xine w/ wmv - no video

[Joseph Sinclair]

Upgrading the video and/or monitor should have no effect on Xine, it uses the X and GL libs to draw to screen, so it's blissfully unaware of the hardware behind that.

As far as the cursor trails, it's fairly likely that what you're experiencing is a result of a problem in the video driver (in which case an upgrade to the latest might help).  It could also be an X setting, most probably the latency or delay between cursor refreshes.
I've seen similar problems in many environments (incl. Windows), and it's almost always a problem with the video driver not performing it's xor/bitblt operation correctly.

==Joseph++

Eric "Shubes" wrote:
> 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?
>>>> ---------------------------------------------------
> 
>