Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto

[Orfintain]

I went through this howto again from beginning (for at least third time)

Neither Quick time nor real player work.
I also have the helix plugin for realplayer installed though it is not enabled in the firefox settings, I couldn't figure out how to remove it.

Quick time says please upgrade to the latest settings, I have changed plugin.dat file and that didn't fix anything. Note I exited firefox than changed it rather than changing it then restarting. I checked it is still changed.

[henwyn]

When I try to install my multimedia codecs etc., I get this error message:

E: Could not get lock /var/cache/apt/archives/lock - open (11 Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to lock the download directory

What does it mean?

It means that another program is open which installs software on your computer is open and has precedence until it is closed. It could be synaptic or the automatic updating utility or another instance of installing something from your browser of a terminal. Sometimes these things aren't released when they should be and you might have to kill the process in the system monitor of log out and beck in again to get back access to /var/cache/apt/archives/.

[ubuntu-freak]

I went through this howto again from beginning (for at least third time)

Neither Quick time nor real player work.
I also have the helix plugin for realplayer installed though it is not enabled in the firefox settings, I couldn't figure out how to remove it.

Quick time says please upgrade to the latest settings, I have changed plugin.dat file and that didn't fix anything. Note I exited firefox than changed it rather than changing it then restarting. I checked it is still changed.

Quicktime streams will work better in 8.10 Intrepid Ibex.

My commands should have removed the Helix plugins. Try searching Synaptic for any Helix package, then remove.

[SuperSonic4]

Kubuntu users may want to try smplayer (it depends on qt 4.x although it might work in ubuntu with too much added dependencies.


Description:
SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

One of the most interesting features of SMPlayer: it remembers the settings of all files you play. So you start to watch a movie but you have to leave... don't worry, when you open that movie again it will resume at the same point you left it, and with the same settings: audio track, subtitles, volume...


Package Info

direct .deb file

[roc320]

I'm trying to install the realplayer but I getting this error:
"trying to overwrite /usr/share/local/zh/_TW/LC _MESSAGES/libgtkhx.mo which is also in package helix-player

dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (broken pipe)

Anyway I can resolve this so that I can finally view streaming videos? Thanks

[ubuntu-freak]

I'm trying to install the realplayer but I getting this error:
"trying to overwrite /usr/share/local/zh/_TW/LC _MESSAGES/libgtkhx.mo which is also in package helix-player

dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (broken pipe)

Anyway I can resolve this so that I can finally view streaming videos? Thanks

What version of Ubuntu are you running? My instructions for installing RealPlayer are for pre-Hardy systems.

Have you tried Gecko Media Player? It can stream Real formats, Windows formats, Quicktime etc. It will work even better in the next version of Ubuntu.

P.S. Make sure you don't have any Helix packages installed, or any other audio/video browser plugins, as they will clash with GMP.

[pritcharded]

Ubuntu-freak

I tried a heap of other suggested solutions but couldn't get Quicktime to work properly until I found your very comprehensive post. Many, many thanks.

Ted

[ubuntu-freak]

Ubuntu-freak

I tried a heap of other suggested solutions but couldn't get Quicktime to work properly until I found your very comprehensive post. Many, many thanks.

Ted

You're welcome.

[Siggma]

Excellent. Well done. I might add that this solved my "choppy video" problem with Hardy and now all video looks great (even full screen).

Thank you.

Update:I had forgotten that I disabled the ATI driver under "Hardware Drivers" prior to this. I have desktop effects "off" as well. So, it looks like this:

Disable the driver and get smooth video playback. But, you can't play games, and Google Earth will cause a crash upon opening (at least for me). Compiz? Forget it.

Enable the driver and you get choppy, horrible video playback. You can play games and Google Earth works fine. Of course, I still have desktop effects "off".

Enable desktop settings (visual effects) under "normal" and you can't play games and of course, video playback is still horrible. Google Earth won't function with them enabled either.

You can use x11 video just fine with fglrx and it works very well with the aiglx (3d) enabled. Just set your video output to X11.

[Siggma]

[UPDATED] Sept 28th 2008

Below I stated that xv will not work with FGLRX. This is now untrue. As of ATI Catalyst version 8.9 the xv output works fine. It does still flash wildly in 3D mode tbough.

First, thanks for the guide. It's very helpful.

Issues I had:

• Firefox rewrites it's pluginreg.dat file on restart overwriting any changes made to pluginreg.dat.
• FGLRX driver does not support xv or xvidix

Apparently firefox likes to update it's pluginreg.dat file when you reload it. This may be from a recent update (Sept 25th 2008 ), I don't know, I have nothing to compare to since I just go got it working.

I managed to get Apple Quick time trailers working by testing the url first in Mplayer which did not work for me. I use the ATI FGLRX driver which does not support xv yet. See below for a quick fix.

Then I edited ~/.mozilla/firefox/???.defaults/pluginreg.dat:
Note that you need to change the xxxxx to your directory, use tab while entering the directory in a terminal to autocomplete the name.

cd /.mozilla/firefox/xxxxxx.defaults

gedit pluginreg.dat

Change the line noted earlier in the guide from:
QuickTime Plug-in 6.0 / 7:$
to:
QuickTime Plug-in 7.0 / 7:$

I then removed the write permission using:

chmod -w pluginreg.dat

Restarted firefox and it works fine. Now disable the plugin and restart firefox again, re-enable it and do this:

chmod 644 pluginreg.dat

For some reason firefox leaves the changes alone after disable then re-enable the Quicktime plugin. It must be keeping a list elsewhere.

To get mplayer working properly as default on ati FGLRX:
Using the ATI fglrx driver I had to first edit the mplayer.conf file,

gedit /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

Change
vo=xv
to
vo=x11
and save the file.

Now mplayer automatically uses the x11 output rather than xv which is not yet working correctly for fglrx driver.

NOTE:
The X11 output is not hardware accelerated. The GL output is hardware accelerated but flashes uncontrollably which is the reason for the change to mplayer.conf

Test it at http://apple.com/trailers