Loving the new Totem

Totem is Gnome’s built-in media player, and it really annoyed me in previous versions, and had me switching to VLC. However, the version included in the Ubuntu 9.10 release candidate has two features which are very important, in my opinion. The first feature is smooth graphical integration with compositing managers (such as compiz). In previous versions, as well as VLC, once you fullscreen the window, moving the mouse (which causes the cursor and the partial interface to appear) causes a very annoying flicker. This has been fixed (at least on my box, using an NVidia card).

The second, more important feature, is the exact one I’ve been missing and talked about in the previous post - hit Edit -> Preferences -> Start playing files from last position, and Totem will keep track of your last playback position when you close the video. Reading the implementation patch shows that there is a certain threshold for this - the position won’t be saved if you’re too close to the beginning or end of the video. So there, my show downloading stack now has every feature I’d want from Miro, without the downsides I’ve mentioned.