Parole

Parole is an open source, modern, simple, easy-to-use and free graphical software that aims to be the default media player for the Xfce desktop environment. It is backed by the powerful GStreamer framework, which is used by default on many modern distribution of GNU/Linux.

Being engineered with simplicity, resource usage and speed in mind, Parole fits very well in the lightweight Xfce desktop environment, from which it requires various libraries and tools to work properly, especially when used on other open source desktop environments.

Media files can be played from local or remote locations

Key features include support for playing local media files, including DVD-Video, Video-CD, Super Video-CD, live streams, as well as any other video and audio file format supported by GStreamer, support for playing video files with subtitle, support for playing remote files located on the network, repeat and shuffle support, built-in playlist, as well as full-screen support.

Another interesting feature is that Parole is highly extensible through plugins, which can be installed the same why you’ve installed the software, from the main software repositories of your distribution. By default, it comes with two plugins, one for minimizing the application to tray and another one for displaying notification of events.

Minimal and intuitive graphical user interface

Parole’s best feature is its minimal and intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), which follows the keep it simple stupid (KISS) principle, offering users all the playback commands they need in a single window.

Video and audio files can be dragged and dropped into the main window in order to be played back, you can select audio channels (if multiple are available for a given video file) from the Audio menu, change the aspect ratio, as well as to select a subtitle.

You can change brightness, contrast, hue and saturation

From the Preferences dialog, which is accessible via the Edit menu, users can disable the screensaver while playing video files, enable visualizations when playing audio files, enable support for keyboard multimedia keys, change brightness, contrast, hue and saturation settings, change the font and character encoding for subtitles, and change various playlist options.

What is new in this release:

• New "mini mode", activated from the right-click menu.
• New play and replay icons in the player content area. Clicking on these will play or replay your media (finally)!
• Most deprecated API calls have been dropped or replaced. We're not dropping GtkStatusIcon yet, the notification area lives on in Xfce!
• Double buffering with the X11/XV video outputs has been reenabled. Ubuntu has been carrying this patch for a while now.
• The window title and content title are now set to the playing filename if no ID3 tags are found.
• Plugins can now be loaded by name instead of full path (plugin-name.so).
• The desktop file and related AppStream have been updated to the now-standard "reverse-DNS" convention (org.xfce.Parole)
• Translation updates: Asturian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (China), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Japanese, Kazakh, Korean, Lithuanian, Norwegian Bokmal, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Russian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian

What is new in version 0.8.0:

• New Features:
• New Clutter video backend (build with --enable-clutter)
• Video backend selection from Preferences dialog
• New "Go to position" feature
• GtkRevealer is now used for the controls with Gtk 3.10+
• New "hide-controls-timeout" setting to specify when controls should be hidden
• Cleaned up deprecated widgets and callbacks
• Bugs Fixed:
• Fixed "value invalid or out of range" errors
• Fixed "Source ID not found" errors
• Prevent mouse cursor from hiding when dialogs are open
• Multimedia keys can now be properly disabled with the Preferences dialog
• Fixed "Show Playlist" appearance in the menu and overlay
• Fixed playlist file filter
• Playback controls can now be always-enabled (Bug 10976)
• Fixed subtitles with MKV files (Bug 9880)
• Fixed audio cd playback (Bug 10902)
• Fixed segmentation fault when sending filenames to existing instance (Bug 10962)

What is new in version 0.7.0:

• New Features:
• New Clutter video backend (build with --enable-clutter)
• Video backend selection from Preferences dialog
• New "Go to position" feature
• GtkRevealer is now used for the controls with Gtk 3.10+
• New "hide-controls-timeout" setting to specify when controls should be hidden
• Cleaned up deprecated widgets and callbacks
• Bugs Fixed:
• Fixed "value invalid or out of range" errors
• Fixed "Source ID not found" errors
• Prevent mouse cursor from hiding when dialogs are open
• Multimedia keys can now be properly disabled with the Preferences dialog
• Fixed "Show Playlist" appearance in the menu and overlay
• Fixed playlist file filter
• Playback controls can now be always-enabled (Bug 10976)
• Fixed subtitles with MKV files (Bug 9880)
• Fixed audio cd playback (Bug 10902)
• Fixed segmentation fault when sending filenames to existing instance (Bug 10962)

What is new in version 0.2.0.2:

• Ali Abdallah (2):
• Fix a bug in the browser plugin about not handling NP_EMBED
• Remove g_debug calles that were left.
• Masato Hashimoto (1):
• l10n: Updated Japanese (ja) translation to 100%

What is new in version 0.2.0.1:

• Aleksandr Ponomarenko (2):
• l10n: Updated Russian (ru) translation to 100%
• l10n: Updated Russian (ru) translation to 100%
• Ali Abdallah (18):
• Make the browser plugin compatible with midori, Makefile was broken.
• Remove border width from the settings.
• Fix on disk file check
• Avoid a Glib warning in the statusbar when filename is null.
• Support for playing DVD/VCD ISO images from a file.
• Query stream duration on-ready state always, fixes DVD duration query.
• Bump version to 0.2.0.1
• Properly handle WriteReady callback.
• For local media files, check the stream caps only when switching from ready to paused state.
• parole --device=/dev/cdrom is now enough to play media on that device. In thunar-volman the command should be parole --device=%d and Parole will handle the rest.
• Andhika Padmawan (1):
• l10n: Updated Indonesian (id) translation to 100%
• Dmitrij Smirnov (1):
• l10n: Updates to Russian (ru) translation
• Harald Servat (1):
• l10n: Updated Catalan (Valencian) (ca) translation to 100%
• Leandro Regueiro (3):
• l10n: Updated Galician (gl) translation to 93%
• l10n: Updated Galician (gl) translation to 94%
• l10n: Updated Galician (gl) translation to 98%
• Massonnet Mike (1):
• l10n: Updated French (fr) translation to 96%
• Michal Varady (2):
• l10n: Updated Czech (cs) translation to 97%
• l10n: Updated Czech (cs) translation to 100%
• Natanael Copa (1):
• provide the headers for browser-plugin
• Per Kongstad (1):
• l10n: Updated Danish (da) translation to 100%
• Sergio Marques (1):
• l10n: Updated Portuguese (pt) translation to 100%
• Timo Verbeek (1):
• l10n: Updated Dutch (Flemish) (nl) translation to 100%
• Vincent Tunru (1):
• l10n: Updated Dutch (Flemish) (nl) translation to 100%
• Xu Meihong (1):
• l10n: Updated Chinese (China) (zh_CN) translation to 98%

What is new in version 0.2:

• Use g_key_file_get_locale_string to load plugin name and description.
• Fix unused Gst overlay expose on READY state.
• Provide a command line to be used to enable/disable xv, X Video support might be missing for some drivers.
• Set the _NET_WM_WINDOW_OPACITY_LOCKED wm hint, so xfwm4 keep us opaque.
• Provide an option to Enable/Disable resetting X screen saver counter while playing movies
• Check for stream type before settings the live bit.
• Don't popup errors in the browser plugin.
• Fix seek backwards+add mouse wheel on the volume slider, patches by Enrico Troger.

What is new in version 0.1.99:

• Fix bug in the active plugin saved list.
• Added translators credit.
• Fix a memory leak.
• reload the logo when the theme is changed.
• Fix compilation with xulrunner 1.9.2.
• Fix bug #6039 concerning the crash on a virtual box.
• Fix a variable type causing the cursor to be set invisible on the video widget event if no video is playing.
• /* Browser plugin */
• Fix buffering info that was displayed in fullscreen mode.
• Stabilizing the browser plugin.

What is new in version 1.98:

• Fix missing signal handler for the mute menu item.
• Don't hide the controls in full screen when cursor is above the popup window.
• Respect browser plugin dir installation directory.
• Support for playlist format in the media browser plugin, that it, the plugin now gets the data from the browser, save it in a temporary file parse it and play it...
• Added an option in the media chooser to chooer whether to start playing opened files directly or not (bug #6035).

What is new in version 1.96:

• Fix the plugin loader bug, when the a plugin is asking to pack a widget and the plugin loader is not ready (bug #6032).
• Exit after 60 seconds of inactivity on the browser plugin to avoid any zombie process.

What is new in version 1.95:

• Use taglib when compiled to get the media itle and display it in the list instead of waiting for a tag message from gst to change the display name while playing.
• Added -n command line to load parolw without plugins.
• Added XF86 button handler.
• Added an option in the media chooser dialog to enable/disable scanning folders recursively for media files
• Handle CTL_O and XF86XK_OpenURL.
• Use cdda:// for audio disc, sine cdda:/ doesn't work!
• Give focus to media list view on GDK_Up and Down.
• Added an option in the media chooser to replace current playlist with opened files
• Hide control full screen popup when switch from a desktop to another.
• Enter/leave fullscreen on double click on the video widget, thanks for Enrico TrA¶ger for the patch.
• Save stream tags when stream playback finished, should be safer.
• Added a power manager plugin to inhibit the power manager while playing DVD/VCD/DVB...
• Added --device command line to be used with cdda:// dvd:// etc...
• Added browser media player plugin.

What is new in version 1.91:

• Don't runref the vis plugin as playbin will remove it on exit (bug #5830).
• Fix settings dialog displayes in english when locales aren't english (bug #5829).
• Don't reset XScreenSaver bit when playing audio file, (problem was in the order of calls).
• Fix some untranslatable strings (bug #5827).
• Fix desktop file Application Type typo. (Type=Application instead if Type=Application;).

Requirements:

• GStreamer
• gtk+