Slashdot Mirror

I don't seem to be having a problem with the site myself, but there are a few mirrors of the page already.
Main
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I don't seem to be having a problem with the site myself, but there are a few mirrors of the page already.
Main
2
Switzerland
Finland

I don't seem to be having a problem with the site myself, but there are a few mirrors of the page already.
Main
2
Switzerland
Finland

Mplayer works good as well. Try 1.0pre3 since the previous one I had audio but no video. It can even stream them as well if you run mplayer mms://<url>

MPlayer devs get ulcers whenever precompiled packages are mentioned, and for good reason: Not only do such packages make it impossible for the user to take advantage of compile-time optimisations to the user's system, they also are almost invariably crippled due to the patent encumbrances of various encoding formats.

You don't mention what specific codec the files use (how boringly typical!), but I'll guess you mean WMV9. I've found that the WMV9 decoder that MPlayer uses by default, 'wmv9dmo', is severely shaky on my particular system (don't blame the MPlayer devs, blame MS for screwing around with the encoding format yet again; can't they just accept that H.26[34] has them whipped?). You may have better luck with the alternate WMV9 decoder by specifying '-vc wmvdmo' in the command line for those particular files. If this helps, you can make the change permanent by finding codecs.conf and changing wmv9dmo's status line to 'status crashing' and (if necessary) wmvdmo's status line to 'status working'.

If it doesn't help, then get a CVS snapshot and the necessary codecs, compile, give it a spin, and if you still have trouble then for God's sake please please please please PLEASE RTFM. They will roast you alive if you submit a report to them that's as useless as the one you posted here.

P.S.: If anyone's about to reply saying "You see, that's the way (MPlayer|Linux|Free Software|etc.) always is, you can't just click on the icon, you have to actually use your brain, whine whine!", will they please go stand in traffic? The gene pool has no need of such willful ignorance.

MPlayer devs get ulcers whenever precompiled packages are mentioned, and for good reason: Not only do such packages make it impossible for the user to take advantage of compile-time optimisations to the user's system, they also are almost invariably crippled due to the patent encumbrances of various encoding formats.

You don't mention what specific codec the files use (how boringly typical!), but I'll guess you mean WMV9. I've found that the WMV9 decoder that MPlayer uses by default, 'wmv9dmo', is severely shaky on my particular system (don't blame the MPlayer devs, blame MS for screwing around with the encoding format yet again; can't they just accept that H.26[34] has them whipped?). You may have better luck with the alternate WMV9 decoder by specifying '-vc wmvdmo' in the command line for those particular files. If this helps, you can make the change permanent by finding codecs.conf and changing wmv9dmo's status line to 'status crashing' and (if necessary) wmvdmo's status line to 'status working'.

If it doesn't help, then get a CVS snapshot and the necessary codecs, compile, give it a spin, and if you still have trouble then for God's sake please please please please PLEASE RTFM. They will roast you alive if you submit a report to them that's as useless as the one you posted here.

P.S.: If anyone's about to reply saying "You see, that's the way (MPlayer|Linux|Free Software|etc.) always is, you can't just click on the icon, you have to actually use your brain, whine whine!", will they please go stand in traffic? The gene pool has no need of such willful ignorance.

MPlayer devs get ulcers whenever precompiled packages are mentioned, and for good reason: Not only do such packages make it impossible for the user to take advantage of compile-time optimisations to the user's system, they also are almost invariably crippled due to the patent encumbrances of various encoding formats.

You don't mention what specific codec the files use (how boringly typical!), but I'll guess you mean WMV9. I've found that the WMV9 decoder that MPlayer uses by default, 'wmv9dmo', is severely shaky on my particular system (don't blame the MPlayer devs, blame MS for screwing around with the encoding format yet again; can't they just accept that H.26[34] has them whipped?). You may have better luck with the alternate WMV9 decoder by specifying '-vc wmvdmo' in the command line for those particular files. If this helps, you can make the change permanent by finding codecs.conf and changing wmv9dmo's status line to 'status crashing' and (if necessary) wmvdmo's status line to 'status working'.

If it doesn't help, then get a CVS snapshot and the necessary codecs, compile, give it a spin, and if you still have trouble then for God's sake please please please please PLEASE RTFM. They will roast you alive if you submit a report to them that's as useless as the one you posted here.

P.S.: If anyone's about to reply saying "You see, that's the way (MPlayer|Linux|Free Software|etc.) always is, you can't just click on the icon, you have to actually use your brain, whine whine!", will they please go stand in traffic? The gene pool has no need of such willful ignorance.

MPlayer

More foolishness from FAQ2:

Q: #1+2=~17: iuefg hehpfeh feu xhfaohefh hsoiae e mplaykhder????
A: mplayer is only supported up to 3 promille of blodalcohol.
A2: umount /dev/vodka && eject /dev/stomach
A3: kjafh mplayeeer bol?!!
A4: Gone fishing.
A5: where's the toilet paper?

--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu

Q #132: I can't see any picture, only hear the sound
A: you are blind

Q: #133: I have configured and compiled mplayer, how do I use it?
A: try sticking it up your ass.

Thanks for the tip. I'd read about unpleasant dealings with the MPlayer group, but didn't realize how obnoxious they really were. That was an eye-opener.

First, make sure you have MPlayer installed and then go to the Mplayer site and download all the win32 codecs. Extract all the codecs to /usr/lib/win32. Now MPlayer, Xine and Totem can play just about any audio/video file you throw at it.

Go to Walmart's Music Sample page and download the test wma file named 829757140926_01_02.wma.

From your favorite terminal, type this command:

mplayer-ao pcm 829757140926_01_02.wma

Encode with oggenc:

oggenc -q 6 audiodump.wav audiodump.ogg

lame -b 160 -h audiodump.wav audiodump.mp3

You are correct so far as there is no official release of RealOne for Linux. However, RealNetworks did release RealOne codecs (i.e., decoding libraries) for RealOne media, usable with the existent player (or for that matter, with MPlayer, plug plug!), which, really, are all you need.

Linux DOES probably have more machines on its side. However, that's not necessarily relevant. Linux's overwhelming number of machines is not because they have a gadzillion desktop users. They run a lot of servers. When it comes to Linux desktop usage, I've yet to see a figure that puts it significantly ahead of Apple in desktop use. Feel free to show me some reliable figures to prove me wrong on this.

OK. Linux at 1.7% versus Mac at 3.1%.

Keep in mind that unlike OS X, Linux can be run on old machines, new machines and everything in between (including old Macs). In addition, every Mac and Windows machine out there is a potential Linux machine. With the easy availability of low-to-no cost Linux distributions, it is nearly impossible to actually estimate the real number of desktops out there. Every estimate I have ever seen has always had the caveat that the real number is going to be a lot higher.

People running servers don't need fancy MP3 playing software. The majority of deployed linux boxes are servers. So long as tenant 2 holds, the majority of linux boxes wouldn't run iTunes.

Umm, we don't need QT for playing MP3's, we need it to play those trailers and movies that so many people thoughtlessly throw up on the web in that closed format. Luckily as with most things we have circumvented vendor idiocy using other means, but Apple's refusal still grates.

Apple supports iTunes with Windows for some good reasons. Firstly, it's the same reason that BeOS started supporting x86 machines. They like money, money is good, and therefore they try and get more of it. The huge spike in iTMS sales suggests this was a good move. Secondly, Quicktime was already out for Windows. Since iTunes relies on Quicktime, their sound code should be trivially portable.

And how much money does Apple make with their free Windows Quicktime viewer again? You do recall that is what we are talking about here?

Apple has kicked back a lot of stuff to the open source community. Apple really doesn't owe Linux in particular anything. Apple owes most of itself to BSDs.

Ok, then, why isn't there a QT player for FreeBSD?

If you don't want an Apple computer, that's your call. Many people would argue it's your loss though.

And many people wouldn't. Me, for example.

What gets me about this whole debate is the hypocrisy from the Mac community. Whenever there is a Windows only app that comes out, there is a cry in the community about being unfairly locked out, but when Apple does the same thing to other platforms, they are defended tooth and nail by those same people.

While I agree that Apple won't probably port Quicktime to Linux, I have to say that any Linux user that's going to buy a TiBook just to use QT hasn't installed Mplayer. It plays QT movie files just fine.

Hey

Did you tryed mplayer (yeah)

Mplayer runs everything.. even in windows.

I allways used linux to see my movies but some friends of mine dont.

Take a look at the Mplayer site , on the main menu selec "Other Media Projects" and the look for Windows Ports.

My friends never had problems again.

webvcrplus for scheduling/recording, mplayer for playback, avidemux for commercial removal, mencoder for postprocessing (deinterlacing, audio syncing, etc.), and transcode with DVD::Rip for backing up DVDs.

My primary goal for this is to make backup copies of media for when I travel. When I watch live TV on my computer, I use TVTime. I am looking more into something like MythTV, because of the possibility of streaming content, and the fact that it is getting toward the point of being able to remove commercials on the fly.

That said, I have been very happy with my current configuration. Webvcrplus works like a charm, downloading listings through xmltv and scheduling them for recording.

online music stores are a boon

I'm curious when they will start to sale videos in online stores?

(and when we will start to buy portable videos (of course based on linux and mplayer ;))

There is a site devoted to video/audio codecs.

As a sidenote, I'd strongly suggest you try the latest MPlayer builds for Windows. Powerful stuff. Shameless plug.

There is nothing like the first time your using Linux someone sends you a link to a Windows Media file... now what are you supposed to do with that?

open and play it in MPlayer?

bye,
[L]

Do you know of anything equivalent in quality and/or speed to TMPGEnc? As an alternative, do you know how to get TMPGEnc working under Wine? The last time I tried (maybe a year or so ago), I didn't get very far with it.

# emerge mplayer
# emerge win32codecs

I'd recommend mencoder if you don't mind the command line. A quick mencoder -ovc [insert codec here] -oac [insert audio codec here] -o somename.avi dvd://[number] and you're set. My current setup supports a straight copy, XViD, QuickTime, and several others which I'm not sure what they are...

Grab mplayer and install it. Run mencode to transcode the WMV file to a different format.

Once that's done, head on over to the BitTorrent website and grab the software. Run a tracker and leave a seed open.

Then post it to Slashdot in a message where you can say, "look at me -- 20 minutes of work and a little CPU time, and I made an open format version of a movie that everyone can enjoy -- plus the video's encoded smaller because of the better codec!"

This will probably net you some great karma, in addition to making your initial format question moot. It's all a matter of effort and motivation :)

None of the things you mentioned are going to be problems for John Q. Everyman for the following reasons:

1. Gateway is installing SuSE Linux on servers, not desktops and laptops.

2. Unless Grandma runs her own big-iron Web server or Folding@Home project, she'll never see SuSE Linux on a Gateway PC (at least not yet).

3. Linux IS fantastic for geeks. And it's fantastic for John Q. Everyman as well. Distros like Mandrake 9.2 make it easy for Linux newbies to get into the market; a Linux newbie does not start with Gentoo!

4. You don't need to recompile the kernel to watch DivX movies. You just need a new version of mplayer.

All in all, sir, this is a very articulate, well-written, yet very trollish post.

MPlayerOSX kicks ass. MPlayer rules on every platform I use it on and plays nearly every format possible, especially with the add-on codecs (soon to be Slashdotted). I don't even need Quicktime anymore except for sentimental reasons.

What makes you think that there are enough people out there who would spend that time and money to keep this thing alive that don't care about Freedom? What on earth would be their motivation?

Well, I have no idea. Maybe they don't have girlfriends and are trying to fill the gaping void.

Well, if you think all music players are half finished and not as good as Winamp, you probably haven't tried KPlayer. At version 0.3 it already is far better than all Winamps together. Or should I say was? Because 0.4 is about to be released, with an excellent playlist support. And best of all, KPlayer is based on the media player.

According to this and this, AAC/AC3 support is part of the newer versions of mplayer.

> there is no other player which plays their media

Whatever you feel of their supposed code nazi attitudes; mplayer plays almost everything.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.
I don't have a sig.

> there is no other player which plays their media

Whatever you feel of their supposed code nazi attitudes; mplayer plays almost everything.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.
I don't have a sig.

unfortuantly there is no other player which plays their media

mplayer!

The conversation died for a while, and then it was brought up again in March. (Although the conversation seemed to get bogged down on selecting a name for the format).

The format description is now included in the DOCS/tech directory of the mplayer tarball. Not sure whether any of it's actually implemented in the mplayer code.

The conversation died for a while, and then it was brought up again in March. (Although the conversation seemed to get bogged down on selecting a name for the format).

The format description is now included in the DOCS/tech directory of the mplayer tarball. Not sure whether any of it's actually implemented in the mplayer code.

The conversation died for a while, and then it was brought up again in March. (Although the conversation seemed to get bogged down on selecting a name for the format).

The format description is now included in the DOCS/tech directory of the mplayer tarball. Not sure whether any of it's actually implemented in the mplayer code.

Might I suggest Decaf?

XP was crashing and no, it was not (faulty) hardware. The machine has been rock stable for 2 weeks now. I kept the machine up to date with patches and had all of the latest (non-beta) hardware drivers. I administer 200 machines at work and run WinXP on my office laptop. I have no problems dealing with it on these machines. I was not trying to say that XP is unstable (though it isn't exactly rock-like), but that it was not stable on my particular box and I got tired of trying to make it work properly.

Admittedly I know a lot of the problems were not explicitly XP's fault (Corel Painter 8's CTD, etc), but it was all the little headaches that were added together that made me decide to switch.

The fact that you use windows 2000 for games tells me right here and now that your are an idiot. XP is better for games, all the way around.

Win2k for gaming has not been a problem for me at all. It does everything I expect, doesn't have a stupid registration process for everytime I upgrade hardware (which I do somewhat often as it's a gaming box), doesn't have services that mysteriously turn themselves back on (MSN Messenger, etc.) and runs every single game I put on it flawlessly. So tell me, *WHY* should I use XP to play games? Oh, yeah, right... it's "Better." Forgive my ignorance. I think I'll just stick to Win2k until they stop making games for it. When they stop, I'll probably just stop buying games. I'm tired of paying Microsoft to abuse me in the name of fighting piracy. It's bad enough I have to deal with that sh*t from game makers.

mplayer handles odd formats? try playing back a wmv ;)

Why would I want to? Don't have any, don't want any. But first, perhaps you should have gone to their website and hit their about page. Here's a quote:

Supported input formats

• (S)VCD (Video CD) directly from CD-ROM or from CDRwin's .bin image file
• DVD, directly from your DVD disk, using optional libdvdread for chapter support, and libdvdcss for decryption
• MPEG 1/2 System Stream (PS/PES/VOB) and Elementary Stream (ES) file formats
• RIFF AVI file format
• ASF/WMV/WMA format
• QT/MOV/MP4 format
• RealAudio/RealVideo format
• OGG/OGM files
• VIVO format
• FLI format
• NuppelVideo format
• yuv4mpeg format
• FILM (.cpk) format
• RoQ format
• PVA format
• supports reading from file, stdin, DVD drive or network via HTTP

Supported video and audio codecs

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
• 3ivx decoder
• Cinepak and Intel Indeo codecs (3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 5.0)
• VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other h263(+) variants
• MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware formats
• FLI/FLC
• native decoder for HuffYUV
• various old simple RLE-like formats

And those are just the "highlights." The full list is longer. Hmmm... I'd probably need 2 or 5 different programs just to play what's on this list on Windows...

Who said you needed to use windows media player anyway? At least windows _has_ a unified method of installing and registering codecs. You don't have to worry if program X has the shit you need. Install one codec and it becomes available to all your media programs. In linux, you install things for the software only which is a fucking r

MP3 version, just got to love mencoder (a utility to convert audio formats, get it mplayerhq ;)

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

Outside of Office software, Audacity is a great free audio editor

SciTE or the java-based Jedit are good text editors.

The GIMP is a good image editor, available here for Windows.

Mozilla or one of its components for mail/web browsing

For media playing you might want to try Zinf (formerly FreeAmp), Foobar2000 (nice light weight music player), WinAMP for Windows. MPlayer is a good video player for Linux (and Windows) and XMMS is a capable music player for Linux.

Celestia is a nice space exploration program.

Jabber is good for instant messaging or Trillian or GAIM if you need to chat on MSN, AIM, ICQ etc.

GNUCash is a capable accounting program.

Oh yeah, and for email, I suggest setting up an IMAP server on an old machine and using that to store your email. This can be quite difficult, though allows you to browse your email from Linux and Windows. Thunderbird is rock solid and good even though only in the early stages of development.

For the Linux side anyway, my apologies if you already know about some of these, just throwing them out there. Also some of these have windows versions (Mozilla, Open Office, GAIM, Thunderbird, Firebird, etc).

Email - Evolution, Mozilla Mail, or Thunderbird

If you want something that looks like Outlook (and even acts like it in most places) use Evolution. Mozilla Mail is included in Mozilla and Thunderbird is like Firebird, but for mail.

WWW - Mozilla or Firebird

These 2 you can't really go wrong with. Also for good measure make sure lynx is installed for console web browsing

IM - GAIM
THere's also Everybuddy, but I perfer GAIM

Office - Open Office or KOffice
Open Office is slightly more well rounded but KOffice is pretty slick IMHO.

Media - XMMS, mPlayer, Winamp
Everyone knows Winamp for MP3s on Windows. XMMS is a Winamp like program for Linux. mPlayer is for movies (and also audio) that plays MOST formats.

Use the following links to research
Mozilla, Firebird, and Thunderbird
GAIM
XMMS
mPlayer
Open Office
Evolution and other Ximian products

Hope this was helpful.

Here's a good list of the more common apps I have in there:

AbiWord, AstroGrep, Audacity, BitTorrent, CDex, Cygwin, Enzip, Filezilla, Gaim, Gimp, GSview, LAME, mIRC, Mozilla, Mplayer, Nero 5.5, QuickTime, TweakUI, WinAmp, winLAME

I've actually gotten my hands on the installable beta. The install seems pretty decent. It's easy, and it leaves your windows drives alone, unless you tell it otherwise. Everything is extremely simple, with a little "detailed" button you can click, if you are an experienced user.

I was surprised to see that the installation automatically detected and installed the wireless network adapter on my laptop, something I haven't seen any other distribution do (even though the driver is ready in the kernel).

The rest of the installation went flawless (except for a hitch with starsuite, which for some reason was in chinese, but I'll leave that to the beta-testers).

For some reason SUN has decided to provide the Java Media Player as the default media player. This would be just fine, if it in any way matched with the overall system design, or if it could play all media, but a simple test proved that it couldn't even play a standard (if such a thing exists) divx file. It worked fine with Ogg Vorbis and mpeg though. I wasn't able to find a dvd-player, xmms wasn't installed, and I could find no other media players besides the already mentioned java media player. If they want to win on the desktop, one thing SUN seriously needs is the capability to play media files using a pretty functional player (xmms for music is the obvious choice).

The entire desktop is seemingly a clone of the basic windows desktop with "this computer", "Documents", "Network Places" and "Trash". Exactly as I remember windows, just with slightly altered names. You even have a control panel (called preferences) in "This Computer".

Another problem I will leave to the beta testers is the fact that my DVD-drive is both mounted as cdrom and dvd, and thus also shown as two icons.

All in all a slick O/S, though with a few bumps which are hopefully straightened out through beta-testing, with a very bad choice of multimedia player (If anyone from SUN read this, go punch the guy who chose java media player in the stomache, and point him to xmms, mplayer and xine instead!).

If you use Linux, BSD or other not QT supported OSes, then use the mplayer video player, which now has native Quicktime support. Or, if you use Debian gnu/linux then use Xine which is compatible with the debian licencing policies.

Download
Mplayer http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
Xine http://www.xine.sourceforge.com/

Debian
run
su -c "apt-get install xine" in an Xterm. (unstable edition only)

Did anyone else ever notice the "UNUSABLE FOR WINDOWS!" message next to the win32codecs in the downloads section? That seems to imply mplayer actually has a windows version, probably confusing for some people.

That's because there *is* a Windows port of it, and it's located on their server. Try ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/win32-beta .

My computer is running Debian 3.0 (woody) and runs MPlayer like a dream.

I just wish the Debian folks would get together with the MPlayer developers and agree on a suitable package that satisfies the Debian Social Contract but does not alienate the MPlayer folks. It would be a terrible shame if MPlayer does not make it into the next release of Debian.

BTW Xine is in debian.

MPlayer site
MPlayer downloads
MPlayer for Max OS X site
MPlayer for Mac OS X downloads

MPlayer site
MPlayer downloads
MPlayer for Max OS X site
MPlayer for Mac OS X downloads

Maybe you want this skin?

Last time I checked, packaging MPlayer had major license problems. I believe at some time it was not even allowed to package according to a clause in the MPlayer license.

But even now there are problems because of all the libraries which are not in the GPL or any other Free Software license. And this is a problem mainly for Debian which has pretty rigid license terms.

Just checked and yes, there are still issues. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design6/news.html #debianandsusesux.

I got the same problem. XP SP1. The thing just crashes when I feed it the URL/download folder/name and hit OK.

Oh well. I'm sure there's free software that'll do the same.

...Ah, there we go. There's mencoder which is part of mplayer, and mmsclient. I need to boot into Linux to get some work done anyway, so I'll try one or both.