[64studio-devel] 'Totem' not playing ANY file here

[R.Wolff]

Hello Daniel,
first let me say that my post wasn't meant as a rant at you or your 
distro. Quite the contrary is the case. Maybe you haven't read my intro 
mail to the list, but all around I'm very happy with 64-Studio.
I'm sorry if I gave you an impression of being a sourpuss (is that the 
right word?)
Not being a native english speaker is another problem.


Daniel James schrieb:
> Hi Raphael,
> 
>> Totem (or any other 'media'player) doesn't play ANY media file on my PC,
>> be it .avi, ogg, mp3 or whatever.
> 
> Firstly, Totem doesn't work with Jack, so you have to make sure Jack or 
> any other sound application is not running. If that still doesn't work, 
> check your user is a member of the audio group (Gnome menu: Desktop -> 
> Administration -> Users and Groups).

Yeah, I didn't try to run totem with Jack running in background.
Just before I've read in another mail about USB MIDI taking over Alsa 
drivers. Maybe that's my problem as well? I have a Delta 1010LT (PCI) & 
a BCR2000 connected via USB.
Quick check: it's definitely a case of shuffled snd devices. So I'll 
include the priority thingie in the config files.

>> Why does it seem so frickin complicated to include some codecs in every
>> distro to be able to watch some video files or to listen to some mp3's.
> 
> We do have Ogg Vorbis, Theora, FLAC, WAV and MP3 support by default. 
> We're working on Flash, using the Gnash player and plugin.

I know about these codecs Daniel, and again, it wasn't a rant towards 
you or your distro but more towards the big corporate shit and the 
bloody patent system. Still, it's a fact that these protected codecs 
have become the 'defacto' standards around the world

>> not being able to watch embedded media while browsing the web
>> no .mov support
> 
> That's software patents for you :-(  We can't include these proprietary 
> codecs in a free distro without the risk of legal action from companies 
> with patent claims. End users can download codecs and DVD decoding 
> utilities from a number of places, with little apparent risk of 
> enforcement action - but then the RIAA did sue individual music lovers 
> in the war on P2P, so I would never say it couldn't happen.

Screw the RIAA and all their other buddies. I DON'T want to STEEL 
protected media, but just watch those I have LEGALLY downloaded from the 
net. Like tutorials, private entertaining stuff and such.

>> And why is it, when I try to install some other music apps from the
>> debian stable repo i.e., 64studio WILL NOT install certain dependencies.
>> I guess it's to avoid breaking some substantial functions?
> 
> Yes, but this situation will get better after the Debian Etch and 64 
> Studio 2.0 releases, because we will then be in sync with a Debian 
> stable release for the first time. When we started in 2005, Debian Sarge 
> was already too old for us to work with.

Do you have any timeframe for this to happen?
Will there still be a 32-bit version of the 2.0 release then? Or will 
those with older hardware have to keep using a 1.xx version?

>> So somebody please help me watching my .avi or .mov files
> 
> mplayer will play most video files, but we can't ship the codecs 
> packages for it in a free (gratis) product, and last time we checked it 
> didn't support gstreamer plugins (including the gstreamer MP3 plugin 
> that we licence from Fluendo). So we took the decision to ship 
> totem-gstreamer as the default video player.

I'll try to download/install mplayer then. 'Cause even though totem is 
starting now, quite some of my videos (.avi's) have sound, but no images.

> Cheers!
> 
> Daniel
> 
> 
> 
Thank you Daniel for taking the time to respond in detail to my lengthy 
post. It's well appreciated.

Cheers

Raphael ;)