tried to download the .bz2 packages .... got so lost in the on-line documentation about mplayer on the mplayer site i just quit !!!!!

so ... i went back and downloaded the .tgz file from slacky.eu and the codecs from the same website ...

now everything is set to look in /usr/local/bin/mplayer for any default behavior in Konqueror ....

but .... mplayer tries to load ... i see it trying in the system tray ...
but it times out and i have no idea why?????

sorry i'm such a doofus but there has got to be an easier path to setup and i'm just missing it ....

thanks for any help .... hope we find a solution for the 120 people that have already hit this thread looking for mplayer help !!!!
:-)
david

Probably because you're missing a library or something. Run it from a terminal and see if you get any error messages. Did you install libjack?

ok .....

found that the link to .bz2 was much too complex ...

went back to the .tgz file that i have not had any luck getting to load ...

mplayer now resides in /usr/local/bin/mplayer and i have pointed all video to play from this directory ...

when i click on a video ... mplayer tries to load ... i see it in the sys tray ... but it times out

the original error with libjack does not come up anymore ... even when i am trying to load mplayer from Konsole .... there i only get a list of [options] and files to point mplayer at ...

maybe i don't have a gui loaded???? ... but did not quite understand the mplayer site on this topic ...

any help will as always be appreciated ...

thanks !!!!!

Did you try to start mplayer as gmplayer instead ?

And also, are you trying running mplayer or "mplayer yourvideo.avi" ? You cannot just run mplayer by itself. Once you get it working in your terminal (like konsole), then you can trying using it in a graphical sense (icons, konqueror, the system tray, etc). Just focus on whether or not you can run it from the command line.

cd into the directory where the videos are. Type mplayer video.avi. Please paste the output here. Thanks.

Just a suggestion, but have you tried slackbuilds.org? They usually have all the dependencies and instructions you need there.

ok ...

the route to the directory where the video is and type mplayer HomeAlone.wmv works like a charm ..... had no idea!!!! :_)

the video pops up in a small color filled window while resting in the open Konsole window ....

so i guess it DOES work already .... so there are no error messages to post 'cause it ran beautifully ....

now,,,, do you know how to make it run from Konqueror or where to look for documentation about how to make it run from there ...????

thanks to everyone for hanging in there on this one ....
david

(just in case you haven't noticed)

Try to right click on video file in konqueror and choose open with ... gmplayer
(I don't remember the tip to make it work for all video files, surelly it must be in KDE component configuration or similar)

Now that you know it works from your konsole, you can look at all of the cool usage options with "man mplayer." I'm sure you'll be able to have konqueror open all videos with mplayer. I do the same with emelfm.

the post from Anithen is the one to work with here,
went to http://www.linuxpackages.net/
went to http://www.slacky.eu/
went to http://rpm.pbone.net
and all 3 had me chasing my tail .....
in the post above from Anithen you will see the ref: to
the mplayer website,
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html
on this page select "download" on the left hand side -
or http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
which is referenced by Anithen above -
choose the source download from http or
MPlayer v1.0rc2 source
it shows up as a bzipped file
unpack it as
tar xjf MPlayer-1.0rc2.tar.bz2
then cd into MPlayer-1.0rc2 and run
./configure
make
then su to root and run
make install
the mplayer that runs will run .wmv natively i suspect
many others
the
essential-amd64-20071007.tar.bz2 or whichever codec file
you need is suggested by the web authors, but when i
unpacked it and tried to run ./configure in "essential-amd64-20071007"
it would not run ...
at that point i don't know why but i tested mplayer without it
and it ran fine ....
hope this is helpful ...
cheers ...
live well,
david

I have to reiterate this.

The pre-built packages are great in terms of ease of use. You download them and then install them. I started using Slackware six months or so ago and relied on them plenty.

However, they're not perfect and do cause problems and can lead to errors/bugs.

I started using Slackbuilds more and more per the advice of those here. They're a little bit more complicated (not much) and take-up a considerably larger amount of time to install, but are worth it.

They avoid most of the problems you're experiencing here. They are as stable and configurable as installing from source, yet as "clean" and as pre-built packages.

I'm to the point to where I'm learning to write my own which only adds to the stability because they are perfectly configured for my system.