Media Player

[sellis]

Not moaning, just reporting...

 

After AussieJohn's post, I just tried a few DVDs with Totem. Please, no flames on my DVD collection...

 

- Andromeda Strain: Cannot read NAV packet.

- Red Dwarf 1: Plays BBC Logo OK but then Cannot read from DVD.

- Red Dwarf 4: Plays BBC Logo OK but then crashes.

 

They're all region 2 in a region 2 drive, and the BBC logo looks lovely. But overall, it's still 0 for 3.

 

My guess is I have to install decss - am I right? Edit: yes, I was. Installed libdvdcss and everything plays okey-dokey now.

 

XMMS and Totem also both still pretty screwy with audio playlists. They will play individual .ogg files fine. But not only can I not read .m3u or .pls files created elsewhere, I cannot read .m3u of .pls files created within the applications themselves, 30 seconds previously.

 

I've looked up the MIME types for both .m3u and .pls and they seem to be set up right, so I don't think that they are mis-identifying the type of the playlist file. Frankly, I'm at a bit of a loss here, and since I'm a recent convert from Windows, the only thing I can think of now is to uninstall and reinstall Totem. :o Edit: didn't work. But installing Kaffeine did. I can't create playlists in Kaffeine though, so any pointers on getting Totem or XMMS up and running again would be splendid.

 

I don't hate Totem. Up until yesterday, it was working fine. I just though that the skin is a bit big and wanted something a little more compact.

Edited September 17, 2004 by sellis

[sellis]

I fond the solution to my problem in XMMS. It's a simple thing once you realise.

 

I had created my playlists under Windows, and therefore the directory separator was a '\' instead of a '/'. Simple as that.

 

Of course, I took the hard path and wrote a shell script using sed to fix them all up, before I found the option in XMMS that allowed them to be used in their original state anyway...

 

In case anyone else has this problem, the option you need can be found from XMMS's right-click menu, Options > Preferences, then in the "Options" tab there is a check box for "Use \ as directory delimiter".

[Guest drdavis]

When I put a DVD into the drive, Totem movie player tells me:

 

Totem could not play 'file:///home/brian/tmp/orbit-brian/linc-da6-0-636df66b28c5a'.

There is no plugin to handle this movie.

 

I have to install a plug in?

[devries]

You can find the plugins at PLF (see the FAQs about urpmi).

 

Good luck.

[SpikeyKlitske]

I find a lot of these comments interesting.

 

To play DVDs in  Mandrake 9.0, 9.1 and  9.2, I struggled with ALL the then media players and finally had to settle on mplayer and then only after working out how to get it to start playing the DVD. 

Then when Mandrake 10 came out  and I had been using it for many weeks, one night I popped in a DVD and expected to have do the usual start play routine.  I took no notice for about a minute or so and was amazed by the sudden burst on screen of the DVDs film intro.

The only time I had ever had that experience in the past was in windows with PowerDVD.

Totem had automatically started playing the DVD and I found I had full access to all the DVDs preliminary choices.  The only thing that I had to click to set was "Full Screen".

Later I tried ALL the other installed DVD players and they were just as big a pain in the +++++ as they had been in the past.

I have now enjoyed watching over a dozen DVD movies with not a trace of noise, streaks, shimmer, missed frames, instability or anything else that could spoil a movie. And I have been able to select all the extras on the DVDs from the DVDs own on-screen Menus.  As well I was able to get the FULL surround sounds.

 

As the result of all this I find the earlier posters hatred for totem quite amusing. 

 

I also find this fascination with the likes of Windows Media Player which seems that everything media should be playable in one unit, to be even more hilarious. 

 

A bit like getting a double decker bus and putting a swimming pool on top, then building a huge flat tray on the back to load up cycles plus motor bikes plus jet skis, fitting it out with all terrain suspension plus tyres plus drive,  and do not forget the catterpillar tracks and skis in case of snow.    Ridiculous  ???? I don't think so.  To me they are one and the same.

In Linux you have a choice of numerous video/dvd players for moving images, xmms and others to play sound and a number of other programs to view still images.  Namely a tool for each job which does the job in superior fashion than the so-called all-in-one or universal tool.  Horses for courses.

 

I have discovered that a majority of the video stuff which is not DVD is mainly Porno.  And before anyone starts flaming me, I can state right now that I have no basic opposition to the stuff, even I don't mind some of it, But I could care less that totem or any other Linux video player can or cannot play some these video formats. 

 

Now I can play a DVD easily, per TOTEM (thanks to all on the totem team), play all my MP3s and OGGS per XMMS, and all my music CDs per KsCD.  These do their tasks extremely well and most of the others are interesting for what their originators saw as their reason for the apps. 

 

Ease of use, reliability and stability is what determines broard CHOSEN adoption.  In Linux this is always the case.  In Windows it is never the case.........Ever noticed that in the Windows world, ALL the very, very best individual applications are also freeware or just free.  Examples :-  Ad-Aware,  AVG, Zone Alarm, the brilliant CDEX, to name just a few. 

 

Makes you think doesn't it.

 

Cheers.                      John.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Amen to that AussieJohn