UMPlayer Update; Sublime Text 2 Gets Solarized [WebUpd8 PPA]

UMPlayer

UMPlayer is a new cross-platform SMPlayer fork. Since it uses Mplayer, it can play most video formats and comes with some very interesting features. For instance, it supports CSS skins so it's very easy to theme.

I've updated UMPlayer to revision 143 in the WebUpd8 PPA - this update brings a feature many have been asking for in the comments: the time position in the video is now remembered (thanks to Steve for the tip!).

Install UMPlayer in Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install umplayer

Sublime Text 2

Sublime Text 2 is a TextMate-like text editor currently in alpha which is now available for Linux too (as well as Windows and Mac OSX).

Sublime Text 2 has also been updated to the latest rev but besides this, I've also incorporated Solarized dark and light color schemes with the Sublime Text 2 package. I've also announced this on ppa.webupd8.org but I felt this deserves a mention on WebUpd8 too.

What's "Solarized"? Check out our previous post: Solarized: A Must Have Color Scheme For Gnome Terminal, Vim, Gedit And Lots More

Install Sublime Text 2 in Ubuntu 11.04, 10.10 and 10.04 using the commands below:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/sublime-text-2
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install sublime-text-2

To get the new Solarized color schemes for Sublime Text 2 (Sublime Text 2 supports TextMate color schemes so these are TextMate color schemes) you may have to either purge the previous Sublime Text 2 (sudo apt-get purge sublime-text-2) and then reinstall or manually remove the config folder (~/.config/sublime-text-2 - you can backup some files if you've customized some settings and copy them back once you install the latest Sublime Text 2).

Then, select Preferences > Color scheme > Solarized dark or light.

Of course, if you want you can also manually install the Sublime Text 2 Solarized color schemes: download them from HERE, then place the files under "~/.config/sublime-text-2/Packages/Color Scheme - Default".

Note: Solarized for TextMate (which are used by Sublime Text 2) are currently work in progress.

UMPlayer Available In The WebUpd8 Ubuntu PPA

UMPlayer is a new cross-platform Mplayer front-end that supports CSS skins, easily searching, watching and downloading YouTube videos, lots of ShoutCast radio stations and more. Check out our initial post on UMPlayer for more info.

I know you like PPAs so I've uploaded the latest UMPlayer 0.9.2 (svn r162) to the WebUpd8 PPA for Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and 11.04 and I'll continue to update it when major changes happen.

Add the WebUpd8 PPA and install UMPlayer using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install umplayer

A few readers have reported that using Mplayer from the Ubuntu official repositories UMPlayer doesn't work so you may want to install the latest MPlayer from the MPlayer daily builds PPA (this PPA is even linked in the MPlayer download page). Add it and upgrade MPlayer using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:motumedia/mplayer-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

If you don't want to add the PPA, you can download Ubuntu .deb files @ UMPlayer download page (there are also openSUSE, Fedora and Mandriva .rpm files as well as a Windows installer available for download).

UMPlayer: New Cross-Platform Mplayer GUI Based On SMPlayer

"UMPlayer (Universal Multimedia Player) is the multimedia player that fills all your needs. With dozens of advanced features and built-in codecs it can handle any media format, and can play Audio CDs, DVDs, (S)VCDs, TV / Radio cards, YouTube™ and SHOUTcast™ streams and even incomplete or damaged media files."

UMPlayer is a new cross-platform SMPlayer fork. Since it uses Mplayer, it can play most video formats and comes with some very interesting features. For instance, it supports CSS skins so it's very easy to theme. For now, there are just a few themes available but more should be available soon.

Here's an example of a UMplayer skin:

Another interesting feature is that it allows you to search, play and save YouTube  videos straight from its interface. However, this seems to be broken for the moment, most probably because YouTube changed something once again, breaking Mplayer.

UMPlayer also comes with ShoutCast support and a huge list of radio stations so if you're missing this being removed from VLC, try UMPlyer. You can find this under Tools > ShoutCast.

Other features include: audio and video equalizers, take screenshot of running video, find subtitles on OpenSubtitles, audio & subtitles delay adjustment and many more. Check out the UMPlayer features page for more info.

Overall, UMPlayer has a great potential, but it's a bit buggy for now. For instance if I play a video, open the equalizer and close it, the video starts from the beginning. I've found a few other minor glitches but overall it looks pretty good and you should definitely give it a try.

Download UMPlayer (available for Linux - .deb and .rpm, Windows and Mac OSX)

Thanks to rAX for the tip!

Use Mplayer With Hardware Acceleration In Ubuntu 10.04 And 10.10 [Nvidia]

Firstly, why should you use Mplayer with hardware accelerated video decoding? Check out this video (look at the CPU usage for the same video when played with and without vdpau) I've just recorded:

(Video available in HTML5 if you've enabled it on YouTube)

As you can see in the above video, using Mplayer without vdpau to play an HD video (H.264 - 720p used for this test), I had a 24-52% CPU usage while using Mplayer with vdpau, the CPU usage decreased to 0%! This may not be the case for everyone, but you should still see a huge improvement in playing HD videos.

In Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat, you only have to install a few packages from the repositories to be able to use Mplayer with hardware acceleration - no compiling required.

To to take advantage of vdpau, you need an Nvidia graphics card which supports it (can't help you here, check your graphic card specifications and see if it supports hardware acceleration) and install the proprietary drivers.

If your Nvidia graphics card supports hardware acceleration, proceed to enabling vdpau for Mplayer in Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat :

1. Firstly, install mplayer and other required packages:

sudo apt-get install mplayer libvdpau1

Then you may need to restart X (I'm not sure about this).


2. How to use:

Then, to try it out, use mplayer like this (for H264 encoded videos only):

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau yourvideo.mkv

If the video doesn't use H264 encoding, don't use "-vc ffh264vdpau".

3. Optional: You can use Gnome Mplayer or Smplayer as a Mplayer front-end. Install Gnome Mplayer using the following command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer

Then to set Gnome Mplayer to use hardware acceleration, in Gnome Mplayer go to Edit > Preferences, on the first tab (Player), under "Video output" select "vdpau".

Install Smplayer:

sudo apt-get install smplayer

Then under Options > Preferences > General, on the Video tab, select "vdpau" under "Output driver".


Both Gnome Mplayer and Smplayer have an option to pass arguments to mplayer. Here, you can also add the "-vc ffh264vdpau" option.

Update: I use an Nvidia graphics card and my instructions for other graphics cards were wrong (as J. H. pointed out in a comment) so I updated the post with Nvidia graphics card instructions only as I can only test it with Nvidia. If you use a different card, sorry, I am not aware on how to do this!

SUPER: Windows GUI For FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, Musepack, Monkey's Audio, Wavpack, Etc.

SUPER (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer) is a GUI to FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, musepack, monkey's audio, true audio, wavpack, ffmpeg2theora and the theora/vorbis RealProducer plug-in.


SUPER can manipulate and produce many multimedia file formats supported by its back-end programs. Back-end program features supported by SUPER include saving various streaming protocols (mms, rtsp, and http), conversion of Flash Video to other formats, and user-controlled conversion of video between different container formats. Users can chose between various lossless direct audio/video transfers between container formats or lossy video/audio encoding, with encoding possessing the added ability to change video and audio specifications such as bitrate, frame rate, audio channels, resolution, sampling rate, and aspect ratio.

SUPER is also able to utilize its back-end's built-in media players, allowing playback of supported video and audio formats.


Requirements:

• At least 1800 MHz Intel Pentium4 processor or equivalent. (64-bit CPU not supported)
• 512MB of RAM or more.
• 20GB of free Hard disk space or more.
• 1024 x 768 video resolution or larger.
• 32,000-color video or more.
• IE 5.5 or later.
• Internet connection.

Since it's a GUI for quite a big list of command line tools, it also has a LOT of features. To see a list of all SUPER features, see THIS page.

Download SUPER

SUPER was suggested to Web Upd8 by Mahdi. Thank you!

Increase MPlayer Soft Volume to 300% in Linux

Sometimes when you watch a move, the sound is just too low, even setting your alsamixer to 100%. But you can increase your MPlayer soft volume to 300% with just a simple command. Open a terminal and type:

mplayer -softvol -softvol-max 300 'video.avi'

and replace video.avi with the video file name you want to watch.

Now to manually change the volume in MPLayer, use the "0" and "9" keys on your keyboard.

[via UbuCentrum & tips4linux]