So when I created Dragon Player based on mxcl’s Codeine player 17 years ago (!), I did intentionally make it using the most straightfoward APIs so that it would be resilient to the choppy waters of 00s Linux Multimedia. And hey it worked. Thanks to everyone over the years who ported it to the latest Qt and KDE APIs.
I’m trying to think of what we would want to do to refresh Dragon Player for next 17 years.
What is a KDE desktop player for in 2024?
For sure
playing videos you click on it in Dolphin. This is just basic functionality desktop computers are expected to have.
Playing audio files you click on in Dolphin. If you click on a voice dictation you don’t want a full featured music library app like Elisa to open if you can avoid it.
Not being VLC media player. VLC exists and works great. This has always been the case, I’ve always thought of Dragon Player as “a better interface for VLC”. (It’s funny that this has only gotten more true, as phonon-vlc reigns supreme). The VLC media player sits on top of a mountain of functionality that it needs to make available, we don’t have that responsibility.
By the same token if there’s functionality in VLC that many users expect then we need to have it as well.
The last two bullet points are really about having an uncluttered UI.
Maybe
Playing discs. This one is more controversial in 2024. Here I’m thinking “what is desktop computing even for, outside of opening Firefox?” On that short list is playing your optical disc media like CDs and DVDs. Dragon Player has always supported DVDs and would consider your CD if you put it in. But it was never an emphasis. Maybe it should be!
A handy thing about optical disc functionality is that all the associated buttons and dialogs can be hidden when it’s not being used.
Internet Radio. It’s useful and UI requirements might not be much. Having something to play also helps the first-run experience.
Terrestrial radio. USB radio SDRs are fun, none of the apps for it are really oriented around simple listening. Can hide all the UI for this when the hardware isn’t present.
Technical Stack
Multimedia
Does Phonon still make sense? The main alternative is using VLC directly. Given that we’re dependent on VLC already can just cross the bridge if needed and not if not. Becomes a lot easier to extend the Phonon API thanks to only having one backend too.
UI
So, what’s the best UI stack for creating a modern interface these days?
Next steps
Just getting feedback here, might also use this thread to add more notes - thinking of doing an inventory of other desktop video players and what’s expected. Once things are more solid we can put together a wiki page.
I tried vlc from the very first release, around the battle of Austerlitz and, no matter what, I don’t like it. If I had to make a tier list of crashing apps, that would be the top one. Furthermore, it doesn’t integrate well with kde, ui wise. And um…please explain why a media player should do image files? I use it on my phone though.
On my desktop, SMplayer has always been my go-to in terms of mediaplayer. That thing does about anything you can think off. Tons upon tons of options and it never failed. Not once.
In terms of small, lightweight mediaplayers, who do what’s on the tin, I’d say ( believe it or not) Parole. Gtk, meant for xfce, but it just works.
That being said, if there’s one player I’d wish someone would pick up and give some love, it’s Kaffeine. If Kaffeine could be redone ( without the TV stuff thank you) and purely focused on media, it could be great. It has pretty much anything you want in a single interface. Remove a few bits and bops, add some. You’ll always have some kind of…clutter I guess, although SMplayer comes about as close as “minimal look” as you can, Kaffeine is just a single click between creating playlists, file management and minimal player. In a single window.
My personal choice…
Waiting for a VLC 4 release there is Harald Sitter / dragon · GitLab which implements a QtQuick UI on top of libvlc directly while dropping complexity all around
I doubt the designer of Parole is considering a qt version. Would be nice though for someone who just wants a simple player. Because for now you need to fiddle with a gtk theme if you, like me, want a media player in a dark mode, regardless of the overall colorscheme ( by running it in qt override kvantum for example). Not that it matters THAT much since the controls are always autohidden. Still.
Thank you for creating Dragon Player. Before Haruna came out as yet another video player for KDE, I used Dragon. Could you add a few options like changing playback speed and taking a screenshot of a video frame?
VLC exists and works great. This has always been the case, I’ve always thought of Dragon Player as “a better interface for VLC”. (It’s funny that this has only gotten more true, as phonon-vlc reigns supreme). The VLC media player sits on top of a mountain of functionality that it needs to make available, we don’t have that responsibility.
