Playing avi and mpeg files on linux

[Gemmini]

Hi,
I cant seem to get any of my avi ,mp4, mpeg files to play on yellow dog linux, 5.0 on my ps3. I tried downloading real player which came as a .bin file and cant be opened. And i also tried to download mplayer but that didnt work either- archive manager couldnt open it.i'm new at this so i dont know any technicalities. some help would be nice.

[Manchunian]

Hi,

Have you dowloaded the Win32 codecs? Mplayer won't play the avi format until you do. You should also think about installing libdvdcss2. Another idea is to install VLC, which will play just about anything out of the box.

[i92guboj]

Hi,

Have you dowloaded the Win32 codecs? Mplayer won't play the avi format until you do. You should also think about installing libdvdcss2. Another idea is to install VLC, which will play just about anything out of the box.

Actually, mplayer shouldn't need that anymore, it can even play wmv9, real player and flv stuff. Unless you are using an old version. The win32codecs support is still there, but I haven't felt a need to use it for a long time. Besides that, it won't work if you are using a 64 bits distro, which I don't know if that's the case. That's, unless you use a 32 bits mplayer on a 64 bits distro, which is perfectly possible.

The exception is DRM'd stuff. If you are buying that kind of stuff, then you are out of luck. Mplayer doesn't support and will never support that kind of thing.

But, as said above, if you don't want to suffer, just install vlc. I don't like it, but it should work out of the box.

[Manchunian]

Actually, mplayer shouldn't need that anymore, it can even play wmv9, real player and flv stuff. Unless you are using an old version.

I didn't know that. But as I'm using Debian stable, I guess I'm lightyears behind everyone else!

I don't like it, but it should work out of the box.

VLC doesn't have much of a GUI - but who needs GUI anyway? It just works, and has a very low footprint, which is why a love it.

[i92guboj]

I didn't know that. But as I'm using Debian stable, I guess I'm lightyears behind everyone else!

I don't know how debian stable is these days. I just checked, and, as per the info here:

MPlayer - The Movie Player

wmv9 support was added on 2006-10-22, Sunday, with mplayer 1.0rc1.

VLC doesn't have much of a GUI - but who needs GUI anyway? It just works, and has a very low footprint, which is why a love it.

Actually, it's got many. It depends on how do you compile it. As far as I know, it has *at least* a command line frontend, an ncurses frontend (text mode, as well) and an wxwidgets based one, which is the same crappy graphics lib that amule uses. There's also a qt4 one, though that's recent and I haven't even tested it. All those frontends are configurable at compile time, and they can be selected on command line, though I don't exactly remember how.

There might be also 3rd party frontends, I don't know. I don't use vlc much.

EDIT: I forgot the http frontend :P

[Gemmini]

Hi,

Have you dowloaded the Win32 codecs? Mplayer won't play the avi format until you do. You should also think about installing libdvdcss2. Another idea is to install VLC, which will play just about anything out of the box.

Beleive it or not i dont think i know the right way to install mplayer, vlc or realplayer. i downloaded the mplayer but i dont know how to install it. If you could help with a really simple process cos i'm really confused about this. i dont even know where to download the win 32 codecs you suggested.

Gemmini

[Manchunian]

These should all be available via your software manager. It looks to me like you're trying to do this the Windows way (go to a webpage, download, press next, next, accept the licence, restart the computer...). This is not how you do things with Linux. What is your distribution?

[ashesnight]

I'm using VLC player but it still won't play any avi files. Any alternative suggestions, or ideas why this might be the case? Thanks

[i92guboj]

I'm using VLC player but it still won't play any avi files. Any alternative suggestions, or ideas why this might be the case? Thanks

Erm... considering that NO player plays anything for you, maybe we should ask where the problem lies.

Is the file broken? Does mplayer or vlc output any error when you try to open the file? Does it play on a window machine?