Like other &kde; programs, &kplayer; is highly configurable. When you install &kplayer; and its multimedia playing backend &mplayer;, the default settings should enable your system to play multimedia content without any additional configuration. This chapter describes ways to make &kplayer;'s user interface best fit your tastes and configure media playback for optimal quality and performance. When &kplayer; is first installed, its window contains a menu bar, a main toolbar, a playlist toolbar and a status bar. Additionally, a progress toolbar will usually appear when you start playing a file. On the Settings menu you will find options to hide toolbars that you do not need and to show other available toolbars. Some of them will only be available for video files, while the progress toolbar is available when &kplayer; can detect the time length of the current file. The menu bar itself can be toggled on and off with the shortcut key combination &Ctrl;M. You can also hide the status bar if you do not need the information it displays. To show or hide the multimedia library, press &Ctrl;L or choose SettingsShow Library. To show or hide the message log detailing internal operation of &mplayer; backend as well as &kde; I/O Slaves, press &Ctrl;G or choose SettingsShow Message Log. Each toolbar has a small area on one of its sides where you can press and hold the &LMB; to drag the toolbar into a new position. You can place most toolbars either horizontally at the top or bottom of &kplayer; window or vertically at the left or right side of it, while the playlist toolbar can only be positioned horizontally. Similarly, you can move around the multimedia library and the message log by pressing and holding the &LMB; on the title area of the window and dragging it above or below the video area and positioning it in relation to the toolbars. If you right click a toolbar, you will get a menu to configure it. You can choose the toolbar orientation, text position and icon size. &kplayer; will of course remember all the settings you choose and the positions where you put your toolbars. It will remember visibility settings for full screen mode and for normal mode separately. &kplayer;'s playlist toolbar has a drop down box that shows the current playlist. It stores files and streams that have been played or are going to be played and lets you easily switch to a different item and play it. For details on the playlist feature see the Playlist micro-HOWTO. Following is a description of options that affect the playlist behavior. Loop option is available from the Player menu, the playlist toolbar and the playlist popup menu. When enabled, it makes &kplayer; start playing items from the beginning of the list after it finishes playing the last item on the list. Shuffle option is also available from the Player menu, the playlist toolbar and the playlist popup menu. When enabled, it makes &kplayer; play items in a random order. When the Loop option is also enabled, items will be reshuffled every time &kplayer; restarts playback from the top of the list. To reshuffle immediately, disable the Shuffle option and then enable it again. Allow duplicate entries on playlists option is available on the General page of the &kplayer; Configuration dialog. When enabled, it allows &kplayer; to put identical entries on the playlist. By default it is disabled, and if you queue the same file twice, the old entry will be removed before adding the new one at the bottom of the playlist. The Edit command opens the current playlist in the multimedia library where you can add new items and remove or change the order of existing ones. It is available from the playlist popup menu that you can open by right clicking the playlist drop down box on the playlist toolbar. To save the current playlist in the Playlists section of the multimedia library, right click the playlist drop down box on the playlist toolbar, select Add toPlaylists... and enter a playlist name. The new playlist will then be added to each menu that works on playlists. See the multimedia library configuration for details. &kplayer;'s multimedia library is the place to access all your multimedia and arrange it into playlists. The things you create in the library affect other parts of &kplayer;, in particular some menus and the current playlist. For details on the multimedia library feature see the Multimedia library micro-HOWTO. This section shows the contents of the current playlist and lets you modify it, for example by adding new files, streams and directories, removing existing items or changing their order. The changes are reflected on the current playlist shown on the playlist toolbar. The commands to modify the playlist contents are available from the Library menu or the library right click menu. This section shows the recently played files and streams and lets you modify the list. The top few entries are shown on the Play Recent submenu of the File menu and right click popup menus. The Maximum Recent entries in the library option on the General page of the &kplayer; Configuration dialog gives the maximum number of files, folders and streams the Recent section can hold. When a new entry is added and the total number of entries exceeds this number, the bottom entry is removed from the list. The Maximum entries on Play Recent menu option on the same page of the global settings gives the maximum number of commands the Play Recent submenus can have. When a new entry is added and the total number of entries exceeds this number, the last entry is removed from the menus. This section stores the playlists you create and lets you add new playlists and change or remove the existing ones. You can also add new playlists by selecting files, folders or streams elsewhere in the multimedia library, right clicking the selection and choosing Add toNew Playlist... from the popup menu. Right clicking a folder and choosing Add toPlaylists will also add the folder to the list of playlists. Play List submenu on the File menu and Add to submenu on the Library menu as well as their equivalents on popup menus each have a list of commands to either play a playlist or add new content to it. Each playlist in this section has its own command on each of those menus. When you add, remove or rename a playlist, the menus are updated to reflect the changes. The Maximum entries on playlist menus option on the General page of the &kplayer; Configuration dialog gives the maximum number of playlists that will be included on the submenus that work on playlists. This section lists the disk and tuner devices available on your system as well as the CD tracks and DVD titles found on the disks you insert into the disk devices and the channels available on the tuner devices. &kplayer; puts any devices it finds on this list, and you can add new devices or remove existing ones. The File menu and some of the right click popup menus have submenus that let you easily access and play multimedia available on these devices. Each device from this section has its own submenu. When you add, remove or rename a device, the menus are updated to reflect the changes. When &kplayer; finds titles on a DVD disk or tracks on a CD disk, it updates the corresponding menu to include commands to play the individual titles or tracks. &kplayer; looks for titles and tracks when you insert a disk into a drive or when you select Play Disk or Load Disk command for a disk device that does not yet have any titles or tracks listed. Similarly, when you change the channel list for a tuner device, &kplayer; updates the corresponding menu to include commands to play each of the available channels. The option to change the channel list is on the General page of the device properties dialog that you can open by selecting the device in the multimedia library and choosing the Properties... command from the Library menu or the right click popup menu. To add a new device, select the Devices node and choose Add Device... command from the Library menu or the right click popup menu. This will bring up a dialog box as shown below. Add device dialog Enter a unique descriptive name for the device into the Name field and the path to the device node under the /dev directory into the Path field. Select the device type from the Type drop down box. For a tuner device you will need to choose a channel list, and for TV device also an input driver. Click the OK button to add the device to the multimedia library and to the File menu and various popup menus. There are many more device specific options that you can see and change in the device properties dialog. To open it, select the device in the multimedia library and choose the Properties... command from the Library menu or the right click popup menu. For more information on disk and tuner device support in &kplayer; see the Devices micro-HOWTO. There are several ways you can customize the list view where the library shows the multimedia found in the folder you select from the tree view. The Columns submenu of the Library menu and the library popup menu allows you to choose what columns to show in the list view. Each available column has a command on this submenu that either shows or hides that column. What columns are available depends on the folder selected in the tree view and on its contents. To change the order of columns in the list view, click and drag a column header with the &LMB;. However, the Name always has to be the first column. To change the width of a column, click and drag the divider on the right side of the column header. To change the sorting order of items in the list view, left click the header of the column you want to sort by. To sort in the reverse order, click the same header again. The new sorting order will apply to all folders in the multimedia library, except for playlist folders with a custom order of items. To change the shortcut key arrangements used by &kplayer; select SettingsConfigure Shortcuts.... This will open a dialog box as shown below. Shortcut configuration dialog If you change the key bindings, make sure not to duplicate an existing shortcut and also not to use the &Shift; key for your new shortcuts, because the &Shift; key has a special function in &kplayer;. Search through the list to find the action for which you want to add or change the shortcut keys and select it by left clicking the name. You will then be able to change the shortcut by selecting the None, Default or Custom radio button or by clicking the large button in the Shortcut for Selected Action area. The Define Shortcut dialog box will then open. Define Shortcut dialog Choose whether you want to change the Primary or Alternate shortcut, then press the key or key combination you want to act as the shortcut. If the Auto-Close box is checked, the dialog will vanish as soon as you enter the key combination, else it will remain until you press OK or Cancel. Clicking the little black icon with a white cross in it clears the shortcut. You can add your own pop up menu to &kplayer;, so that pressing one key combination will make the menu appear, then pressing a second key, or using the Up arrow and Down arrow keys and pressing Enter, will select an item from it. To do this add a Custom shortcut for each of the actions you want to appear in the menu and in the Define Shortcut dialog check the Multi-Key box, press the key combination that you want to bring up your new menu, then, separately, press the key that will choose that item from the menu. The toolbar popup menu has several options to change the toolbar appearance. To display this menu, right click the toolbar for which you want to change the options. The Orientation submenu contains options to place the toolbar at the Top, Bottom, Left or Right side of the &kplayer; window. You can also click and drag the toolbar by the handle on its left border with the &LMB; to move it to a new position. The Floating option displays the toolbar on top of other parts of &kplayer; window. The Flat option makes the toolbar show as small lines that you need to left click to expand the toolbar. The Text Position submenu allows you to display a description of each icon on the toolbar either underneath or alongside the icon, or display only the description instead of the icon. By default only the icon is displayed without the description. The Icon Size submenu allows you to choose the size of the icons on the toolbar. The choices are Default, Small, Medium, Large and Huge. To configure &kplayer;'s toolbars, select Configure Toolbars... from the Settings menu or from the toolbar popup menu. This will open a dialog box as shown below. Toolbar configuration dialog The drop down list box at the top of this dialog shows the name of the selected toolbar and lets you switch to another toolbar. The Current actions list box shows the actions included on the currently selected toolbar, and the Available actions list box shows all the other actions that exist in &kplayer;. The buttons in the middle part of the dialog let you include or exclude actions from the selected toolbar and change the order of buttons and other elements on the toolbar. The right arrow button puts the action selected in the Available actions box on the toolbar, and the left arrow button takes the action selected in the Current actions box off the toolbar. The up and down arrow buttons move the action selected in the Current actions box back and forward within the toolbar respectively. To be included on a toolbar, an action needs an icon that will be shown on the toolbar if the action is shown as a button. Some actions already have icons, but for others you need to choose one. The Change Icon... button opens a dialog box that allows you to choose an icon for the selected action. Change icon dialog When the System icons option is selected, the drop down box on the right lets you select a category of system icons to choose an icon from. By default the Actions category is selected that shows the action icons in your system icon theme. If you have icons other than the system icon theme that you want to choose from, select the Other icons option and click the Browse button to open the standard dialog to find the directory where your icons are stored. The Search box lets you filter the icons by name. &kde; is known as the most flexible and configurable desktop environment, and &kplayer; is no exception. In addition to the configuration options described in previous sections, there are many more options, most of which are accessible through the &kplayer; configuration dialog. Select Settings Configure &kplayer;... to open it. The dialog is divided into several sections. Some of them affect &kplayer; behavior, including general options. The Controls section tells &kplayer; which changes it should remember globally and which ones it should store in individual file properties, and its subsections allow you to fine tune individual &kplayer; controls, including progress, volume, contrast, brightness, hue, saturation, and slider controls in general. Other sections affect options that &kplayer; uses for interaction with &mplayer; and control various aspect of multimedia playback, including video, audio, subtitles and advanced options. The Configuration dialog chapter gives complete details on each section and all the available options. Also the Advanced configuration micro-HOWTO describes some of the more advanced options in more detail. Some additional options that apply to the main &kplayer; window are available from the title bar popup menu that you can get by right clicking the title bar or left clicking the little button in the top left corner of &kplayer; window or by pressing &Alt;F3. &kplayer; has a unique feature that lets you choose many different options on per-file basis. These options are called File Properties and are stored along with the URL of each individual file or network location. There are two ways to set a file property. The easiest one is by holding down the &Shift; key when changing a setting like video size or aspect, sound volume, video contrast or brightness, etc. &kplayer; will apply the change to the currently loaded file and remember it in the corresponding file property. When it loads another file, it will revert the setting back to where it was before the change (unless the other file also has the same property set). When you load and play that first file again, &kplayer; will again apply the change you made to the setting and keep it until you load another file or URL. The other way to set a file property is through the File Properties dialog. The properties in the dialog are arranged according to their function. General properties like Name, Length and others are in the General section. Properties that control the video size are in the Size section. Other sections contain properties that affect &kplayer; interaction with &mplayer; and control multimedia playback, including video, audio, subtitles and advanced properties. Select File Properties... to open the properties of the current file or URL. You can also right click an item in the multimedia library and select the Properties... command to open the properties dialog for that item. The File properties dialog chapter gives complete details on each section and all the available properties. Also the File properties micro-HOWTO describes this feature in more detail and gives some examples.