Playing Audio and video 

PCQLinux 8.0 contains mplayer, a media player that plays many different types of audio and video formats. Installed as default in both Personal Desktop and Workstation install types - this player offers a never before feature on Linux — the abilty to play Windows Media — including the latest Windows Media 9 format! In video formats, mplayer plays AVI, DivX4/5, MPG, WMV, QT and RM. In audio it plays MP3, WMA and Ogg. This

To use mplayer, go to the Gnome/KDE menu and then select Extra /Sound and Video/ Mplayer. This opens a graphical interface for you which has a video screen part and a video player part. Right click on the video screen and select the media file or VCD/DVD you want to play. The video player interface easily allows you to perform common functions such as play, pause, fast-forward, rewind, etc. Similiarly while playing audio, the player also has an equalizer for fine tuning.

You can even run the Media Player from the terminal by running the following commands. 

# mplayer filename 



# mplayer —vcd (to play vcd) 

The player can then be controlled by a combination of keys, which you can use to change the volume, play, pause, fast forward, etc. For instance, the keys - “/” and “*” - are used to control volume levels and the right and left arrow keys are used to fast forward and rewind.

You can also pass other parameters to Mplayer from the console to set other attributes. For instance, 

# mplayer filename —vm —fs 

lets you play the movie file on the full screen.

Once you start using mplayer, you may be stuck with it for a long time given its versatility. 

Sanjay Majumder