Slashdot Mirror

Zoom Player http://www.inmatrix.com/
VideoLAN http://www.videolan.org/
VirtualDub http://www.virtualdub.org/

Omitting the ones that have been well-referenced by other posters:

• ConText
• Media Player Classic
• VideoLAN
• Gordian Knot (note: included DivX 5.x codec can be installed in ad-free mode, but encoding is restricted)
• Foobar2000

More to come as I think of them.

video lan client is the best video player out there. it plays everything i've ever thrown at it.

http://www.videolan.org/

a clean, free, open source gem ;)

VLC Stream output:

http://www.videolan.org/streaming/features.html

Excellent player without bunch of unwanted crap. Surely there are others, but this one replaces WMP very nicely for me. Open Source, too.

What's wrong with vlc? It was initially designed for just what you describe! What am I missing?

You probably mean VLC? And yes, its the best mediaplayer for OS X, use it all the time :)

... about Real reverse engineering FairPlay (more power to them)

I feel compelled to correct that: as was probably pointed out in the previous Slashdot coverage, it wasn't Real who do did the difficult reverse-engineering, it was "dvd Jon" Lech Johansen (for the open-source media player VLC -- I assume so that he could listen to iTunes-purchased music on his Linux PC, kinda like DeCSS). From a post his blog:

Q: Has the Harmony project met your expectations?
A: No, it has blown them away. We took the decision at the beginning of the year to implement Harmony. It really went back to some things we were working on before, where we've had good experience with creating technology with interoperability in the past.

... about Real reverse engineering FairPlay (more power to them)

I feel compelled to correct that: as was probably pointed out in the previous Slashdot coverage, it wasn't Real who do did the difficult reverse-engineering, it was "dvd Jon" Lech Johansen (for the open-source media player VLC -- I assume so that he could listen to iTunes-purchased music on his Linux PC, kinda like DeCSS). From a post his blog:

Q: Has the Harmony project met your expectations?
A: No, it has blown them away. We took the decision at the beginning of the year to implement Harmony. It really went back to some things we were working on before, where we've had good experience with creating technology with interoperability in the past.

Try VLC. I've been using it since I got my iBook over a year ago and haven't looked back since. I use iTunes for music and VLC for pratically everything else.

Have you tried Video Lan it works on any OS - Even Windows.

Have you tried Video Lan it works on any OS - Even Windows.

You want VideoLAN. You've probably used the vlc client software, but there's a server too.

VLC will play Quicktime files (and many others, including DVDs) without asking you to buy the pro version. It will also play fullscreen, unlike the standard Quicktime player. It's a remarkably good piece of software.

playfair was first. Jon didn't write playfair. in fact, the usage notes for deDRMS mention you need to use VLC to get your "user key"; a feature that was part of the original playfair which was later integrated into VLC.

* drms.c : DRMS
* Copyright (C) 2004 VideoLAN
* $Id: drms.c,v 1.2 2004/04/01 19:48:01 play_fair Exp $
*
* Author: Jon Lech Johansen

Jon is the person who first reverse-engineered the FairPlay DRM scheme.

* drms.c : DRMS
* Copyright (C) 2004 VideoLAN
* $Id: drms.c,v 1.1 2004/01/05 12:37:52 jlj Exp $
* Author: Jon Lech Johansen

Similarly, we've got no evidence he's done anything except compile the freely available VC-1 code in this latest iteration.

Actually, Quicktime definitely does do fullscreen. What doesn't is the free version of Apple's Quicktime player - though for $25 US you get fullscreen and a lot more handy features.

There are many free alternatives though -- such as, but not limited to MPlayer and VideoLAN which are two very fine players.

As far as missing applications, I've had yet to be unable to find alternatives to what I use in the PC world, so without further specific examples, you won't get much help. In fact, even if there is a program only available for PC, VirtualPC or Remote Desktop Connection Client solves that problem completely for me.

I've always used Win and Mac OS (since Win3.1 and OS 7 anyway) and the only major annoyance on the OS X side is when I keep hitting CONTROL+C to copy on my Mac after working on the Windows box for prolonged periods of time.

I won't even bother to list all my annoyances with Windows :) ... IMO, it just feels like a clumsy OS in comparison.

Fullscreen QuickTime playback is supported by the Pro (pay-for) version of the QuickTime Player application on both Mac and Windows platforms. It has always bugged me that they split QuickTime into 2 versions a number of years ago, the free one having most of the functionality disabled. Video Lan Client http://www.videolan.org/vlc/ is a very good program, that offers a lot of features Quicktime's free version does not.

sorry you geniuses, but WASTE has been around for a while now and more than serves such purpose. This sounds like a restricted hybrid between WASTE and VideoLAN...

DING! next 'marketable product service' please.

stop wasting our f-cking time.

Cheers.

Why did nobody mention VLC yet? It's opensource, cross-platform, fast, clean and it plays *all* my audio and video files. I have movies that crash winamp (because of bad frames?) which play fine in vlc. The only thing that's not optimal is the GUI, but i can live with that... Check it out. It's GREAT!

No reason for panic!! there is always VideoLAN. With Client/Server Media Streaming and a MiniSAPserver.

For streaming sound to anywhere in the house, I have my Rio Karma (the ultimate geek music player) plugged into my stereo (the Karma dock has RCA out and the base glows blue and pulses to the music), as well as the ethernet wall socket just behind the stereo (the Karma has 100Mb ethernet on the dock).

I can upload music to the Karma from any one of my various Linux boxen scattered throughout the house (the Karma has a built-in web server that you can download the Java applet to access it from, which is fully Linux- and MacOS-compatible) as well as from my laptop via WiFi.

I don't do any video streaming, other than when I use "mplayer -vo aa" in an SSH terminal to stream video in ASCII art ;) but a mate of mine tells me that VideoLAN is good for that sort of thing and it might be what you're looking for.

WiFi is handy, but sometimes you can't get full reception everywhere in the house, and 11Mb mightn't be enuogh to stream certain video formats, so when my house was rennovated recently, I ceased the opportunity to wire up CAT5 to every room, which is all run back to a central place (a cupboard in the middle of the house) which all plug into an ethernet switch, which is plugged into the ADSL modem and the WiFi AP.

I highly reccomend decking out your house with trusty old CAT5 if you have the chance.

Mac OS X meets almost all of the criteria that the article suggests for Linux compatibility... ...except that Mac OS X is not Linux. (That, and the Windows codecs, although the popular VLC application does the trick in all but the stickiest non-QuickTime codec.

So, taking a page from both Apple and Microsoft's business handbook, what can the Linux community "steal" from Microsoft and Apple to make Linux a stronger enterprise player?

Getting things from the Apple side isn't very hard since its resources come from the FreeBSD world, which is open source. Samba works great in OS X, which means stronger integration in Linux is needed to match OS X's performance, which I suspect does nothing particularly special.

Same is true for AD authentication. Mac OS X uses a plug-in its Directory Services that understands this LDAP-variant...surely this is something that would work in Linux, or does it lack a refined mechanism for handling multiple directory services as OS X?

Ximian already provides Exchange compatibility in its mail product, and Exchange 2000 works with IMAP provided that Outlook Web Access (WebDAV) is running. Special features of Exchange (and its Outlook client) may be missing, but Mac users are still missing features from Entourage, the successor to the Outlook client on Mac OS X, so this is not quite the biggie. Linux/Intel users can run VMware (as Mac users would run Virtual PC) to use the actual Outlook client if needed.

The Microsoft Office component is a toughie. Mac OS users have a genuine Office client. Microsoft knows that holding back creation of a Linux client would sap power from its enterprise drive.

No easy answers in this, really. I think, however, that Linux could use a central business owner, although I know its nature makes that impossible. But wait--isn't that what Apple's doing with OS X by licensing or using BSD components?

What if a company licensed a Linux distro and took the reins to make a Linux-compatible OS with the same functionality, but also the "one-click" simplicity, application strength, and security that Mac OS X enjoys in its Mach/BSD fusion?

Of course, we know that this appears to have been done, with Red Hat, et al. But has it really been done well?

vlc: http://www.videolan.org/ should be fine!

I second this recommendation; VideoLAN Client (VLC) performs flawlessly for both streaming and local playback.

If you want to encourage people to download it, you might also mention its ability to play DVDs on your terms: no unskippable previews, no "operation prohibited by disk" messages", just the content you paid for displayed how you want to see it. VLC will also play almost any video and audio codec available, thanks to FFMPEG.

Yeah oh yeah - DRM and 'Trusted' Computing are just the first two examples that come to mind. [ ... ]

Which is precisely why I never download updates to Windows Media Player (and no one else should, either). I use vlc and Media Player Classic.

Schwab

Try getting VLC (Videolan) it is a free/open source (GPL) video player that I use to play *ALL* of my video files (mpg, divx, avi, xvid, mov, ogm).

I downloaded the torrent and it plays with VLC, and I have divx and xvid installed which may also make a difference.

Try getting VLC (Videolan) it is a free/open source (GPL) video player that I use to play *ALL* of my video files (mpg, divx, avi, xvid, mov, ogm).

I downloaded the torrent and it plays with VLC, and I have divx and xvid installed which may also make a difference.

It can play everything except maybe WMV9 and RealMedia, and it's free, open source: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

Gates: What the consumer wants is pretty clear: a single remote control that lets them navigate photos, music, videos, TV in a very rich way. They want to see that on any screen in the house and then have a great portable device where they can take that stuff wherever they want anytime. The full realization of that dream is still years away, but we've taken a dramatic step in delivering that with Media Center.

I think it'd be great if we could beat Microsoft to the punch by offering all of this and more using Linux and open formats (not WMA Bill!). It seems like there is already a lot of work in the area going on (MythTV, Freevo, Mister House, VLC) but is any of this ready to be easily set up by the average Joe? Is there any work being done to put all the pieces together. Perhaps a modded distribution geared specifically to creating and setting up a Media Center type environment. Not only could a Linux based solution put anything from MS to shame it could also force Movies/TV/Music industries to support open formats if the Linux Media Center becomes the dominant player.

Am I dreaming or can the open source community take the lead here?

In that case, FairPlay is also open: drms.c and DeDRMS.cs. MD5 and AES.

There is one player than can play most video formats on windows (including incomplete files), VideoLAN!

With VLC's Server, you can have it record to the hard drive in a higher-quality format and also have it lower the FPS and stream it to your VLC from anywhere (firewall rules notwithstanding). You can tell it to turn off the audio to save disk-space/bandwidth (depending on if you're recording or streaming). I typically used the msmpeg4 codec for streaming because it's the smallest (bandwidth) and highest quality video codec at about 5 FPS for my security project. It worked rather well, and there was enough USB bandwidth to capture from 4 cams on the same USB port with a USB hub.

It's just something worth checking out! I know it worked for me, and if I had a child, I know I'd be setting one of these up in my place! =) Take care!

- Insolence

Actually, the wireless D-Link webcam that we bought has (unfortunately) a web interface that relies on an ActiveX component to do the video streaming. So, no *nix support, no Mac support, no Firefox/win32 support. :( :(

That said, the camera makes available on-demand JPEG still images and I've used software that makes pseudo live video by quickly refreshing these images but its nowhere near as good as a streaming video file format.

On a side note, I tried like hell to get VLC to work with their (H326+ or something) implementation but could never make it happen.

now THIS is new to me. Of course I probably won't be able to sneak it onto the work laptop (PowerDVD or death, I suspect) but this could be good if it'll run on my personal machines.

for anyone else reading and wondering, VLC is here, and I'll be testing it out tonight.

--

Answering my own question. Use VLC to playback, then go in the Navigation menu, then Navigation, then Title 38, then Chapter 1.

It's designed for D-VHS streaming, which is a similar testcase. Keep in mind that VideoLAN works natively with MPEG2-TS as well:
http://www.videolan.org/

I haven't found a solution yet for capturing the HDTV data over the firewire port yet, though I have a mac for this purpose. The mac is unable to render the HD content because its an old G4 400Mhz, but it can stream it to disk just fine and I'm able to use a cross platform tool to render the saves streams on my PC. In practice this ends up being more trouble than I'm usually willing to go through, since I can't actually do this for movies (because of the encryption as stated above) but its what I've got. This does at least let you play the MPEG-2 streams on a PC.

Easy.

VideoLAN

"Broadcast" from your server with TV tuner as source, watch anywhere on your LAN.

It works well. VideoLAN+server full of TV and DVD rips = my very own Video on Demand system that blows the doors off of what Comcast offers.

Video Lan Client(VLC) http://www.videolan.org/ has a video filter called Wall (Found under preferences, modules, video filter 1). You can specify the number of rows and columns, and it will break a stream up into blocks. I use two monitors using the TwinView option for X. I can place each 'video block' anywhere on the desktop. Just one of the MANY way cool features of VLC. Enjoy!

I was playing with VideoLAN a week ago, and noticed it has a video filter module called "wall" (this is under WinXP, FWIW) which will split your stream into as many multiple windows as your machine can handle. So, split your video stream into four windows, move each one to its own display, and full-screen them. I haven't played with VLC under Linux, but I'm guessing it has the same options.

Great project, BTW! I've been thinking of doing something like this for a while. Good luck!

You don't have to downgrade. Leave windows do its mad upgrading thing and then if you want to run "old" media player type "mplayer2" in start->run.

Personally I think you can't been vlc.

I use my VisionPlus DVB-T card for Digital SDTV and HDTV combined with the TSReader software and the free software VLC.

Streaming is done (by default) over RTP/UDP over IPv4 or IPv6 unicast or multicast.

The problem is, with 802.11g, it does not seem to be able to reliably deliver an SDTV signal (~7mbps here in Australia) let alone a HDTV signal (~14mbps). SDTV works sometimes, however can start to break up after a while, and I have to return to 100/1000 Ethernet.

• Mac Rumors - Good rumors website
• Mac Slash - Slashdot like mac news site
• Mac News Bytes - Good quick links to mac related articles
• Version Tracker - Software update website. Kind of like download.com for mac.
• Mac Update - Similar to versiontracker.com
• Mac OS X Hints - Good tips site for beginners and experienced people alike.
• Think Secret - Another good rumors site. Very accurate, most of the time.
• Emulation.net - Links to game emulation for mac

• Adium - Multi-protocol IM client
• Byte Controller - Good itunes hotkey/menu pager applet
• Camino - Nice mac based gecko browser.
• Colloquy - Webkit based IRC client. not too newbish.
• Cyberduck - SFTP/FTP client for os x
• Desktop Manager - Multi desktop app for os x
• Apple X11 Server - Apple's integrated X11 server. you'd want this for the next two items
• Fink - UNIX software for your mac
• Gimp.app - decent free photo editor
• Handbrake - DVD to mpeg4 ripper
• iTerm - Multi tabbed terminal
• Logorrhea - iChat log viewer/searcher/indexer
• Meteorologist - Weather applet for the menu bar
• Menu Meters - Menu applet for cpu usage, net usage, and more.
• Mplayer OS X - This app will play just about any media format in existance
• Poisoned - GiFT (Kazaa) and mldonkey based P2P mac client.
• Quicksilver - Very cool file/application/url/itunes/etc/etc/etc indexing program. It's like spotlight, only here TODAY and free!
• VLC - Another good video playing app. Nice to have a backup sometimes if mplayer doesn't play a file (which is very very rare).

I never got it to work, but the feature is supposedly there! (In the windows version, obviously)

You can also probably rig VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to do this pretty easily as well, though I've never tried. I don't know about changing channels remotely, but use a remote desktop (windows XP) or VNC (everything else) and there shouldn't be any problems. I bet one of the many remote admin plugins for VLC supports this as well, and VLC is cross platform, which is always a plus.

http://www.videolan.org/

video lan?

If you are ok with trying a different media player, VideoLan will play anything that I've come across, including quicktime. Shit, I swear it would play a video clip if I loaded a text file into it.

All the linux players will use

http://freshmeat.net/redir/libdvdread/17926/url_tg z/libdvdread-0.9.4.tar.gz http://download.videolan.org/pub/libdvdcss/1.2.8/l ibdvdcss-1.2.8.tar.bz2

So go get em'

PenGun do What Now ???

There are still people worrying with playback control on DVD players?

Media Player Classic

http://sourceforge.net/projects/guliverkli/

VLC

http://www.videolan.org/

Pick yer platform