AC3 codec
 

does anyone know how to get the windows AC3 codec or equivalent for linux, so that i can play divx 5 etc avi films ?

Just use mplayer. It plays divx 5 perfectly and comes with the AC3 codec. Here's the link to the feature list so you can make sure it has what you want. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/info.html#docs

does it !? i have mplayer and i cant play avi's, well ive only tried one but it didn work, only sound :(

Please post the video error you're getting for that avi. Maybe try a recompile. Or look for a rpm.

i installed mplayer using apt-get and this is the error i get when trying to play an AVI

************************************************
**** Your system is too SLOW to play this! ****
************************************************

Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver
- Try -ao sdl or use ALSA 0.5 or the OSS emulation of ALSA 0.9.
- Experiment with different values for -autosync, 30 is a good start.
- Slow video output
- Try a different -vo driver (-vo help for a list) or try -framedrop!
- Slow CPU
- Don't try to play a big DVD/DivX on a slow CPU! Try -hardframedrop.
- Broken file
- Try various combinations of -nobps -ni -forceidx -mc 0.
- Slow media (NFS/SMB mounts, DVD, VCD etc)
- Try -cache 8192.
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file?
- Try -nocache.
Read DOCS/HTML/en/devices.html for tuning/speedup tips.
If none of this helps you, read DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html.

A: 92.2 V: 9.9 A-V: 82.295 ct: 0.992 249/249 4% 0% 7.0% 248 0 45%
Badly interleaved AVI file detected - switching to -ni mode...
A: 885.8 V: 95.4 A-V:790.420 ct: 9.536 2385/2385 4% 0% 7.5% 2384 0 38%

the the numbers at the bottom keep going up :(. the thing is that my computer is not to slow to play the fils atall:

P4 3.06
ati radeon 9000 pro
512 DDR (ive got another 512 stick but for some reason my box doesnt like running with 1gb or DDR :( )

ive installed UT2004 and that seems to run very slowly aswell!

Compiling mplayer-1.0-pre5 solves lots of problems.

What ATI drivers do you have. I dont know much about ATI, but I know there have been plenty of driver horror stories on this board. That may be your problem.

Which vo (video output) are you using? The best option is XVideo (-vo xv). What version of MPlayer
are you using? (quote mplayer -v output)