KMPlayer - App of the Month
Read also the interview with the developer of KMPlayer, Koos Vriezen.
Description of KMPlayer by Jasper van der Marel.
KMPlayer is a multimedia player for the KDE Desktop capable of playing audio and video. The difference between KMPlayer and other multimedia players like Kaffeine is that KMPlayer acts as a frontend to multiple multimedia libraries. KMPlayer supports not only Mplayer but also Xine and Ffmpeg. This means that KMPlayer will play everything MPlayer and Xine will play. With KMPlayer you can also record streams with mencoder and watch TV if your card is supported by Video4Linux.
Installation of KMPlayer can be done by compiling the tarball. During runtime KMPlayer will detect if you have MPlayer (required) installed. KMPlayer works with the default MPlayer 1.x series but it can also be configured to work with MPlayer 0.9.x. If you also have Xine installed it will be detected automatically. You can then switch between MPlayer and Xine by pressing the most left button (the arrow pointing down) and select Xine or Mplayer in the menu entry 'Play with...' . In this menu you can also zoom the video or switch to full screen. The other buttons are (from left to right) : rewind, play, forward, stop,pause and record. With the last button (the red square) you can record a stream to an MPEG4 video. The default file will be named record.avi in your home directory, which can be changed by altering the output settings in the Settings menu.
When right clicking on a video you can choose the option Preview with. When KMplayer is properly configured (the associations in Konqueror are set right) a menu simular to this picture appears.
KMPlayer can be embedded into Konqueror ('Embedded KDE interface for MPlayer'). When choosing the highlighted menu Embedded MPlayer for KDE the video will play embedded like the next screenshot.
(click for larger image)
The first button (on most left with the arrow pointing down) will pop up the following menu :
Here you can select the engine which will play the video (Play with MPlayer or Xine), which is great because some videos will play better with MPlayer and some will play better with Xine (eg. streaming video). You can also bookmark videos, zoom in and out, switch to full screen and adjust the brightness and contrast (Colors menu). Here you can also Configure KMPlayer which will show you the following menu
(click for larger image)
In this menu you can configure the general settings, the output settings and the MPlayer and Xine settings. In the sidebar there are options for the source of the video (which engine is default MPlayer or Xine and options for Click and Play of videos eg. trailers from Apple's website), recording options and options for Output plugins.
The next picture shows the options for one of the most outstanding features of KMplayer : recording videos.
(click for larger image)
By default KMplayer records videos with MEncoder but can also use FFMpeg for recording TV input (Video4Lin). This window will also popup when pressing the record button (the red square) in the buttonbar. The options for recording with MEncoder and FFMpeg can be set here (the tabs MEncoder and FFMpeg).
KMPlayer is still one of the best videoplayers for KDE. The most outstanding features are : the choice between two engines : Mplayer and Xine for the best performance., good recording options and Click and Play support. Recommended !
Read also the interview with the developer of KMPlayer, Koos Vriezen.
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