Linux has such horrible multimedia support

C

Cheetoz

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Mar 3, 2003
Messages
1,972
Getting multimedia to work on linux has to be the most daunting task ever.

Theres not a good video player. For me, mplayer does not go into fullscreen by double clicking it. In fullscreen, you have no visible controls. it plays sound delayed, while other players play it fine.

Theres no browser plugin for videos either. Only one I know of is mplayer, but that thing is buggy beyond belief. Fullscreening videos sometimes freezes it, or leaves it in a endless loop of 1 second. You can't fast foward or back up precisely, and it also freezes/locks up attempting to do so.

Can't really play games, wine + steam = wtfbug pwned. Gotta use xover office, which I don't want to pay for.

And for flash, well it's about time there was an update.

Yeah, other than for multimedia use (my main reason for having a computer), I love linux.

Now I have to google for how to fix my delayed sound in mplayer, and why the contrast on totem player is fubared, even though it is set on defaults. And try out that flash beta.

So, does anybody know of a GOOD (meaning it doesn't just play every video out, but has a GUI) video player? And a good plugin for firefox to view videos?

/rant :)
 
Cheetoz said:
Getting multimedia to work on linux has to be the most daunting task ever.

Theres not a good video player. For me, mplayer does not go into fullscreen by double clicking it. In fullscreen, you have no visible controls. it plays sound delayed, while other players play it fine.
Click to expand...
Then try another player. There are plenty around
Totem,Xine shite there is even realplayer


Cheetoz said:
Theres no browser plugin for videos either. Only one I know of is mplayer, but that thing is buggy beyond belief. Fullscreening videos sometimes freezes it, or leaves it in a endless loop of 1 second. You can't fast foward or back up precisely, and it also freezes/locks up attempting to do so.
Click to expand...
Totem is a plugin

Cheetoz said:
Can't really play games, wine + steam = wtfbug pwned. Gotta use xover office, which I don't want to pay for.
Click to expand...
and how is this a linux problem? if ppl wont write for linux there is not alot linux user can do (and that is why I still dual-boot)

Cheetoz said:
And for flash, well it's about time there was an update.
Click to expand...
you mean like flash9 which is out


Ever thought that the reason playback sucks is because some exteamly clever (infintily cleverer then you or I) are trying their hardest to reverse-engineer a media format. Having worked with VHDL-level voice encoders believe me when I say A/V is a bastard to work with
give the OSS community some slack will you. Don't like it stick with windows and all the pain
 
It sounds like you want linux to be windows. It's not. Things are different. mplayer is one of the most mature, full-featured media players ever. It's a very powerful program, but you have to learn how to use it. It isn't a shitty program just because you aren't used to it. And I'd wager the freezing problems aren't related to mplayer, but probably either a hardware or driver issue. If you want a gui frontend, then get one. mplayer has several. gmplayer is probably a good one to start with.
 
I know exactly where you're coming from and I'd have to say I agree completely. Though I solved all my problems through hours of wasted time... just to get it to the point where it could compete with Windows in the usability area... I questioned why I was doing it.

Windows was already usable after a clean install. While I still screw around trying to get this to work in Linux more often than not I'm just waiting for someone to reverse engineer something.

Yes, Linux does suck, but the "great" thing about Linux is that it doesn't have to. How much it sucks depends on the amount of time you're willing to put into it. I just really wish these developers would save us the time so it doesn't suck by default.

:p
 
mplayer is not windows media player. Do not insult mplayer by making that comparison.

There are a great many high quality media players for Linux that don't even begin to have an equivelant on Windows. Xine and Mplayer come to mind immediately.

You may not be aware but a lot of developers that write software that you are so quick to criticise do work on these projects for free. They do so because they see a need in the community for a program and feel that they can deliver that program. If you're so keen to bitch please bitch after you contribute meaningfully to their project.
 
I'm not going to turn this into another windows vs linux thread, but I have some issues with this post.
neo86 said:
I know exactly where you're coming from and I'd have to say I agree completely. Though I solved all my problems through hours of wasted time... just to get it to the point where it could compete with Windows in the usability area... I questioned why I was doing it.
Click to expand...
Familiarity should not be a factor in usability. If it was then every new program would be unusable. As I mentioned above, linux is different and like anything else, it will take a bit of time to learn how to use it given the differences. If you don't want to learn a new system, then why do it? If you do want to learn a new system, then why do you consider the learning experience to be wasted time?

Windows was already usable after a clean install. While I still screw around trying to get this to work in Linux more often than not I'm just waiting for someone to reverse engineer something.
Click to expand...
The first statement is simply not true. After a clean install, you still have to install at least a few drivers(usually), install antivirus/etc. software, download a few hundred megs of windows update. That's just to get you to a point where you can start installing the rest of your software that you need.

Linux does have some of the same issues. Often times drivers need to be installed, but usually only for video cards and sometimes for wireless cards. Often you will have to download a set of updates. However, using ubuntu as an example, you will already have most of the software that most people need installed.

If a person who was roughly equally familiar with the installation and operation of both windows and linux, I'd wager he'd be able to get a usable linux system set up faster than a usable windows system.

Yes, Linux does suck, but the "great" thing about Linux is that it doesn't have to. How much it sucks depends on the amount of time you're willing to put into it. I just really wish these developers would save us the time so it doesn't suck by default.

:p
Click to expand...
This is just borderline trolling. You make an unsubstantiated claim that linux sucks, and then you blame it on the developers. That's just ignorant. If you want the software to not "suck", then perhaps you should learn to provide useful, meaningful feedback rather than insulting the software and those who make it.
 
Cheetoz, you neglected to mention what distro you're using. There might be someone on here who could help with your troubles with mplayer.

Without knowing your specific distro, I'll suggest downloading and compiling mplayer from source (with the --gui option) from http://mplayerhq.hu . Sometimes a buggy binary build ends up in a given distro's repository.

The only trouble I have with mplayer is that the codecs lag Windows, and that I'm too lazy to add the Windows codecs to mplayer manually.
 
I guess the alsa drivers are buggy *shrug* the audio doesn't lag anymore with oss.

I'd love for mplayer to have forums, but they don't so oh wells.

Now if only I could get mplayer plugin to work. Sometimes it plays the video, and sometimes it just buffers to 100% and stops, and sometimes I have to press play mutliple times until it decides to play.


I just wanted to state my hardest part of doing a complete switch to linux. Theres tons of programs that replace the windows side easily. But the multimedia area is what I see the most difficulty in.
 
doh said:
mplayer is not windows media player. Do not insult mplayer by making that comparison.
Click to expand...

Wooh there lady, who actually was talking abt MS-mplayer here? from what I can gather it is all abt the Linux media player mplayer here and not one mention of the player with the same filename
 
Cheetoz said:
I guess the alsa drivers are buggy *shrug* the audio doesn't lag anymore with oss.

I'd love for mplayer to have forums, but they don't so oh wells.

Now if only I could get mplayer plugin to work. Sometimes it plays the video, and sometimes it just buffers to 100% and stops, and sometimes I have to press play mutliple times until it decides to play.


I just wanted to state my hardest part of doing a complete switch to linux. Theres tons of programs that replace the windows side easily. But the multimedia area is what I see the most difficulty in.
Click to expand...

Honestly, something is wrong or misconfigured some where along the line. What distro, how did you install it, etc.

Alsa drivers should not be buggy, how did you install them, what version? Going back to OSS? Unless you mean emulation through alsa, that is the wrong route all together.

I don't have any issues, and havn't had any in years, with basic multimedia in linux. Games are obviously another story but I would not group them with movies, music, photos, etc.

I know it's not what you are trying to accomplish really, but I have to recommend trying VLC over any other media player. It's all I have been using the last couple years (in Windows too) and I love it. Maybe it is a way for you to get past the clearly misconfigured mplayer on your system.
 
Cheetoz said:
Getting multimedia to work on linux has to be the most daunting task ever.

Theres not a good video player. For me, mplayer does not go into fullscreen by double clicking it. In fullscreen, you have no visible controls. it plays sound delayed, while other players play it fine.

Theres no browser plugin for videos either. Only one I know of is mplayer, but that thing is buggy beyond belief. Fullscreening videos sometimes freezes it, or leaves it in a endless loop of 1 second. You can't fast foward or back up precisely, and it also freezes/locks up attempting to do so.

Can't really play games, wine + steam = wtfbug pwned. Gotta use xover office, which I don't want to pay for.

And for flash, well it's about time there was an update.

Yeah, other than for multimedia use (my main reason for having a computer), I love linux.

Now I have to google for how to fix my delayed sound in mplayer, and why the contrast on totem player is fubared, even though it is set on defaults. And try out that flash beta.

So, does anybody know of a GOOD (meaning it doesn't just play every video out, but has a GUI) video player? And a good plugin for firefox to view videos?

/rant :)
Click to expand...


ok what distro do you use, cause I know for myself from using ubuntu that I have none of the problems you are suggesting. By default multimedia support, is lacking in some distros for legal issues, like ubuntu, but there are ways of getting multimedia working.

if mplayer isnt working use vlc, its the bees knees, it has a firefox plugin for videos as well.

the flash thing and the games isn't really gnu or linux fault, thats really an ms issue if they were willing to make direct3d available to other operating systems then maybe one could blame linux, and I doubt, that Microsoft is ever going to make it available for anything other than windows.

I really wish that people would appreciate that there are ways of allowing windows software/drivers to run on linux, I think thats nothing short of a miracle, sure its not 100% but I think that thats a little unreasonable to expect it to be.
 
I don't agree but I understand your frustration. Yes a WMP9+ would be ideal. A one stop do it all for Linux however this is not the case. I use Totem which is a front end for Xine.

My biggest issue is that ALSA or OSS (sound) can't multitask. Your playing XMMS, you can't hear new mail notification or watching a movie, etc etc etc. Sometimes I will pause XMMS to watch a youtube video someone sent me and I have to close out XMMS completely.
 
^^

the word you are looking for is "mix" not "mulit-task"

ALSA is just a method of interfacing with the hardware and it does that. gst (for instance, or arts) does the mixing
 
jpmkm said:
This is just borderline trolling. You make an unsubstantiated claim that linux sucks, and then you blame it on the developers. That's just ignorant. If you want the software to not "suck", then perhaps you should learn to provide useful, meaningful feedback rather than insulting the software and those who make it.
Click to expand...

You're approaching the argument from the point of a person familiar with computers to the point where they could be called a geek. I don't know what version of Windows you use, but Windows asks the user to turn on automatic updates and downloads them in the background. Windows comes with enough video card drivers to not have to worry about it normally because 800x600 seems to be enough.

I give feedback to sourceforge for the software I use. Speaking of usability sourceforge is horrible. I'm not trolling. I'm encouraging the OP to put in the time to figure this stuff out. You have to agree withs someone's point of view at least some what to understand them and thus help them better. I thought Linux sucked when I first started using it.

Perhaps you took issue with my post because you were assuming that I was directing it at someone besides the OP?
 
neo86 said:
You're approaching the argument from the point of a person familiar with computers to the point where they could be called a geek. I don't know what version of Windows you use, but Windows asks the user to turn on automatic updates and downloads them in the background. Windows comes with enough video card drivers to not have to worry about it normally because 800x600 seems to be enough.
Click to expand...
Ubuntu has security update notification enabled by default. There is a tray icon and a box pops up asking the user if he wants to update whenever updates are available. The open source graphics drivers provided by default work well enough for most people(the kind of people who run 800x600). I don't see what your point is.

I am only assuming the geeky computer familiarity because most non-geeks would have no idea how to install an operating system in the first place, regardless of whether it is windows or linux.

I give feedback to sourceforge for the software I use. Speaking of usability sourceforge is horrible. I'm not trolling. I'm encouraging the OP to put in the time to figure this stuff out. You have to agree withs someone's point of view at least some what to understand them and thus help them better. I thought Linux sucked when I first started using it.
Click to expand...
Sourceforge isn't great, but that's certainly not the only user-developer feedback avenue. I don't have to agree with a person's point of view to help him. If I agreed with his point of view then all I would be doing is complaining along with him. If, however, I have the point of view that the software is not at fault, then I can help by sharing that point of view.

Perhaps you took issue with my post because you were assuming that I was directing it at someone besides the OP?
Click to expand...
I took issue with your post because it sounded somewhat trollish. It doesn't matter who it was directed toward.
 
Carloswill said:
I don't agree but I understand your frustration. Yes a WMP9+ would be ideal. A one stop do it all for Linux however this is not the case. I use Totem which is a front end for Xine.

My biggest issue is that ALSA or OSS (sound) can't multitask. Your playing XMMS, you can't hear new mail notification or watching a movie, etc etc etc. Sometimes I will pause XMMS to watch a youtube video someone sent me and I have to close out XMMS completely.
Click to expand...
Actually most of the Alsa drivers don't have this problem, just a few here and there that do. I know that the emu10k1 one at least doesn't have that problem since I can have XMMS and ioQuake3 going at the same time without a problem, now it's just a matter of getting the ability to control XMMS while in game I need to figure out.
 
As for the sound delay problem, I've had that same problem with the ac97 driver. In addition to that I was never able to to get surround sound to work.

Since then I bought a pci audigy card, and all of those problems have went away.
 
ummm alsa allows for threaded audio oss does not........make sure in your preferences that you set the output device as alsa, other wise it may default to oss. You also have to have mixing enabled in alsa, if something does use oss I believe you can use mixing and aoss, to give you threaded audio. Other wise you will get audio problems. Also using flash 9 beta does work better for alsa. but I did have alsa with flash 7 but this caused the video and audio to be not in sync.
 
Code: 
Building audio filter chain for 44100Hz/2ch/s16le -> 0Hz/0ch/??...
alsa-init: 1 soundcard found, using: default
ALSA lib pcm_dmix.c:819:(snd_pcm_dmix_open) unable to open slave
alsa-init: playback open error: Device or resource busy
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can't open audio device /dev/dsp: Device or resource busy
Could not open/initialize audio device -> no sound.
Audio: no sound

*shrug* I'm using Ubuntu dapper

totem is playing videos too bright, and mplayer is playing videos too dark. I never even touched any settings.
 
I dont really run into any problems other than wmv's on either my slackware or ubuntu box.
 
well, and now this comes out of nowhere when playing rm on mplayer,
Code: 
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: avisynth.dll, /usr/lib/win32/avisynth.dll, /usr/local/lib/win32/avisynth.dll

plays fine on totem...?


and through mplayer plugin, it just sits buffering forever.
 
you must have a shabby sound card, alsa can 'multitask' or mix just fine. I can have XMMS open, playing, then load up youtube or something and the two will play at the same time. I can then at the same time start playing a dvd in vlc and all three streams will play at the same time.

Carloswill said:
I don't agree but I understand your frustration. Yes a WMP9+ would be ideal. A one stop do it all for Linux however this is not the case. I use Totem which is a front end for Xine.

My biggest issue is that ALSA or OSS (sound) can't multitask. Your playing XMMS, you can't hear new mail notification or watching a movie, etc etc etc. Sometimes I will pause XMMS to watch a youtube video someone sent me and I have to close out XMMS completely.
Click to expand...
 
Even FreeBSD will let that work, even using the raw /dev/dsp devices. (Automatic kernel-side multiplexing is a good thing.)
 
Carloswill said:
My biggest issue is that ALSA or OSS (sound) can't multitask. Your playing XMMS, you can't hear new mail notification or watching a movie, etc etc etc. Sometimes I will pause XMMS to watch a youtube video someone sent me and I have to close out XMMS completely.
Click to expand...
ALSA is quite capable of software mixing.
 
doh said:
There are a great many high quality media players for Linux that don't even begin to have an equivelant on Windows. Xine and Mplayer come to mind immediately.
Click to expand...

That is highly subjective I would say. I certainly like WMV10 and watching full DVDs in WMVHD like Step Into Liquid.

You may not be aware but a lot of developers that write software that you are so quick to criticise do work on these projects for free. They do so because they see a need in the community for a program and feel that they can deliver that program. If you're so keen to bitch please bitch after you contribute meaningfully to their project.
Click to expand...

What kind of logic is that? Fitt's law - software is user-centric. If the users don't "bitch", the software and the developers have no direction. And you certainly don't owe anything to someone who volunteers - it's their choice.
 
Stellar said:
What kind of logic is that? Fitt's law - software is user-centric. If the users don't "bitch", the software and the developers have no direction. And you certainly don't owe anything to someone who volunteers - it's their choice.
Click to expand...

Well concidering I use Gentoo and Doh dev's I am very grateful for the support and advancements the devs do!

show some gratitude
 
eeyrjmr said:
Well concidering I use Gentoo and Doh dev's I am very grateful for the support and advancements the devs do!

show some gratitude
Click to expand...


Agreed. I cant stand the "gimme gimme" attitude alot of people have. There are alot of real work going on in linux desktop world right now, ranging from composite 3d desktops, to creating a flash player that works with absolutely NO help from Adobe, to writing a brand new multimedia api, in gstreamer...

Right now there is arguably more work being done in the linux communtiy then there is anywhere else right now. These guys certainly deserve credit for the amazing work they been doin.
 
Stellar said:
What kind of logic is that? Fitt's law - software is user-centric. If the users don't "bitch", the software and the developers have no direction. And you certainly don't owe anything to someone who volunteers - it's their choice.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes:

You owe everything to the devs that volunteer to produce software that you use. Show some gratitude.

Farking ingrates.
 
I have plenty of gratitude. Apparently my point flew clear over your head.

You honestly think for any GNU project end users are not allowed to complain if the end result is buggy or non-functional software? Only other devs?

They are developing for the community, not each other.

Clearly I'm not saying the community has a responsibility to be whiny ingrates - but they have a responsibility to provide feedback. That is the user's part and entitlement - just as a volunteer dev is entitled to leave a project anytime if he can't handle the complaints.

Users don't have to quietly put up with poorly executed software just because it is free.. particularly when it is part of a so-called stable and long-term support shipping OS.
 
Stellar said:
I have plenty of gratitude. Apparently my point flew clear over your head.

You honestly think for any GNU project end users are not allowed to complain if the end result is buggy or non-functional software? Only other devs?

They are developing for the community, not each other.

Clearly I'm not saying the community has a responsibility to be whiny ingrates - but they have a responsibility to provide feedback. That is the user's part and entitlement - just as a volunteer dev is entitled to leave a project anytime if he can't handle the complaints.

Users don't have to quietly put up with poorly executed software just because it is free.. particularly when it is part of a so-called stable and long-term support shipping OS.
Click to expand...
I don't think anyone is arguing against user feedback. That's part of what makes software better. Rather, we're arguing against complaining and the general attitude of "I don't like the way it works/the way it looks/etc., so it sucks". Yes, complaining is a form of feedback, but there are better ways to provide feedback. Part of it has to do with a good deal of the software being developed by volunteers. Commercial software developers obviously have to listen to complaints or they risk losing customers and money. A volunteer isn't going to mind if he loses a few users who don't like his software in the first place.

Feedback can be a simple feature suggestion or bug report. I'd wager a developer would much rather read these than angry complaint emails, and would be a bit more motivated to work on them. This isn't an issue specific to software development; it's applicable everywhere in life. Complaining about something you got for free is generally frowned upon. Giving something back(in the form of useful feedback, in this case) to those who provided you with something free is generally appreciated.

So I don't think anyone missed your point. I think we pretty much agree with you. Nobody is saying users don't have the right to provide feedback. We're just saying it is ungrateful to complain about something you got for free that was probably created by a volunteer.

btw, a good deal of free software developers are not developing for the community, they are developing for themselves because they couldn't find what they wanted anywhere else. And instead of keeping it to themselves, they open it up and share it with everyone. This is how most free software projects are started. Very few people voluntarily spend the time to develop an application that they have no need for.
 
jpmkm said:
A volunteer isn't going to mind if he loses a few users who don't like his software in the first place.
Click to expand...

Nope! LOL! And we laugh at them too.
 
mplayer is streaming choppy because it's always doing this
Code: 
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.012 msecs. resetting stream%  0%  0.3% 2 0 0%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.009 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 72.6% 4 0 9%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.009 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 83.5% 6 0 3%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.009 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 99.0% 8 0 3%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.008 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 134.6% 9 0 3%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.010 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 106.7% 12 0 0%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.010 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 109.0% 12 0 0%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.010 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 114.6% 12 0 0%
alsa-play: xrun of at least 0.010 msecs. resetting stream%  0% 131.8% 12 0 6%

why? Do i need to set oss as the sound driver?
 
my sound lags using alsa, but not with oss.

and mplayer plug-in doesn't seem to want to work. streaming http://media1.break.com/dnet/media/2006/11/teen_tips_how_to_buy_alcohol.wmv through console works fine, or through gmplayer, but not through firefox.

recompiled mplayer-plugin, but it it goes all the way to 99% and stops. right clicking and play, I get this in the console

Code: 
(Gecko:32051): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_widget_reparent: assertion `widget->parent != NULL' failed
sleeping state = 110
sleeping state = 110

I don't get that error when ALSA is the driver, but that 2 second sound delay is annoying, so I rather not use alsa.
 
compiled mplayer svn and all is good now. but now I have bad brightness/contrast like i did with totum. how do i edit them in mplayer?
 
Cheetoz said:
compiled mplayer svn and all is good now. but now I have bad brightness/contrast like i did with totum. how do i edit them in mplayer?
Click to expand...

You can use 1/2 and 3/4 while playing to tweak them, but for a more permanent solution you'll probably have to change the config file. Let's see ...
edit: I think this will work.

Create a text file ~/.mplayer/conf and add two lines to it:
brightness=x
contrast=y
where x and y are on a scale from -100 to +100.
It's probably easiest to use the number keys tweak brightness/contrast while playing something, and guesstimate from there. (I can't remember if it prints the numbers on the console when you adjust; It's worth checking.)

The next time you start mplayer it should use those settings as default.
 
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