blog/data/2016-05-08-debian-media-player.txt

   1 Title: What is the best multimedia player in Debian?
   2 Tags: english, debian, debian edu, multimedia, video
   3 Date: 2016-05-08 09:40
   4
   5 <p><strong>Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
   6 Debian claim support for most file formats.</strong></p>
   7
   8 <p>A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
   9 plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
  10 Edu.  I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
  11 for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
  12 plugin supported most file formats / media types.
  13 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/BrowserMultimedia">The
  14 result</a> can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
  15 not been updated for a while.  But browser plugins are less relevant
  16 these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
  17 players.</p>
  18
  19 <p>A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
  20 player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
  21 Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why.  The cause is a
  22 <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/822245">missing MIME type in the VLC
  23 desktop file</a>.  In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
  24 of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
  25 only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
  26 two for VLC.  This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
  27 compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
  28 instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
  29 support most file formats.</p>
  30
  31 <p>The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
  32 <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">a
  33 table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
  34 in the table</a>, with the package supporting most MIME types being
  35 listed first in the table.</p>
  36
  37 </p>The best multimedia player in Debian?  It is totem, followed by
  38 parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
  39 kmplayer.  Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
  40 support?</p>