Why is it so hard to play a RealMedia file?

[Guest Extreme Coder]

Maybe this only happened to me, but I really hate the KMPlayer interface, so I decided to install Kaffeine. I tried to play my .RM media , but none of them would work, even though the normal RealPlayer would play them.

I figured this was a case of missing codecs, as with most distros. I had the plf mirrors, so I installed real-codecs(with win32-codecs, and xanim-codecs in case I need them).

But still, nothing would happen. Next, I looked around on the internet. I read something about having to install the plf versions of mplayer and xine, instead of the normal ones.

I did that, and now KMPlayer could play the files! But still, Kaffeine wouldn't, giving me an error of: " An error occurred loading library: drvc.so"

I looked around on the internet, with nothing of a similar case.

Then, in rpmdrake, I looked at the files the package real-codecs installed, which between them I found drvc.so. I opened Kaffeine, chose the xine engine parameters, pointed the link of real codecs to the correct directory, and finally it ran.

 

My question is, are all these steps necessary to be able to run a realmedia file? Or is something wrong with my setup? I am hoping it is, because in Kubuntu, I only had to install w32codecs(it contained the realmedia codecs too), and every xine/gstreamer player,including Kaffeine, could play without a hitch.

In other words, what are the exact steps needed to play a RealMedia file in KMPlayer or Kaffeine ?

That's the only bummer for me so far in this wonderful distro.

 

 

Extreme Coder

[scarecrow]

The simple way is getting the "all" tarball from the mplayer FTP - here - extracting it to your win32 codecs folder, and you are set.

Mandriva can't include all these codecs due to sevral GPL violations.

And for the record, I *much* prefer Kmplayer over kaffeine. Actually I like Smplayer even better, but the latter does not work via Konqueror (yet), so I have to keep kmplayer installed as well.

Edited May 10, 2007 by scarecrow

[Guest Extreme Coder]

You didn't exactly get my point;

a lot of distros, including Ubuntu, do not include the codecs for legal issues. That's not a problem for me. The distro I stayed the most with, Ubuntu, made me install only one outside package so I could play the RM files. As you can see above, I had to do much more than one step to get them to play. I am asking, are the package upgrades to xine/mplayer necessary, or am I doing something wrong?

[neddie]

Don't know, but I just installed the rpm from real.com and never noticed any problems.

[scarecrow]

I am asking, are the package upgrades to xine/mplayer necessary, or am I doing something wrong?

 

This is a good question, which probably a good lawyer can answer properly.

 

xine is simpler to build, but mplayer has tons of build switches, and I do not know (or really care) which ones of them form some sort of GPL violation.

My mplayer is built with

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gui --disable-arts --enable-x11 \

--enable-runtime-cpudetection --enable-sdl \

--enable-theora --confdir=/etc/mplayer \

--enable-xvid --enable-gl --enable-tv-v4l1 --enable-tv-v4l2 --enable-largefiles \

--disable-liblzo --disable-speex --disable-openal --disable-faac \

--enable-smb --enable-aa --disable-fribidi --disable-libdv --disable-musepack \

--language=all --enable-lirc --disable-dvdnav --disable-esd $EXTRAOPTS

 

...where the EXTRAOPTS are relative to win32 codecs, and can be set in numerous ways.

Does not look that simple as a whole, does it?

[Guest Extreme Coder]

Aha! I guess the Ubuntu mplayer packages already have these build switches. Ah well, installing two packages is not more terrible than installing one. :lol: BTW, the reason I hate KMPlayer is because it can't really fast-forward correctly(when I click on another time on the timeline, the audio and video go out of sync -_- ), while Kaffeine doesn't suffer that problem. And anyway, Kaffeine is KDE's official player, and Mandriva should instead include it as a default(the mozilla plug-in issue is fixed)

 

Extreme Coder