Last Updated on March 24, 2026
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.
Key Features
- 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.
Website: sourceforge.net/projects/xine/
Support: FAQ
Developer: xine team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
xine is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Media Players | |
|---|---|
| VLC | Cross-platform multimedia player and framework |
| mpv | Media player for the command line. libmpv is used by many front-ends |
| QMPlay2 | Qt based video and audio player |
| MPlayer | Movie player which runs on many systems |
| SMPlayer | Qt based MPlayer front-end |
| GridPlayer | Play multiple videos simultaneously |
| Parole | Modern simple media player based on the GStreamer framework |
| MPC-QT | Clone of Media Player Classic |
| clapper | GNOME media player built using GJS with GTK4 toolkit |
| Totem | Movie player for the GNOME desktop based on GStreamer |
| Dragon Player | Multimedia player with a focus on simplicity rather than features |
| xine | Video player for playing CDs, DVDs, BluRays and VCDs. |
| Showtime | GNOME media player |
| Glide | Simple and minimalistic media player |
| Phantom Player | Simple video player |
| Daikhan | Media player for the modern desktop |
| QtAV | Cross-platform multimedia framework based on Qt and FFmpeg |
| Rage | Simple video and audio player |
| Kaffeine | Simple, easy to use, full featured media player |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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