List of useful media players for Linux

Everyone knows Linux as one of the best open source operating system.  It has a vast number of desktop environment, has lots of applications. But very few people know that Linux has plenty of options when it comes to media players. Linux is fantastic for variety. We will show a list of media player in this article so that you could be able to grab the best media player for your personal use in Linux.

Let’s check out the list -

VLC

If you want a powerful multi-platform video player, check out VLC from VideoLAN. VLC is is a player and "framework" that can handle most audio and video formats you'd want to use, and it also works with DVDs, audio CDs, and much more. The video support for VLC on Linux is outstanding. VLC also boasts support for quite a few subtitles and captioning formats, so it may be the best option for users who need or want subtitles with their video for accessibility reasons or just because they want to be able to watch their dialog. you can also use VLC to stream content from video files, DVDs, hardware encoding cards, and even satellite and digital TV. So you can have one system that's serving media all over your house to any VLC client.

MPlayer

This is the another best choice for the Linux users for playing the media content. Those users who wish to have a clean interface with crowd less UI, this media player is just made for them. The player would not be enough for the handling of high-quality 4k media’s but for simple media content, it can play all that with ease.

CM Player

CmPlayer also was known as Bomi is another powerful media player that will offer you to play all types of Video file. This video player is really easy to use and also provides some powerful features which you will find in the context menu. It works really well on Linux and provides GUI features at the same time. It generally saves your all playback record which helps to browse your old playlist. It supports Audio file and Subtitle at all.

Banshee

Banshee is a popular Linux video player released in 2005 under MIT License. It is also an open-source platform developed in GTK#. It supports almost all kinds of Media format has some useful features such as Podcasting, Multimedia keys support, iPod manager etc. This media player has all those features which any user would require to regularly play their media contents.

Miro

Miro which was previously known as Democracy Player is a cross-platform audio & video player developed by Participatory Culture Foundation. This is one of the best Linux video players which you can have on your Linux computer. The video player supports numerous Video and Audio formats. The video player is entirely written in Python and GRK and it’s available in more than 40 languages.

Kaffeine

Kaffeine is a KDE media player that lets you play DVDs, video, and audio CDs, and it has support for DVB devices as well. Whether you want to watch a movie on DVD, play a few songs, or tune into a show on digital TV, Kaffeine is a good choice for KDE users and other desktops as well. Kaffeine is also available with most Linux distros, or you can browse the download page on the Kaffeine Website.

Gnome Videos

Earlier known as Totem, Gnome Videos comes is the default media player in the desktop environment GNOME. It first came into existence in 2003, and the GNOME project started bundled it with their desktop environment since 2005. The free and open source Linux media player, Gnome Videos takes its power from the GStreamer framework for playing different video formats and DVDs.

SM Player

SMPlayer is another fantastic media player on Linux that support all the default formats as like as other media players. It has a built-in a codec which helps you to play YouTube Video directly from this player. It will load the subtitle of a movie from the internet. When you will play video in SMplayer it saves your all settings. It is fully resume supported video player. It will play the videos at the same point which you previously stopped playing.

Kodi

Kodi is a cross-platform video player written in C++ as a core with python scripts. This is a very popular Linux video player that will offer you to play both audio and video files at the same times. It will provide you with some powerful features such as audio and video streaming plugins, visualizations, screensavers, themes and more. It supports all types of Media format including MPEG-1, 2, 4, HVC, MIDI, MP2, MP3 etc.

MPV

This media player could easily handle and decode 4k videos better than any other video player available for the Linux platform. With its minimalistic UI, the users would never give any issues working on it. The performance of this media player is also very consistent so the users could install it without a problem.

Xine Multimedia Player

Xine Multimedia player is released under GNU General Public License and this player is entirely written in C. This is one of the oldest media players that still exists. The development of Xine Multimedia Player project was started way back in 2000. The best part about Xine Multimedia Player is that it has a feature that can correct audio & video streams synchronizations. It plays all media file such as AVI, MOV, WMV, and MP3. Installing Xine you can play your video from CD, DVD, Local drive without any difficulties. It will offer high-performance communication, fast memory transfer, unified configuration system and more. Xine require less CPU processing to play videos.

Parole

Parole video player is the default video player for the XFCE desktop environment. Don’t let that turn you off of it though. Generally speaking, Parole is one of the most full-featured, lightweight video players for Linux. The app can play most video formats, has support for DVD/VCD, has support for subtitle files, and has a robust plugin library.

DeaDBeef

DeaDBeef has support for title formatting scripting, like foobar2000, which allows you to customize group patterns, the converter output, the window titles, etc. to your needs. DeaDBeeF also has a Design Mode, which allows you to add new widgets to the interface and move/delete existing ones.

Amarok

Amarok is a cross-platform free and open-source music player. Although Amarok is part of the KDE project, it is released independently of the central KDE Software Compilation release cycle. It supports  FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC, MP3, and RealMedia. Amarok can be controlled via D-Bus. Amarok Scripts, for example, when writing lyrics fetching plugins, can be written in QtScript.

Rage

Rage is a simple video and audio player intended to be slick yet simplistic, much like Mplayer. Use the command line to play media files or just drag and drop them onto the Rage window to add them to a playlist. Run Rage with no command-line arguments to enter video browser mode. From here you can display a graphical overview of everything on your playlist by hitting the / key or just hovering your mouse over the right-hand side of the window. It also has a full set of key controls. See the README for the complete list. It automatically searches for and displays album art when playing music if they aren't already cached. It even generates thumbnails for video timelines and allows you to preview clips by hovering your mouse over the position bar at the bottom of the window.

ExMPlayer

ExMPlayer is a GUI or "front-end" for MPlayer, a standard among Linux media players, that adds additional features like Youtube-style thumbnail seeking, video stream downloading, audio extraction, and format conversion.

Audacious

This open source, a decent audio player that can perform all playback related tasks without overloading your CPU. Users will love to access their media files via simple drag and drop tools and it also allows search on the basis of artists names, albums etc. Once can develop a personalized library on Audacious with ease and further they can listen to music directly from internet and CDs.

FFmpeg

It is a well designed, complete solution for cross-platform needs. It can easily process all audio and video file formats whereas conversion process can be completed within seconds. This tool never creates load on CPU and also co-operates with device battery so you can enjoy watching HD videos for hours. It consists of a large number of filters that assist in easy processed streamed content and ensured delivery of breathtaking quality. The user interface is quite impressive with effective tool management.

 

All the above mentioned are the top rated and widely used media players in Linux. But this list does not cover all the players, if you use your Linux box as an entertainment center, then there are plenty of options available. If you find another one which is awesome media player according to your experience, then, please share with us in the comments section. Thank you!