I've compiled Mplayer twice today and both times it said that real was supported. However when I try to open a .ram file that I saved to disk it shows a red dot and doesn't play. I don't get an error message from xterm if I run gmplayer from it. It just says 'playing file' and then nothing.

If I use firefox's open with function and I select gmplayer I can't click on OK. It's grayed out. Also if I select gmplayer it first makes the box white again and I have to try a few times before I see mplayer in the box. But still I can't open it.

Does anybody have an idea on what might be wrong?

Possibly the real audio file is encoded in too old/too new a version of ra? I know that the "official" realplayer for Linux can't play old ones (really stupid!). But maybe mplayer hasn't incorporated the latest real audio codecs yet. Might try finding some older files.

Have you tried tweaking the "Helper Applications" setting in the Firefox prefs? (I assume that Firefox has this place.) I do believe that I had some problems with the "Open With" in Firefox on a friend's laptop. (I just use Mozilla myself.)

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Kyle

I know of that settings thing in firefox. But I never got it right anymore after installing and then removing mozplugger.

I think it's because it's a really new file. On windows my realplayer7 or something couldn't play it either. So I hope they have newer codecs going to search them now.

I'm actually not sure if they're even available yet - I don't believe they're open source. You'll need the actual real audio player, I think.

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Kyle

Yep you're right. And it seems I got a nice onboard soundcard that alsa doesn't support really good yet so it probably won't work. I hear something about aoss wrapper or something but I'll look into thta later.

Really strange is this:

I tried the realplayer with mozilla and firefox in two user accounts. In user account 1 I click on a *.ra link, and in both browsers it works. It even shows realplayer as the default action.
In user account 2 it only works with mozilla. When I click the ra link in firefox, even if i manually chose "/usr/bin/realplayer" (and I know its there!) the OK button stays grayed out! realplayer is even listed as defaullt (but not selected automatically) - I just cant click OK.
Now, if anyone has an idea what the hell I could have misconfigured in firefox of user account 2, i would be happy.
Because I use user account 2 with firefox 99% of the time...

stef

Hey mehlkelm I had the same problem with my mplayer. Maybe it's a permission problem? Did you install realplayer systemwide?

Yes I did! That's why the "open with" dialogue works fine with the other user account (its a normal user account).
Talking about permissions:
Im using debian and the user account that works with both browsers is in the audio and the video group. My primary user account one wasn't in the video group until i run into this problem; I changed that without effect on the problem. The primary user account is in some more groups, maybe there are permission-limiting effects in being in some groups??

stefan

I'd check your groups out. They can limit things you can do. (For example you can't listen to audio if you're not in the audio group even if everything else is right)

i know. i am in the video group, so realplayer should work and all my other video player DO work.

I was just wondering whether some groups actually restrict permissions when youre in them.