That's supposed to say "Where to read about multimedia playback programming?"

What I'd like to find out about are the libraries, tools, etc. that are available and used/recommended for developing programs to run on Linux (I've got no preference on "distro", so I'm open to recommendations and suggestions about that, too)

I'm looking to run almost anything, where possible - video (AVI, WMV, MPEG1, MPEG2, whatever), audio, Flash (SWF), Quicktime, and whatever else is around. I've done some fooling with DSPack in Delphi on Windows, and used ActiveX controls to play Quicktimes and Flash.

What I'd like to get an idea about is whether making something work under Linux makes sense. I'm not even really particular about language to use - I can use Pascal, but if something else makes sense, I can pick that up. I was looking for a time at Java and/or the MONO project as being potential targets for making somethiing that could run on Windows AND Linux -- that would be interesting to try.

I realize that there are lots of programs that play all these formats. I'm not interested in watching stuff - I want to write the thing that plays the file back.

Thanks for any input...