Issue removing software

[Dark Nuker]

I'm having a problem removing gstreamer-plugins-good package which is a problem I have never had before now. I know it's a framework file that's greatly depended on by some programs, but I still want it removed and plan to replace it with gstreamer-plugins-bad. Reason being, when I play many of my movies, many times I get a pop up saying it needs gstreamer "bad" plugin for the movies to play properly in totem. I know there are other media players, but I prefer totem more. Well, the problem is that the "good" plugin clashes with the "bad" plugin because the two share common files/dependencies and the system gets confused apparently so it won't let me installed the "bad" plugin without first removing "good" plugin. So, I want to remove "good" plugin and get "bad" plugin instead. Well, everytime I try to remove the "good" plugin in package manager, the package manager crashes. I even tried uninstalling the "good" plugin using terminal hoping I'd be able to do a force removal, but to no avail. Here is the command I used and the error.

[root@localhost ~]# rpm -e gstreamer-plugins-good-0.10.16-7.fc12
error: Failed dependencies:
gstreamer-plugins-good >= 0.10.7 is needed by (installed) farsight2-0.0.16-1.fc12.i686
gstreamer-plugins-good >= 0.10.0 is needed by (installed) totem-2.28.2-2.fc12.i686
gstreamer-plugins-good >= 0.10.6 is needed by (installed) gnome-applets-1:2.28.0-2.fc12.i686
gstreamer-plugins-good >= 0.10.6-2 is needed by (installed) cheese-2.28.1-1.fc12.i686

I understand what the error is saying, but I'm wondering if there is a way around it so that I can remove the "good" plugin. I could have sworn I had both the "good" and "bad" plugins installed at the same time when I was using Ubuntu, so I'm not sure why I can't have them both installed on Fedora. Well, if someone knows of a work-around or a way for me to force the removal process, please let me know. And just incase it's necessary to know, I'm using Fedora 12.

[Rubberman]

On CentOS, the only issue with installing bad along with good is that bad is missing the libSoundTouch library which isn't in any of the repositories I have registered. However, gstreamer-ugly does install fine. So, I think the issue isn't that you cannot have them both (or all) installed at the same time. Rather, the problem is that other stuff that is needed is not available as your system is currently configured. In any case, DO NOT uninstall gstreamer-plugings-good unless you don't want any of your video players to work...

[Dark Nuker]

Thanks for the reply. I have decided not to remove the "good" plugin and just find an rpm download and force install the "bad" plugin. I'll just use terminal and have it ignore the dependency check.

[Rubberman]

Which codecs are you installing the "bad" package to get? I can view just about any video made without it being installed, though sometimes I have to use VLC instead of an mplayer frontend.

[Dark Nuker]

I need the MPEG-4 AAC decoder. Some of my AVI movies and all of my MKV movies need it to run in MPlayer. Some of the dependencies or packages that you have to install along the MPEG-4 package are already installed on my system through the "good" plugin though. So everytime I try installed the decoder, I get the error and I can't stall the "bad" plugins. I know I can have all the plugins though, because when I was using Ultimate Edition (Ubuntu based), I watched all my movies in MPlayer no matter what the extension was and I had no issues installing any of the plugins. I just don't understand why I'm having problems with the plugins on Fedora. If the packages contain the same file as each other, why not just use the later plugins or simply skip the plugins on install. If it's the same file, it's not like the program will have conflicts.

[Rubberman]

Have you installed VLC? I find that after installing VLC, most other media types play in mplayer or kaffeine, including mp4, mkv, and flv files.

[Dark Nuker]

Yes, I have VLC installed. And after installing it, I did find that I was able to play more videos in MPlayer, but not as many as I was able to in the past. Usually, after VLC, I was able to player AVI, MKV, MP4 and other video types in MPlayer. Not this time, apparently. Maybe I will just have to get use to using VLC for all videos that MPlayer won't play? That is, perhaps, until I switch distro's again. But, I'm very content with Fedora at this point and have no intentions of switching anytime in the near future.

[Rubberman]

I have the same experience with VLC/Kaffeine in that VLC will play some videos that K won't, and vice versa, so using both at different times is what I do. I just set up my desktop preferences to run the appropriate player for the different video types.

[reed9]

I think mplayer and VLC both depend on libavcodec52, from the ffmpeg project. I'm not too familiar with Fedora, but I know many distros strip that library of non-free components. . Try the version at atrpms.

If you gstreamer based players are having trouble with a particular video, try installing the gstreamer-ffmpeg plugin.

[Dark Nuker]

So, I found a source to download the "bad" plugin containing the MPEG-4 AAC decoder. I used RPM comand via terminal and just ignored the dependencies upon install. It hasn't hurt anything in the past to ignore depencies on certain files, but this time it was a MISTAKE. Now, no movie will play in MPlayer. VLC still works just fine, but MPlayer won't play anything. In hopes of getting rid of the issue, I uninstalled then reinstalled both MPlayer and VLC player hoping that by removing both players and there codecs, a refresh would do some good. I was wrong. When I try to play a movie in MPlayer, now I get an error now saying I need to install the MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3) decoder. I'm not sure what package contains that decoder, but I'm in search now hoping to find something soon so I can get MPlayer back up.