On Saturday 14 October 2006 11:25, Dazed_75 wrote:
> I have been trying to play the go-open DVD that was available at the East
> Side PLUG meeting last Thursday.  I have no problem under XP using the
> included player for windows.  However, I am having little success under
> Linux (ubuntu 6.06 or SUSE 10.1) and had asked Joe Zagar what luck he had.
>
> Joseph Zagar wrote:
>
> When I insert disk, file manager opens and shows 11(?) files the second one
> " go-open-1X02.ogm" opens in Totem Movie Player and runs a 22 minute movie.
>
> Joe
>
>  I wrote back:
>
> Almost the same except that nothing plays.  The second file icon does show
> a picture of the host rather than the opening text image the rest show.  I
> have totem (1.4.3-0ubuntu1) and totem-gstreamer (1.4.3-0ubuntu1) installed.
>
> I did learn that the second one will play with Movie Player (about menu
> item under help shows it to me Totem 1.4.3) although it does not autorun.
> The others will open but cannot be made to play.  The opening screen shows
> up but the controls seem ineffective.  They act the same way if I drag them
> to the desktop and try to run them from there. Interestingly, if I use the
> save button in the lower right of Movie Player the saved file shows a
> different icon and attempting to open the saved file gives the same error I
> get under SUSE 10.1:
>
>    Cannot open go-open-1x02.ogm
>
> The filename "go-open-1x02.ogm" indicates that this file is of type "OGM
> video". The contents of the file indicate that the file is of type "MP3
> ShoutCast playlist". If you open this file, the file might present a
> security risk to your system.
>
> Do not open the file unless you created the file yourself, or received the
> file from a trusted source. To open the file, rename the file to the
> correct extension for "MP3 ShoutCast playlist", then open the file
> normally. Alternatively, use the Open With menu to choose a specific
> application for the file.
>
> I suspect this is a clue that Movie Player (mine) needs a plugin for
> shoutcast that I don't have despite the fact that totem-gstreamer claims to
> support it.  These are the kinds of things that drive folks away from FOSS
> unfortunately.  I think I will bring this to the PLUG Discussion list for
> help.
>
> Oh, and one more thing is that if I wait long enough under ubuntu Movie
> Player pops a small dialog box that says "An error occurred       Could not
> decode stream" so again, it looks like some decoder is missing.
>
> Anyone got an answer?

The Go-Open TV series is recorded in OGM (Ogg based multimedia files) which is
a Free/Open Source video format.  The cross-platform VLC media player can be
downloaded from http://www.videolan.org/ and there is a binary for just about
every version of Linux, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, PocketPC, Mac and Windows.

VLC can play not only OGM files but just about any other format that is
legally playable with F/OSS software.

Actually, you may only need the proper codec to play the files with your
present player.  Most Linux players look for codecs in /usr/lib/codec.  If
the player finds a the needed codec there then it will be able to play the
file.

The Go-Open series was broadcasted on South African TV and was funded by Mark
Shuttleworth of Ubuntu fame.  It's an enjoyable series (and yes, it's in
English) which explains Open Source software, has interviews with many of
F/OSS's "Big Guns" and highlights sucessful F/OSS projects in South Africa
and around the world.  The complete series is available for download from
http://www.go-opensource.org/ .