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Once again, for a Linux player that can handle this Quicktime Sorensen file, look no further than the superlative mplayer. It has had the capability to play quicktime movie trailers for a while now, but I figure some people still haven't heard. Just make sure you have version 0.90 rc1 or better, because that's when they reverse-engineered the windows quicktime codecs.

So write up an FAQ. Tell us:

1) What WMs work with what video programs.
2) What libraries are required.
3) What version of gcc you used *G*
4) What flags are set, where to set them, and what's "right" for a wide range of systems, say, a few nVIDIA and ATI systems on AMD and Intel chips, and/or any specific motherboard-related issues.
5) All the other variables I've overlooked, but that you didn't, that make the difference between "It Works" and "It Doesn't".

One working example.

First, install Debian. Use this in your /etc/apt/sources/list
deb http://marillat.free.fr/ unstable main

To install, run
apt-get install mplayer-686
apt-get install ffmpeg

Also, grab the extra binary codecs from the Mplayer site and throw them in /usr/lib/win32

That site is here

To play a vid, download it first. IF you get a stupid quicktime page thingy, load the page source, use "wget" to grab the vid, and play it.

If you get a windows streaming site, use mplayer -dumpstream to dump the stream to an ASF file on disk, and then play it. I usually use the options -vo xv and -xy 2 (or 3) to enlarge, and ensure usage of the XVideo extension.

So much for playing vids. To record digital vids, do the following

1) grab a cheap Firewire card. If you pay more than $20 you paid too much.

2) Build Firewire options into kernel and load the modules (or reboot if you build them in)

3) Use kino to grab digital video. Again, from Debian, apt-get install kino. Edit in kino, export to a type 2 AVI file.

4) Use ffmpeg to make a divx file. I like to use these options
-f avi
-vcodec mpeg4
-s 360x240
-b 200
-g 300
-bf 2
-acodec mp3
-ab 128

If you have a lot of motion consider also using -4mv and -me FULL. If you have an IDE drive make sure dma transfer is enabled.

Again, just one working example.

There's a WiMP skin for MPlayer. Scroll down this page.

You can find this on MPlayer's HQ. The story is taken from the MPlayer HQ's frontpage.

X-Box media player infringing GPL - 2002.10.04

Some win32 guys made a media player for Micro$oft's well-known "console", the X-box. Unfortunately they used FFMPEG and XVID sources in their closed-source product, and failed to make their sources - and changes to the used GPL codebase - available either in public, or by request - as the GPL license forces them to do so. They can't be contacted because they don't publish their E-Mail addresses due to an expectable threat from M$, or whatever their reasons are.

This violates GPL.

As we currently cannot move against them (not that we want to do so, in the first place), we can only warn the open-source community to STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF PIRATED SOFTWARE!

It's a pity that so much people don't give a shit about the tireless work of FFMPEG/XVID creators.

2 of the best Killer apps for the X-Box I've heard of are the DivX player and the PVR.

Yeah! And that killer app Mediaplayer is a MPLAYER + some other open source projects rip off! Read more about on MPlayer's HQ site. There's talk about it somewhere on the frontpage. Xbox mediaplayer people shamelessly denied using open source code and DID NOT GIVE ANY CREDIT to whom it belongs. They were also violating GPL by not providing the source code.

Apt-get makes dependencies a thing of the past.

That's something I've never fully understood. Why are dependencies so farking hard to observe? I mean to a fresh newbie or someone who just doesn't have the time or interest in it, sure, but I've found apt to be more of a pain in the ass than anything else.

Disclaimer: I've been using Slackware since shortly after it first came out. I believe my first install of Linux was with the 0.99.x kernels, but it may have been the early 1.x.x kernels, I really can't remember.

Slackware's biggest bonus (and fault) has been that it lets you do as you please with packages. It'll let you install a package without having its dependencies installed. You run the app, and you get an error. Usually something along the lines of a library missing.

Now this isn't what I'd want a newbie to see or do, but for someone who's familliar with the system you run ldd on the binary and find out what's missing and install it. No big deal.

Especially now that CheckInstall is around, I have absolutely no issue with Slackware -- -current has logrotate which was sorely missing from the distro, but Checkinstall's the best. Create Slackware, Debian or RPM packages with a touch of the keyboard. Parallel installs, links, everything's supported.

Back to Slackware's packaging. What I disliked about Debian or RPM was that if the package didn't exist you had to go hunt around trying to find it and hope someone else made it, or else make it yourself, perhaps using Checkinstall. Unfortunately both RPM and DEB have heavier requirements -- dependency trees, documentation in the right spot, patches to make it fit within their particular file structure... you either use Checkinstall to make the package poorly (but validly), or you set out on a mission and end up being the maintainer of every package you make. Slackware doesn't care, which is great for me.

Sure Debian's got 10k packages, but it seems that everything I need isn't there, isn't complete, or is old, even in the unstable tree. FreeS/WAN with NAT-traversal and SA-disconnect, GNU-Radiusd, Psi, mplayer... that's just off the top of my head. If I don't install via packages (this goes for Perl modules from CPAN, too!) I now have TWO package managers to take care of -- the one in my head and the one in the distro. For me, Slackware compliments the one in my head (or vice-versa).

Anyway enough ranting -- I just don't understand how for anyone who's been using linux for any amount of time cares about dependencies. Even with upgrades.

Any good person please tell us, bad Linuxers, what is going on on those clips?

Why don't you download a media player and find out for yourself?

It is ported to windows. It compiles in cygwin just fine. Heres two pics.

It is ported to windows. It compiles in cygwin just fine. Heres two pics.

All mplayer does is load the decoder from the Real software you would already have had to download from Real. I don't see that this is "supporting" Real at all, nor do I see how it allows you to avoid installing RealPlayer.

Yes you do, you're just too stupid to realize it. You need the libraries from RealPlayer to use mplayer to play your .rm files--how about about RTFM'ing before posting next time?

By the way, the asshole tone of this post is a tongue-in-cheek imitation of the user-hostile attitude of the mplayer developers.

Just as well we don't need to use realplayer any more for "realmedia" content.

This may be OT for this discussion, and it may be completely anti-EULA altogether, but is anyone else here aware that mplayer has had Real support for some time now in the 0.90 series? It works pretty good for me and you can even use the included mencoder program to convert realvideo into any number of less annoying formats.

Tell me, have you stopped by the mplayer site recently?

You might notice that mplayer supports just about every major codec, as well as DVD playback. Embedding mplayer in a browser would take as long as writing a plugger config file.

I have trouble with the whole "at least 4 times faster" guff, but then, my lecturer at university had trouble with me completing a year's assignments in a couple of weeks. Just because you can't see a way to do something, don't be so arrogant as to assume that everyone else is the same.

I should point out that the judging for the Young Scientist of the Year is pretty rigorous. I would be surprised to find that these claims are entirely without merit if he has won the prize. Assuming, that is, that the journalist involved hasn't just made everything up.

To those that are using the lack of results on the Irish Patent Office database search as evidence that you're right, and this is a steaming pile: did you even read the page you were searching? Really? Allow me to quote:

780kloc isn't that difficult either, espcially if you start counting libraries, headers, etc. Sure, maybe all this kid has done is link together a few common components and create something new out of the combination. So, are you going to wait and find out what it is and come up with something better? Or are you going to trash somebody based on a half-page article because you were too lazy to come up with an idea of your own?

Mplayer playes quicktime:

http://www.MPlayerHQ.hu

I am just watching the movie under Linux.

Unless you're using Hurd or Windows 3.1, there's almost definately both Quickime and Windows Media for your platform. Stop whining.

Mencoder is not a codec. It uses other codecs.

You mean something like Mencoder?

Here is the list of codecs their website has listed:

# The most important video codecs: MPEG1 (VCD) and MPEG2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video
# MPEG4, DivX ;-), OpenDivX (DivX4), DivX 5.02, XviD and other MPEG4 variants
# Windows Media Video v7 (WMV1), v8 (WMV2) and v9 (WMV3) used in .wmv files
# RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2), 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9)
# Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other common QuickTime codecs
# Intel Indeo codecs (3.x,4.1,5.0)
# VIVO v1, v2
# MJPEG variants, HuffYUV, ZLIB/MSZH, ASV2 and other capture/hardware formats
# FLI, RoQ and other old/rare animation formats

# The most important audio codecs: MPEG layer 1, 2 and 3 (MP3) audio
# AC3/A52 (dolby digital) audio (software or SP/DIF)
# WMA (DivX Audio) v1, v2 (native codec)
# WMA 9 (WMAv3), Voxware audio, ACELP.net etc (using x86 DLLs)
# RealAudio: COOK, SIPRO, ATRAC3, DNET (using RP's plugins)
# QuickTime: Qclp, Q-Design QDMC/QDM2, MACE 3/6 (using QT's DLLs)
# Ogg Vorbis audio codec
# VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren) using x86 DLL
# alaw/ulaw, (ms)gsm, pcm, *adpcm and other simple old audio formats

Now...why would you want to run WMP9 when it doesn't support any where near that many codecs? Oh...you want more you say? What about these output options:
# General: x11:X11 with SHM extension
# xv:X11 using overlays with the Xvideo extension (hardware YUV & scaling)
# gl:OpenGL renderer
# gl2:Alternative OpenGL renderer (with multiple textures)
# dga:X11 DGA extension (both v1.0 and v2.0)
# fbdev:Output to general framebuffers
# svga:Output to SVGAlib
# sdl:SDL >= v1.1.7 driver (supports software scaling, and versions >=1.1.8 even support Xvideo, thus hardware rendering)
# ggi:similar to SDL
# aalib:Textmode rendering
# vesa:display through the VESA BIOS (also needed for Radeon TV-out)
# directfb:DirectFB support

# Card specific: vidix:VIDeo Interface for *niX
# xvidix:VIDIX in X window
# mga:Matrox G200/G400 hardware YUV overlay via the mga_vid device
# xmga:Matrox G200/G400 overlay (mga_vid) in X11 window (Xv emulation on X 3.3.x !)
# syncfb:Matrox G400 YUV support on framebuffer (not tested, maybe broken)
# 3dfx:Voodoo 3/Banshee hardware YUV support (/dev/3dfx) (not yet tested, maybe broken)
# tdfxfb:Voodoo 3/Banshee hardware YUV support on tdfx framebuffer (works!)

# Special: png:PNG files output (use -z switch to set compression)
# jpeg:JPEG files output
# gif89a:Animated GIF files output
# yuv4mpeg:yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools
# pgm:PGM files output (for testing purposes)
# md5:MD5sum output (for mpeg conformance tests)
# null:Null output (for speed tests/benchmarking)

I love Mplayer...it loves you...why use something from MS when you don't have to? ...goes off to watch more Quicktimes of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker...

Beacuse of mplayer I will never even try WMP9 if it gets ported to Linux. Its just trouble. Plus, mplayer can play real, quicktime, divx, etc etc... I'm sure wmp can play some of these.. but I know it can't play all the stuff mplayer can :-)

Maybe because it's a nasty, semi-legal hack using MS/Apple binaries.

You forgot to add "that works extremely well". I think it's better than WMP. It's much much much more stable (in my experience, can't speak for everyone) and supports about as many formats (more?).

I will not install proprietary binaries on my computer.

Then no soup for you!

So I assume you're talking about the codecs, anyway. Well guess what, if you don't like the fact that mplayer uses binary non-opensource codecs, then write your own. mplayer itself is opensource and they don't need to re-write every fucking codec themselves. Why don't you volunteer your support?

And if your'e not talking about the codecs, then check this (from the mplayer website): MPlayer is GPL now. In the past it contained non-GPL code from the OpenDivX project, which did not allow binary redistribution. This has been removed.

Anyway, I hope you're not thinking that MS would release WMP opensource, cause... umm...

But I'm flying with GStreamer atm and couldnt be happier. Also Xine and MPlayer are top quality too. Especially when used on conjunction with interfaces like Totem, I really couldnt ask for much more! DVD playback is also coming on strong!

Off the top of my head I cant think of anything (apart from DRM) that WMPlayer can do that any of the above can't do anyway? [conspiracy]Maybe that's the point.. this is a cunning plan to get DRM onto Linux :)[/conspiracy] Anyway, by the time it's available the other Linux media players will have either caught up or be better I expect.

2003 will be the year for linux \o/

Microsoft not required.

MPLAYER
This project has managed to become imho the best media player on any platform. Having been exposed to windows media players such as realone and divx recently , I can appreciate these guys' effort even more. MOZILLA - (the framework)
Mozilla is simply amazing, I finally got bitten b y the XUL bug and have been losing much sleep to playing with this incredibly usefull tech. I am now contemplating forcing mozilla down the throats of my clients for intranet web based apps. =) PHOENIX - (the browser)
An absolute GODSEND, and very late entry into this year's favorites =) Yet more proof that xul rocks. And there's prolly more I am forgetting.. but these stand out =)

If you look at the page source, you'll see this tag:
embed src="atlminke10x.mov" width="80" height="20" type="video/quicktime" controller="true" autoplay="false"
I used wget to fetch http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/sound01 /background/seasounds/media/atlminke10x.mov and it played just fine in mplayer. I used the PCM writer plugin and Notlame to make an mp3 of it (please mirror!!!!!!)

We here on /. are to pathetic to have anything to do on saturday night.

Seriously though, I would never trust any "merger of my pc and entertainment center" such as the "HP Media Center PC." Just throw a video capture card (the Haupauge PCI TV card works fine w/ v4l) into a Linux box. It is neither difficult nor complicated. It seems like my server does nothing but host some websites and show TV. I recommend mplayer in spite of it playing Stargate in French occasionally.

Didn't you know that you can have Quicktime in Linux? ..Windows media too. It's called MPlayer and it can be reached here!
----

Incredibly off-topic, bot:

just have your cake and eat it

mplayer plays quicktime( even sorensen ), wma, mpeg4, realaudio, just about everything I've tried.. (Fink support missing) Fullscreen, scaled, whatever you wish. And no annoying startcenters, spyware, "register this", "buy the pro version", DRM or any other shit realplayer/quicktime/ms media player player try to stuff in our throat.

Still missing the fink support...

(windows-centric because IIRC there is no Linux QT player):

For those of you like me that are on linux and want to see this, here are some tips:

1) The latest version of mplayer does play all QT, including this one. The needed codecs are here along with a short how to.

2) The standard view-source and play whatever it lists doesn't work. All trailer's on apples website are now redirects. Add an "m" before the size for the real movie (t3_tlr_480.mov becomes t3_tlr_m480.mov).

3) mplayer http://... usually doesn't work (sits there at 0% cache). Just wget it.

4) Here's a direct link to the large trailer.

5) While I'm at it, here's a link to the large X2 (X-Men 2) trailer.

For those of you like me that are on linux and want to see this, here are some tips:

1) The latest version of mplayer does play all QT, including this one. The needed codecs are here along with a short how to.

2) The standard view-source and play whatever it lists doesn't work. All trailer's on apples website are now redirects. Add an "m" before the size for the real movie (t3_tlr_480.mov becomes t3_tlr_m480.mov).

3) mplayer http://... usually doesn't work (sits there at 0% cache). Just wget it.

4) Here's a direct link to the large trailer.

5) While I'm at it, here's a link to the large X2 (X-Men 2) trailer.

For those of you like me that are on linux and want to see this, here are some tips:

1) The latest version of mplayer does play all QT, including this one. The needed codecs are here along with a short how to.

2) The standard view-source and play whatever it lists doesn't work. All trailer's on apples website are now redirects. Add an "m" before the size for the real movie (t3_tlr_480.mov becomes t3_tlr_m480.mov).

3) mplayer http://... usually doesn't work (sits there at 0% cache). Just wget it.

4) Here's a direct link to the large trailer.

5) While I'm at it, here's a link to the large X2 (X-Men 2) trailer.

I thought the intent of his question was pretty obvious. He's noticed that readily-available media offerings aren't generally high-quality, but that there is a fair amount of good stuff floating around that's relatively freely available, and though he isn't sure what's involved yet, he'd like to put his metaphorical money where his proverbial mouth is and try to contribute to this pool of good watchable material.

In other words, "While there seem to be fewer and fewer worthwhile shows in the mainstream media (such as the unnamed show that has been canceled, and I think most slashdotters can guess what the likely quality of its replacement show will be) there seems to be a growing pool of good free material online, and I'd like to contribute. Has anyone here been involved in this? What do I need to know to participate?"

Yes, it IS a very general question, which contains a lot of smaller questions within it, but this is Slashdot, not rec.arts.video.online.bandwidth-questions or some similarly specific tech support forum. I think what the poster was hoping for is some discussion of all of the aspects so that he'll be able to formulate more specific questions and take them to more focussed forums. Besides - general or not, someone interested in improving the quality of available entertainment ought to be encouraged regardless of how much they already know about the subject, not told to go away until they already know most of what they need to do...

(I didn't at all get any sense that he wanted to continue the cancelled show, just that the cancelling of what he considered to be a good show was an indicator of the decline of "mainstream media" quality, which I think most of us can sympathise with.)

So, yes, all of the above, and more. Seems a perfectly valid and potentially informative topic for discussion here. A few of us occasionally read the more general "ask slashdot" discussions for general education ourselves...

So...to contribute what little I can:

Firstly, decent writing and acting (even for animation - hey, somebody has to do the voices) is the key to watchable material. This is probably already obvious to the person asking the question (as well as everyone else here) but it should be said.

As to the "internet distribution" portion of the question, one might contact the The Internet Archive and the folks at Creative Commons about hosting and licensing, if one's willing to release the material freely.

At this point I'll also throw in a nod to one of my "pet causes" - Ogg Theora which, if they get a bit more visible on the development of it (likely to happen in March, when the format freeze is supposedly scheduled, though the second Alpha release is due Real Soon Now. At the moment, though, development appears to be a "Monty Only" project that shows up as infrequent "chunks" of updates in CVS when official releases come out. At least news is starting to show up on the mailing list...) will supply a very nice no-license-hassle format for distribution.

Transforming the recordings to a wide variety of internet-ready formats can be done with MPlayer/MEncoder in combination with a few other tools (ffmpeg, mjpegtools, the aforementioned Ogg Theora), not to mention using mjpegtools' encoders to convert video dumped from MPlayer to VCD or SVCD format for viewing on standalone players.

Someone else will have to comment on technical issues of camera and recording media types most suitable for generating internet-ready material. In MY opinion, if one handles the rest of the matter well, it's probably possible to produce perfectly adequate "good amateur quality" internet videos with ordinary off-the-shelf video cameras and a halfway-decent digitizing card. Last time I attempted video capture it was from a VHS tape, with a BT878-based card and "streamer" from Xawtv to store as a relatively high quality mjpeg/pcm quicktime file [to allow > 2GB files] then dumped to mjpegtools to generate SVCDs.

Any other topics in this broad discussion I've missed?...

mplayer also handles Quicktime, though you may have to recompile your kernel.

(Note: these are in Quicktime)

Have no fear, MPlayer plays them without problem.

For a Linux player that can play these Sorensen files (finally), along with practically every other movie file format in existence, head here:

MPlayer

Like someone mentioned earlier on this thread - Linux version of Real Player is completely trouble free. No ads, no popups, no messing with file extensions...

Unfortunately I don't know anything else that plays realmedia and rm seems to be pretty common on the web.

Well, I do. MPlayer can play any modern mediaformat you can possibly find on this planet. It is also the most fastest and feature rich player there is.

From MPlayer HQ We've began preparations for the real release: this pre-release is the RC1. There are quite some features about it which make it the player supporting all modern codecs of the world today. No other player can boast with support for all of RealAudio/Video 9, Windows Media Audio/Video 9, Quicktime Sorenson 3, QDesign Music Audio. This is a peak improvement, and I'm not talking PR now. I'm watching TV with MPlayer even now. I could do so even on my EGA or Hercules display. Quite touching isn't it.

mplayer is the answer to all video-related problems.

I find it a way more interesting to realize that the _FABULOUS_ MPlayer hackers have released MPlayer 0.90 RC1 and guess what - ALL CODECS ON THE PLANET ARE SUPPORTED! Way to go! You guys are the best!

Just out of curiosity: I am located in the United States, and use mplayer to watch encrypted DVD's on my Linux PC. Am I breaking the law (DMCA)? I'm sure that nobody has been prosecuted for it, but has the [il]legality of this actually been "officially" established? Can anyone cite a source?

and this will finally allow me to kill my Wife's Win 2k partition. She likes to watch Korean broadcasts on line. In any case if you are using Debian see this

To create (S)VCD cue/bins from MPEG files , you can use vcdimager. Keep in mind that (S)VCD only accept certain resolutions and bitrates, not just any MPEG file can be used to create a video CD.

There's a cygwin port of MPlayer, but I haven't tested it. If you're a Windows developer, go to www.mlayerhq.hu and help them.

you haven't tried mplayer, have you? it greatly outperforms windows media player. i don't know however if the windows version is that good as well...

I can't see Linux playing DVDs well (a la WinDVD)

And why not? Xine is about to hit v1.0 (and now includes the dvdnav plugin in the mainline source - all you need is libdvdcss dropped in, and you even get DVD menus!), Mplayer is loved by many, and vlc works well too, from what I've heard. And hey, for games on Linux, there's always WineX - yeah, it doesn't work for every game, but a lot of them do work.

Why because Real Player dosen't spy on you?

Mencoder is part of the Movie Player for Linux project.

For some reason the last link didn't show... oh, I see it, no quote. Ooops. Preview those links folks!

just point mplayer at the thing and stop moaning.

Sound cards
Support media file formats