Hi, I just installed Ubuntu on my computer few days ago. I am completely new to Linux and unfortunately lousy at computers as well. But I got sick of having a constantly bug infested windows computer so I figured I'd switch and learn something along the way. Well I switched, now it's the learning part that's giving me the headache. What was I thinking!!!

In windows I used BS player for pretty much anything with separate subtitles. I love that program. While the movie or episode was playing, you could press ctrl++ or ctrl+- to slow down or speed up the subs if the two were out of sync. Piece of cake. The program took on pretty much any subs, but it preferred .srt format.

Now in Ubuntu I can't get anything to work. I've seen that mplayer has similar, although not as advanced subs manipulation capabilities, but neither mplayer, VLC or Totem will play movie+subs. Also, the videos are lagging and hacking, there are occasionaly white pixled areas appearing withing the video screen and the sound i somewhat distorted lagging/hacking as well.
I have downloaded ever codec I could find in Synaptic, it made no difference whatsoever.

I was thinking that maybe it could be a hardware problem. Beware that I have no idea what I am talking about though. Anyway, I googled and saw somewere that lspci in command window will give info about the hardware in the pc. This is what my said:

I would really appriciate it if anyone could help me out with whatever the heck is wrong with my machine.

For video player I recommend mplayer - espacialy the graphical one: gmplayer.
It has - by my opinion - every option other players in windows could have, and many more - see the readme file of mplayer.
Before thinking of hardware problems, you should try install a new version of mplayer. Google for mplayer plf version or gmplayer plf versions. These "plf" versions contain additional codecs which are not included usualy in standard editions becouse of copyright issues. Then download the "windows codec pack" from http://mplayerhq.hu, or install them from your linux CD/DVD if you have them there.
The gui version gmplayer has an options windows for all important setting, but for fine-tuneing and special options se the readme file.

If these don't work, I may suspect that hardware rendering of your graphical interface is not working. This can be checked by the command:
[root@localhost ~]# glxinfo | grep direct

which should return something like:
direct rendering: Yes

I already have all the codecs, because all the codecs and mplayer itself were downloaded at the same page you gave me link to.

I tried the command line you gave me. I got nothing, no yes, no no, no nothing. The blinking thingie just skipped down to the next [root@localhost ~] line.

OK. Tell us then your video card type, and post here the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file.
Maybe then we will know more about your video configuration. I don't know very much about Ubuntu, but I'll try to help. Anyway, Mandriva Linux, is also a good choise for begginers ... and experts too ,and has lot of configuration options in graphical mode.

You should also post the hole output of the glxinfo command. Note, that the command is ONLY "glxinfo"

I think i posted the video card ID in the forst post. From what I can figure out it's VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82845G/GL[Brookdale-G]/GE Chipset Integrated Graphics Device (rev 03) but I could be completely off here. I got one of those "all in one" motherboards anyway. Everything is built in.

Contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf file is:

The result from "glxinfo" command is:

I hope you can make any sense out of this.

Yes and no. Configuration an glxinfo looks OK.

It is problably NOT a direct rendering problem in your video driver setup. This is OK.

Lets see now your mplayer setup:

-start gmplayer (mplayer gui)
-right click on player window / Preferences
-Video option / I have selected "xv X11/Xv" - if you too, then try other drivers from the list
- Enable double buffer - YES
- Enable direct rendering - NO - in my case if I turn it on, all video goes crazy
- Enable framedropping - yes allows mplayer to drop some frames if playback is too slow in order to syncronise the video with the sound
- the rest should be generaly NO, or O (zero)

Try these settings, and make some experiments with different setting in video option. Direct Rendering in mplayer's configuration shoul be generaly turned off, but of course you can try all kind of combinations of setting.

At MISC option you could try turning on or off the "Enable postprocessing". Also in the same windows is an "AutoSync on/off" option, for automatic sound/video syncronisation. Autosync value shows the max diference in seconds between video and sound.

Have fun ... hope it helped a little

Wooohoooo.....that seems to have sorted out the problem with the video and audio.
EDIT:
The video along with audio still hacks (like it has a hiccup) all the time but it's at least watchable compared to before

One problem remains, I still have trouble adding subtitles. Most of subs are in .srt format and mplayer doesn't seem to support them. However, others who have Ubuntu/Linux have told me that their mplayer indeed supports .srt subs.
I need to be able to add a subtitle to a videofile and if they are not synchronized I would like to adapt the subs to the video while it is playing. Read my first post on how BS player works and you'll get the idea of what I need.

Thanks a lot in advance. Just fixing the video/audio of mplayer was huuuuuuge help.

1) please download de PLF version of mplayer, look here http://plf.zarb.org/, install it, than try again. Many codec/video/sound/subtitle related problems comming from missing things due license issues are solved in plf versions. For example I had a missing sound codec and plf version solved it.

2) subtitle adjustment can be made by "z" and "x" key while viewing the video.

3) detailed and structured information about mplayer's keyboard shortcuts and setup parameters can be found in the mplayer's readme.html or readme.txt file ... read it, or at least look in there for your problems. By my opinion is the best way to start understanding mplayer.

I've just found this, you may be intrested in these things:
http://www.digg.com/linux_unix/How_T...port_in_Ubuntu

Thanks for the links....I am not sure what to install, so I installed everything. And of course, my computer as well as media players went completely bonkers. So I digged around to find how to uninstall things installen via the terminal. Got "sudo apt-get autoremove" which I run and uninstalled a shitload of stuff. All but one, freecontrib something, when I try to update the update gets stuck there and after a while it responds "took to long time" or something like that.
I have no idea how to get that off but its screwing with the rest of computer which freezes up inte the best Windows manner. God I wish I knew first thing about computers.

Anway, in all this mess one good thing turned out. My mplayer is working perfectly, sound and video are aligned and there is no hacking and no hiccup. However if I have lots of windows open it tends to get a bit of a hiccup but that isnt strange considering.
So I am pretty pleased that I got it to work. No idea how though.

But, X and Z DO NOT work. If I play a video with additional subs, and press X or Z, the only thing that happens is that a message pops up on the upper left area of the screen "Sub delay: 0ms".
But no matter how much I press X/Z, the delay is still zero. How do I fix that?

hmm ... I never had that problem. Maybe you should try search on google for this X/Z problem.

I do not want to convice you to abandon Ubuntu, but in my opinion Mandriva Linux 2007.0 Free, works better, and it is easyer to maintain, update, install software, and I personaly had less problems with Mandriva. If you are new with linux, I recommend it to you.

Ofcourse others may have different opinions about Ubuntu / Mandriva / etc.

Good luck.

I found these on google:

Delay
Delay of the subtitles relative to video. By default this property is remembered automatically when you use Increase Delay and Decrease Delay commands from the Subtitles submenu of the Player menu. The default setting always resets subtitle delay to zero when a file with subtitles is loaded

-------------------------------
From mplayer manual:
These keys may/\:may not work, depending on your video output driver.
Adjust subtitle delay by +/\:- 0.1 second

-------------------------------

Hmm..I've googled Mandriva and it looks rather cool and pretty user-friendly. The Discovery edition seems pretty apropriate for my current needs. However, it COSTS!!! I thought the whole idea behind linux was to remain open and free. Ubuntu does give me lots and lots of headache but at least its free.

I've had Ubuntu for about a little while now, I still have problems (not only with media players), some programs crash (Gaim for one example) and the computer freezes up so I have to restart it.
I was only able to install the damn thing because i found an IRC forum where there were bunch of very helpful nerds who were kind enough to guide me through and act as my support so far.

Switching to Mandriva.....who is gonna help me do that?