.WMV will not play on fedora

Hi

I cannot get Mplayer to play .WMV files stored locally on my HD. I have tried Mplayer rpm's for apt from both rpm.livna.org and fresh rpm's (on 2 seperate installs) and have the same problem.

I have the win32 codec pack installed, I can play all other formats just fine.

Together with the Mplayer-plugin I can even watch streaming media in WMV format (off of yahoo news, choosing windows media from the dialog box for media type) and all other types like quicktime etc just fine.

But I cannot play any local .WMV files on my HD. As soon as it starts playing I see the video for a few seconds, then get a gray screen (Mplayer i.e.) and then it just closes!!

I tried Xine, same thing!!! Plays everything else except .WMV

Now I know theres nothing wrong with these files because:

1. they play fine under XP, Suse 9, MEPIS.

Its just that every time I try this media type on fedora it never plays. Could thid be a bug?

Is anyone else experiencing the same problem?

I have everything else installed like java, flash, etc working just fine. Its just these *%#$@^& !!!!! .WMV files that will not play and it is driving me nuts to figure out why!!!!!!

Prepackaged builds of mplayer usually suck because they're deliberately crippled due to patent fears.

The best thing to do is to just go to http://mplayerhq.hu/ and download it yourself.

I tried compiling it from source, but it did not work out properly. In the end i could not completely uninstall the messed up version I had compiled and installed so I ended up reinstalling fedora.

The thing is I have installed rpm's of Mplayer off APT repo's for Suse 9 , and a deb package for MEPIS that i found at apt-get.org and they worked fine .

I am trying to figure out if it's just me or if the packagers at Livna.org and Freshrpm's are intentionally disbaling .WMV support from their .rpm builds for fedora. It does not make sense but I am really lost for answers on this.

Update: I have filed a bug report at both sites(livna and fresh rpm's) , lets see if they can come up with something.

I don't understand - if mplayer won't compile, there's nothing to uninstall.

Yes, the packagers really do intentionally disable wmv support. It's patent paranoia. They won't issue a fix in response to your bug report because the bug is intentional.

What mplayer source did you download, and what exactly happened when you tried to compile it?

Wow , thats too bad. I did not realize they would intentionally disbale one format over another. Makes no sense does it?

regarding my failed attempt at compiling it, well this is basically how it went:

I downloaded the source files from http://www.mplayerhq.hu

i was trying to do the --enable gui switch in the compile command, but it kept giving me an error saying that it needed an X server, or something to that effect. Now i was already doing this as root, so I am not sure why it did not have access to the X server.

so i decided to just do it without the gui interface for now.

I had the win32 codecs in /usr/lib/win32

I specified that with another command during config and it did its thing, did make and make install and finally it was done, after spitting out what seemed endless lines of stuff. (i hate compiling from source by the way , if you can't tell) .

anyway once everything was don eand i was back at a prompt , i found a media file and opened it with mplayer . only sound came out no video.

Being no expert here, I opened up synaptic to see if it would pick up this messed up install and it did not list mplayer as being installed, needless to say it would not let me install a new copy either due to various dependency conflicts now.

I tried rpm -e mplayer, and it said it was not installed, but it had to be becuase it would play the files just with no video.

So i just blew the install away and reinstalled fedora and then used apt to get the rpm's from livna again. I figured at least I can pay some media if not all.

I dont understand why apt repo's for SuSE 9, or debian for that matter give you a fully functional product with ease of install via apt, but packagers for fedora/red hat are crippling the apt packages they provide?

does not add up does it?

Hi

both freshrpm's and rpm.livna are looking into the issue.

Livna bug http://bugzilla.livna.org/show_bug.cgi?id=73

Well this is weird, all the .wmv I have tried worked for me, I got my mplayer from freshrpms.
mplayer-1.0-0.5.pre2.20031107.fr is the package I have.

don't mean to intrude but...
why are you using wmv in the first place?
I'm not too hardcore of a Winblowz hater, but everytime I've used wmv or wma the quality was... less than desirable.
If you dare to use a windows machine at all, you can find a great encoder at www.tmpgenc.net that will convert it for you.
On the other hand DivX has a linux version... but I don't personally care for DivX either.

I hope that isn't too off topic, happy trials.

Yeah, I happen to like WMA. I have many many many songs at 80 KB/s WMA which are better than many songs ripped from CD's at 320 KB/s MP3. WMA has a high quality but dont make it any lower than 80 KB/s

I always get clicks and pops in wma.
fyi: wma 8 is different from wma 9, it uses an srs equivelent so 80kbps will sound about 160kbps mp3 (or 80kbps mp3pro) if your ears lack high frequency response. It also gives it an equalizer effect that may sound better/worse depending on what your prefence is.
I used it for a month or so, but it's terrible.

Originally posted by biotek1 I tried rpm -e mplayer, and it said it was not installed, but it had to be becuase it would play the files just with no video. So i just blew the install away and reinstalled fedora and then used apt to get the rpm's from livna again

Of course you couldn't rpm -e it, as you didn't install a rpm package in the first place.
Instead of reinstalling Fedora you just should have gone into the mplayer directory and do a "make uninstall"

Umm I have a few questions.

Why in the hell would it go against patent? Do companies that make Radios have to disable their cd drives because they MIGHT be playing copyrighted things? That sounds stupid to me....


And I happen to hate OGG more than anything. To me that sounds like crap, really really crap.


And clicks and pops? Are you recording off an LP? Ive never had clicks and pop except off of my Bob marley collection that I recorded from LP's.

I've never even used ogg, but there's no way it can be worse (I'll clarify that if I ever try it).
wma sux. end of discussion.

Thanx for the tip crypticsoda! I was wondering how to do that.

Originally posted by CoolAJ86 Thanx for the tip crypticsoda! I was wondering how to do that.

You are welcome it's in every readme btw , you know, RTFM

Originally posted by CoolAJ86 I've never even used ogg, but there's no way it can be worse (I'll clarify that if I ever try it). wma sux. end of discussion.

Hmm. Are you one of those psychos that thinks that anything to do with windows sucks? Or do you just not ever listen to songs? Because I noticed with some of my WMA's using the XMMS wma thingie, that they had pops. I rebooted and listened to them with windows media player, and it had none. It was the XMMS that did it.

And another question on music, for me I have about 3000 songs in the open in my HD with music and the other like 5000 are in folders. When i try to access it with linux, it takes a minute or two to let me see the files, and with windows, it takes no time at all. Why is this? Its really annoying. I dont CARE how many files are in the folders. And is there any way to hide all of the album art? You know, the stuff that windows generates automatically.