Suse 10.0 OSS multimedia problem
 

I am having problems with Suse 10.0 OSS.

I installed 10.0 .. made sure I didn't install any of the multimedia players (except Real ..)

Then I downloaded packages from packman
- xine, libxine, libdvdcss .. lame, mad kaffeine etc.
all my multimedia download comes from packman .. there is NO other install source.
I installed them after duly removing any other installation source from yast.
I double checked the vendor for all the packages .. it's all packman.


When I try to use kaffeine (or xine) I get no video just a blue screen (Bill are you there !!!!)
.. sound works find .. but no pictures ( I have some mpeg2/avi/mpeg1 clips I tried them all).
(These things work fine in my knoppix install)

This is the second time it has happend like this (first time was with 10.0 beta) .. anyways anyhelp/pointer will help.

This page did the trick for me. From my limited knowledge, it would seem like a video codec problem. Try to install the mentioned codecs.

Yes .. I have done that .. it's surely a codec problem .. and I checked EVERY lib/package they are all from Packman .. nothing from suse .. so it should work but it doesn't. This is really ticking me off .. I did get it to working in earlier suse versions .. even 10.0 alpha .. but 10.0 beta and release just don't seem to work.

If anyone knows the diff . between libxine1 and xine-lib ?

I have updated

libxine1
xine
xine-ui
xine-skins
kaffeine
kde3-multimedia-xine-.....
lame
mad
libdvdcss2
...
libmpeg2 (this one keeps coming back with suse .. may be this is the problem but I can't find the packman/good version)

all from packman


- thanks for any pointers

I have nothing against Packman but find this is the best place for xine an related packages. They update frequently and focus on commercial DVD viewing.

http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/

I did actually try cambuca first by downloading all the RPMS and making a local dir as the installation source (only).. when that didn't work I went to packman and used that as a installation souirce.

That also failed as you can see from my frustration .. I am really looking for the root cause now .. it doesn't make sense.
Audio on DVDs as well as on my mpeg & avi files works fine .. video is missing altogeher.

My experience is all with the retail SuSE distributions -- may not matter. I once had some trouble that ended up being xine configuration based. I tried kmplayer for a front end instead of kaffine and all worked well. Apparently kmplayer's first install did a better configuration job than I had. You can also try mplayer. kmplayer front ends both of them. Mplayer loaded codecs I didn't have and gave me access to video files I hadn't been able to view.

I have MPlayer successfully working with Suse 10.0. I had to do a bit of tinkering to get it to open DVD's, etc., but it works really well. May want to give that a try. I think either packman or guru has the packages that you can install with Yast. The only thing I had to do was put it in the kmenu but that's easy.

I have tried MPlayer also .. it also plays audio only and no video .. this seems to be some rogue decoder that I have not been able to remove.

I haven't tried guru packages . but all others seem to result in indentical behavior. I will give guru a shot.

None of your symptoms really make any sense. This one has me stumped. Did you try to uninstall and reinstall (I say this because I am always having to do this with YAST)? Are your YOU updates up to date? I would think that if the packages were broken or were not able to work correctly you would have gotten an error message. Try to run the programs you are having issues with in the console so that you can get error messages. You will get a wealth of information running video through Mplayer in the console.

I also found this site very helpful tracking down RPMs. I gathers them from several sources, even pacman. rpm.pbone.net (important you do not use the standard http://www for some reason it won't work that way)

Off Topic: I did the online update today and it messed up my NVidia driver and disabled 3D no way to get it back other than reinstalling the driver.

Well .. that's why I posted.

I have cleaned EVERY thing under YAST in multimedia .. which even remotely suggests video/encoder etc.
I just used sources out from miguel's site and nothing makes any sense. The sound works and video is missing. .. blue screen galore.
I have even tried once reinstalling suse (on a different partition) .. nothing makes any sense ..
I have played around disabling different sources and leaving just one thing "active" at a time .. remove/reinstall and it still the same.

Install Mplayer, run the video you want view in the console. Look for errors in the console window. Mplayer gives a lot of information when run this way.

This is the video decoder/codec from Mplayer on my system:

Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))

I would like to add myself to the pool of fustrated SUSE 10 multimedia people. I've had so much trouble trying to get the video audio part of the os to work that I actually completely stoped trying to get it to work 100%. For me it kind of an either or situation. Either I can watch video with sound or I can play my audio-cds. Sometimes it works, most of the time it don't.
I know this is not to much help, but I would just like to say that you are not the only one having trouble getting the multimedia part of suse10 to work properly. Hope you find a way to fix your problem.

/Steffen

Have you installed the win32codecs?

Yes .. I have tried W32Codes .. .. and mplayer.
suggestion to run mplayer was helpful .. the debug messges point out that it's using mpeg pass thru driver .. i.e. it's probably trying to rely on hardware on the video card (chip) to do the decoding .. but it fails to map the color spacle and barfs on it So I think that explains the problem, I still don't have a solution.

I don't know enough about this stuff to say whether I should force it to do software decoding (using a different decoder) or try to find out which kernel driver it's using for my video card and try to fix that .. I guess the later is the better thing to do .. so there is some searching to do

What kind of video card are you using?