Mplayer - how do I get it to work??
 

I'm a complete newbie to linux - just got it up and running today :)

Now downloaded and installed MPlayer - it actually IS installed and I can start the program. BUT I cannot play my sample movie file. The error I get is: Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

Now I'm running Red Hat 8.0 on an older laptop with and ATI Mach64 video card. I know it's not state of the art - but it did the job when I ran Win2K on the same hardware. Now there's a challenge:D

Thanks in advance for any help!

Dr. Fresh

try starting mplayer with a different video output plugin.

to see what's available type
'mplayer -vo help' (i think)

what usually works is
mplayer -vo xv

very common problem - you compiled mplayer from source on an rpm based system and ca't play anything

very simple answer - you compiled it without the XFree86-devel files installed, so MPlayer had no way of knowing what decent outputs it could use.

The best way I've found so far is using apt-get to install it (and many other things) with no pain.

Go in here:

http://freshrpms.net/

Get apt-get for you RedHat distribution, install the easy to use rpm for apt-get and when done type at the console:

apt-get install mplayer

Done, it will install all you need, all the dependencies and even with gui. Doing it you skip a long time compiling programs from source or checking its' dependencies via rpm's ;)

Time is money you know ;). If we waste time compiling programs with a good RPM distro RedHat is, it'll eventually become not so free after all ;)

Thanks everyone!

Now I didn't compile it! (IMHO - there's some way to go yet until Linux will compete with Windows in user friendlyness when it comes to installing and configuring new programs...)

Now I found a new ati.2 driver - tried to install it - and now I'm reinstalling (from scratch, that is) Red Hat 8.0, as the result were that the X-server could't start after reboot.

I'll get back to you all when I'm up and running again...

I haven't given up yet - but it's rather anoying:confused:

Thanks again for you time.

Dr. Fresh