Mplayer Frustrations - Getting Closer

[Kenny Gow]

C.Beamer wrote:
> Kenny Gow wrote:
> 
> 
>>Anyway, a bit of digging around revealed that the CNN video wants
>>to use the WMV 9 codec. And, I just happened to have another PC
>>that I put FC4 on and installed mplayer from livna as you did. I
>>got the same problem as you did on this other PC when trying to
>>play CNN videos: audio, but no video.
>>
>>The short story is that the livna mplayer packages do not install
>>the WMV codecs you need, specifically, the wmv9dmod.dll codec.
>>
>>There are a couple of ways to get the codecs you need and install
>>them to the right place.
>>
>>On the mplayer codecs page,
>>
>>http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html
> 
> 
> Tried this and installed per instructions from a previous post to this
> thread creating the sym links as outlined.
> 
> 
>>
>>it can be confusing which pack to get. The easiest choice is the
>>"all" pack which contains all the codecs.
> 
> 
> 
> I've tried both the "essential" and the "all" packs.  Neither made any
> difference.
> 
> 
>>The livna mplayer install creates the /usr/lib/win32 but it's empty
>>and that's the problem because that's where mplayer looks for the
>>WMV codecs. So you can either create a symbolic link as one of the
>>earlier posters described, or least copy the windows related
>>codecs, the ones that start with "wm" to /usr/lib/win32.
>>
>>A somewhat cleaner alternative is to grab the Xine windows codec
>>package which comes in a nice rpm,
>>
>>If you scroll down to the bottom of the Xine downloads page,
>>
>>http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases
>>
>>and click on the link cambuca...
>>
>>and scroll to the bottom of that page, you can get the w32codec
>>package
>>
>>http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/w32codec-0.52-1.i386.rpm
>>
>>If you are unfamiliar with installing rpms, you can install it like
>>this (as root):
>>
>>rpm -ivh w32codec-0.52-1.i386.rpm
>>
>>which will populate the /usr/lib/win32 directory with the codecs
>>you need.
>>
>>I installed the w32codec package on my other PC and then I could
>>see and hear the CNN video with Firefox and the mplayerplug-in.
>>Firefox still hangs after playing the video but at least you can
>>watch the video now.
> 
> 
> I had no success installing the codecs packages from livna when I
> tried.  However, I *did* get the w32codec package from atrpms and that
> didn't help any.  I tried downloading the package from the xine site.
> This was older than the atrpms package that I got, but I removed the
> newer package and installed the older package, just in case it would
> work.  No luck.
> 
> So I'm still at square 1 1/2.  But thanks for trying!  :-)
> 
> 
I'm not giving up that easily.  What I did to figure out what codec 
the CNN videos wanted was copy down that URL you see when you get the 
audio but no video, and run it from a command line like this,

mplayer 
mms://wmscnn.stream.aol.com/cnn/nitn/2005/07/08/nitn.edition.12.cnn.ws.wmv

If you run that command (it's one line) in a terminal, it will show 
you what codec it's trying to use and whether it finds it. Could you 
try running that and posting the output?

Also, what's in your /usr/lib/win32 directory? From all you've 
described with the codecs, it ought to have the right codecs.

--Kenny