XINE(5)

✨ NAME ✨

xine — a free video player 💖

(also hi, this is XINE(5) from the File Formats Manual — the deep-lore file-formats page, not the regular command one, iykyk)

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🌈 MRL (media resource locator) 🌈

okay so bestie, an MRL is literally a URL but for your media player. Same vibe as your browser's address bar, except instead of websites it's telling xine what to read from. A valid MRL can be a plain boring file name, or one of these iconic ones (and pls also read the notes at the bottom, they're important):

• Filesystem:

file:<path>
fifo:<path>
stdin:/

• CD and DVD:

dvd:/[device_name][/title[.part]]
dvd:/DVD_image_file[/title[.part]]
dvd:/DVD_directory[/title[.part]]
     (use the path of the directory which contains VIDEO_TS)
vcd://[CD_image_or_device_name][@[letter]number]
vcdo://track_number
cdda:/[device][/track_number]

• Video devices:

v4l://[tuner_device/frequency]
v4l2://tuner_device
dvb://channel_number
     (nth channel in your channels.conf)
dvb://channel_name
dvbc://channel_name:tuning_parameters
dvbs://channel_name:tuning_parameters
dvbt://channel_name:tuning_parameters
dvba://channel_name:tuning_parameters
pvr:/tmp_files_path!saved_files_path!max_page_age
     (for WinTV PVR 250 and 350)

• Network:

http://host...
tcp://host[:port]
udp://host[:port[?iface=interface]]
rtp://host[:port[?iface=interface]]
     (default port for tcp, udp and rtp is 7658)
smb://...
mms://host...
pnm://host...
rtsp://host...  (requires Real codecs)

More input plugins will hand you more MRL types — the ones above are what you get with stock libxine. 💅

⚠️ NOTE: when a file name is needed, you have to give the full path, no shortcuts. From a shell you can normally use "$PWD/file" or "$(pwd)/file" or "pwd/file" if the file lives in the current directory. (Which one works depends on your shell; all three work in bash. Also, normal URL encoding rules apply; the % character in particular must be encoded as %25.)

As of xine-lib 1.1.3, the DVD title number can be 0 (that selects navigation) and the chapter number can be 0 (that's the full title). 🎀

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🦋 VCD MRL Syntax 🦋

A plain vcd:/ runs the default item (like, maybe track 1 or entry 0) using the default VCD device (maybe /dev/cdrom). Both the default item and the default device are user-configurable, so it's giving your setup, not a fixed rule.

But you can also spell out both the Video CD device/filename and the item explicitly in the MRL. Slay.

For example, vcd:/dev/dvd picks the default entry using device /dev/dvd — which is handy if that's your DVD drive and it's a different thing from your CD-ROM device, and your DVD drive can play CDs. And vcd://test_svcd_ntsc.cue names the cue file for a CD image on disk. (test_svcd_ntsc.bin is the matching bin file, but using that one won't work — noted. 😭)

After the optional device name or file name, you can name the kind of unit, preceded by a colon. An MRL that ends in a colon is exactly like not adding it at all: the default entry type and number get used. Items come in 4 flavours: "Track", "Entry", "Playback" and "Segment". These units are indicated with the capital first letter of each type: T, E, P, S, s. An uppercase S in the MRL display means a NTSC segment while a lowercase s means a PAL segment. But when you type an MRL, the case of these letters is insignificant. ✨

Depending on the Video CD, you might not have any playable segments (S,s) or playback control (P). If you give a MRL that refers to a playback control entry but there's no playback control, your playback number gets silently converted into the corresponding entry number. The way that it just quietly does that… 💀

You can configure various things that affect which MRLs get selected when there's some ambiguity in the MRL name. media.vcd.autoplay sets what kind of unit to use in a MRL if none is given. Another configuration setting, vcd.device, determines what device to use if that part isn't given. When you hit the VCD button, that's equivalent to entering vcd:/, and thus these two configuration settings get used to expand the MRL. 🫶

Some examples of MRLs are below. In the examples, we assume the following configuration settings:

• vcd:// — Play (navigate) default item (in this case Entry ID 0) from the default device (in this case set to /dev/cdrom)
• vcd://@ — Same as above
• vcd:///dev/cdrom@ — Same effect as above since the default device is set to /dev/cdrom.
• vcd:///dev/cdrom@E0 — Same as above. But note that this is because we have autoplay:entry which is no longer the default value.
• vcd:///dev/cdrom2@ — Play (navigate) the default item of /dev/cdrom2
• vcd:///dev/cdrom2 — should be same as above but is currently broken?
• vcd:///dev/cdrom2@T1 — Play Track 1 from /dev/cdrom2
• vcd:///dev/cdrom@S1 — Play segment 1 from /dev/cdrom. This assumes that there is a segment 1. Check the MRL list to see if that is the case.
• vcd://@P1 — Play playlist item 1 from default device. If there is no playback control, the MRL will be converted into vcd:/@E0. Again check the MRL list to see if there is a P1.
• vcd://@P1* — Probably same as above.
• vcd:///dev/cdrom@E1 — Play Entry id 1 from default device.
• vcd://@S0 — Play segment 0 from default device.
• vcd://@3 — Play track 3 from default device.
• vcd:///dev/cdrom2:1 — Play track 1 from /dev/cdrom2.
• vcd:///tmp/ntsc.cue@ — Play default item (E0) of /tmp/ntsc.bin. Note trailing @.
• vcd://ntsc.cue/@E0 — Play entry 0 of ntsc.bin.
• vcd:///tmp/ntsc.nrg/@E0 — Play entry 0 of /tmp/ntsc.nrg (Nero file). Works for some simple Nero images.

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📡 DVB 📡

DVB MRLs require that xine-lib/channels.conf exists in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/ or ~/.config/ and contains valid data. You can get that by generating a tuning file with the LinuxTV DVB apps utility scan (or dvbscan if you're on a version newer than 1.1.0):

scan -o zap /usr/share/doc/dvb-utils/examples/scan/dvb-t/uk-PontopPike
>~/.config/xine-lib/channels.conf

(This example is for the writer's local transmitter, using a file from the Debian dvb-utils package. cute of them 🎀)

For the dvbc, dvbs and dvbt MRLs, tuning parameters are expected, in one of these forms:

DVB-S  <frequency>:<polarisation>:<sat-no>:<sym-rate>:<vpid>:<apid>:<service-id>

DVB-C  <frequency>:<inversion>:<sym-rate>:<fec>:<qam>:<vpid>:<apid>:<service-id>

DVB-T  <frequency>:<inversion>:<bw>:<fec-hp>:<fec-lp>:<qam>:<transmission-mode>:<guardlist>:<hierarchy-info>:<vpid>:<apid>:<service-id>

DVB-A  <frequency>:<qam>:<vpid>:<apid>:<service-id>

The individual parameters are:

• frequency — number, usually in kHz
• polarisation — v or h
• sat-no — unsigned long, usually 0
• sym-rate — symbol rate in MSyms/sec
• inversion — INVERSION_ON, INVERSION_OFF, INVERSION_AUTO
• fec, fec-hp, fec-lp — FEC_1_2, FEC_2_3, FEC_3_4 ... FEC_8_9, FEC_AUTO, FEC_NONE
• qam — QPSK, QAM_128, QAM_16 ...
• bw — BANDWIDTH_6_MHZ, BANDWIDTH_7_MHZ, BANDWIDTH_8_MHZ
• transmission-mode — TRANSMISSION_MODE_2K, TRANSMISSION_MODE_8K
• guardlist — GUARD_INTERVAL_1_4, GUARD_INTERVAL_1_8, GUARD_INTERVAL_1_16, GUARD_INTERVAL_1_32,
• hierarchy-info — HIERARCHY_1, HIERARCHY_2, HIERARCHY_4, HIERARCHY_NONE
• vpid — video program ID
• apid — audio program ID
• service-id — service ID (needed for now/next information etc.)

The following keyboard & mouse inputs may be accepted:

• Menu 2 — Start/stop recording
• Menu 3 — Toggle zoom
• Menu 7 — Toggle now/next display
• Previous/Next Chapter — Previous/next channel
• Mouse wheel & button 1 — Scroll through channel list & select the highlighted channel

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💜 SUBTITLE 💜

external subtitle files (any mrl)

Text subtitle files may be appended to the MRL:.

• <mrl>#subtitle:<subtitlefile> — This is the normal way to define the subtitle file to use. The frontend will not take any notice of the subtitle file. For example:

file://home/user/wibble.mpg#subtitle:/home/user/wibble.sub

(Note that some front ends can detect subtitles files where the name differs as shown in the example. ✨)

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🔥 STREAM OPTIONS 🔥

After a delimiting # you can add several stream parameters:

• novideo — Video will be ignored.
• noaudio — Audio will be ignored.
• nospu — Subpictures will be ignored.
• demux:<demux name> — Specify the demux plugin to use.
• volume:<level> — Set audio volume.
• compression:<level> — Set audio dynamic range compression.
• <config entry>:<config value> — Assign a new value to any config entry.
• save:<file> — Save the stream (if allowed) to the named file, relative to the directory given by the option "media.capture.save_dir".
• change configuration option 'on the fly': — You can change a configuration option at any time, using the special cfg:/ MRL style. The syntax is:

cfg:/<config entry> : <config value>

Unlike stream config option, you can change anything before playing the stream.

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

xine(1), aaxine(1), gxine(1), toxine(1), totem(1), kaffeine(1) ...

The programs are documented fully on the xine home page: http://www.xine-project.org/

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

This text was extracted from the xine man page by Darren Salt <dsalt@users.sourceforge.net>. The xine man page was written by Siggi Langauf <siggi@debian.org> for the xine project. Lots of additions by Guenter Bartsch <guenter@users.sourceforge.net>, Daniel Caujolle-Bert <f1rmb@users.sourceforge.net>, Rocky Bernstein <rocky@panix.com>, and Philipp Hahn <pmhahn@users.sourceforge.net>.

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and that's the whole thing bestie, ily, go play some video files 💖

✧ The xine project ✧ 2005-06-15 ✧ XINE(5) ✧