Miro won't play mp4

Message

Bulkley · #1 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-07 00:15

Miro used to work perfectly on my machine. Lately, it won't play videos with .mp4 extensions. I have to convert them to Ogg Theora. I have tried renaming .miro and I have hunted on Google both with no luck. I assume that a routine upgrade created a conflict somewhere but launching miro in a terminal doesn't show any problems. Any ideas?

Miro 4.0.4-1
Wheezy
AMD 64
Openbox

stevepusser · #2 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-07 00:39

Like Totem, Miro uses gstreamer and gstreamer-ffmpeg to render video. You can confirm it's some sort of problem with these libraries by installing Totem (Movie Player) and checking to see if it has trouble with the same mp4 files. If so, then the next step is tracking down whether it was some sort of ffmpeg/libav update(i.e. from debian-multimedia), or an update to gstreamer-ffmpeg, that caused the problem.

Bulkley · #3 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-07 02:23

stevepusser wrote:Like Totem, Miro uses gstreamer and gstreamer-ffmpeg to render video. You can confirm it's some sort of problem with these libraries by installing Totem (Movie Player) and checking to see if it has trouble with the same mp4 files. If so, then the next step is tracking down whether it was some sort of ffmpeg/libav update(i.e. from debian-multimedia), or an update to gstreamer-ffmpeg, that caused the problem.

Thanks for the reply. The debian-multimedia repository was a good suggestion. It brought in a fresh gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg which I thought might fix Miro but it didn't.

I thought of Totem. Is there any way to install it without Gnome 3? Installing Totem in Wheezy brings a whack of other packages, including Gnome 3, which I'd rather not have. I used Totem years ago without Gnome but that doesn't work now.

SMPlayer plays mp4's but it doesn't seem to use gstreamer and gstreamer-ffmpeg.

stevepusser · #4 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-07 05:06

Usually rebuilding gstreamer-ffmpeg against your current ffmpeg header files (such as libavcodec-dev and libavutil-dev) fixes the issue. I recently backported Wheezy's libav/ffmpeg 0.8 to a Squeeze base where we already had a perfectly working ffmpeg 0.6.1 because the latest VLC needs it, and was all set to have gstreamer-ffmpeg and Miro playback break completely...but nothing happened except Miro h.264 encoding broke (but I found a patch for that for libav--the baseline profile parsing bug, to be exact) and nothing else seemed to have broken like it has for you.

It looks like Wheezy upgraded libav on March 19, is this possibly when Miro broke? You can try rebuilding the gstreamer-ffmpeg package this way:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=38976

and see if that fixes it. It looks like I have to do another backport because of the security issues with 0.8...

Bulkley · #5 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-07 17:21

stevepusser wrote:Usually rebuilding gstreamer-ffmpeg against your current ffmpeg header files (such as libavcodec-dev and libavutil-dev) fixes the issue. . . .

Oh, that's interesting. I don't have either libavcodec-dev and libavutil-dev. Should I? While typing this I installed them but it didn't help. I'll try rebuilding gstreamer-ffmpeg as you suggested.

Can I ask a really dumb question? What does the "-dev" suffix indicate? I have always assumed it was short for "developer" and that normal users generally don't need -dev packages.

stevepusser · #6 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-07 19:24

The normal user won't need the -dev files. They include "header" files that let other programs use certain libraries, such as the ffmpeg/libav ones, when they are compiled against them. In this case, you'll be recompiling gstreamer-ffmpeg against a newer set of libav* libraries, so they are necessary. You will also get a scary warning about using external libraries instead of gstreamer-ffmpeg's internal version, but it's Debian policy to do it that way. However, I think that using the internal version would stop the breakage of things like Miro upon upgrades, at the cost of a bigger gstreamer-ffmpeg binary file. It's something that may be worth playing around with.

Bulkley · #7 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-08 02:31

Thanks for the explanation. I haven't got at building the gstreamer-ffmpeg yet as I have been busy all day. Just out of curiosity I installed Miro on my laptop which also runs Wheezy. Miro runs perfectly on it. The laptop also has Totem and minimal Gnome Shell (much better than the full Gnome-3 but that's another story). It is most likely that I messed up something silly on the desktop that is blocking Miro mp4's.

stevepusser · #8 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-08 19:48

emma, if you aren't a spammer, how 'bout a bit more information?

I managed to backport the newer Wheezy libav-0.8.1 to a Squeeze base, installed, and Miro and all other playback and transcoding seems to be unaffected.

Bulkley · #9 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-09 02:21

Well, I've spent a great deal of the afternoon trying to make a new gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg. I keep getting error messages. Soul Singin' laid out great instructions but I am really missing something. For example, apt-get source gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg produces

Code: Select all

$ apt-get source gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Picking 'gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-dmo' as source package instead of 'gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg'
E: Ignore unavailable version '1:0.10.13-0.2' of package 'gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg'
E: Unable to find a source package for gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg-dmo

I tried using a tar ball with no better luck.

In between times, I installed Totem. It can't play mp4's either. This is an old machine that has been upgraded several times. I think it was first loaded with Etch. So there have been a lot of package changes. I wouldn't be surprised if an upgrade to a browser or whatever changed a configuration or replaced a necessary package.

stevepusser · #10 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-09 07:04

Well, actually when I backport something I use a more hands-on method by manually downloading the source packages, then extracting them, per this guide: https://sites.google.com/site/stevosfil ... ects=0&d=1

So you would get the wheezy gstreamer-ffmpeg source here: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

or the testing debian-multimedia version here, which is probably the one you want, the three source files are near the midpoint of the list:
http://debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/ ... eg-dmo.php

Once you have extracted with dpkg-source, the "Smart Guide" can be followed.

craigevil · #11 Post by **craigevil** » 2012-04-09 07:36

No issues with Miro here but I am on sid.

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$ dpkg -l|grep gstreamer
ii  gstreamer0.10-alsa:i386              0.10.36-1                      GStreamer plugin for ALSA
ii  gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg                 1:0.10.13-0.2                  FFmpeg plugin for GStreamer
ii  gstreamer0.10-gconf:i386             0.10.31-1+b1                   GStreamer plugin for getting the sink/source information from GConf
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad:i386       0.10.23-1+b1                   GStreamer plugins from the "bad" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-base:i386      0.10.36-1                      GStreamer plugins from the "base" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386      0.10.31-1+b1                   GStreamer plugins from the "good" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly:i386      0.10.19-1                      GStreamer plugins from the "ugly" set
ii  gstreamer0.10-x:i386                 0.10.36-1                      GStreamer plugins for X11 and Pango
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-bad0.10-0:i386  0.10.23-1+b1                   GStreamer development files for libraries from the "bad" set
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0:i386 0.10.36-1                      GStreamer libraries from the "base" set
ii  libgstreamer0.10-0:i386              0.10.36-1                      Core GStreamer libraries and elements
ii  phonon-backend-gstreamer             4:4.6.0.0-1                    Phonon GStreamer 0.10.x backend

$ apt-cache policy miro
miro:
Installed: 4.0.4-1
Candidate: 4.0.4-1

Bulkley · #12 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-11 21:57

stevepusser wrote:Well, actually when I backport something I use a more hands-on method by manually downloading the source packages, then extracting them, per this guide: https://sites.google.com/site/stevosfil ... ects=0&d=1

So you would get the wheezy gstreamer-ffmpeg source here: http://packages.debian.org/wheezy/gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

or the testing debian-multimedia version here, which is probably the one you want, the three source files are near the midpoint of the list:
http://debian-multimedia.org/pool/main/ ... eg-dmo.php

Once you have extracted with dpkg-source, the "Smart Guide" can be followed.

Bulkley · #13 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-11 22:04

stevepusser wrote:Well, actually when I backport something I use a more hands-on method by manually downloading the source packages, then extracting them, per this guide: https://sites.google.com/site/stevosfil ... ects=0&d=1
. . .

That guide is easier to follow. Still, I had nothing but trouble. Last night i did a safe-upgrade and, lo and behold, a fresh version of pbuilder came with it. So I tried again and this time it built the fresh gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg_0.10.13-0.2~bpo50+1_amd64.deb. This installed properly. Unfortunately, it still doesn't help Miro play mp4's.

Bulkley · #14 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-12 03:53

Searching around I see that this is not an exclusive Miro problem. See this link.

stevepusser · #15 Post by **stevepusser** » 2012-04-12 04:22

Well, I'm stumped. It does seem to be some gstreamer bug overall, just not confined to gstreamer-ffmpeg. I do have a newer Miro running in Squeeze-based MEPIS (4.0.6), (sources here: http://main.mepis-deb.org/mepiscr/testr ... st/m/miro/) but I don't think upgrading Miro will fix gstreamer. I am currently running the ffmpeg/libav 0.8.1 from Wheezy, backported to Squeeze, and gstreamer, Miro, and Totem have not missed a beat...maybe the mp4 codec has moved from one gstreamer plugin package to another upon upgrade.

The only workaround for Miro that I can come up with is to go into its Preferences--> Playback and uncheck the "Play Media in Miro" box. Miro will then launch externally the system default player for the file type (such as VLC or SMPlayer, whatever .mp4 is associated with), instead of using the internal gstreamer player for playback. It's clunky, but does work.

Bulkley · #16 Post by **Bulkley** » 2012-04-12 23:14

stevepusser wrote:The only workaround for Miro that I can come up with is to go into its Preferences--> Playback and uncheck the "Play Media in Miro" box. Miro will then launch externally the system default player for the file type (such as VLC or SMPlayer, whatever .mp4 is associated with), instead of using the internal gstreamer player for playback. It's clunky, but does work.

Agreed, it does work although features are transfered to SMPlayer.

If I load Miro in a terminal, the only error messages are these:

Code: Select all

** (process:7415): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype 'GMountMountFlags' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'

** (process:7415): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype 'GDriveStartFlags' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'

** (process:7415): WARNING **: Trying to register gtype 'GSocketMsgFlags' as flags when in fact it is of type 'GEnum'

When this problem first showed up I did some searching and got the impression these are minor and not a problem. Is that true?

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