DaemonForums  

Go Back   DaemonForums > Miscellaneous > General software and network

General software and network General OS-independent software and network questions, X11, MTA, routing, etc.

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1   (View Single Post)  
Old 15th April 2013
RJPugh RJPugh is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Culpeper, VA
Posts: 45
Default Video player suggestions?

Can anyone recommend a good video player for FreeBSD? AVI and MP4 are the formats I have in abundance. My system has Dragon Player, but it's as flaky as a bowl of raisin brain (on my system anyway).

Thanks in advance,

RJPugh
Reply With Quote
  #2   (View Single Post)  
Old 15th April 2013
jggimi's Avatar
jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
Posts: 7,977
Default

I have always preferred mplayer on UNIX-like systems.
Reply With Quote
  #3   (View Single Post)  
Old 15th April 2013
Beastie Beastie is offline
Daemonology student
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: /dev/earth0
Posts: 335
Default

+1 for multimedia/mplayer. It just plays everything.

You may also want to try its fork multimedia/mplayer2. I haven't tried it yet but it seems interesting. Among other things, they have removed the GUI player most people don't use.
__________________
May the source be with you!
Reply With Quote
  #4   (View Single Post)  
Old 15th April 2013
shep shep is offline
Real Name: Scott
Arp Constable
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Dry and Dusty
Posts: 1,503
Default

Vlc is also a good multimedia player capable of transcoding formats as is done by mencoder. The decision point may hinge on qt vs gtk libraries. I use mplayer without a frontend on my lightweight systems. If I have qt, say from installing libreoffice or stellarium then I use vlc.

If you are installing in NetBSD 2 versions of vlc are available. The older version was gtk based (<=0.9.8) and the newer versions (>=1.0) are qt based.

Another point of consideration was the audio backend. Vlc has had sndio for sometime and mplayer just had its sndio backend "polished".

Last edited by shep; 16th April 2013 at 12:12 AM. Reason: Added sndio polish from OpenBSD mailing lists
Reply With Quote
  #5   (View Single Post)  
Old 16th April 2013
RJPugh RJPugh is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Culpeper, VA
Posts: 45
Default

Thanks for the suggestions; I'll look into these.

However, at the moment neither of the players I have is delivering video output. Audio is working, but not video. I suspect I don't have a codex installed, but how can I check on this? What do you all suggest I do as a first step in fixing this?

I figure step one is identifying the problem. All I have at the moment is the result (no video).

Thanks in advance,

RJPugh
Reply With Quote
  #6   (View Single Post)  
Old 16th April 2013
jggimi's Avatar
jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
Posts: 7,977
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by RJPugh View Post
... neither of the players I have ...
You've only mentioned Dragon Player, which I know nothing about. For that application, see the variety of support options at http://www.kde.org/applications/mult.../dragonplayer/
Reply With Quote
  #7   (View Single Post)  
Old 16th April 2013
shep shep is offline
Real Name: Scott
Arp Constable
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Dry and Dusty
Posts: 1,503
Default

The information you provide about "video" forces the reader to make alot of assumptions.
One assumes that you are using the KDE desktop and Xorg is working. Even if Xorg is working, if you are running FreeBSD you could be using the vesa driver, xf86-video-nv or the propriatary Nvidia. Looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log will sort that out.

If you are having trouble with a particular media format you will get some information by starting your media player from a terminal using the command line:
Code:
mplayer video.wmv
or
Code:
vlc video.avi
or
Code:
dragon video.mp4
My understanding is that the phonon backend for dragonplayer can use either the gstreamer plugins (which contain the codecs), xine or vlc. If you are using gstreamer you will need to ensure that the appropriate gstreamer package is installed. gstreamer-ugly plugins contain codecs that have licensing issues. For example mp3 is licensed in the U.S and the codec is not routinely distributed in the U.S. Depending on your BSD version you would want to look at the descriptions of the various gstreamer plugins. One gstreamer codec that is key for playing *flv videos is the ffmpeg codec. This is often packaged separately.

Looking at Freshports phonon
It looks like phonon can use xine, vlc or gstreamer backends

Last edited by shep; 16th April 2013 at 01:59 PM. Reason: added gstreamer codecs.
Reply With Quote
  #8   (View Single Post)  
Old 17th April 2013
RJPugh RJPugh is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Culpeper, VA
Posts: 45
Default

Regarding...

Quote:
Originally Posted by shep View Post
One assumes that you are using the KDE desktop and Xorg is working. Even if Xorg is working, if you are running FreeBSD you could be using the vesa driver, xf86-video-nv or the propriatary Nvidia. Looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log will sort that out.
Xorg is working, and I do have KDE installed, though it's not my primary GUI. As for the driver, my computer (a Dell Inspiron 660) uses an Intel HD Integrated Graphics chipset. I've read in some other threads that the Intel chips are notorious for bad video playback in FreeBSD.

I'm still examining the Xorg.0.log file to see what else is going on.

Last night I re-installed several KDE components, including the multimedia ones, in hopes of fixing the problem that way. I now have three video players available - Dragon, Mplayer, and Kplayer - and none of them give a moving image. That's why I still suspect a codex issue, though now my chipset is under suspicion.

One strange thing is that audio, in every format I've tried so far, comes through just fine. Weird.
Reply With Quote
  #9   (View Single Post)  
Old 17th April 2013
Beastie Beastie is offline
Daemonology student
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: /dev/earth0
Posts: 335
Default

I don't know for other players, but mplayer lets you set the output video driver. Maybe it will help with your problem.

In ~/.mplayer/config, add vo=x11, or vo=gl2, etc.
Or run it with mplayer -vo driver testvideo.mp4.
__________________
May the source be with you!
Reply With Quote
Old 17th April 2013
shep shep is offline
Real Name: Scott
Arp Constable
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: Dry and Dusty
Posts: 1,503
Default

That is a relatively recent Intel Video chip that may require Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) which is only available, out of the box, in FreeBSD 9.1/PC-BSD 9.1. In the absence of KMS, xorg would likely use the vesa driver. KMS is also available in OpenBSD current but you will not have the most recent KDE version.

See post in Gentoo forums for more details
Reply With Quote
Old 18th April 2013
RJPugh RJPugh is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Culpeper, VA
Posts: 45
Cool

Quote:
Originally Posted by Beastie View Post
I don't know for other players, but mplayer lets you set the output video driver. Maybe it will help with your problem.

In ~/.mplayer/config, add vo=x11, or vo=gl2, etc.
Or run it with mplayer -vo driver testvideo.mp4.
This worked, by selecting the x11 driver. So far, it has worked on every video format I have. I haven't tried playing a DVD yet.

Mplayer works fine, obviously. One of my other players, KMPlayer, actually uses mplayer as a backend, so it works as well. If anyone else encounters this problem, among the preferences for KMPlayer there is a place for command line options to go with mplayer. I entered "-vo x11" and now it selects that driver automatically. I also set the driver within the appropriate config file, though it's probably not necessary to set both options.

Dragon is still posing problems, but I'll deal with that in time.

For a more permanent solution, I will be exploring the procedure described in Shep's Gentoo link.

Thanks everyone!
Reply With Quote
Old 19th April 2013
RJPugh RJPugh is offline
Port Guard
 
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Culpeper, VA
Posts: 45
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by shep View Post
That is a relatively recent Intel Video chip that may require Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) which is only available, out of the box, in FreeBSD 9.1/PC-BSD 9.1. In the absence of KMS, xorg would likely use the vesa driver. KMS is also available in OpenBSD current but you will not have the most recent KDE version.

See post in Gentoo forums for more details
Where can I learn more about Kernel Mode Settings? I'm using FreeBSD 9.1 (PC-BSD 9.1), and as far as I know my system is fully up to date. I'm looking through the Gentoo thread you suggested, and I've gleaned some ideas from it. But, my system querries don't look anything like the ones featured in that thread, at least not at a quick glance.

As I mentioned earlier, I've managed to get some of my video playback to work. Dragon and Xine are still not working, so DVD playback isn't available. I'm still looking into it.
Reply With Quote
Old 19th April 2013
jggimi's Avatar
jggimi jggimi is offline
More noise than signal
 
Join Date: May 2008
Location: USA
Posts: 7,977
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by RJPugh View Post
Where can I learn more about Kernel Mode Settings?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mode_setting
Quote:
I'm using FreeBSD 9.1...
And https://wiki.freebsd.org/Intel_GPU.

I'm an OpenBSD user, and as mentioned above, KMS for select Intel graphics was added to the development branch (-current) in March of this year (announcement and details). As a user, the impact to me is:
  • The X Window System Aperture Driver xf86(4) no longer requires access to the first physical megabyte of system memory for INT 10H emulation. Instead, it only requires access to the framebuffer. This is a security improvement.
  • I get a nifty, and to-my-eyes very nice looking framebuffer for console use.
Reply With Quote
Old 19th April 2013
Beastie Beastie is offline
Daemonology student
 
Join Date: Jan 2009
Location: /dev/earth0
Posts: 335
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by RJPugh View Post
I'm using FreeBSD 9.1 (PC-BSD 9.1)
Which one? There's actually a big difference when it comes to Xorg and KMS supports on the two systems.

PC-BSD may be based on FreeBSD, but third-party applications (such as Xorg) are built differently on the two.

The GENERIC FreeBSD kernel does include the drm2 and i915kms modules, but Makefiles for Xorg in the FreeBSD ports tree are by default not KMS-ready, for backward compatibility. Binary packages are built using the default settings of the ports tree and so are not KMS-ready either.
In both cases, the system will install an old version of the libGL and libdrm libraries and Intel video driver.
You must tell the system to build a new version with KMS enabled through make.conf. Once you do, it will grab the newest libGL, libdrm and xf86-video-intel, and when you run Xorg the system will load drm2 and i915kms instead of drm and i915.

On the other hand, the newly-created PC-BSD pkgng repository uses more "generous" Makefile settings compared to the FreeBSD tree and seems to have a KMS-enabled Xorg.
And PC-BSD itself has KMS enabled, AFAIK.
__________________
May the source be with you!
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
x11/xf86-video-intel and x11/xf86-video-intel29? Carpetsmoker FreeBSD Ports and Packages 2 23rd October 2011 01:23 PM
Need suggestions on what to name this project TerryP Off-Topic 10 6th November 2010 03:13 PM
Suggestions for Web Traffic Logging? Bruco FreeBSD Ports and Packages 16 18th September 2008 10:54 PM
Mini-ITX motherboard suggestions twisted_steel General Hardware 28 18th August 2008 09:32 PM
Software suggestions rex FreeBSD General 10 17th May 2008 12:00 AM


All times are GMT. The time now is 09:00 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Content copyright © 2007-2010, the authors
Daemon image copyright ©1988, Marshall Kirk McKusick