Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Hal MacArgle]

Greetings am in trouble again researching media playing..

Fedora core 4, default desktop install that includes the totem media
player launchable from one of the pull down menus..

Plays a selected known good avi file/s/ to test and the screen looks
like a fractal display with coloured lights and circular swatches of
colour that resembles a circular saw... (Audio is fine)

The docs say that totem is a front end for xine but I don't see xine
anywhere in the apps... A Web lookup said to use totem-xine, but
that's not in evidence either in the installation or installation
DVD... I can only conclude that xine is included with the default
totem package.. Nothing I do seems to change anything..

I invoked totem from a terminal command line and got the following
report that I don't understand.. Running that started the viewing
window and ran the avi file just like a mouse click:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(totem:4011): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: gsignal.c:1719: signal
** `got-redirect' is invalid for instance `0x9b84e90'
 Message: don't ** know how to handle EMPTY
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I found several sites on the web with a totem version earlier than
the one bundled, all for Fedora core 3, not 4...

I invoked ldd totem and found no missing dependencies... I'm stuck..
<g>

Any suggestions or words of wisdom?? TIA.. (I was so happy with CLI
for so many years.) <grin>

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Peter]

Checked my Fedora4. There is no xine and totem runs fine clicked from task bar 
or invoked from command line. The latter gives an error message which I just 
ignore since apparently it has no bearing on the running of totem.
-- 
Peter

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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 04-27, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> Hal MacArgle wrote:
> >Greetings am in trouble again researching media playing..
> 
> I don't know if this will get you out of trouble, but it's what I can 
> offer. Hope it helps.

	__Every__ bit, no matter how little helps, Ray.. I, usually,
can't see the forest for the trees...




> >Fedora core 4, default desktop install that includes the totem media
> >player launchable from one of the pull down menus..
> 
> totem comes in two flavors: totem-xine and totem-gstreamer. Each is just 
> a frontend to the named video app. From what you write it is impossible 
> to tell which version you have installed (Debian provides both, and a 
> quick Web search seemed to say that Fedora does too), but on Debian, the 
> package "totem" is a dummy package that installs totem-xine.

	This has, apparently to me, been changed.. Fedora core 4 has
neither of the above as files, just totem.X.X.rpm.. Uninstalling that
and installing another RPM file, totem-xine of an earlier vintage,
will not install without quite a few missing dependencies.. So it
seems many changes have been made; as you've mentioned many times..




> >Plays a selected known good avi file/s/ to test and the screen looks
> >like a fractal display with coloured lights and circular swatches of
> >colour that resembles a circular saw... (Audio is fine)
> 
> "known good" isn't good enough here. I've seen this sort of problem a 
> lot ... video files that will play in mplayer but not xine, or xvideo 
> but not xine, or about any other combination you can think of. (Though 
> offhand I cannot recall one that mplayer wouldn't handle, at least not 
> once I patched it to use the DIVX FourCC code.)

	Well all I can say is that the "test" files "known good" that
I've tried all play flawlessly using mplayer; captured by different
capture cards, both bttv and ATI (gatos), video cards and Slackware
versions.. To confuse things more, however, I tried all of these
"test" files on both Slackware 10.1, 2.4.29; and Slackware 10.2,
2.4.31 with Slacks bundled, standalone, Xine package and in all
cases, all files, the flesh tones are BLUE... A limited amount of
tweeking was tried finding that RED is missing... I didn't spend too
much time on this but found it interesting to say the least..



> It typically means the asserted video codec (that is, the FourCC codec 
> name) doesn't *quite* match the codec with that name available in the 
> player. For example, video encoded with an old (3.something, as I 
> recall) version of the DivX codec often came out as a mess ("a mess" is 
> pretty much the right technical term for what you've described) when 
> played back with the DivX 4.x coded ... but both had the FourCC code 
> "DIVX". Yuck.
> 
> Since avi is just a container format (that is, a way of combining the 
> audio and video data, plus some metadata), there is no knowing from 
> "known good" what codec is involved in your problems.

	I have much to learn about this, of course, and it seems I've
not lucked onto the proper defaults.. Since I have standardised on
grabbing with Xawtv I've tried to select play programs that mention
Xawtv's normal AVI files.. Of course we have the old problem of NTSC
and PAL because most of the development seems to come from PAL
country.. Simple in-compatibility has returned to haunt me, eh?? In
the __beginning__ there were only, what, three Linux versions; now
there's, what, 2000.. I think that's good even considering some of
the agony.. We survive..




> The guts of xine is a library. On Debian, the package is:
> 
> 	libxine1 - the xine video/media player library, binary files
> 
> The non-library package, called xine-ui, is just xine's own User 
> Interface, which totem substitutes for (there's also a gxine frontend 
> package). So look for something in Fedora with a similar name. The 
> underlying library should be something like:
> 
> 	/usr/lib/libxine.so.1.12.0
> 
> and there should also be an associated directory /usr/lib/xine/ with a 
> bunch of plugins. Probably some other stuff too.

	Slackware 10.1 and 10.2 has this; Fedora Core 4 does not.. No
mention of anything Xine except in the Totem docs; then only
fleetingly..




> >I invoked totem from a terminal command line and got the following
> >report that I don't understand.. Running that started the viewing
> >window and ran the avi file just like a mouse click:
> >
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >
> >(totem:4011): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: gsignal.c:1719: signal
> >** `got-redirect' is invalid for instance `0x9b84e90'
> > Message: don't ** know how to handle EMPTY
> >------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Is this all it said? The advantage of starting video players this way is 
> that they usually write a lot of helpful info about codecs and such to 
> STDERR. I'm afraid I don't know what this actual message means.

	That's all it said and the display was the aforementioned
fractals, etc.. At least some of the "swirls" had some red in them..
Ugh.. I keep trying things then going back to the totem binary and
noting that ldd reports no missing dependencies... I'll keep hacking
away.. APPRECIATE!!! ( Peter has since told me that his Fedora Core 4
worked fine, but he installed using the "work station" selection of
files rather than my selecting "desk top." There may be some files my
install missed, although the install help's don't mention this..
Seeing the above mention of GLib, may be a clue.. A missing library
that ldd didn't catch, perhaps.? )

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Ray Olszewski]

Hal MacArgle wrote:
[...]
>>The guts of xine is a library. On Debian, the package is:
>>
>>	libxine1 - the xine video/media player library, binary files
>>
>>The non-library package, called xine-ui, is just xine's own User 
>>Interface, which totem substitutes for (there's also a gxine frontend 
>>package). So look for something in Fedora with a similar name. The 
>>underlying library should be something like:
>>
>>	/usr/lib/libxine.so.1.12.0
>>
>>and there should also be an associated directory /usr/lib/xine/ with a 
>>bunch of plugins. Probably some other stuff too.
> 
> 
> 	Slackware 10.1 and 10.2 has this; Fedora Core 4 does not.. No
> mention of anything Xine except in the Totem docs; then only
> fleetingly..

I'm wondering now if Fedora 4 actually supports totem-xine, or if it 
just supports totem-gstreamer. Or if it is a single version that somehow 
supports both, at least potentially. You might check this; according to 
FSF, here's how: "To see what backend you are using check the "About 
box" of totem."

A bit of looking around led me to these additional details ...

1. The latest version of totem I can find in Fedora is 
totem-1.4.0-2.i386.rpm (found at the update site 
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/5/i386/ 
). I wonder if you have updated to that version.

2. Debian Sid (Unstable) reports totem-xine at version 1.2.1-3 and 
totem-gstreamer also at version 1.2.1-3.

3. FSF lists 1.4.0 as the latest version; find it (as source) at 
http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sources/totem/1.4/ . Here -- at 
http://www.gnome.org/projects/totem/ -- FSF does confirm that totem 
comes in xine and gstreamer flavors, and it seems to think that Fedora 
(via yum) supports that form of the app.

4. I cannot find xinelib at the official Fedora update site, or at a 
couple of mirrors, which suggests it is no longer part of "official" 
Fedora for some (no doubt excellent) reason that Red Hat has failed to 
mention. I did find it at 
ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/freshrpms/fedora/linux/4/xine-lib/ . The 
current version there is xine-lib-1.0.1-2.2.fc4.i386.rpm, dated March 
2005, a tiny bit newer that what Debian Sid offers (1.0.1-1.3). 
FreshRPMs is where xine upstream home page says to go, incidentally, to 
do Fedora installs.

5. For more distro-specific help, you might find is useful to read

http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installation_notes.html#Xine

6. Downloading DVD images takes more time than I am willing to spend 
just to satisfy curoisity. So I'll just speculate that Peter might have 
an older image of Fedora than you do, and that xine was removed 
somewhere along the way, rather than being missing from the outset.

I know that all fo this isn't that much help, but perhaps it will take 
you in a useful direction.

(BTW, why are you using Fedora 4 and not Fedora 5? Since I don't use 
Fedora here, there might well be some good reason I am unaware of ... so 
I'm really just wondering.)

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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 04-30, Ray Olszewski wrote:
> Hal MacArgle wrote:
> >	Slackware 10.1 and 10.2 has this; Fedora Core 4 does not.. No
> >mention of anything Xine except in the Totem docs; then only
> >fleetingly..
> 
> I'm wondering now if Fedora 4 actually supports totem-xine, or if it 
> just supports totem-gstreamer. Or if it is a single version that somehow 
> supports both, at least potentially. You might check this; according to 
> FSF, here's how: "To see what backend you are using check the "About 
> box" of totem."

	Much more light; "Movie Player using GStreamer v 0.8.10" So
Xine isn't in the loop at all for this particular version..




> A bit of looking around led me to these additional details ...
> 
> 1. The latest version of totem I can find in Fedora is 
> totem-1.4.0-2.i386.rpm (found at the update site 
> http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/updates/5/i386/ 
> ). I wonder if you have updated to that version.

	Why can't I find all this stuff?? I erased the default
version and and installed above with the report of no less than 13
dependency failures.. Should I, maybe, have installed it on top of
what was there?? I wonder if RPM erases all the dependencies when
uninstalling... Slackware is looking good. <grin> No disrespect
intended.. I went back to the original and changed some preferences
with display names like: goom, the default; monoscope; smoothware;
synastasm, and the original fractals disappeared replaced by various
vertical coloured lines, dual horizontal lines, an oscilloscope type
trace filled in with colour, etc... Phew!!




> 2. Debian Sid (Unstable) reports totem-xine at version 1.2.1-3 and 
> totem-gstreamer also at version 1.2.1-3.
> 
> 3. FSF lists 1.4.0 as the latest version; find it (as source) at 
> http://ftp.acc.umu.se/pub/GNOME/sources/totem/1.4/ . Here -- at 
> http://www.gnome.org/projects/totem/ -- FSF does confirm that totem 
> comes in xine and gstreamer flavors, and it seems to think that Fedora 
> (via yum) supports that form of the app.

	There's a bazillion different selections but I still have to
wonder why the "default" install would not, out of the box, play a
normal file.. Don't ask, eh?? <grin>




> 4. I cannot find xinelib at the official Fedora update site, or at a 
> couple of mirrors, which suggests it is no longer part of "official" 
> Fedora for some (no doubt excellent) reason that Red Hat has failed to 
> mention. I did find it at 
> ftp://fr.rpmfind.net/linux/freshrpms/fedora/linux/4/xine-lib/ . The 
> current version there is xine-lib-1.0.1-2.2.fc4.i386.rpm, dated March 
> 2005, a tiny bit newer that what Debian Sid offers (1.0.1-1.3). 
> FreshRPMs is where xine upstream home page says to go, incidentally, to 
> do Fedora installs.

	In order to continue I'm going to have to install FC4 as a
work station so I have some tools to fiddle better.. All the URLS you
listed are very good, now bookmarked.. I may learn something yet..




> 5. For more distro-specific help, you might find is useful to read
> 
> http://stanton-finley.net/fedora_core_4_installation_notes.html#Xine

	I fetched that entire file.. Very detailed and worthwhile..
Thanks.. He has updated it to FC5 I note.. There's a lot more
activity around RH/Fedora it seems..




> 6. Downloading DVD images takes more time than I am willing to spend 
> just to satisfy curoisity. So I'll just speculate that Peter might have 
> an older image of Fedora than you do, and that xine was removed 
> somewhere along the way, rather than being missing from the outset.
> 
> I know that all fo this isn't that much help, but perhaps it will take 
> you in a useful direction.

	You've done more leg work over and above..... You've outlined
more help than I could do for myself in a month.. One of these days I
might get used to the GUI world.. Gnome, actually, seems pretty
nice.. Patrick, at Slackware, has dropped it in favour of KDE with
the latest version.. Too much code out there??




> (BTW, why are you using Fedora 4 and not Fedora 5? Since I don't use 
> Fedora here, there might well be some good reason I am unaware of ... so 
> I'm really just wondering.)

	I didn't know there was a Fedora 5 until yesterday and FC4
was the latest, I gather now a "close out", on eBay, part of my quest
to find a distribution I can recommend to the neighbours to pry them
from M$... I'm not doing too well.. One of my "selling" points to
them was a very powerful O/S costing them less than $10; compared to
M$'s hundred$ or so.. Also, since my "fastest" machine is way behind
state of the art today; I thought I'd better stick with "older" FC4;
(Duron 1.3)..... <grin> Appreciate!! I've tried a FC4 install on
various other machines with 600mHz or 233mHz CPU's and BIOS chips
circa <2000... No soap, even with plenty of SDRAM..

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Peter]

I just checked once more Totem in Fed-4. It does play music CDs, most .wav 
files, however, not all .mp3 and not .wmv.

In slackware I have totem tweaked to play them all, however, I seldom use it. 
I find totem too clumsy and at times unpredictable. If possible I use realplay 
or xmms or just command 'cdp' for music CDs.

Case in point, I just upgraded to gnome dropeline 2.14. Now totem crashes when 
I try to open w/o a file to play, however, it plays and stays open when 
invoked from command line with file to open: totem file.*.

Version of totem in slackware now: Gnome totem 1.4.0

In Fedora4: totem-1.0.2-1.i386.rpm

Regards
-- 
Peter

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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Peter]

I just checked once more Totem in Fed-4. It does play music CDs, most .wav 
files, however, not all .mp3 and not .wmv.

In slackware I have totem tweaked to play them all, however, I seldom use it. 
I find totem too clumsy and at times unpredictable. If possible I use realplay 
or xmms or just command 'cdp' for music CDs.

Case in point, I just upgraded to gnome dropeline 2.14. Now totem crashes when 
I try to open w/o a file to play, however, it plays and stays open when 
invoked from command line with file to open: totem file.*.

Version of totem in slackware now: Gnome totem 1.4.0

In Fedora4: totem-1.0.2-1.i386.rpm

Regards
-- 
Peter



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Re: Fedora core 4 and Totem Media Player??

[Hal MacArgle]

On 05-02, Peter wrote:
> I just checked once more Totem in Fed-4. It does play music CDs, most .wav 
> files, however, not all .mp3 and not .wmv.

	I just found the following that I fetched from somewhere and
it covers playing .mp3 in detail plus many other questions I have..
"Fedora Core 4 Installation Notes" by Stanton Max Finley.. Sorry I
don't have the URL but I must have found it with Google.. He
doesn't like Totem either so details many others.. My current problem
seems to be a codec incompatibility as Ray suggested.. I tried re-
installing FC4 as a WorkStation and Totem acted identical except for
one small item: The pull down menu had an extra icon next to Totem
that was missing from the DeskTop install.. Still NG though...:^(.
> 
> In slackware I have totem tweaked to play them all, however, I seldom use it. 
> I find totem too clumsy and at times unpredictable. If possible I use realplay 
> or xmms or just command 'cdp' for music CDs.
> 
> Case in point, I just upgraded to gnome dropeline 2.14. Now totem crashes when 
> I try to open w/o a file to play, however, it plays and stays open when 
> invoked from command line with file to open: totem file.*.
> 
> Version of totem in slackware now: Gnome totem 1.4.0
> 
> In Fedora4: totem-1.0.2-1.i386.rpm

	It's looking to me that streaming video is a real crap shoot
and it's no wonder I'm have so many problems.. Apprently everything
has to be "GO" to succeed.. The above goes into that in detail even
mentioning some mirrors that upset the apple cart, etc... Finley has
really dug into it in details..

	To confuse the issue more; on someone else's recommendatation
that SuSE v 10.0 is the best media distribution; I tried it... One
machine refused to install it--period.. I didn't finish trying the
other machine because the installation scheme insisted on wanting to
re-format my data drive, hdb, with the reiserfs.. That would have
been a disaster.. Hours into it I was not able to figure out how to
merely install it on hda1, a clean ext3 partation... I gave up.. It
kept reporting that I had to start with the "highest" numbered
partition, and would halt..

-- 

    Hal - in Terra Alta, WV/US - Slackware GNU/Linux 10.1   (2.4.29)
.
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