Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

Red Hat Linux 7 Unleashed

By William Ball

Playing Video

There are many different digital video formats produced for today's computer platforms, and it seems like there are different standards for different operating systems. Fortunately, Linux comes with several players that can handle different forms of video successfully. Some of the digital video formats include

One of most common (and versatile) video players for Linux and X11 is Marc Podlipec's xanim client. You can find the latest version at http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html. This player generally works from the command line of an X11 terminal window, along with the name of the video like this:


   # xanim ibm_linux-02.avi

After you press Enter, the video will start playing in a small window, while the xanim controls are nearby in a floating window, such as that shown in Figure 8.19.

08fig19.jpg

Figure 8.19 The xanim client will play a variety of video clips under X11.

Another popular player, automatically launched from the Netscape Navigator Web browser during Web sessions, or usable as a standalone streaming video player (as shown in Figure 8.20) is Real's RealPlayer. This client, which can be installed in a directory in your home directory, replays streaming audio and video over a network.

08fig20.jpg

Figure 8.20 The RealPlayer client plays audio and video over a network.

The xanim client (at the time of this writing) plays clips from mounted filesystems, so performance is quite good. On the other hand, RealPlayer generally plays streaming audio or video via a network; performance can depend on your type of Internet connection, or the network traffic on your LAN.

Where is DVD Support for Linux?

As you know, digital video disc (DVD) drives work fine as normal CD-ROM drives under Linux. Red Hat Linux can also read the contents of DVD discs. In fact, SuSE, Inc. distributes a version of its six-CD-ROM Linux distribution on a single DVD! However, playing movies from DVD discs under Linux and X11 is another matter. On March 20, 2000, a Fremont, California-based company, InterVideo, Inc., announced that it would develop and release a software DVD player and decoder for Linux named LinDVD. Unfortunately, the product has not been released for consumers at the time of this writing. You can explore other methods to play DVDs under Linux, such as the one described in Nathan Rowlan's DVD Playing HOWTO, found at http://www.linuxdoc.org. Other sources of information, workarounds, and software include OpenDVD.org at http://www.opendvd.org, and the LiViD Project at http://linuxvideo.org.

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