Ubuntu – What media (music and video) players are there?

software-recommendation

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What media (music and video) players are there?

Please list one piece of software per answer, as per this meta post.

Best Answer

VLC Media Player

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.

Features:

  • Simple, fast and powerful media player.

  • Plays everything: Files, Discs, Webcams, Devices and Streams.

  • Plays most codecs with no codec packs needed: MPEG-2, DivX, H.264, MKV, WebM, WMV, MP3...

  • Runs on all platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Unix...

  • Completely Free, 0 spyware, 0 ads and no user tracking.

  • Can do media conversion and streaming.

From the VLC media player home page.

Install via the software center
(source: hostmar.co)

I was using it the other day to play back 3 720p videos simultaneously on a 1 1/2 year old HP notebook. Performance was flawless.

Very advanced customizations/settings.

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Separate window that includes playlist, file browser, external devices and local network access, internet features (radios, postacasts, Freebox TV channels for registered users)

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(Using skins reduces the easy access to some of these features.)

VLC media player supports many audio and video compression methods and file formats, including DVD-video, video CD and streaming protocols. It is able to stream over computer network and to transcode multimedia files. (from Wikipedia)

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It can use extensions, plugins and skins - to be downloaded from addons.videolan.org.

Among these, some that can find movie subtitles. (More answers on this: here and here.)