What's the best media player for Linux?

[CompVid]

Title says it all - looking for a better alternative to VLC.

Thanks

[davexnet]

Have you tried SMPlayer? What's wrong with VLC?

[CompVid]

Thanks, I'll look into SMPlayer.

VLC is mostly okay but sometimes I find that the video playback is a little 'juddery' and it seems to have issues with subtitles at times and loses sync.

[vongooB9]

The one that works best for me is mpv.

[sophisticles]

I second SMPlayer, in fact I use it on Linux and Windows.

[CompVid]

The one that works best for me is mpv.

Thanks, I"ll give that one a try alongside SMPlayer.

[Hoser Rob]

The one that works best for me is mpv.

Thanks, I"ll give that one a try alongside SMPlayer.

SMPlayer is actually a GUI front end for mpv so unless your system is severely underpowered there's not much advantage in choosing mpv over smplayer. SMplayer used to use mplayer as a back end and this is still an option. But mplayer isn't well maintained any more, it's buggy as hell now. mpv has excellent video playback performance, the best I've seen. I think thty's lso true for Windows too. SMplayer was my default in Windows when I still used it.

Unfortunately I don't think smplayer is as well maintained as it used to be either. It often doesn't work very well in Wayland. I run Debian 12 Gnome in my main box and I use the smplayer appimage. The repo smplayer version doesn't work properly in Wayland. The flatpak version crashes if I try to use the advanced mpv args that I've used for some time. The appimage is the one that works for me. YMMV of course.

Celluloid is another mpv GUI, it's good but compared to smplayer the UI is a bit too simplified for me, I have to edit the mpv.conf file to get the same performance settings I can get from the smplayer settings menu. But it's still agood program and I think it's better maintained than smplayer is. E.g. it works fine in Wayland.

As is often the case though all those nice performance settings won't work with a lot of the old hardware you often see Linux installed on. And those users are the ones who want those settings the most.

EIther of these is a lot better than VLC, which IMHO is one of the most over rated programs I've ever used. The video performance isn't neatrly as good as mpv and the UI is a mess. I mean, whose idea was it to put the cache size adjustment for local files, which is a performance setting, in the Input/Codecs section? It's just rubbish.

[sophisticles]

Unfortunately I don't think smplayer is as well maintained as it used to be either. It often doesn't work very well in Wayland. I run Debian 12 Gnome in my main box and I use the smplayer appimage. The repo smplayer version doesn't work properly in Wayland. The flatpak version crashes if I try to use the advanced mpv args that I've used for some time. The appimage is the one that works for me. YMMV of course.

In all fairness, Wayland is not fully backed yet.

I have problems with Audacity on distros that use Wayland, including the appimage version.

[CompVid]

Thanks Rob, didn't know all that, some very useful info there.

[Hoser Rob]

Unfortunately I don't think smplayer is as well maintained as it used to be either. It often doesn't work very well in Wayland. I run Debian 12 Gnome in my main box and I use the smplayer appimage. The repo smplayer version doesn't work properly in Wayland. The flatpak version crashes if I try to use the advanced mpv args that I've used for some time. The appimage is the one that works for me. YMMV of course.

In all fairness, Wayland is not fully backed yet.

I have problems with Audacity on distros that use Wayland, including the appimage version.

You're right about Wayland but Gnome is huge (it's pretty much the 'default' in Ubuntu, Debian and Fedora/RHEL) and it is fully backed there. It works better in Wayland now than in X11. But yes, not all DE projects have the resources to implement it. KDE is the only one that comes close to Gnome in this respect and I'd still run KDE Plasma in X11 mode for the time being. I used KDE for years but I quit using it because it's just too buggy.

But if you're running other desktops like Xfce or Cinnamon or pretty much anything else it's a non issue.

I'm actually not a Wayland fanboy. For something that's been developed for over 15 years now the progress isn't brilliant. But it is being developed. X11 is pretty much abandonware now and has been for a few years.

I haven't had any problems with Audacity yet in a Wayland session in Debian 12 Gnome but I've hardly used it. SMPlayer was way worse. mpv itself has no problems there. SMplayer is one of those projects with dev staff of one and those are the ones that struggle with all the changes Wayland entails. It's too bad but the problem with FOSS projects is maintenance. It's too hard to get unpaid devs to do debugging.

[Hoser Rob]

... VLC is mostly okay but sometimes I find that the video playback is a little 'juddery' and it seems to have issues with subtitles at times and loses sync.

What hardware are you using? Which VLC video output module? What sort of videos does vlc have problems with?