Multimedia Codecs - Lenny

[Bulkley]

Now I can't listen to this. I can watch it, but no sound.
I have no sound anywhere.

[refracta]

I dont usually like news....especially news about politics....but that was great!

[Bulkley]

I dont usually like news....especially news about politics....but that was great!

I can't tell. In all this messing around, I have no sound. My Openbox is now neon green, which makes me wonder if I deleted something python.

[naeryandor]

Bulkley, I checked that link. The video and audio play after a second or two on my computer. The only problem on my end is the video is just a tiny bit slow/lags/choppy. This is the only site I have watched with this problem. Other news sites and the weather channel play without any discernible lags.

In re-reading some of the posts in this thread and comparing, I do not have gecko-mediaplayer in Lenny's package list. I see that Squeeze has it listed. So, that is something for me to look into when I learn enough to eventually move to Squeeze.

I am not sure what to suggest on the green OpenBox since I have not gotten that far.

[craigevil]

Bulkley, I checked that link. The video and audio play after a second or two on my computer. The only problem on my end is the video is just a tiny bit slow/lags/choppy. This is the only site I have watched with this problem. Other news sites and the weather channel play without any discernible lags.

In re-reading some of the posts in this thread and comparing, I do not have gecko-mediaplayer in Lenny's package list. I see that Squeeze has it listed. So, that is something for me to look into when I learn enough to eventually move to Squeeze.

I am not sure what to suggest on the green OpenBox since I have not gotten that far.

gecko-mediaplayer is the new version of mozilla-mplayer which is in Lenny.

[naeryandor]

craigevil, thanks for the clarification on gecko-mediaplayer. I was thinking it was the same/updated version. I am already looking at Squeeze as my next project.

[Bulkley]

I got my sound working again. I have no idea why but something reset all my settings in alsamixer. After fixing that I dumped mplayer and went back to Totem. I like it better. Maybe this is personal but I have never been able to get mplayer to behave the way I want it to. Thanks for the help.

[refracta]

do you use totem-xine or totem-gstreamer?

I am a xine fan but never bothered with the totem frontend.

[Bulkley]

do you use totem-xine or totem-gstreamer?

I am a xine fan but never bothered with the totem frontend.

I use the Totem front end for off-line stuff. I'm a Bit of a Totem nut in that I have just about everything Totem including totem-gstreamer, totem-xine, totem-mozilla and totem-coherence. Frankly, I don't know whether I should. Do any of those things conflict?

[stevepusser]

craigevil, thanks for the clarification on gecko-mediaplayer. I was thinking it was the same/updated version. I am already looking at Squeeze as my next project.

I managed to backport gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer to the Lenny based Mepis 8, so should not be any trouble doing it in "pure" Lenny. Will take a look at it this weekend.

[Bulkley]

I am already looking at Squeeze as my next project.

Judging by your skills here, I'd say that you are ready for Squeeze. When you do it, do yourself a favour and use command line from init 1; that is a console without X running. I like to do the the kernel and X first, one at a time, so that I can check them out. It makes it easier if their is a hitch.

[refracta]

I use the Totem front end ...

I swear some things that play with xine xine-plugin do not when I use totem-xine and totem-plugin....wonder if I am missing something....totem uses a lot of resources as well although it is prettier...ugly is good though

[Bulkley]

[quote="refracta]I swear some things that play with xine xine-plugin do not when I use totem-xine and totem-plugin....wonder if I am missing something....totem uses a lot of resources as well although it is prettier...ugly is good though [/quote]
Yeah, I can go with ugly. I did consider switching to xine; haven't ruled it out; still mulling it over.

[Bulkley]

refracta, I couldn't resist. I stripped out Totem and installed xine-ui, plugin, etc. Yup, it is ugly. So far, it works. It certainly works a lot better than when I tried it several years ago. As long as it does what I need, I'll stick with it.

[jstnice]

Thanks for all of the replies in this thread and the private messages. I am already learning a great deal.

As suggested, I have installed esound, gnome-audio, and libesd-alsa0. I now have start-up and shut-down sounds without having to install PulseAudio. System sounds are not critical, but a nice feature. Thanks.

To begin with, I am sticking close to the Debian wiki. I have installed faad, ffmpeg, gstreamer0.10-plugins-really-bad, lame, lame-extras, sox, twolame, and totem-xine (as well as everything that installs with them). Also, I have added gstreamer0.10-lame for MP3 encoding in Sound Converter and Sound Juicer.

Maybe I have not been out on the Internet enough, or perhaps I am having excellent luck. With these new codecs, I cannot find anything that will not play. Every news site plays the video clips, and all of the Internet radio stations play either in Totem or Iceweasel. This is great.

oOarthurOo, the two paragraphs above may answer your question. If you have any sites or files you would like for me to test out, I would be happy to help. I would like to be able to play pretty much anything.

Now, if I do stumble across a media file that will not play, I have a list of other packages to install such as realplayer and gecko-mediaplayer. Thanks, craigevil.

Bulkley, I would also like to use something besides Adobe Flash, but from what I have read, Gnash is still not quite there. I hope to be able to use Gnash soon enough. I have just started researching the HTML5 articles. Looks interesting, too.

refracta, thanks for suggesting Sound Converter. I have not used it yet, but it may come in handy. All of my newly ripped media files are in Ogg Vorbis right now. On the subject, I used Sound Juicer, and it did not have the options for MP3 output format. I did not notice, originally since I was wanting Ogg Vorbis. That led me to check Sound Converter, too. The MP3 option was grayed out. I clicked the hyperlink for more info, and it suggested gstreamer0.10-lame for MP3 functionality. Without your post, I may not have noticed this.

So, with everyone's help, this little Debian Lenny box is up and running flawlessly. I shall update as I experiment more. Thank you all very much.

Congratulate you, ah, I'm also studying.

[Bulkley]

1. Can anyone watch/listen to CBC? http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ It crashes every one of my browsers. From Googling around, I see that CBC, BBC and Stage 6 are notorious for causing problems with Linux. CBC states clearly that it does not support Linux. From time to time I am able to play their audio but it is not consistant and I don't know what the variable is.

2. Just for kicks, I removed xine. Now, I have no media player, no Totem, no mplayer, etc. What I have is a lot of gstreamer and flashplugin-nonfree. I can still watch/listen to Youtube, Googlevid, and the rest of the places I normally visit, execpt CBC (above) but I had that problem anyway. I took out the players as an experiment because I noticed that gstreamer files are required for a lot of other programs, such as Open Office and Epiphany-browser. So, what are the players for? Since some gstreamer files are already on most of our Debian systems, why do we need other media files, such as xine, as well? Note that this is not a complaint about Xine, Totem or Mplayer; it's just my curiosity.

Edited to add: Is it possible to configure a browser to be a player? I tried it, but so far no success.

[nadir]

I clicked on the link you gave and it works.

For me multimedia is voodoo. I installed gecko-mediaplayer and flashplugin-nonfree and alsa and thats it (well: gecko is so much of apps that to say: "thats it" is a bit strange).
There might be stuff installed i don't know about.

To sum it up: You are not the only one.

[Bulkley]

For me multimedia is voodoo.

Yeah, me too. Magic. Might as well cut open a chicken and study the entrails.

I wonder what is in the gecko-mediaplayer that enables it to play CBC.

I guess what I'm trying to do with my own setup is to get satisfactory results with a minimum of files, partly from a belief that the more complicated anything gets the faster it will break.

[Bulkley]

I clicked on the link you gave and it works.

. . . I installed gecko-mediaplayer and flashplugin-nonfree and alsa and thats it (well: gecko is so much of apps that to say: "thats it" is a bit strange).

Again, I installed gecko-mediaplayer but CBC crashes my browser. That site doesn't like me.

[naeryandor]

Bulkley,

I went to the CBC site. I clicked to open the player window, and everything played with no problem. However, when I tried to close that player window, Iceweasel locked up. I tried it again and waited for several minutes before closing the window. Iceweasel still locked up. I can verify there is a problem with that site in conjunction with my system as configured.

One thing you might try is click over on the Listen tab, choose a local stream address from the drop-down box on that next page, and copy/paste the stream address into Rhythmbox (or your favorite player). I can listen to CBC in Rhythmbox just fine.