo apt-get install parole

That's it.

How To Install Listen Music Player in Ubuntu (11.04/10.10)?

If you want a Python written music player that has a very similar interface to Banshee or Rhythmbox ... then you might find Listen Music Player quite comforting. Although it's certainly not a carbon copy of those players and comes with few unique features of its own as well.

Standard features such as accessing audio lyrics directly through the GUI to fetching album related information from online sources, Listen is a pretty cool little app.


Few of the main features...

*. Listen to Shoucast web radio.

*. Podcast support.

*. Large album management.

*. Find Wikipedia information for Artists/Albums, etc.

*. As said, for a unique feature of its own (maybe few other have it...), it can automatically fetch your current playlist related song information from last.fm and can create a playlist of its own (including your most favorite ones) as well.

*. As said, this is written using Python rather than GTK or Qt tool-kits, so... quite "fair" for both Gnome and KDE without a doubt :).

*. 10 Band software equalizer.

*. Burn Audio CDs with Brasero (if installed in your GNU/Linux PC-Laptop).

*. Sync with iPad... etc.

Listen music player can be installed in Ubuntu by using the official repository or a PPA (which would contain updated/customized features). For installing it in Ubuntu 11.04/10.10 using the official repository, open your Terminal and issue the below command.

sudo apt-get install listen

For installing using the PPA channel, please use the below command instead.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:listen-devel/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install listen

How To Install Gnome Media Player in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal?

To be honest, sometimes I hate Totem. I'd just too simple and useless. For instance, if your audio/video tracks aren't sync without any delays... then before the character speaks... we hear the voice which is the worse scenario for watching a movie. But with Totem (a front-end for libxine multimedia player engine) you simply can't do anything about it/fix.

And sometimes, I don't like the low sensitivity of Totem either. For instance, with other advanced players like MPlayer, when I press the "Pause" button, the player just pause the video. But Totem (maybe it's just with my GNU/Linux Laptop only) has slight "gap" before it pause the file. So after being frustrated with it with these few things and many more or you just want another player for no reason at all :)... then you should try the Gnome Media Player.

This is again a front-end that's capable of using libxine, MPlayer or the Gstreamer multimedia framework according to your preference. This is written in GTK+ tool-kit ... so you won't be seeing a lot of "options" with it either... but most of the time (especially when used with the MPlayer as the engine) I like the "sensitivity" it delivers. And unlike with Totem, with GMP, you can easily switch between player-engines as well.

If you use Ubuntu 11.04 or 10.10 (could work in 10.04), then you can install GMP using the below PPA channel. As usual, open your Terminal and enter the below command.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gnome-media-player-development/development && sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gnome-media-player

Bangarang 2.0, Features Rich Excellent Multimedia Player for KDE Desktop!

Unlike with Gnome, with KDE you'll always get lots of useful features by default. Not like in the past, KDE now has a multimedia framework of its own called Phonon. So as a KDE/Qt developer, all you gotta do is to create a GUI and integrate it with Phonon framework and it'll make sure to play multimedia files without you having to do that part of the coding.

Meet Bangarang! (means "awesome" according to sources - a Jamaican word)...

Although there are several excellent players that uses the Qt toolkit, yet with Bangarang, you can do few things that most those players fail to achieve. Although it comes with a lot of features, but the main GUI looks very simple and less complicated as well.


Main features...

*. As said, anything that Phonon plays, Bangarang can play.

*. Manage large collections of multimedia files with its built in powerful album support.

*. Add/Manage TV shows.

*. View audio/video feeds.

*. Play CD/DVDs.

*. It can share/fetch audio/video file ratings done by (Amarok for instance) other Qt/KDE apps that uses the Semantic desktop API. For instance, if the video "A" is rated with 4 stars by another video player in KDE and if it integrates with Semantic desktop API, then Bangarang can "import" that rating automatically.

*. Automatically fetch album/artist, etc related information.

*. Last.fm support... are just a few to name.

If you use Kubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal, then you can install Bangrang multimedia player by issuing the below command (should work in 10.04/10.10 as well).

sudo apt-get install bangarang

How To Install MPlayer In Ubuntu 10.10

IiiiiiiiiiI loved it the day I started using it :). MPlayer in my humble opinion, is one of the most advanced, durable multimedia players available for GNU Linux, Windows and Mac OSX.

Although it is a command-line based player (mainly) and the official GUI is so poorly designed :P in comparison with the features that you can use while on the command line, the official GUI (known as "gmplayer") only includes about 1-2% of the features that it comes with!. It is almost disrespect to this amazing app!.

Like Xine, it is a separate project and is not based on Gstreamer or any other framework, although they use the ffmpeg codecs nonetheless. From adjusting subtitle delays, audio/video delay, few dozens of video and audio enhancing effects, web browser integration (via plugins), playing DVD/ Blue-ray or any other codecs, etc... you name it.. and MPlayer have it!.

Anyway, enough boasting, if you use Ubuntu 10.10 then you can easily install it by entering the below command in your Terminal (make sure you have enabled universe, multiverse repositories).

sudo apt-get install mplayer

This should install the official GUI called the "gmplayer" as well and if you want the mozilla addon then issue the below command also.

sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

There are hundreds other projects that are based on the MPlayer (such as the SMplyer which is a Qt based pretty amazing GUI!), check them out in this page.

How To Install VLC 1.1.9 In Ubuntu Linux

Well I don't think anyone needs an introduction to VLC media player but for those of you who haven't it is one of the the best multimedia players available for GNU Linux!. It is a cross-platform app, meaning that it is available for Windows, Mac OSX... as well.

Although it's been few week (if I'm not mistaken) since they released the 1.1.9 version and it won't necessarily bring new features but does come with some bug fixes anyhow. It can play almost all the video/audio codecs known to man :) and using PPA channels you can install it very easily in Ubuntu and sometimes these PPA developers include some new features that aren't included default by the developers as well.

To install VLC in Ubuntu 10.10, open your Terminal and issue the below command.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:n-muench/vlc
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

For Ubuntu 11.04 users please use the below command instead.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa: n-muench/vlc2
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install vlc mozilla-plugin-vlc

For more information, please visit this VLC home page.

Install Xine Mediaplayer in Ubuntu

Xine was the first ever multimedia player I installed in GNU Linux around 2002-2003 I think. When I used Linux for the first time and even the Totem wasn't around that time... and for sometime I used to wonder, why the heck Linux does not give a media player?. It didn't make any sense to me.

But later I realized the issue.. of being "free" and all that, to which still to this day.. I'm not quite sure if we're really free just because we use "GNU" powered software. Anyhow, enough of that bullshi*. Let me tell you few things about Xine. Xine is actually not a player, it is a multimedia engine.

Meaning that, if you just install Xine only in Linux, you can't do anything with it. It's like trying to drive a car without a driver. So, unless you install a GUI front-end such as Totem-xine or the official Gxine (GTK based GUI) or xine-ui (which is very popular) you won't be able to play anything whatsoever. So when installing Xine you have to install one of their officially supported GUI front-ends as well.

And for sometime I haven't been heavily dependent on Xine (been using MPlayer) so, not quite sure... its drawbacks, etc these days. But few years ago when VCD was still popular, you couldn't play a .dat extension which was copied to the HDD via Xine (plays VCD from the disk... Linux had a mounting issues with VCD disks). But for a multimedia player it is highly customizable and plays almost all the multimedia codecs out of the box nonetheless.

Main features...

*. Plays almost all the files.

*. Equalizer support.

*. Skin-able interface.

*. Advanced video and audio features (various enhancing effects, etc).

*. Playing Web channels.

So, if you use Ubuntu and need to know how to install Xine, then open your Terminal and issue the below command.

sudo apt-get install xine-ui libxine-extracodecs

Xine-ui front-end

But if you want the GTK+ based front-end then replace the above command with the below one

sudo apt-get install libxine-extracodecs
sudo apt-get install gxine

The Xine front-end for Gnome