Playing DVDs using totem?

Sat May 7 17:35:16 UTC 2005

--- Toralf Lund <toralf at procaptura.com> wrote:

> Marcel Janssen wrote:
> 
> >On Saturday 07 May 2005 11:12, Toralf Lund wrote:
> >  
> >
> >>This has probably been discussed before, but is
> anyone actually using
> >>totem to play DVDs these days? I've tried variants
> from various distros
> >>and installed every gstreamer plugin I can think
> of, but it still won't
> >>work. Originally, it wouldn't recognise DVDs at
> all, of course, now it
> >>will either crash or give messages like

Others in list have reported sucess with Totem.  You
just need certain packages and it will work.  If I
remember correctly something like gstreamer???? and
other plugins will make it work.  

> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Do you mean you installed binary packages from
> other distros ? If so -> bad 
> >idea to begin with. Crashes will be very likely.
> >  
> >
> Bad choice of words, there. I meant "various
> distros" as in "Fedora Core 
> and different 3rd-party distributions of packages
> built specifically for 
> Fedora".
> 
> >I've tried totem, but I don't understand the UI.
> Play disc will not play the 
> >disc, so to my opinion it fails it's function ;-)
> >  
> >
> Calling that an UI problem is definitely stretching
> things. When the 
> function associated with an UI item doesn't work,
> I'd say that the 
> function is faulty, not the UI. But perhaps your
> remarks wasn't meant 
> too seriously...
> 
> Anyhow, Totem or any other media player installed
> with Fedora Core 
> certainly won't play DVDs out-of-the box.
> Apparently, Fedora/Red Hat 
> dare not distribute the somewhat controversial code
> needed to do the job 
> along with the OS...

Disregard this part.  Fedora will go with open
standards and the controversial code.  Go and snatch
the needed downloads to get the applications and
codecs that you want for it to play.  At one point I
disregarded Fedora for this reason, but the one
missing out on a great OS was me.  I tried installing
the missing parts and now it works great for me.  

> 
> >Also, many options that xine-ui has I miss in
> totem.
> >
> Those seem to be options I don't need and don't
> want, and they tend to 
> get in my way when I try to find what I do need...
> 
> > xine-ui may not be the 
> >nicest UI, but it can do the job which is most
> important I think.
> >  
> >
> Of course... But when I've tried it, I've been left
> with the feeling 
> that it didn't get the work done because I had to
> struggle too much with 
> the GUI - not only because I found it hard to
> understand, but also 
> because it just wouldn't work some of the time - and
> the whole 
> application seemed somewhat unstable.
> 
> >  
> >
> >>And, no, I don't think I want to use xine or
> mplayer or whatever
> >>instead. I think they all have pretty lousy UIs,
> and mplayer in
> >>particular has also proven to be rather
> unreliable. 
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >About the UI you can do something. There are many
> frontends to xine like 
> >kaffeine or gxine.
> >  
> >
> Yes. Or I may even use Totem with Xine as a
> backend...
> 
> >Suggest using kaffeine
> >
> Maybe I'll give it a try...
> 
> >Worked straight away to play DVD for me and has all
> 
> >the necessary functions for me to support
> multimedia.
> >
> >  
> >
> >>I know one 
> >>application that generally just works most of the
> time, though: It's
> >>Ogle (http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/~dvd/) Some of
> its features are
> >>incomplete, however, and it seems like there
> hasn't been a lot of
> >>development lately, and I've come across one DVD
> it won't play, so I
> >>thought I might try something else...
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >Another application is vlc
> (http://www.videolan.org/vlc)
> >  
> >
> I've tried that one, and yes, while it also has some
> dialogs and menu 
> items that are rather cryptic, the UI is not that
> bad. However, I'm 
> struggling a bit to get it to play the actual film
> or display the root 
> menu; it seems inclined to start showing me some of
> the "special 
> features" or whatever whenever I open a disk.
> 
> >If you install any of these, please use yum or apt
> so that at least you're 
> >sure that your not working with broken packages. It
> really saves you a lot of 
> >hassle in the end.
> >
> Yes.
> 
> Meanwhile, I'm still inclined to conclude that Ogle
> is still the player 
> closest to Just Working, but unfortunately, it seems
> like there are too 
> few developers involved in the project. Maybe I'll
> start a flame war by 
> saying this, but I generally think that it would be
> a lot more 
> productive if the people behind some of the video
> players would stop 
> developing their own software, and start
> contributing to other 
> applications instead. There has probably been far
> too much duplicate 
> work in this area.
> 
> - Toralf
> 
> 
> 
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> 

Sorry to add to tbe discussion, but I have a few
remarks to add, I have both xine, and MPlayer on my
pcs and I don't have any problems.  Most Dvd's play
without a hiccup.  

There are the frontends for xine 
http://xinehq.de/index.php/download
I can't complain about the frontend for xine the
xine-ui might not be the best but it works!  

To install xine I obtain the rpms from 
http://cambuca.ldhs.cetuc.puc-rio.br/xine/.
I follow almost all the instructions there.  you can
get RealPlayer and install the w32codecs to play
windows media/quicktime and other formats. 

As for MPlayer, you can install kplayer which is a
nice frontend for MPlayer.  

I have no complains as both players work for me and as
far as ogle is concerned, it never worked for me.  I
tried it in Mandrake, and Fedora Core 2 and 3 and it
did not work.  They say it is real good, but it never
worked for me.  So I can't rate it.

Regards,

Antonio

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