Results 1 to 7 of 7

Thread: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Beans
    310

    Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    I've tried to see some mp4 videos using gnome-player in Wily, to my surprise I've discovered that it doesn't work at all: in fact, it can't display anything, only the audio is reproduced.

    The same videos can be played with zero isssues in VLC and mplayer as well, which is IMHO surprising as gnome-mplayer should be -as I understand- just a GUI frontend for mplayer.

    I've tried already to set different video output modules and also specified the actual path to the mplayer executable, which has made no difference at all.

    I have mplayer2 2.0-728-g2c378c7-4build1 and gnome-mplayer 1.0.9-3build1 installed.

    Is gnome-mplayer broken or am I missing something to make it actually work?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Beans
    Hidden!

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Hey cogset..Well this has been a long time bug..
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...10/+bug/973014
    They had kind of a dirty fix then,.. don't know if it still works or not but it should.
    Those would be the most likely to fail to be decoded but certainly not limited to kust them.
    These files are commonly found online though many users will have locally.
    Also affected other than totem, totem youtube plugin, & banshee would be the mozilla-plugin & minitube.
    Typically the audio will play with no video though sometimes neither
    *Moving libgstvideoparsersbad.so to a .bak allows decoding to take place on the previously affected files, but *is not the recommended fix*
    But most of the Video files i play are with Smplayer, VLC, and Kodi MC and all the mp4 video I throw at them they all work at least here.
    Regards

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Beans
    310

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Thanks, but that bug dates back to 2012, and the last comment is from 2013 referring to Ubuntu 13.04 ... it's 2016 now and we're talking about Ubuntu 15.10, is that particular bug still not fixed?

    Apart from the last comment, it seems to have been fixed in comment88 : maybe there has been some regression?

    Besides, I've also tried a live CD of Lubuntu 15.10 which comes with gnome-mplayer as the default video player, and I believe should have the same exact packages gnome-mplayer (1.0.9-3build1) and mplayer2 (2.0-728-g2c378c7-4build1) as Ubuntu-MATE 15.10 : and it works there, which is really confusing.

    Thinking of it, if gnome-mplayer is actually just a GTK frontend for mplayer2, and the latter definitely works in Wily, it should be actually possible to launch gnome-mplayer from a terminal with the correct arguments and it should work, without having to manually rename some files, which seems kind of dirty way of "fixing" things.

    As for other options, well VLC is still my media player of choice, but I'd like to have an alternative too - also it looks like mplayer is rendering some videos a tiny bit better than VLC, although it may be a matter of advanced settings and/or default video output.

    As for Smplayer, I've tried it briefly and it works, but after installation it has tried twice to launch Firefox opening the project webpage on sourceforge.net : that's just a no go in my book, so how don't care how good it is, it's gone.
    Last edited by cogset; March 7th, 2016 at 06:09 PM.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
    Beans
    Hidden!

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Quote Originally Posted by cogset View Post
    As for Smplayer, I've tried it briefly and it works, but after installation it has tried twice to launch Firefox opening the project webpage on sourceforge.net : that's just a no go in my book, so how don't care how good it is, it's gone.
    I also agree with that sort of behaviour but it stops doing that.
    You can use what ever works for you..but I myself not a big fan of mplayer due to it's lacking consistency.
    Kind Regards
    EDIT: I found the way to disable the browser open problem
    Under Prefernces On the Left Tree <Updates> and disable
    Open an informative page after an upgrade.
    Attached Images Attached Images
    Last edited by QDR06VV9; March 7th, 2016 at 07:12 PM.

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Beans
    17,337

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Don't know about 15.10, but in 16.04 gnome-mplayer works ok.
    There are some packaging & config issues that should be fixed, addressed in this bug.
    https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...r/+bug/1554224

    Otherwise if you get the proper vo should be ok. Here I have nvidia optimus so installed mplayer over mplayer2, enabled Video Hardware support, changed vo to vdpau (with libvdpau-va-gl1 installed) & the player is ok. Not what I use but should be usable for others if they so choose.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jun 2012
    Beans
    310

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Thanks, but I'm not sure the above could work for me: I have (unfortunately, may I say) an ATI card instead of Nvidia, so I don't think that vdpau as output may solve this issue.

    Truth to tell, I think by now I've tried any vo in gnome-mplayer in Wily, and enabled/disabled Video Hardware support as well, it just never works: I've never seen a single video.

    Furthermore, this statement
    The control file should list mplayer before mplayer2, mplayer2 is long dead, should be removed from disk
    looks kinda confusing to me, I thought it was the other way around: in fact, in Wily I believe mplayer is a virtual package provided by mplayer2.

    And I can confirm that mplayer2 works in Wily, whilst gnome-mplayer on the other hand is utterly useless.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Jun 2007
    Beans
    17,337

    Re: Issue with gnome-mplayer in Ubuntu Wily

    Quote Originally Posted by cogset View Post
    .

    Furthermore, this statement looks kinda confusing to me, I thought it was the other way around: in fact, in Wily I believe mplayer is a virtual package provided by mplayer2.

    And I can confirm that mplayer2 works in Wily, whilst gnome-mplayer on the other hand is utterly useless.
    development in mplayer2 stopped quite some time ago while mplayer is still going. For 16.04 mplayer2 has now been dropped & won't be available,ie.
    http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/mplayer2

    Your best bet is to check out 16.04 come May, hopefully it will treat your hardware better.

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •