oh, you know. video topic: gstreamer, vlc, xine, mplayer
 

Gstreamer is definitely getting better now, but others are improving so much. Lots of choices out there. What is your favorite? What are your pros and cons? Do you use few of them or only use one? For me, on my very slow machine, I yanked out Gstreamer by hand on Ubuntu and only using Mplayer for movies and Audacious for audio. On my main workstation, I am using mplayer for video streams, but using Totem-Xine and Xine-UI (both Xine) for watching videos and DVDs. I am only using Gstreamer for Rhythmbox to sync with my Ipod, but I am using Audacious to play the audio files. I guess using one player is getting impossible with way too many options. What are your thoughts? What are some pros and cons of players you like and hate?

I will start just get going.

Mplayer
Pro: Codec support. It can play any files. Skin support is awesome.
Con: Playlist editor is horrible compare to Totem-Xine. It has few issues with playing encrypted DVDs (CSS).

Totem-XINE (not xine-ui)
Pro: It is very streamlining feel. It buffers very smoothly. The playlist editor is very easy to use. I love the drag and drop feel. Playing encrypted DVD is a snap. Everything works out of the box.
Con: It has less support for playing W32codec files. It doesn't make a good mozilla media plugin.

Totem-Gstreamer
Pro: I love the fact that it is a multimedia framework.
Con: It can't play certain files and DVD function is cripple.

VLC
PRO: It can stream to other VLC and support many multimedia formats.
CON: It is so bulky using as a Mozilla plugin. Why do I need it if other players filled all my needs?

I like mplayer myself. It's never given me any trouble playing any file format I throw at it, something I can't claim for the xine or gstreamer versions of totem. I'm no fan of gmplayer though, and would prefer a better gui wrapper. But then, such wrappers do exist, I guess.

MPlayer blows everything away. If you use the config switch to install the gui you don't have to know anything, it will just play whatever you want automatically.