The verdict
Despite the great number of very promising and actively maintained projects, the veteran of the pack, VLC still remains the alpha of them all.
VLC is one of the best examples in the world of open source software with roots going back to 2001, when the VideoLAN project was born. Since then the video player, with its distinctive traffic cone as a logo, has become one of the most valued and recognisable players, and we’re proud that it’s a GPL-licensed application.
In this Roundup, VLC achieved the maximum score in all categories with the exception of hardware acceleration. We have to admit that it’s not a universal issue but rather a particular case with our test configurations. VLC is reported to use both VAAPI and VDPAU on many machines (feel free to check it yourself with the $ vlc --ffmpeg-hw -v command). The lack of direct YouTube support, although annoying, isn’t a critical one.
Meanwhile there was a fierce battle for the second place, where SMplayer, QMplay2 and Bomi were vying for runner-up. All the players are very strong and we particularly liked that QMplay2 indicates whether VAAPI will actually have any effect on CPU load – you just drag the item and put it to the higher priority and instantly see the result. QMplay2 is, essentially, a toolbox containing hundreds of items you might need (but missing a user manual for many of them),
SMPlayer also works well with all required settings in a neatly designed interface. Bomi is also a very promising project that packs a great number of features and offers a minimalist design, the player does, however, feel like an alien device which hides all its tools inside an enclosure.
Romp is a great application for everyday use, but it’s been left unmaintained for such a long time to the extent that even some features have started to break (eg YouTube support). Nevertheless Romp is good for making screencasts, trimming them and extracting audio tracks from movies.
“VLC is one of the best examples in the world of open source software.”