Strange Mplayer codec problem...

ArthurDent · 12-16-2006, 09:30 AM

I have just upgraded from Fedora Core 5 to Fedora Core 6 (FC6). I have used all the Fedoras since before there were Fedoras. I have not had this problem before.

As usual I used the Livna repositories to install mplayer using Yum. As usual I gabbed the latest codecs from the Mplayer website (all-20061022.tar.bz2) and as usual I unpacked them and put them into /usr/lib/win32. To my surprise this did not work... It always has in the past. I googled a bit and tried putting the codecs in /usr/local/lib/codecs and for good measure in /usr/lib/codecs too. None of these seem to work.

All I get - even with cruddy old .avi clips - is a bright blue screen and sound but no video.

I have (I presume) the latest version of mplayer (downloaded from Livna today - MPlayer 1.0rc1-rpm.livna.org-4.1.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team).

Where should the codecs go - and why don't mine work now when they always did before?

All help gratefully received...

Thanks

Mark

jlo_sandog · 12-16-2006, 02:33 PM

what's in your .mplayer/config file? You should have something specifying video and audio output.

afm=ffmpeg,
vo=xv
ao=alsa

ArthurDent · 12-16-2006, 04:39 PM

My ./mplayer/cofig file has just this in it:

Code:

# Write your default config options here!

But then so did my (working) FC5 version!

Is that significant?

Thanks for your help - any other ideas?

Mark

jlo_sandog · 12-16-2006, 08:59 PM

Yes, its important. The default video is X11 not xv or for xvmc (nvidia card). Try the entries given before let me know if it works.

ArthurDent · 12-17-2006, 04:29 AM

Nope - sorry - didn't work...

I put in the entries you kindly suggested but still no joy.

Any other ideas?

Thanks again.

Mark

p.s.

I havn't got round to installing RealPlayer yet. I'll try that too and see what happens.

p.p.s.

I have installed Totem Xine and that doesn't work either (but I'm not sure it ever did for these sort of clips...)

ArthurDent · 12-17-2006, 09:58 AM

***UPDATE***

More weirdness...

So I installed RealPlayer (using the RPM10Gold RPM from the RealPlayer site). At first it wouldn't work at all (wouldn't load) and then I read somewhere that I had to have compat-libstdc++ installed first (don't ever remember doing that before with FC1,2,3,4,5...) so I removed RealPlayer and installed compat-libstdc++ then re-installed RealPlayer.

RealPlayer now loaded but - here's the strange thing - when playing a .rm clip would show a millisecond of the video and then revert to a black screen with only audio for company...

Trying to play a live clip from the BBC website crapped out because it wanted to try to play it using Totem - so I uninstalled the Totem Mozilla plugin. Then it crapped out because it wanted to try to play it using Mplayer (huh!) so I uninstalled Mplayer - completely - and now it plays BBC clips!

However the previous behaviour (showing a brief second of video before resuming a black screen) with saved files still remains.

I have tried deleting all the codecs from all three locations and still RealPlayer plays BBC video but not files.

What do I try now?

Thanks for your help

Mark

jlo_sandog · 12-17-2006, 01:22 PM

Ok, I'll tell you my set up in hope it can help.
1. I have compat-libstdc++-33 installed.
2. I uninstalled the original totem.
3. I installed mplayer and mplayerplug-in from freshrpms.net
4. I downloaded and installed the win32 codecs from the mplayer site and placed the contents in /usr/lib/codecs
5. I installed alsa-oss and RealPlayer-10.0.8.805-20060718
6. Removed mplayerplug-in-rm.so, and mplayerplug-in-rm.xpt from /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins folder. Then linked the RealPlayer plugin files (nphelix.so and nphelix.xpt) to the plugins folder.
7. As root edited /usr/bin/realplayer and changed the line
REALPLAYBIN=$HELIX_LIBS/realplay.bin
to
REALPLAYBIN="/usr/bin/aoss $HELIX_LIBS/realplay.bin"

ArthurDent · 12-17-2006, 03:52 PM

Thanks for that jlo_sandog,

I followed you instructions to the letter - the only difference being that I did not have a mplayerplug-in-rm.xpt file (just mplayerplug-in-rm.so) and now I can watch stuff on the web (e.g. BBC).

However - the original problem still remains - no video on either Mplayer or RealPlayer file playback.

Very frustrating...

Thanks for your help so far...

Mark

Ynot Irucrem · 12-17-2006, 04:05 PM

Can you please reinstall the codecs and post the output of playing the file with mplayer from the command line? I don't know what RealPlayer's output is supposed to look like, but if you post that mplayer output, maybe I could help you. Also, I don't see how having mplayer and codecs installed could affect RealPlayer.

ArthurDent · 12-17-2006, 04:24 PM

Thanks Tony,

Code:

[mark@localhost ~]$ mplayer stuff/clips/movie1.wmv 
MPlayer 1.0rc1-rpm.livna.org-4.1.1 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Celeron(R) CPU 1.70GHz (Family: 15, Model: 1, Stepping: 3)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing stuff/clips/movie1.wmv.
ASF file format detected.
VIDEO:  [WMV2]  360x288  24bpp  25.000 fps    0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 name: Trailer 1
 author: 
 copyright: 
 comments: 
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [dshow] DirectShow video codecs
Decoder supports the following YUV formats: YUY2 IYUV UYVY YV12 YVYU I420 YVU9 
Decoder is capable of YUV output (flags 0x7f)
VDec: vo config request - 360 x 288 (preferred colorspace: Packed YUY2)
[PP] Using codec's postprocessing, max q = 4.
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 360x288 => 360x288 Planar YV12 
Selected video codec: [wmv8] vfm: dshow (Windows Media Video 8)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Trying to force audio codec driver family ffmpeg...
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 64.0 kbit/4.54% (ratio: 8005->176400)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm: ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (FFmpeg))
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
A:  67.7 V:  67.7 A-V: -0.010 ct: -0.037 1618/1618 18%  3%  5.0% 0 0            
Exiting... (Quit)
[mark@localhost ~]$

Mean anything to you?

Thanks for your help

Mark

Ynot Irucrem · 12-18-2006, 12:59 AM

There doesn't appear to be anything going wrong in that output. I think the problem may be the video output driver you are using. Try "mplayer -vo <driver> <file>", for all the drivers listed in "mplayer -vo help".

EDIT: If that works, set your default driver in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf or ~/.mplayer/config with "vo=<driver>".

ArthurDent · 12-18-2006, 04:50 AM

Well thanks! We're really getting somewhere now...

Playing a clip as $ mplayer -vo x11 stuff/clips/movie1.wmv worked!

I got quite excited and quickly added vo=x11 to both /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf and ~/.mplayer/config and also found that there was an entry in ~/.mplayer/gui.conf that needed to be changed....

Then it seemed to work. However, we're not quite there yet. Some clips that used to play well on Mplayer now stutter and splurt and garble the sound (mainly mpgs - I think - but not all mpgs) and the other thing is that when I try to play "full screen" size the video remains its original size but is now on a black background which fill the screen. Is this another config setting that needs changing? I've tried a few without success...

Also - RealPlayer still won't work.

Is there a more fundamental problem with my system?

What is x11 as opposed to xv and why did I need to change this setting when I never had to in the past? I've tried most of the other settings and some work - some don't. Some do some things (e.g. full screen - but not others) How can I find out what setting it should be for my system?

Many many thanks for your help so far. Much appreciated...

Mark

[edit : fix typo]

Ynot Irucrem · 12-18-2006, 06:23 AM

You only need to add that line to one or the other file, mplayer first looks at it's hardcoded settings, then anything in /etc/mplayer/ overrides those, then ~/.mplayer/ overrides those.

xv is an extension to x11 with some hardware acceleration to speed up the video rendering, that's why (unless you have a really fast CPU) the sound skips in x11, because mplayer is compensating for the slow video.

The full screen behavior is normal - some drivers just don't support video scaling.

The only things I can suggest are to update your video drivers, and to use a different codec. Try "mplayer -vc <codec> -vo <driver> <file>" with ffwmv2, wmv8*, and wmvdmo. If you get one that works, edit /etc/mplayer/codecs.conf so that the working codec's definition comes before all others that support the fourcc "WMV2" (or just comment out the broken codec's definition). See here for more info on codecs.conf.

EDIT: I know some packages don't include a codecs.conf and just rely on the hardcoded settings, so here's mine (had to rename to .txt to upload).

*D'oh, that's the one you already tried.

ArthurDent · 12-18-2006, 07:16 AM

OK - So we're getting a little beyond my level of competence here...

I am really confused. Here's the thing:
This is is dual boot system - I have both FC6 AND FC5 (as well as WinXp, Ubuntu, Gentoo and Mandriva) and on this same machine unmodified Mplayer settings (i.e. xv etc.) work just fine under FC5. The very same clips work without stuttering and in full screen mode.

I have just found a setting in the RealPlayer gui preferences that says "Use XVideo". In FC5 it is ticked and works just fine. In FC6 it will only work if it's un-ticked!

So I think my problem is at a higher (or probably more accurately - a lower) level.

I've looked at the two xorg.conf files (FC5 & FC6) and they are very different. The problem is I don't speak XOrg and it's all greek to me...

Is this even where I should be looking?

Why can the same machine play xv in one distro but not in another?

Thanks again for your help and support.

Mark

Edit : p.s. - In case it's relevant...

Code:

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -qa | grep xvid
xvidcore-1.1.2-1.lvn6
[root@localhost ~]#

Ynot Irucrem · 12-18-2006, 04:06 PM

Yes the fact that your xorg.conf's are different could mean something, as the problem could be your video card driver version and/or settings. I would try to update xorg and the driver.

The part that looks like

Code:

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device"
        Driver          "i810"
        BusID           "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

will give you the name of the driver you're using. Here, the package name in debian is xserver-xorg-video-i810, so yours is probably something similar.

If that doesn't help/you already have the latest versions, post both your xorg.confs.