How can I display .xed files in Linux?

Using Microsoft Kinect SDK 1.x, it is possible to record RGB-D video with Kinect Studio, and save those recordings in .xed files.

Is there a way to open and view those recordings in a Linux-based distribution, such as Ubuntu?

Answer

XED files are based on a proprietary format, and up to my knowledge there are no “players” for this format, except Kinect Studio.

So the only possibility to display XED files in Linux is to install Kinect Studio… on Linux.

This is possible by using Wine, which allows to execute Windows application on Linux. Here is how to install Wine and configure it to execute Kinect Studio on a Linux distro (I have tested this on Ubuntu MATE 15.10, but it should work similarly in other distros).

Get Kinect Studio

Kinect Studio is part of Microsoft Kinect Developer Toolkit, but we do not need to install all the toolkit on Linux. Indeed after installing it on Windows, we can get just the Kinect Studio files, and copy them to Linux.

So first of all we should download and install Microsoft Kinect Developer Toolkit 1.8 from here (which requires to preventively install Microsoft Kinect SDK 1.8), and execute the installer. Then, we will find the Kinect Studio .dll and .exe files in C:Program FilesMicrosoft SDKsKinectDeveloper Toolkit v1.8.0ToolsKinectStudio. Those files are:

• KinectStudio.exe
• KinectStudioConnector32.dll
• KinectStudioConnector64.dll
• KinectStudioNative.dll

We should copy those files to our Linux distro.

This is the only thing we have to do on Windows. Now we can switch on Linux.

Installing Wine

On Linux, we need to install Wine from the WineHQ repository (and NOT from our distribution repository). The following instructions are for Ubuntu, but installation on other distros is well documented in this page.

1. If our system is 64bit, we must enable 32 bit architecture:

   sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386
   

2. Add the WineHQ repository:

   sudo add-apt-repository ppa:wine/wine-builds
   

3. Update packages:

   sudo apt-get update
   

4. Then install wine and winetricks:

   sudo apt-get install --install-recommends winehq-staging && sudo apt-get install winetricks
   

To the present, this will install Wine 1.9.2 (Staging):

$ wine --version
wine-1.9.2 (Staging)

After the installation, BEFORE EXECUTING WINE, we must add a global environmental viariable:

export WINEARCH=win32

If, by mistake, you execute wine or winetricks before the above command, you should delete the .wine folder (which is in your home folder), and then execute the above command.

Installing .NET packages with winetricks

Now, we must install some .NET packages via winetricks, an extremely useful tool to install and configure libraries, DLLs and more for the correct execution of Windows applications on Wine.

Because we have already installed winetricks (which is usually available in the distro repository), we can proceed as follows:

1. winetricks msxml3

   While installing this package, it is possible that the script asks you to download a file, copy it on a folder and re-execute the script. We MUST follow these instructions before continuing with the next step.

2. winetricks dotnet45

   This will automatically install .NET Framework, starting from version 2.0 up until 4.5. You should carefully follow all the installation steps, and complete them to have everything working fine.

Executing Kinect Studio

Now, after having copied all the Kinect Studio files in a single folder (for instance /home/myname/Kinect Studio), let’s open a terminal and execute the following:

wine '/home/myname/Kinect Studio/KinectStudio.exe'

And we will see Kinect Studio on our Linux desktop, ready to open any .xed file we need to visualize.