Playing Movie Files

You can choose between several movie players shipped with your openSUSE. Kaffeine, for example, can be run with several back-ends, such as Xine and MPlayer.

To start Kaffeine, press Alt+F2 and enter kaffeine.

The formats you can view with Kaffeine depends on the back-end (by default, Xine is used). Xine interprets many of the most common multimedia formats available. For more information, refer to http://xinehq.de/.

In case the format is not supported by the player's engine, openSUSE offers to search for a suitable codec which you can then install with YaST.

Figure 22.5. Kaffeine Main Window

Kaffeine can also play multimedia streamed over the Internet and can be used as a plug-in for Konqueror. It provides the usual options for playing files in full screen mode, navigating through files, and more. You can also take a snapshot of the video and save it as an image.

KDE 4 also ships with Dragon Player (dragonplayer) which uses the Phonon technology. Phonon is a multimedia API that connects to any of several multimedia frameworks. To start Dragon Player, press Alt+F2 and enter dragon. For more information on using Dragon Player, refer to the online help.