xine

xine is a powerful multimedia program, specializing in video playback. In addition to functioning as a standalone product, it also serves as a library and engine for other software products.

It has excellent support for a large number of different file formats including physical media DVD, Video CD, and Audio CD.  Xine supports a large number of formats including .mpeg, .ts, .ogg, .ogm, .avi, .asf, .wmv, .wma, .mpv, .m2v, .mp2, .mp3, .cpk, .voc, .snd, and .au.  It also supports a wide variety of video and audio codecs.  Streaming formats include mpeg-2 and mpeg-1 system (audio + video multiplexed), mpeg elementary (audio/video only, e.g. mp3 files), AVI file with various video formats (some of them by using win32 dlls), Vorbis OGG, and quicktime.

There are a large number of frontends (i.e media players) that use the xine playback engine, including xine-ui, gzine (both of which are part of the xine project) as well as third party frontends including Totem and Kaffeine.

xine 1.1.15

Price Free to download Size 7.1MB (xine-lib) License GNU General Public License Developer Guenter Bartsch - Miguel Freitas, Michael Roitzsch, Mike Melanson, and Thibaut Mattern (Project leaders) Website www.xinehq.de System Requirements X11 server liba52 libmpeg2 libmad libffmpeg Support Sites: Xine Hacker's Guide, xine developer list, Xine-plugin Selected Reviews: Linux Journal, Raiden's Realm, Softpedia.com, rivernet.com

Features include:

• Support for OSS, ALSA, Irix Audio, Sun Audio, ARts, and ESD Audio drivers
• Streaming playback support covering the following Webcasting/Streaming protocols: NMS, PNM, RTSP, HTTP, and raw TCP socket streaming
• Supports DXR3, DVB tv cards, Video 4 Linux, and WinTV-PVR 250/350 pci with TV full screen support
• Skinnable GUI
• Download and installation of new skins from the internet
• Navigation controls (seeking, pause, fast, slow, next chapter, etc)
• Linux InfraRed Control support (LIRC)
• On Screen Display features
• DVD and external subtitles
• DVD/VCD menus
• Audio and subtitle channel selection
• Closed Caption support
• Brightness, contrast, audio volume, hue, saturation adjusting (requires hardware/driver support)
• Playlists
• Mediamarks
• Image snapshot
• Audio resampling
• Software deinterlacing algorithms
• 2-3 pulldown detection (tvtime plugin)
• Configuration dialog
• Aspect ratio changing
• Fullscreen display
• DTS passthrough
  

xine also features in our 'Linux Equivalents to Windows Software' section. The category selector below allows you to filter the different types of software included in that separate article.

Last Updated Sunday, March 29 2009 @ 11:37 AM EST