In the next article we are going to take a look at Haruna. This is an open source video player, built with Qt / QML and libmpv. This project offers users a multimedia player, which means that it is not limited to video playback. As an audio player, its performance is also satisfactory.
Haruna is a modern looking Qt video player that acts as an interface for mpv. In case someone still doesn't know yet, mPV is a multimedia player for the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio / video codecs, and subtitle types.
General characteristics of Haruna
- Video and audio playback while I tested it was smooth, without unwanted jumps or cuts.
- Haruna can play videos online thanks to her built-in support for youtube-dl. Although its functionality in this area is limited, since we must write a URL to play a video, it does not have an integrated search. That is why we will need to use a web browser. By default, the software will reproduce the best possible video and audio quality.
- We can search for the next or previous subtitle and chapter. There is also the ability to move forward or backward one frame.
- There is the option of attach external subtitles.
- The program offers us the possibility of make a quick jump to the next chapter by clicking the middle in the progress bar.
- Playlists are one of the main features of the player. If you hover your mouse pointer over the right side of the window (or left, as you configure it), a playlist pane that lists other slides slides out video files in the same directory. The software will create a playlist automatically.
- We can control playback speed, take video screenshots, and make color adjustments. Screenshots can be saved in PNG, JPG and WebP formats.
- This software will also allow to change various interface settings, choose different color schemes and styles for the GUI.
- In the program settings, on the playback tab, the program It will allow us to activate the hardware video decoding. By default, this setting is disabled, but it is recommended to enable it.
- We will find configurable keyboard and mouse shortcuts. These mouse shortcuts will allow us to quickly navigate and configure the program to do just what we want.
Install Haruna on Ubuntu
Although Haruna is in an early stage of development, we can test this program using its corresponding Flatpak or AppImage package.
As a Flatpak package
If you use Ubuntu 20.04, and you still do not have this technology enabled on your computer, you can continue The Guide about it that a colleague wrote on this blog a while ago.
When you can install flatpak packages on your computer, you will only need to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and use the following command to start installation:
flatpak install flathub org.kde.haruna
After the installation, we can find the program launcher or type the following command in a terminal to start the program:
flatpak run org.kde.haruna
uninstall
For remove the flatpak package from this player, we will only need to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and execute the command in it:
flatpak uninstall org.kde.haruna
As AppImage
The other quick way to test this program will be to use its AppImage package. This is a universal software format with which to distribute software in Gnu / Linux, without requiring superuser permissions to install the application, even though no software is actually installed. It is a compressed image with all the dependencies and libraries necessary to run the desired software.
It can download the application's AppImage file from the project release page. We can also choose to open a terminal (Ctrl + Alt + T) and use wget to download the latest version published today:
wget https://github.com/g-fb/haruna/releases/download/0.6.3/Haruna-0.6.3-x86_64.AppImage
Once the download is finished, all that remains is make the file executable:
chmod +x Haruna*.AppImage
Then we can execute the file by double clicking on it or executing it with the command:
./Haruna*.AppImage
Haruna is a media player that offers an mpv front-end. While support for youtube-dl and audio playback is useful, it is not a replacement for dedicated software in these areas. Although as Haruna is in a fairly early stage of development, perhaps in future versions she will be able to establish herself as a reference player. For more information about this project, users can consult their web page.