VLC 8.6h mediaplayer Lite 7.8MB pet

[vito]

The problem with scanning 12pages of posts is that one is apt to forget where one read what. Just 5 posts above this one it seems to have been demonstrated that vlc is having trouble working with deeper thought x2 and not the main release.

OK so we will have to wait for the next installment. I didn't even begin to think about vlc until I read this post. I agree those it seem to be the most stalwart of the media players. I have uninstalled it for now.

I tried to install bmp and bmpx but I am no compiler of progs and those need some compiling as it turns out.

Thx again for the great work to date on Deeper Thought. I no longer miss the pwidgets. I have gone outside of the forum to the site of someone with the moniker of the Dark Knight to try out his new compile of firefox 3.0.6 and flash 10.00.87.pet, which may in fact be someone elses compile.

Both are working well.

Mny Thx,
Vito

[Flash858]

Fantastic job, thanks!

[ecomoney]

.3gp video (commonly used on many mobile phones) does not play with sound on this VLC (neither does puppy default Media Player gxine). Any ideas why appreciated.

[tempestuous]

Yes, the 3gp audio codec is difficult to support in Linux, and no, the Windows codec-packs won't help.

See "MPlayer-1.0rc2 + mencoder Feb 2008"
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=26511

[ecomoney]

Thank you for the link. Im sorry Im blissfully unaware of how video codecs work under linux. I notice under the wikipedia entry for .3gp it says that it is supported with VLC, however it doesnt seem to be with this package.

Slightly off topic, .3gp is the only video format Ive had trouble playing in puppy linux (to its considerable credit), although auto-open mime types are often not set up to open files with a media player when clicked on. How tricky would it be to produce a .pet with the codec for 3gp..and would that make the audio available in all media players (gxine/vlc)? Having "all the software for everyday use" is a puppy goal better forfilled for being able to play mobile phone video...which wasnt really about when puppy was first conceived.

[tempestuous]

How tricky would it be to produce a .pet with the codec for 3gp..and would that make the audio available in all media players

Near-impossible. The codec libraries for 3gp are libamrnb and libamrwb, but media player applications need to be explicitly configured for various forms of codec library support when they're compiled.
That's why I referred you to the version of MPlayer which I provided with 3gp support suitably configured.

... better forfilled for ...

Forfilled? We native English speakers should be better representing the English language on a multinational forum.

[mikeb]

libamrnb and libamrwb

The latest avidemux...2.4 series comes with this support also.
Can be used to edit such movies , stick them together and convert to a more common format such as mp3 or ogg audio

Annoying sometimes..our old camera used an obscure windows audio codec which I could only convert using virtualdub in NT4!!

mike

[SilverPuppy]

Hey mike well I'm compiling the latest VLC, earlier today I compiled around 12 sound/video related packages for the video editor, So I figured might as well keep going, tonight I compiled another 24 packages for VLC, lol cross your fingers
ttuuxxx

I'm looking forward to it very much. I actually really like the 0.8.6 version better in many ways, but I recognize that the 0.9.x platform adds some truly useful features and decoders. I still have my main box running Windoze XP, and I keep switching between them. Just can't decide which is better. They're just different, really.

I look forward to a link to the finished product.

[Patriot]

Hmmm .....

In its current form, any software that contains 3gpp codecs are unredistributable without a license. I've made a pet of ffmpeg library and mplayer-svn previously and was unable to include the 3gp codecs due to this very reason. A license is required for redistribution of the 3gpp codec binary.

Please read the legal notice posted on the AMR Codec Libraries for GNU-Linux (libamrnb/libamrwb) site.

The end-user license notice in ffmpeg and mplayer also indicates that binaries compiled with AMR 3gpp codecs are un-redistributable.

Hopefully, this may change once ffmpeg have a working 3gpp native codec after GSOC 2009.


Rgds

[SilverPuppy]

One of the things I do to recycle and help people is to refurbish elderly computers for elderly users, and Puppy Linux is my OS of choice for those. It's easy to use, supports modern gizmos like thumb drives (unlike Win98), is light, fast on low-powered computers, and of course, free. I'm using one of them to write this, and it's running GREAT.

I do however had a question. Using the 8.6h pet of VLC, things play fine from local sources, like the hard drive, CD drive, etc. It will even play FLV videos without skipping or stuttering, which is impressive considering that this computer only has a 350MHz PII Processor. However, it won't even play audio alone from an SMB share on the network without stammering. Not badly, but it puts bits of dead air in the audio output from time to time, although the timing of the playback is not affected. Video from an SMB source behaves similarly.

Initially, I thought that this might be due to a system bus bottleneck that the network and sound both used, but then I discovered that YouTube videos play fine (low FPS, but no audio glitching at all) so it can't be that. The strangest part is that playing from SMB shares worked fine on the last box I did, which was almost identical, except that it had a 330MHz AMD K6 processor instead of the Intel. Same audio chipset, same network chipset, both on-board. I don't get it...........

Turning the VLC priority up helped some, but it didn't solve it completely. Maybe I just haven't turned it up enough yet......how high can that thing go??! I turned it up to 13,xxx before I said "no way" and turned it back down to 2048. Maybe a wild priority will be necessary on this box.....on the previous I only turned it up to 3 and everything was fine! I guess I always knew AMD made better stuff than Intel.........

I need ideas, 'cuz I'm about out.

J

[SilverPuppy]

After playing around with it a little more, watching the blinky and messing with GXINE, I have determined that VLC doesn't allocate a large enough buffer to compensate for network latency. For now I'm going to just use GXINE on this box, since it's stable on this Intel architecture (it wasn't on the AMD, which was why I put VLC on it, which was stable and worked great on it.)

One other question: when I put VLC into the defaultmediaplayer script, clicking on the desktop icon for an audio CD gives a weird message and doesn't play anything. I can get the CD to play from the Open Disc menu item, but can't figure out how to make it do that automatically. It also skips badly, probably also because of too little buffer.

So how can I increase the output buffer, and what do I have to change to get the correct syntax to pass to VLC from an audio CD click-on?

[mikeb]

Have you tried several avi? Some are not interleaved very well and this shows up playing from certain mediums. Some have 5.1 audio and this tends to be a pain also.Media info in the right click menu will give details.
Not sure what the overhead of samba is....i was using curftpfs on a 333 pentium machine and had no problem.

mike

edit from last post

cddax:///dev/cdrom for audio

preferences..show advanced.....only remember seeing buffer for internet streaming but doesn't mean there isn't one.

[SilverPuppy]

It does it even on MP3 and OGG (audio only, very little network traffic created by these.) The same file that stuttered over the network plays fine if copied to the hard drive first. If I watch the blinky, I can tell exactly when it's going to stutter because it's not a quick blink-blink, it's a longer series, apparently meaning that the Windoze box upon which the files reside didn't respond in time to prevent a buffer underrun.

I did not see any way to adjust the buffer either, except for streaming media. As for the audio CDs, I know what the reference should be, but I don't know how to set the default run action for an audio CD, since "set default run action" is grayed out on its context menu. Not a big deal, I guess, as GXINE is working fine on this box, and I don't know too many senior citizens who would be playing media over SMB anyway, so this is mostly for my own information.

I'll tell you what, though, this Puppy makes a very seaworthy computer out of a 12-year-old box! It's amazing what good coding can do. ~300MHz and 128MB of RAM is all it takes to have a very reasonable surf and e-mail box with Puppy. Just amazing. I wonder what the absolute slowest machine it'll run on is.....I've got a few original Pentiums I could try.... Eventually, I definitely will, if only just to know. And who knows, maybe they'll work well enough to place!

[mikeb]

I don't know how to set the default run action for an audio CD

I don't think there is one though there may be the option with the desktop mount icons. (audio cd's are not mountable hence the absense of a handler.
I made a short script instead with
vlc cddax:///dev/cdrom
in it for example..then drag and drop to the desktop , give it a shiny icon and voila.
I use beep-media-player for cd and mp3...skinnable with winamp skins and very lightweight for audio...does internet radio very well too.

As for samba..maybe it needs something tweaking..seems a poor do as it is.
I'm using nfs now.

mike

[SilverPuppy]

Thanks for helping to try to figure this out. The script idea is a very creative one, but I'm sure there is an action specified SOMEWHERE, as clicking on the desktop icon for an audio CD does launch defaultmediaplayer with some option that works on GXINE but not on VLC.

As for Beep, I completely forgot about it. That's the one I used on a similar computer I gave to my church to record sound with. That is a nice little player; I'll have to get it back and try it on this one.

Jason

[mikeb]

The choice of mediaplayer is written into the launch script for each icon so an edit of pup_event_frontend_d would be needed as the icon script itself would be removed when the cd is.

mike

if you do use beep then it references for running an audio cd by the mount point!!!...ie to play /dev/hdc you need to call /mnt/hdc and this folder has to be present.
I made a script to deal with it and detect which drive if any has an audio cd in it .


mike

[donpoon]

I have installed this pet under Puppy 4.2.1 (Full Install). Running great.

I also need to run the VLC Modzilla Plugin under Firefox. It doesn't seem to be included in this version. Wonder if I have missed something...

Regards,
donpoon

[WoodLark]

I just installed the two .pet files at the beginning of this thread into puppy 4.2.1. According to the messages from the installer, both worked. My default media player now tries to exec a file named "vlc" , but there is no such file anywhere on my system. Where is the executable supposed to be?

My reason for installing is that I want to be able to play Winamp streaming audio from this site: http://cw.dimebank.com:8080/CNNslow.m3u

[mikeb]

The vlc binary should be around 760K and found in /usr/bin....check in /root/.packages for a file list.

If its not there something has gone wrong with the install ... perhaps run it again or even try a fresh download of it.

I listen to winamp steams with vlc just fine by the way.

mike

[edoc]

I just installed the two .pet files at the beginning of this thread into puppy 4.2.1. According to the messages from the installer, both worked. My default media player now tries to exec a file named "vlc" , but there is no such file anywhere on my system. Where is the executable supposed to be?

My reason for installing is that I want to be able to play Winamp streaming audio from this site: http://cw.dimebank.com:8080/CNNslow.m3u

I get

xine-plugin: playlist detected, requesting a local copy

from that URL.

Odd ... then again, the source is CNN ...