xine w/ wmv - no video

[Eric "Shubes"]

Thanks again for all the pointers, Joseph. I haven't gotten around to trying 
them yet.

I just thought of something else though that is probably a contributing 
factor (I should have made this connection before now). I upgraded the video 
card and monitor on my system a month or two ago, so I'm guessing that the 
graphics card/monitor driver/settings is probably the culprit. Would 
re-installing xine or something possibly correct the problem?


BTW, I have another problem with my video that I've simply been living with 
for the time being. Let me see if I can explain it.

First of all, when I'm in a terminal window, everything is hunky dory. 
However, when I'm in a gui window (like Thunderbird Composer, for instance), 
pressing the arrow keys leaves 'trails' of the cursor (blinking vertical 
bar) when I move around the text. Then, when I begin typing again with 
'normal' characters, the 'trails' go away.

Is this likely a problem with my graphics configuration?

The video card is EVGA e-GeForce 6200 (nvidia) AGP. lcpci shows:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 6200 (rev a1) 
(prog-if 00 [VGA])
         Subsystem: eVga.com. Corp. Unknown device a341
         Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
         Memory at ce000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
         Memory at b0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
         Memory at cd000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
         Expansion ROM at cfee0000 [disabled] [size=128K]
         Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2
         Capabilities: [44] AGP version 3.0

xorg.conf settings are:
Section "ServerLayout"
         Identifier     "single head configuration"
         Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
         InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
         InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
         FontPath     "unix/:7100"
EndSection

Section "Module"
         Load  "dbe"
         Load  "extmod"
         Load  "fbdevhw"
         Load  "glx"
         Load  "record"
         Load  "freetype"
         Load  "type1"
         Load  "dri"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
         Identifier  "Keyboard0"
         Driver      "kbd"
         Option      "XkbModel" "pc105"
         Option      "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
         Identifier  "Mouse0"
         Driver      "mouse"
         Option      "Protocol" "IMPS/2"
         Option      "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
         Option      "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
         Option      "Emulate3Buttons" "yes"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
         Identifier   "Monitor0"
         VendorName   "ViewSonic"
         ModelName    "VA2012wSERIE"
         DisplaySize  430        270
         HorizSync    30.0 - 94.0
         VertRefresh  50.0 - 75.0
         Option      "dpms"
EndSection

Section "Device"
         Identifier  "Videocard0"
         Driver      "nv"
         VendorName  "EVGA"
         BoardName   "nVidia Corporation GeForce 6200"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
         Identifier "Screen0"
         Device     "Videocard0"
         Monitor    "Monitor0"
         DefaultDepth     24
         SubSection "Display"
                 Viewport   0 0
                 Depth     16
                 Modes    "800x600" "640x480"
         EndSubSection
         SubSection "Display"
                 Viewport   0 0
                 Depth     24
                 Modes    "1680x1050" "1280x800"
         EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "DRI"
         Group        0
         Mode         0666
EndSection


TIA for any (more) pointers.


Joseph Sinclair wrote:
> Start with VLC, if you can get the videos to play in VLC, then the codecs are available, they just aren't setup in Xine.
> 
> Check that the upgrade didn't replace the Xine renderer with GStreamer or something similar.  Sometimes that happens.  If it did, you need to reinstall all of the Xine support packages.
> 
> If Xine appears to be installed and selected as the default rendering library, then check that you're not using XGL/AIGLX, since the Win32 codecs don't currently work correctly in that environment.
> 
> Try downloading the very latest FFMPEG library (compile it from CVS, using the stable mark, not the daily snapshot).  This adds a LOT more codec support than the last released version, and it doesn't rely on Win32 DLL files.
> 
> Try installing the latest MPlayer and the MPlayer codecs package, even if Xine doesn't work, this should (again, as long as you're not running XGL or AIGLX).
> 
> Hope that helps,
> ==Joseph++
> 
> Eric "Shubes" wrote:
>> Thanks for the ideas, Joseph.
>>
>> I tried playing some mpeg and wmv files from '03 and they don't play
>> either.
>> What next?
>>
>> Joseph Sinclair wrote:
>>> It's more likely that the new videos use new WMV codecs or require a
>>> "phone-home" call to play.  WMV an "evolving" format, meaning that MS
>>> modifies it every 6 months or so to ensure it won't be reliably
>>> playable on any platform except Windows.  The modifications are
>>> generally nothing more than a new FourCC, a slight packet header
>>> change, and some additional options for restricting content, but they
>>> don't play on the old codecs, so you have to "upgrade" a Windows
>>> machine, then pull in the new codec DLL to get it to play.  If the
>>> videos require a "Phone Home" check, they won't play anywhere except
>>> Windows, no matter what you do.
>>>
>>> Eric "Shubes" wrote:
>>>> I used to have xine set up on FC5 working nicely. I had to install the
>>>> wmv codecs for it to work.
>>>>
>>>> Some time ago I noticed that wmv files weren't showing video any more.
>>>> Not a big deal, as I only use it to view an occasional email attachment
>>>> now and then.
>>>>
>>>> wmv files seem to play ok, no errors that I see, audio plays, just no
>>>> video. I'm guessing that a FC5 upgrade might have broken something. Any
>>>> ideas what direction to look for a fix?
>>> ---------------------------------------------------


-- 
-Eric 'shubes'