Linux-FAQs

[linrock]

I found this list while surfing

MEDIA PLAYERS FOR LINUX

mpg123 (http://www.mpg123.de/) is a real time MPEG Audio Player for Layer 1,2 and Layer3. (MPEG 2.0 with Layer1/2 not heavily tested) Tested with Linux, FreeBSD, SunOS4.1.3, Solaris 2.5, HPUX 9.x and SGI Irix. Plays Layer 3 in stereo on an AMD-486-120Mhz or (of course) a faster machine. (Just for info: mpg123 plays an average 128bps stream, with about 66% in full quality on my AMD 486-133MHz machine) Note: this player is only for non commercial use.

XMMS (http://www.xmms.org/download.html) XMMS is a multi-format audio player capable of playing WAV, MOD, MID and MP3 files. It provides features such as playlist function, CDDB, CD Index, Wheelmouse change volume, visualization plugins, compatible with Winamp's .wsz skin files and more. XMMS is not a freeware, it's GPL (open source)

Sonic-Rainbow (http://sourceforge.net/projects/sonic-rainbow/)- CD Player, MP3 Player, Ogg Player, CD Ripper.
Sonic-Rainbow is a Linux GUI Multimedia Player that provides a CD Player, DVD Player, CD Ripper, Ogg Player, MP3 Player, CD Ripper, Sound Mixer, MP3 and Ogg file TAG editor enables the creation and modification of file TAGS. Utilises CDDB HTTP to download CD information and Tag Ogg and MP3 files as it rips them. Maintains CDDB information locally and displays it when playing CD's. Displays Ogg and MP3 embedded Artist and Track Title information when playing. Provides a playlist editor. Can play playlists containing a mixture of Ogg, MP3 and WAV Files. Playlists may also contain files and directorys of music files. Supports FM Radio cards if installed.

Mp3blaster (http://www.stack.nl/~brama/mp3blaster.html)- Interactive text-based mp3player. Mp3blaster is an interactive text-based mp3player. One of the unique features of this player is the ability to divide a playlist into groups (albums). Therefore, the play order can be adjusted with great flexibility.

SnackAmp (http://snackamp.sourceforge.net/) - Multi-platform Tcl/Tk music player. SnackAmp is a multi-platform audio music (mp3, ogg ,wav ...) file and stream player, ID3 tagging and file organizer. Embedded web server used for both remote control and streaming your media collection. Works well with very large music collections.

Wimpy player (http://www.wimpyplayer.com)- A streaming flash mp3 player for your web site. A jukebox you can embed directly into your website. Wimpy makes streaming mp3's from your Web site a snap. Upload wimpy, upload your mp3's and your done! You can even run wimpy off of custom XML playlists that are easy to create with the Wimpy companion Playlister. Wimpy can also run off a MySQL database. Requires PHP.

MPD (http://www.musicpd.org)- Allows remote access for playing music and managing playlists. Music Player Daemon (MPD) allows remote access for playing music (MP3's, Ogg's, and Flac's) and managing playlists. The design focus is on integrating a computer into a stereo system that provides control for music playback over a local network.

Gecko Multimedia System (http://gecko.sourceforge.net) - Gecko is a mediaplayer, able to play almost all media types. Gecko Multimedia System is a complete media solution, able to play almost all media types and supports scheduled tv-recording from online tv-guides. It is intended to replace your VCR, DVD, MP3- and CD-player into one single software-unit.

AlsaPlayer (http://www.alsaplayer.org/)- New type of PCM player. AlsaPlayer is a new type of PCM player. It is heavily multi-threaded and tries to excercise the ALSA library and driver quite a bit. It has some very interesting features unique to Linux/Unix players. The goal is to create a fully pluggable framework for playback of all sorts of media with the focus on PCM audio data.

Traymp (http://musicpd.org/) - A system tray interface to MPD. Traymp is a fully functional system tray interface for MPD. Also includes an xosd interface.

Gtk2mp (http://www.moviegalaxy.com.ar/gtk2mp/) - GTK2 frontend for mpd. A GTK 2 frontend for Music Player Daemon (MPD) which allows remote access for playing music (MP3's, Ogg's, and Flac's) and managing playlists. The design focus is on integrating a computer into a stereo system that provides control for music playback over a local network.

Zinf (http://www.zinf.org/)- Extensible, cross-platform audio player. Zinf (FreeAmp) is an extensible, cross-platform audio player. It features an optimized version of the GPLed Xing MPEG decoder which makes it one of the fastest and best sounding players available. FreeAmp provides a number of the most common features users have come to expect in a clean, easy to use interface.

Apolos (http://apolos.sourceforge.net) - Small cdplayer.
Apolos is a small cdplayer only for GNU/Linux. It's written in C using GTK+ 2.x as GUI. Support FreeDB with CDDB Protocol, playlist, "timeline" and normal CD functions.

OZradio (http://ozradio.sourceforge.net/) Plays and Records from Fm BTTV compatible cards. OZradio. BETA 0.9.5 Simple Linux KDE / GNOME interface.Control and listen to FM radio with bttv compatible cards. Programed Recording, Instant Record, Replay, Auto Station Scan, 10 stations can be saved to buttons, Volume control. Sound Mixer, Ogg Vorbis support By Gary Baker South Oz.

DreamPlayer (http://www.dreamplayer.prv.pl)- Linux-console multi format player. DreamPlayer is a Linux-console multi format player. Supports OSS output, TwinVQ input, Wave input. It's been created for people, who don't like to run huge XWindow to listen music over XMMS, or any other soundplayer.

Sidtools (http://user.tninet.se/~uxm165t/sidtools.html)- A set of tools to create playlists for SidPlay. A set of tools to create playlists (and play them) for SidPlay. Lists be created automatically, via the search engine search2list, or manually, with a text editor.

Xmp (http://xmp.sourceforge.net/)- Extended Module Player. Xmp is a free module player for UNIX distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL. xmp runs on Linux 2.0 and 2.2 (using ALSA and OSS), S/Linux, Solaris 2.5 and HP-UX 9, and has been also reported to work in OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux/Alpha and Digital UNIX (an experimental driver for IRIX is included but it has not been tested for 16 bit output). On PC class machines with GUS or AWE cards xmp takes advantage of the OSS sequencer to play modules with virtually no system load. Using software mixing, xmp plays at sampling rates up to 48 kHz in mono or stereo, 8 or 16 bits, signed or unsigned, little or big endian samples with 32 bit linear interpolation. Experimental support for the Enlightened Sound Daemon is included.

Sing-Along Disk Player (http://www.geocities.com/xsadp/) - CD player with spectrum analyzer, oscillator and mixer.
CD player with spectrum analyzer, oscillator and mixer. Keeps local CD data base and provides access to remote CD data bases (FreeDB, CD INDEX. Comes with text mode and GUI versions. The new features: dockable interactive icon, CD TEXT and CD EXTRA support, multiple play lists.

CDCD (http://cdcd.undergrid.net/)- Command line cdplayer. Cdcd is a command line cdplayer It supports CDDBP/HTTP mode access to CDDB servers, and HTTP access to the CD Index. Under Linux 2.1/2.2, it also supports CD-ROM changers.

Ramp Music Player - Console front-end to mpg123 with enhanced playlist capabilities. The Ramp Music Player is a console front-end to mpg123 that revolves around creating a vast, dynamically searchable and modifiable library of songs as opposed to a single playlist conglomerate of all styles

Kmikmod - KDE module player based on mikmod.
Kmikmod is a multithreaded KDE module player based on mikmod routines originally by Jean-Paul Mikkers [mikmak]. The libmikmod release 3.1.8 on which kmikmod is based on is maintained currently by Miodrag Vallat and is under GPL

Auplay (http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmiller3/Linux/) - Plays AU files through PC speaker. Using auplay, you can play Sun audio (.au) files through your PC's built-in speaker. No sound card required. Just don't expect your computer to be able to do anything else at the same time!.

Zgsmplay - Curses-based real-time GSM file player. Zgsmplay is a curses-based real-time GSM file player with file selector. (GSM is a lossy sound compression format ideal for speech.) In addition to simple playback, zgsmplay lets you move around the files, etc. It can also playback in pseudo-stereo, which can be useful for GSMs of music.

Tplay (http://www.cs.tut.fi/~ik/tplay.html) - Threaded and buffering audio player. Threaded and buffering audio player. Plays RIFF/WAVE, Sun audio (AU) and raw PCM audio files. POSIX threads are used so a pthread library is needed for compilation.

Cdloop - Audio-CD-player. CDLoop is an audio-CD-player with special looping capabilities intended for musicians who want to transcribe certain parts of a CD.

[Linux-faqs.com]

[lilo]

heres some more MP3 players

MJS (http://mjs.sourceforge.net/)is a console mp3-player with some special features not found in most console based mp3-players. It features a search function, playlist saving and loading and an easy to use interface.

Mp3blaster (http://www.stack.nl/~brama/mp3blaster/index.html) is an mp3 player for computers running a UNIX-like operating system, e.g. Linux, Free/Net/OpenBSD, etc. Its interface is entirely text based, thereby eliminating the need for a graphical environment like X-Windows. This does not limit the way you can control the player whilst playing though; just like any graphical mp3 player, there are cd-style buttons like play, stop, pause, next track, etc.

xine <http://xine.sourceforge.net/>:
This player is pretty advanced. Can play MPG, DVD, and AVI (though I couldn't get AVI working in my brief trial). The DVD performance is the only Linuk player I have got working that can produce acceptable frame rates through the software decoder. Also has CSS plugins so it can view most DVDs. Problem I had was that it tended to drop subtitles sometimes (probably tied in with the high frame loss). It is definitely one to look at.

Ogle <http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/>:
This Linux DVD player does what no other Linux player does, supports the menus on DVDs! All it can do is DVD, and is pretty early in development. Has a lot of potential. In my brief trials, the menus seemed to work great, but it could not play the actual movie.

VLC <http://www.videolan.org/>: Another program capable of DVD playback, as well as other formats. It also keeps itself pretty platform independent. I had problems getting it to work, but if it is as good as everyone seems to say, it is worth a look.

Open Media System <http://linuxvideo.org/oms/>: A media player with focus on DVD. It seems to work ok, but software decoder is way too slow on my system to be playable. It also can have serious display isssues if your cofiguration does not closely match the developers. They seem to have improved some since my last try, including some supposed hardware support. It is worth a look, particularly if you have a high-end system.

Avifile <http://divx.euro.ru/>: This package is primarily meant as a library (which Xtheater happens to use). It qualifies here for the simple qt player that is included. It works well as an AVI/ASF/WMV player, even if it isn't the most fancy thing around.

xanim <http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/>: Very good multimedia player for Unix systems. Supports many formats, but does not do MPEG systems streams correctly. Will play most other formats though. The program is getting a bit dated, but the author seems to be working on it and may pull a few things out of his sleeve yet.

kmpg <http://www.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~mvogt/linux/kmpg/index.html>: An MPEG-1 player for KDE. I've tried it, it works well, has a winamp-like interface, visualization of the audio portion, and does a bit more with its backend than Xtheater did with it (for obvious reasons). Development on the player has seemed to slow down, but the decoding core has been integrated into KDE2.1. It was a pretty good engine and it is good to see the author get into such a prominent position.

ZZplayer <http://zzplayer.sourceforge.net/>: This is a MPG player that has KDE and Gnome UIs. Not as feature rich as other players, but what it does, it seems to do well. If you want a simple, no nonsense MPG player, this may be a good choice.

XMPS <http://xmps.sourceforge.net/>: This was one of the first programs to adopt avifile for AVI playback. Has a pretty nice UI, but has had a lot of problems in my tests, especially with garbled display bugs. Lately it seems to have lost a lot of steam, but it may still be kicking.

MpegTV <http://www.mpegtv.com/>: Undoubtedly one of the more famous MPEG players for linux. It has most features you'd want in an MPEG player, but costs a nominal amount and is not open source :) If you want it done and don't care about the internals and can part with some money, you might want to see it.

Creative Labs <http://opensource.creative.com/>: Here you can find the cvs and mailing lists and such for Creative products including the dxr2 decoding board capable of playing DVD MPEG-2 as well as MPEG-1 files. The best quality playback that you'll probably get, but not much control yet. If you have a dxr2 board, look here. Works great for me!

Xmovie <http://heroinewarrior.com/xmovie.php3>: A player that claims to be capable of MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (DVD), MP2, MP3, WAV, AIFF, AC3, and Quicktime (no Sorenson though). I have not had the chance to try it, but have heard some good things.

Berkeley <http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/frame/research/mpeg/>: The place where most projects are derived from now. The programs there don't do much for System streams (audio & video), but are good for reference. This is really not recommended for any media playback, but is mainly here for historical and educational reasons.

LAMP <http://pauillac.inria.fr/lamp/>: This media player seems to be the one orphaned by LiViD in favor of OMS. It claims to have a better featureset, but I have not had the opportunity to try. There may or may not be a good reason why it was dumped for OMS, you never know until you try, and I would if I had more time.

Noatun <http://noatun.kde.org/>: This is the media player chosen by the KDE project currently. It supposedly supports wav, mp3, vorbis, mpeg-1, and divx. I typically find KDE software some of the highest quality, the most thoroughly thought through software there is. Because of this I have tried and tried this program in all sorts of ways, because I couldn't believe that KDE would put something this crappy in the distribution. The feature set looks nice, but I have never gotten it to play a single media file or do anything right no matter how I look at it, and many people agree. This is the first player I couldn't find much good to say about. It really wasn't ready to be called a "stable" release. It uses Martin Vogt's mpeglib for most of its playback, which works fine in kmpg, so I don't really understand the difficulty. Good luck to these people, and don't flame me too hard for saying this.

[tester]

mp3 to wav convertor

Mp3toWav (http://home.t-online.de/home/dekrause/mp3towav.htm)is a Mp3-Decoder for Mp3 Musicfiles. If you like to create your own Music CD's under Linux, use this software. Then you can convert those mp3 files to ether .wav or .cdr files. This program needs for basic function the free available sound tools mpg123 and sox. You should find the latest version of Mp3toWav on this webside:

Autolame (http://www.h.shuttle.de/mitch/stuff.en.html)- script to convert wav to mp3.