Xine Media Player

[Yoshi Heffernan]

xineˈksiːn/[2] is a multimedia playback engine for Unix-like operating systems released under the GNU General Public License. xine is built around a shared library (xine-lib) that supports different frontend player applications. xine uses libraries from other projects such as liba52, libmpeg2, FFmpeg, libmad, FAAD2, and Ogle.[3] xine can also use binary Windows codecs through a wrapper, bundled as the w32codecs, for playback of some media formats that are not handled natively.[1]

xine was started in 2000 by Gnter Bartsch shortly after LinuxTag. At that time playing DVDs in Linux was described as a tortuous process since one had to manually create audio and video named pipes and start their separated decoder processes.

Gnter realized the OMS (Open Media System) or LiViD approach had obvious shortcomings in terms of audio and video synchronization, so xine was born as an experiment trying to get it right. The project evolved into a modern media player multi-threaded architecture.[4]

During xine development, some effort was dedicated to making a clear separation of the player engine (xine-lib) and front-end (xine-ui). Since the 1.0 release (2004-12-25) the API of xine-lib is considered stable and several applications and players rely on it.[citation needed]

Since it is not a member of DVD Forum, the xine project is not contractually obliged to insert user operation prohibition such as disallowing fast-forward or skipping during trailers and ads. However, without membership in the Forum, the project also cannot make xine play DVDs encrypted with CSS except by using reverse-engineered code. xine therefore uses the libdvdcss library, which was created by reverse engineering. The legal status of libdvdcss is questionable in several nations; in the United States, for example, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act arguably prohibits reverse-engineering of CSS. Virtually all commercial DVDs are encrypted with CSS.

To prevent a screensaver from starting, xine sends a scroll lock key signal to the environment to pretend keyboard interaction took place. This can often lead to issues with other programs running as they receive the scroll lock key as normal input. One example is the Konsole terminal emulator, which changes the behaviour of the arrow keys when scroll lock is used.[citation needed]

The shared library 'xine-lib' used and developed by xine is also used by other projects. For example, it can be used instead of GStreamer as a backend for the Phonon media framework used by KDE and Qt.

xine is a media player for Unix released under the GNU General Public License. It can play CDs, DVD-Video, and VCD, as well as common computer multimedia formats like AVI, WMV, MOV, MP3, FLAC, Theora, Speex, and Vorbis.

xine can handle VCD/SVCD menus, mouse hot spots, navigation (called PBC or playback control), and multiple audio channels. Many of these are missing or incomplete in vlc version 0.8.4. (Actually, pretty much all VCD/SVCD handling is broken in vlc version 0.8.4.) But one area where vlc may be a little ahead of xine is in SVCD and CVD subtitle handling. SVCD and CVD subtitles in xine however require a separate plugin which is not part of xine whereas in vlc it is part of the main code base.

This is an X11 based GUI for the libxine video player library.It provides xine, a skin based media player that can play all theaudio/video formats that libxine supports. Currently, this includes MPEG1/2,some AVI and Quicktime files, some network streaming methods and disc basedmedia (VCD, SVCD, DVD). A more complete list can be found on DVDs on the market today are play-protected by the Content ScramblingSystem (CSS). Xine does not provide any code to descramble those DVDs,because of legal uncertainties. Have a look at/usr/share/doc/xine-ui/README.Debian for more information! Tags: User Interface: Graphical User Interface, Text-based Interactive, interface::x11, network::client, Role: Program, Scope: Application, Sound and Music: sound::player, uitoolkit::gtk, Interface Toolkit: Ncurses TUI, Purpose: Playing Media, Works with: works-with::audio, works-with::video, X Window System: Application

With Gxine I just get a popup window that says "Media stream scrambled/encrypted" (but again I do have libdvdcss, libdvdread, and libdvdnav installed). In the terminal Gxine reports it's using libdvdcss to get the encryption keys and it appears to all go fine, but then I get the "Media stream scrambled/encrypted" popup window.

Unfortunately, I had to return the DVD sooner than I thought, so I can't troubleshoot this problem any further. I'm still curious if anyone else has had this sort of problem where a DVD will play in Windows, but not Linux, on the same machine, even when using VLC under both systems. Again, other DVDs work okay for me on this machine, both in Arch and Debian, just not this one. But since it worked in Windows under VLC and Media Player Classic, I can't just say it's something wrong with the DVD.

Welcome to copyprotection hell. Many dvds are not only encrypted using css, but with several other mechanisms too. Such dvds cannot be played back on linux. It might work with one of the commercial players, but definately wont work with free tools.

That's interesting. I didn't realize it was all css. But how does that explain in this case the DVD did work with free players in Windows. As I said, both with Media Player Classic with the K-Lite codec pack and with an older version of VLC (0.8.6d)? Thanks.

That is very possible. All those players use (or can use) direct show. As soon as you have the needed filter installed by SOME software all those players will be able to make use of it. And i think Vista even had dvd filters pre-installed.

I am having the same issue where I can't play certain dvd's on linux but I can on windows. Whats even more wierd is that I try playing them in a windows install on virtual box while on my Arch linux boot and still can't play them using the windows vlc. Though if I boot into my windows boot I can play them no questions asked, it is rather annoying and something needs to be done!

My friend mentioned to me about the DirectShow thing which is part of DirectX which is only experimental in VirtualBox and as for Wine it MIGHT work, but that would be sketchy as well I think running VLC in wine. Microsoft must fall! The basis of the problem is close-source coding that windows has to play the DVD's and Linux doesn't.

But the DVDs would presumaby play in an actual set-top DVD player (as well as I suppose in OS X)? So does that just mean there's some proprietary something that Linux would have to license to play these DVDs? That is, I assume the DVDs that we're having trouble with were not designed to only work in Windows.

It is a good idea to have a short MPEG test file for evaluating various players and options. Since some DVD applications look for DVD media in /dev/dvd by default, or have this device name hardcoded in them, it might be useful to make a symbolic link to the proper device:

Due to the nature of devfs(5), manually created links will not persist after a system reboot. In order to recreate the symbolic link automatically when the system boots, add the following line to /etc/devfs.conf:

There are several possible ways to display video under Xorg and what works is largely hardware dependent. This guide will focus on the Xvideo extension which allows video to be directly displayed, even on low-end machines.

xine is a free multimedia player. It plays back CDs, DVDs, BluRays and VCDs. It also decodes multimedia files like AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3 from local disk drives, and displays multimedia streamed over the Internet. Get started by installing the package:

In practice, xine requires either a fast CPU or support for the XVideo extension. The xine video player performs best on XVideo interfaces. If in the previous step, the Xvideo extension was unsupported, issues may occur.

Xine is a very popular multimedia player for Linux. Above all, it's a movie player, but it also can play audio files or connect to live streams. DVB cards can be accessed using the DVB input plugin. The main advantage of Xine over other DVB clients is that it can be completely controlled using a mouse. Many users like it because it provides much functionality for watching TV very easily.

Install the package

Instructions on doing so will vary by distribution. For example, with Debian GNU/Linux and Debian-derived distributions (such as Ubuntu), one can install from the GNOME desktop using Synaptic or from the command-line with one of these commands:

You should now see the first channel on your channels.conf list. If you want to always load the first channel on the list at startup, edit the following lines of the config file under /home/username/.xine/ :

You can use the mouse scroll wheel to change channels. Once a channel has been tuned Xine will display EIT data (the current program) next to the channel. To record, use "Menu 2" from the popup menu, or select "Menu 2" from the navigation panel (keyboard shortcut: ALT+e). To view EPG data select "Menu 7".

Methods of changing channel other than the previous/next keys will cause a channel list to be displayed; this will display some now/next information, depending on what's been received on the current multiplex and any previously visited (this information is not remembered when you quit xine).

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