Xine is a cost-free media player that supports various audio and video formats without requiring any additional codecs.
One of the most impressive features of xine is its speed. All decoders included in this tool are optimized to use MMX, MMXEXT, SSE and 3DNow! acceleration if available. This well-designed architecture can efficiently move data across plugins without requiring extra memory copies to be made. Multi-threaded implementation provides significant gains on SMP systems.
Another useful feature of xine is its extensibility. Plugins are probed on startup, and new ones may be installed from third-party sources to enhance functionality (although most important plugins are already provided). Moreover, xine is reusable, and all the features are available from the library and may be called from other applications. A default X11 GUI (xine-ui) is available, but any other frontend can use the xine-lib too. There are several frontends already available: gtk (gxine and sinek), gnome2 (Totem), gtk2 (GQoob), scriptable console (toxine), kde (kxine), kdemultimedia (xine aRts plugin), and even a Netscape/Mozilla plugin.
xine has a lot of general features that make it a fantastic multimedia playback engine. For instance, it has skinnable GUI, and you can download and install new skins from the internet. It also offers various navigation controls such as seeking, pause, fast, slow, next chapter, etc. Moreover, xine supports Linux infraRed Control (LIRC) and offers On Screen Display features, DVD and external subtitles, DVD/VCD menus, audio, and subtitle channel selection. It has Closed Caption support and brightness, contrast, audio volume, hue, saturation adjusting (requires hardware/driver support). Other features include playlists, mediamarks, image snapshot, audio resampling, software deinterlacing algorithms, 2-3 pulldown detection (TVTime plugin), configuration dialog, aspect ratio changing, fullscreen display, DTS passthrough, TV fullscreen support using nvtvd, and streaming playback support.
Overall, xine is an excellent multimedia playback engine that has a lot of features and flexibility. Its speed, extensibility, and reusability make it a compelling option.
Version 1.1.16.3 / 0.99.5 (xine-ui): N/A