More DVD sadness

Last night I compiled Gmerlin, a media player. Works alright, but lacks features, like no full-screen.

I had another go with Mplayer, compiled lots of dependencies, just in case one of the Ubuntu packages was causing trouble. The problem is with DVDs, and after going through the lengthy exercise, finally compiled Mplayer and tried it, still got that bug...

Well, there are various mysterious error messages, like a window pops up saying "warning MVs not available". I popped in a "X-Files" DVD and it works, but it just starts playing the first episode, ignores all the preliminary menu stuff.

I have just now rebooted alpha6, pfix=ram to get it pristine, popped in the "X-Files" DVD, it plays perfectly. This is ffmpeg, xine-lib and gxine that were compiled back in November 2007. I'm going to have to stay with those.

The fact that those old packages work does pretty much rule out anything wrong with the rest of the Ubuntu system.

I installed the Mplayer 1.0rc2 PET package from the Puppy4 repository, and it gives no error messages but also goes straight into playing the first episode.

It would be great if an Mplayer could take this up as a project to fix.

Anyway, it looks like I'll stay with those old ffmpeg, xine-lib and gxine packages for Jaunty pup. I'm not happy, have put an incredible amount of time (5 -6 days) stuffing around with this. Enough is enough.

...darn, I kept trying last night, after writing the above. Experimented with some more ideas. Nup, no good. Now I really do give up. Mplayer's playing of DVDs is plain flackey.

Incidentally, Mplayer does have right-click menu for selection different title/chapter on the DVD, but testing with my X-Files DVD, Mplayer crashes. I can only play the first episode, and chapters within the first episode.

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Comments

mplayer
Username: ttuuxxx
Hi Barry in the past VLC has proven to be a great Mediaplayer, Fullscreen works, takes upto 1/2 the resources, actually some of the real older pc's can actual play dvd's or divx movies with, but with gxine or mplayer, didn't have enough resources, yes its a bit larger, but its stable as 2 interfaces wxgtk or QT, now here's the good part, If you went with a QT GUI then you could have Opera as a browser, since Opera comes with 2 flavors Static QT and local QT, But you could use the Opera non static version and make a Opera pet around 5-6mb and include the 4MB or so QT libs with puppy Then Opera and VLC could use the systems QT and we would have a new library included with puppy. Then the VLC pet package would only be around 3-4MB. As for VLC, series 9 I had the same issues as you stated above and I compiled it 3 different times and followed instructions to the "T", but 8.6h is the magic version that does compile well on puppy and its fairly new, You can get the Sources at http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan/vlc/0.8.6h/ the total size estimated for VLC+QT+Opera I would say around a 15-16MB pet maybe a bit less. ttuuxxx

Yes for VLC
Username: arm-arch
"I vote also for VLC as the standard Media Player. Nor Gxine nor MPlayer are really good Media Players. VLC has a lot of Users. 55'300'000 Downloads and Installation of the stable release Version 0.9 should be a argument to be maked as the standard media Player. From my side of View VLC is the only Multi Media Player alternative in the Windows and Linux world. VLC is fast and user friendly. Having Opera as a web Browser too with a lot of inbuild function would be a big plus.

Gxine works perfectly
Username: Leon
"I like its interface, good sound and video quality. I tried Mplayer, Vlc, Alsaplayer and Bmp but Gxine ramains to be my favorite. Vlc is fine too and could be available as PET or SFS package. Gxine upup-466.iso frugal install test report: CD: OK DVD: OK AVI: OK FLAC: OK FLV: OK MP3: OK MP4: OK RM: OK WAV: OK

Gxine?
Username: happypuppy
"" Gxine upup-466.iso frugal install test report: CD: OK DVD: OK AVI: OK FLAC: OK FLV: OK MP3: OK MP4: OK RM: OK WAV: OK " But it doesn't play WMV and VC-1 videos :( I'm still looking for a Linux player that can play this video: http://video.fraps.com/sunrise.zip (with sound)

MPlayer tricks
Username: tempestuous
"Barry, MPlayer is like an Italian sports car; very advanced, but takes a lot of tweaking. DVD support in MPlayer requires the separate libdvdnav library, and MPlayer must then be launched like this: mplayer dvdnav:// The MPlayer dotpet I provided in Feb 2008 has the necessary DVD menu components working - http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=26511 The latest MPlayer CVS source has some very advanced video acceleration features to assist with decoding of MPEG2/MPEG4 video content such as High-Res TV and Blu-Ray discs. Such hi-res video content otherwise requires some serious CPU grunt.

Mplayer
Username: ttuuxxx
"tempestuous hmmm how about building one for upup? a small version not overblown but something that could be used as a default mediaplayer if need be? So we could compare between Gxine and Mplayer. Full screen, cpu/memory usage and general size :)if you do and want to share it, new software for upup-J can be found http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=301964#301964 ttuuxxx

VLC
Username: FrogLeader
"I have been using vlc and mplayer for years. After hours of tweaking with mplayer, my opinion is mplayer has way too many bugs to be smooth and user friendly. VLC can be compiled with a mozilla plugin that can run in both Seamonkey and Firefox. My favorite feature of VLC is that it can open and run a movie from a DIRECTORY. Very useful for people like me who still use pupdvdtool. I have yet to see that feature in mplayer. I did not see the point in spending $500 plus on Mic.Soft's new personal "server" when Puppy has them built in. Further VLC can stream your videos over the network. Nuf said. Just give it a try. Right click while watching and see all the awesome built in features. ~FrogLeader

VLC
Username: FrogLeader
"That's right Dougal, All I do is click on the menu area and find "open". There it give you the options to open from a file, disk, directory, etc... I've tried on Mplayer but I have to load each file separately one by one. And that becomes burdensome especially when the files are note in order. ~FrogLeader

Tags: woof