Parole Media Player 0.4.0 Released With New Features

Parole, the default Xfce / Xubuntu media player, has reached version 0.4.0, a development release which brings many new features and improvements.

The latest Parole 0.4.0 features CD and DVD playlist support, DVD navigation support, custom subtitle management and other new features along with some important bug fixes for fullscreen controls, screensaver inhibition and others.

Here's the complete Parole 0.4.0 changelog:

• fixed build bugs;
• fixed fullscreen controls;
• fixed screensaver inhibition;
• fixed freezing with subtitles;
• fixed skipping every second ogg-vorbis in playlist;
• added embedded mode so you can use Parole as a browser plugin with mozplugger;
• added missing codec installation like in Totem so now if you try to play a format for which you don't have any codecs installed, parole will prompt you to install the correct codecs;
• added custom subtitle management (you can now choose subtitles manually);
• added CD and DVD playlist support;
• added DVD navigation support;
• added Recent Items in open menu;
• replaced Stream Properties plugin with AudioBox widget;
• moved notifications from system tray plugin to notify plugin;
• added album artwork and details to notifications;
• ported configuration to Xfconf;
• interface refinements;
• keyboard shortcut refinements.

For those not familiar with Parole, this is a lightweight media player based on the GStreamer framework, designed specially for Xfce, but obviously, you can use it in other desktop environments like GNOME too. 

The application can play local files (with subtitles support), CD / DVDs and live streams and is extensible with plugins - currently, 3 plugins are available by default: a notification plugin, one to inhibit Power Manager from suspending the machine while playing a DVD and a tray icon plugin.

Install Parole media player in Ubuntu / Xubuntu 12.10 or 12.04

The latest Parole 0.4.0 is available in the Xfce 4.12 PPA, along with other Xfce 4.12 development packages such as Xfce4 Settings 4.11 which introduces multi-monitor improvements or Thunar 1.6.2 which comes with tabs support and other improvements. 

Important: Ubuntu 12.04 users also need to add the Xfce 4.10 PPA!.

To add the PPA and install the latest Parole 0.4.0 in Ubuntu (Xubuntu) 12.10 or 12.04, use the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:xubuntu-dev/xfce-4.12
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install parole

The latest Parole 0.4.0 source code can be downloaded from HERE.