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Media Player Classic is definitely one golden player I had to leave behind when I switched to Linux from Windows. The reason I call it golden are as follows:

  • Press 1 and you'd get a completely a frameless window i.e. no seek bar, no title bar, no info bar. If you're playing a video then it's just the video that you see and if it's audio best-of-luck even finding the window
  • various other number combinations, some with the ctrl modifier key would show/hide certain widgets (menu bar, seek-bar, etc)
  • if you are playing foo.avi and the playlist is empty pressing Pg-up/Pg-dwn would play the next/previous playable file, in alphabetical order, from the directory in which foo.avi is situated, or else the next in playlist. Or it would do nothing.

Is there an equivalent player or a plugin which does the above for Linux? I have tried mplayer, smplayer and vlc but none of them seem to provide these features.

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  • I added some details to my answer concerning the "frameless window" you would like. Its not so easy as in MPC but the result comes close if I get your description right. (If not, please add a screenshot of how it should look like then I will bring VLC to look like this)
    – Angelo Fuchs
    Feb 24, 2014 at 10:41

1 Answer 1

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I suggest VLC even though you have already tried it. It supports most of what you want.

  • Press key to fullscreen: Yes. The key is Ctrl + h or F11 whether you want to see other windows or not.
  • Show/hide elements of the player: No. You have some presets that you can acitvate (like h for a minimaist player, l (small L) toggles between video/visual and playlist.
  • Press key to advance playlist: Yes. The key is n for next and p for previous.

There are more keyboard controls available, as I usually don't use them myself I can't tell how intuitive they are (here's a list). You can also change the hotkeys and make pg-up "play next" by going to Tools, Preferences, HotKeys (names differ strongly in non-English, from German translation it must be Extras, Properties, HotKeys - but you can reach it through Ctrl+P) and choose your keys there for yourself.

And using a skin you can make VLC look like a media player if you desire this.

Screen of vlc looking like media player

Another view that might be interesting to you: The sans-playlist minimal controls view:

smallest possible view of VLC

And if you disable controls you get:

small VLC without controls

To get rid of window decorations you have to have a look at your window manager. For XFCE (my window manager) here is a script that does the trick (with a keyboard shortcut).

I tried it and it looks like this (screenshot of VLC with the keyboard control window in background:

removed window decorations

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    Note in fullscreen the seek bar/interface appears if you hover your mouse near bottom of the screen. Move the cursor away and cease moving it, and both the bar and the cursor vanish, you're left just with the movie.
    – SF.
    Feb 7, 2014 at 11:46
  • Note also in full-screen bar interface can be grabbed and positioned anywhere on screen, and it will disappear as soon you cease moving mouse.
    – danijelc
    Feb 7, 2014 at 12:17
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    The next-track function of VLC chooses the next track from the playlist. In MPC if there's just one the pressing next plays the next playable file in the currently playing files directory if there is one.
    – Bleeding Fingers
    Feb 26, 2014 at 20:36
  • @BleedingFingers There is an extension called Add similar for VLC, but I haven't tried it. I will do so and report back if that solves the problem, meanwhile you might give it a try anyway :)
    – Angelo Fuchs
    Feb 26, 2014 at 20:41

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