I cant for the life of me figure out what I need to see mpeg and/or avi videos on my Linux box. I checked all the packages that I thought would play videos but nothing. I basically just need something comparable to windows media player. What program do I need to get? I know I installed the wine package but how does that work? Can windows media be installed with wine?

Also I have found that when I try to upload pictures from my browser that they dont upload. I realized this problem the other night when I was doing Ebay listings. I would select the pictures to upload and it would look like it was going but then when I viewed the listing, no picture. I also saw the same thing when I tried to post a picture on another forum. I was able to upload the same pictures on one of my windows boxes with no problem. I fighure maybe the slashes being the opposite of DOS/windows could have something to do with it but if thats the case is there a workaround. I am trying to get toi where I can do anything on my Linux box that I can on a windows box but I do alot of Ebay auctions and the pictures are a problem. I have tried with both Red Hat and Mandrake with the same result.

Thanks
-Mike

Get mplayer or xine.They both got rpm packages for RH.

I have Xine and Mplayer and I just get errors about not having supported codecs of somesuch. Is there som package that they are dependant on that I may not have?

You need win32.That goes to /usr/lib/win32 - probably not included.
Get it at http://www.mplayerhq.hu

Ok I went and downloaded the mplayer and followed the installation instructions. It appeared to install fine, but where is it now that it is installed? It isnt listed in my programs.

Just open a terminal and type mplayer - will give you the options for mplayer.If you got the gui installed type gmplayer.That will bring up the gui.
How you add it to your menu depends on the desktop or windowsmanager you use.
If you don't find it type whereis mplayer in a terminal.
From yor post it seemed that you had mplayer and xine already installed.All you need to do there is install the win32 part.
With xine you can open the configuration from the gui (its a little wrench on the bottom left corner of the default gui) go to codec in the menu that pops up and check 'path to win32 codec dll's' - should be /usr/lib/win32
Make sure they are in /usr/lib/win32

The commands come up when I do mplayer but I dont see the option to pen a file, and gmplayer gives me a command not found so maybe the gui didnt install. I will try it again. I would like it to act like windows media player where I just click an a video file and it opens with the mplayer app, is that possible and how would I go about setting it up to do that. BTW I am using RH7.3 with the Ximian Gnome Desktop package.

Thanks

Well, I will try to help with both parts of your question...

Mplayer, if you installed via RPM, you have no gui. gmplayer is not installing. You will need to compile from source to enable that. There are loads of threads on compiling mplayer, so I won't go into that other than, you may have problems with your gcc version. There are also threads about that though.

If you get that accomplished, you can then do program association. You could probably do it now, and use mplayer via command line, but that is beyond me. My instructions are for KDE because I hardly ever use Gnome, but it's probably similar. You need program assocation, and to attain that, you go to K---Prefs---File Browsing---File Association. Locate the extension(s) you wish to associate with gmplayer (probably .avi and mpg but can do MANY others), and add that as a program. To have it be the first one of choice, you will need to have it at the top of the list.

Ok, now for your upload problem...

You said you tried with 2 distros, but did you try with different browsers? It may be a browser issue, you might wanna try mozilla or netscape, or something else that is more "widespread" like that (maybe Opera). Also, the site might be "IE friendly" boo for that. You might wanna contact the webmaster and let them know. Don't expect much though, but it's worth a shot.

Cool

Thanks alot for the help, I did manage to get the GUI and default skin package installes. I can launch it now from a command like with gmplayer and the GUI comes up. Problem is that when I point to a file to open I get the following error-

Detected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 32000 Hz, 2 ch, sfmt: 0x10 (2 bps), ratio: 4000->128000 (32.0 kbit)
It seems there is no Xvideo support for your video card available.
Run 'xvinfo' to verify its Xv support, and read Xv section of DOCS/video.html !
See 'mplayer -vo help' for other (non-xv) video out drivers. Try -vo x11
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device!



MPlayer interrupted by signal 11 in module: uninit_acodec
- MPlayer crashed by bad usage of CPU/FPU/RAM. Recompile MPlayer with --enable-debug and make a 'gdb' backtrace and disassembly. For details, see DOCS/bugreports.html section 5.b.
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen. It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your gcc version. If you think it's MPlayer's fault, please read DOCS/bugreports.html and follow instructions there. We can't and won't help unless you provide these informations when reporting a possible bug.
[root@localhost software]# xvinfo
X-Video Extension version 2.2
screen #0
no adaptors present
[root@localhost software]#


Any Idea what no Xvideo support means? Also, how do I put a shortcut to mplayer in my programs menu?

Shortcut, again, I don't use gnome, so hopefully someone who does can help ya there..

Mplayer vo..

In the latest mplayer to can specify in the gui what vo you wish to use. Right click and choose prefs. Click on video and pick one that suffices.

Cool

I got it working for the most part. I changed the video output driver in the preferances to x11, and I also figured out how to do the shortcuts. You just right click on the launcher panel and select edit panel and it pulls up a window where you can add and remove programs, change icons etc. Its pretty cool. My only problem now is that it starts to play a video and then tells me my system is too slow, but it will play it kinda frame by frame. My new motherboard should arrive today or tomorrow that will hopefully fix that problem. Thanks for helping me get it going though.

-Mike

No problem

The reason it's probably running slow is the -vo x11 option. It's not the fastest kid on the block. To find out other options (well actually they should be listed in prefs in gmplayer...) type mplayer -vo help and it will list your options. Try each one til you find the one that best fits your needs. If they all go slow, you may want to head over to the mplayer mail lists and see if you can figure out what's going on, and maybe make it go quicker. mplayer -vo xv is one of the 2 that work best for me.

Cool