LinDesk

I have used a lot of video players on Linux - and over the time my favorite video player have changed. When I wrote the post Top 5 Video Players in Linux, it was VLC. After that, the position was held by Xine for a long time. But that was before I discovered SMPlayer.

SMPlayer is a front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

Features

Remembers the settings of all files you play

So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave… don’t worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, volume…

Extremely Configurable

This is one feature I absolutely must have in a video player - I want to use very specific settings. And SMPlayer is one of the few players that lets me do that.

Configurable subtitles

You can choose font and size, and even colors for the subtitles. Or you can drag and drop a subtitle file into the player when you are playing a video - the video will use that subtitle file from then on. Or you can automatically get the subtitle of the currently playing film from OpenSubtitles with the click of a button(you need the latest version for this).

Audio track switching.

You can choose the audio track you want to listen. Works with avi and mkv. And of course with DVDs.

Seeking by mouse wheel.

You can use your mouse wheel to go forward or backward in the video.

Video equalizer

Allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma of the video image. I have never used this feature - but it might come in handy for a bad quality video.

Multiple speed playback

You can play at 2X, 4X… and even in slow motion. SMPlayer speeds up the audio as well - which is kinda distracting - I wish they would mute it in fast mode.

Filters

Several filters are available: deinterlace, postprocessing, denoise… and even a karaoke filter (voice removal).

Audio and subtitles delay adjustment

Allows you to sync audio and subtitles.

Advanced options

Such as selecting a demuxer or video & audio codecs, providing mplayer command line options and more. Seriously, take a look at the Preferences dialog of this app.

Playlist

Allows you to enqueue several files to be played one after each other. Autorepeat and shuffle supported too.

Multiplatform

Binaries available for Windows and Linux.

Free Software

SMPlayer is under the GPL license.

Installing SMPlayer

In Fedora/Red Hat system, you can install SMPlayer using yum…

yum install smplayer

The package name is the same for Ubuntu/Debian systems…

apt-get install smplayer

Or you can download the app from their site and install it manually.

Related Links

• SMPlayer - Offical Site
• SMPlayer: A high quality wrapper
• SMPlayer - Nice Frontend for MPlayer
• Echoes: SMPlayer Review - One of the Most Powerful Video Players for Linux