Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto

[GranpaDan]

Sorry, a real beginner here, but I just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy, and so far the only thing giving me grief is the streaming video playback from Firefox. Its pretty choppy compared to the VLC I ran as default in Gutsy.

I followed your directions in the sticky (Big Thanks for that!!!!) and the only trouble I had was in following your instructions below:

"New users of Ubuntu or MPlayer should open the main MPlayer application after installing it for the first time, this will then cause it to create it's default folder in your home directory. Also, please navigate to Preferences>Audio in MPlayer, and then tick the "Enable Software Mixer" option."

When I go to Applications->Sound&Video->MPlayer Movie Player, all I get are the following two windows from MPayer, which do not give me the option to go to Preferences. Do I need to reinstall MPlayer? I have had good luck with VLC in the past. The DVD play with VLC is wonderful.
Screenshot.png
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

[unshareef]

What drivers are you using? Installing them with ENVY should cure your problems:

http://www.albertomilone.com/nvidia_scripts1.html

Nathan

Many thanks for your reply. I didn't know about ENVY, so I just tried that and it installed an ATI driver version 8.3

The problem still persists exactly as it was - that is both processor cores appear maxed out even just by typing causing the performance to be jerky.

Before I tried ENVY, I had installed the lates ATI driver, which I believe is 8.4, but same problem.

I hope that there's hope

[ubuntu-freak]

Sorry, a real beginner here, but I just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy, and so far the only thing giving me grief is the streaming video playback from Firefox. Its pretty choppy compared to the VLC I ran as default in Gutsy.

I followed your directions in the sticky (Big Thanks for that!!!!) and the only trouble I had was in following your instructions below:

"New users of Ubuntu or MPlayer should open the main MPlayer application after installing it for the first time, this will then cause it to create it's default folder in your home directory. Also, please navigate to Preferences>Audio in MPlayer, and then tick the "Enable Software Mixer" option."

When I go to Applications->Sound&Video->MPlayer Movie Player, all I get are the following two windows from MPayer, which do not give me the option to go to Preferences. Do I need to reinstall MPlayer? I have had good luck with VLC in the past. The DVD play with VLC is wonderful.
Screenshot.png
Any insight would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Thanks. If you just right-click on the video window, you can get to the preferences that way.

Nathan

[ubuntu-freak]

Many thanks for your reply. I didn't know about ENVY, so I just tried that and it installed an ATI driver version 8.3

The problem still persists exactly as it was - that is both processor cores appear maxed out even just by typing causing the performance to be jerky.

Before I tried ENVY, I had installed the lates ATI driver, which I believe is 8.4, but same problem.

I hope that there's hope

No idea what's going on there, ENVY has solved it for others. Did you fully remove the previous driver? Has it ever worked? How does it perform in Windows?

Nathan

[Mr_Odwin]

Hi there. First off, thanks for the great guide.
Everything is working great with one exception. On the apple trailers site when I try to watch an HD trailer (eg. any of the HD ones from here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramo...ystalskull/hd/ ) the mplayer plugin opens up an external window from firefox, I click 'play' in the box that has appeared and is buffering, then the window disappears and the video starts playing but I can only hear it, not see it. I can see the video only if I click the same link again in firefox.
Plus, in system monitor there are tons of mplayer processes that are either sleeping or zombies (no idea what either means!). I guess this is because I've tried it on so many links.

[ubuntu-freak]

Hi there. First off, thanks for the great guide.
Everything is working great with one exception. On the apple trailers site when I try to watch an HD trailer (eg. any of the HD ones from here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramo...ystalskull/hd/ ) the mplayer plugin opens up an external window from firefox, I click 'play' in the box that has appeared and is buffering, then the window disappears and the video starts playing but I can only hear it, not see it. I can see the video only if I click the same link again in firefox.
Plus, in system monitor there are tons of mplayer processes that are either sleeping or zombies (no idea what either means!). I guess this is because I've tried it on so many links.

I'm gonna experiment tomorrow with HD apple.com clips, used to be fine and now there are random issues. Have you tried "noembed=1" in the MPlayer plugin config? Make sure you delete the pluginreg.dat file if you change the plugin settings. Could be a Firefox problem though, we'll see.

Nathan

[Mr_Odwin]

I'm gonna experiment tomorrow with HD apple.com clips, used to be fine and now there are random issues. Have you tried "noembed=1" in the MPlayer plugin config? Make sure you delete the pluginreg.dat file if you change the plugin settings. Could be a Firefox problem though, we'll see.

Nathan

Just tried "noembed=1" and it made a vast improvement. The window no longer disappears! Slight issues are that it won't go full screen and I'm still getting zombie processes and sleeping processes, but overall I'm very, very pleased. Thank you so much.

[ubuntu-freak]

Just tried "noembed=1" and it made a vast improvement. The window no longer disappears! Slight issues are that it won't go full screen and I'm still getting zombie processes and sleeping processes, but overall I'm very, very pleased. Thank you so much.

Ah good. I do wonder if it's Firefox. Might be worth reporting a bug to them and what you had to do as a workaround.

Nathan

[dooma]

Can someone help me? I've gone through the steps of this tutorial and spent several hours trying different things to no avail.

Here is the problem:

1) I just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy Heron.
2) Now when I go to a site like www.apple.com/trailers, mplayer plugin plays the audio, but NO VIDEO.
3) changing preferences does not affect it. Flash works fine.
4) Prior to the upgrade to Heron, everything worked great

I am using a Thinkpad T60P with Hardy Heron installed (as of April 26)
It has the Fire GL graphics card, so I'm using FGLRX.

Please - any help would mean the world to me.

[ubuntu-freak]

Can someone help me? I've gone through the steps of this tutorial and spent several hours trying different things to no avail.

Here is the problem:

1) I just upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy Heron.
2) Now when I go to a site like www.apple.com/trailers, mplayer plugin plays the audio, but NO VIDEO.
3) changing preferences does not affect it. Flash works fine.
4) Prior to the upgrade to Heron, everything worked great

I am using a Thinkpad T60P with Hardy Heron installed (as of April 26)
It has the Fire GL graphics card, so I'm using FGLRX.

Please - any help would mean the world to me.

Can you tell me if disabling effects helps? Navigate to System>Preferences>Appearance>Effects and tick the first box.

Nathan