GTK MediaplayEr
foR LINux
2 Usage
2.1 Invoking Gmerlin
Gmerlin has some commandline options for loading plugins. They are VERY
expertimental and buggy so I don't want to document them here. They will
officially appear in a future version. In the meantime, call gmerlin by:
gmerlin file1.wav file2.avi ...
where file1.wav and file2.avi are media files supported by gmerlin. Unsupported
files are ignored.
2.2 Loading media files
If you invoke gmerlin, you can use commandline options (see above). If
Gmerlin is already running, you can add files to the playlist by dropping
them onto the playlist window or by selecting "Add File(s)" in the
playlist menu. In the file open dialog, you can optionally select a plugin,
with should be used. You can use this, if your file doesn't have a suffix,
which is recognized by gmerlin or if multiple plugins support one file
type (e.g. i_gmerlin_mpeg and i_mpeg for mp3s).
Use the next and previous buttons to select the track you want to hear/see.
Or simply double click on the track.
2.3 Playing Audio CDs
Go to Options->Preferences in the menu of the main window. Here
you can select the input plugin. There are 2 audio CD plugins:
CD Player and CD Reader. The CD Player just sends some commands to
your CD-Drive to control playback. The audio data are sent directly to
the soundcard, so the CPU-Usage is minimal.
If you want to save CD tracks to audio files, select the CD Reader plugin,
and an appropriate audio output plugin for writing WAVs or encoding MP3s
or Ogg Vorbis files.
The selection of the input plugins will (hopefully) become much easier
in the future, when the playlist supports folders and subfolders.
2.4 Converting Formats
Gmerlin has file writer plugins, which try to save anything, which comes
from the input, to media files. Go to Options->Preferences in the
main window menu. Go to Audio Output and Video Output to
select the audio and video output plugins. Pressing the Configure button
shows a configuration window where you can select subformats, codecs, quality
levels and so on.
If the video output plugin also supports audio, you can select "Use
this for audio" to write audio and video to the same file. The audio
output plugin isn't used in this case.
In the Main precerences window, you can chose an output directory for
file writer plugins. You can also select, if output files should be deleted,
if the conversion is interrupted (by the stop button or so). The filename
of the ouput file is the name which appears in the playlist plus a format
specific suffix. If you want a different name for the file, you can change
the trackname in the playlist.
2.5 Playing DVD's
Gmerlin has no DVD plugin yet. You can, however, load the corresponding
.ifo file from the "video_ts"-Directory of the mounted DVD. The file is
treated just as every other media file.
2.6 Improving video performance
Gmerlin can use XShm and XVideo for video playback in an X11 window. XShm
is currently needed for Video playback and should be available if the XServer
and Gmerlin run on the same machine. It just means, that XServer and gmerlin
use the same memory for the video frames, which reduces traffic through
the X connection.
XVideo is new in XFree86-4. It provides hardware scaling (for fullscreen
mode) and can show frames in various VUY formats, which come out of many
kinds of media files. With XVideo, gmerlin bypasses software YUV->RGB
conversion, which significatly improves performance. YUV frames also use
less memory (YUV4:2:0 is 50% of 24 bit RGB), so using XVideo reduces the
data traffic to your graphics card.
To play video, which is available in YUV-formats supported by your graphics
card, using the xvideo extension, enable "Check for XVideo" in the configuration
dialog of the X11 output plugin. If you enable "Force XVideo", XVideo
is also used (if supported by hardware/driver) for input plugins, which
produce only RGB frames. In this case, gmerlin does software RGB->YUV conversion.
"Force XVideo" can be enabled on machines which are fast enough for the
RGB->YUV conversion. This provides hardware scaling for all types of media
files you watch.