Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

Himari · 2008-10-04 12:57:17

Hello folks,

I'm quite new to Arch (I've been using Arch for about more than one month, but I tried various distros before, so I'm not a total newbie to Linux at all). I have some problems with Arch and I hope some experienced Arch users will help me to solve :

1. I have problem to view the content of my external HDDs, before I add my username to the group "storage", I couldn't even view the content of the HDDs unless I tried "su" or login as root. After I added my username to the group "storage", now I can view the content of the HDD but I still can't copy nor modify anything. If I want to change anything with the HDD, I need to login as root. As for copying, I have to login as root, copy the files to /home/username/Desktop/The_Destination_Folder, but then I still couldn't do anything with the files unless I login as root again, change the permission to "Read & Write" for my username.

2. Video playing doesn't seem very "smooth" to me (sorry, I can't find any better words-English is not my mother tongue), I can't play .avi, .wmv with MPlayer but I can play .avi with Xine & VLC. However, .wmv files are played as if there are scratches on the surface of the disk, the sound is bad even though I tried VLC which has its own codecs.

These are my two main problems now, so far, Arch seems ok for me, just only these two need to be solved.
Any help is appreciated

Cheers

Rumor · 2008-10-05 12:55:52

I don't have any ideas about the external hard drive.

For your videos, have you installed the codecs required by mplayer? Most of them are covered in the ugly and bad gstreamer packages.

pacman -S codecs gstreamer0.10-ugly-plugins gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg

What video card do you have and what driver did you install when you set up? I am guessing your choppy play back is due to the video card and driver more than it is due to any missing codec.

Himari · 2008-10-06 04:10:44

Hello Rumor, thanks for the post

I guess I only just installed "codecs" package only, that kinda explains why MPlayer can't play those video files.

As for the video card, mine is ATI, but I don't think that is due to the card, because when I used ZenWalk/LinuxMint before (these OS are pre-configured to have mostly everything "just work"), the video files are played smoothly.

skottish · 2008-10-06 04:14:57

Mplayer doesn't use gstreamer. In fact, most of what it does is internal. Simply pacman -S mplayer should take care of everything. The codecs package only covers RealPlayer stuff these days.

Himari, try to launch Mplayer from a terminal then try to start a video. Post what it says back here.

AD28 · 2008-10-06 04:15:21

What method are you using to mount the HDD?

Himari · 2008-10-06 05:54:10

@skottish :

Here's the result of playing a .mkv file with Mplayer in terminal.

[dh@arch ~]$ mplayer /home/dh/Desktop/Movies/Swordfish/Swordfish.mkv
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.3.1 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP-M (LV) 2100+ (Family: 6, Model: 10, Stepping: 0)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
115 audio & 237 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing /home/dh/Desktop/Movies/Swordfish/Swordfish.mkv.
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC) "Movie", -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_AAC) "Nero AAC 6ch Audio", -aid 0, -alang eng
[mkv] Track ID 3: subtitles (S_VOBSUB) "Subtitle", -sid 0, -slang eng
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Matroska file format detected.
VIDEO: [avc1] 720x352 24bpp 25.000 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffh264] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg H.264)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: compressed input bitrate missing, assuming 128kbit/s!
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [faad] afm: faad (FAAD AAC (MPEG-2/MPEG-4 Audio) decoder)
==========================================================================
AO: [oss] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 352 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 2.48:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x352 => 872x352 Planar YV12
A: 701.5 V: 701.5 A-V: 0.008 ct: -0.035 1126/1126 37% 13% 9.1% 0 0
Exiting... (Quit)

I'd say the quality is good, everything is smooth.

Another one with .wmv file

[dh@arch ~]$ mplayer /home/dh/Desktop/Movies/kira.wmv
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.3.1 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) XP-M (LV) 2100+ (Family: 6, Model: 10, Stepping: 0)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
115 audio & 237 video codecs
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.
Playing /home/dh/Desktop/Movies/kira.wmv.
ASF file format detected.
[asfheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
[asfheader] Video stream found, -vid 2
VIDEO: [WMV2] 528x360 24bpp 1000.000 fps 636.0 kbps (77.6 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
name: JAnime
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [dshow] DirectShow video codecs
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: wmv8ds32.ax, /usr/lib/codecs/wmv8ds32.ax, /usr/lib/win32/wmv8ds32.ax, /usr/local/lib/win32/wmv8ds32.ax
Warning: DS_Filter() could not open DirectShow DLL. (DLL=wmv8ds32.ax, r=0x939a038)
Failed to create DirectShow filter
ERROR: Could not open required DirectShow codec wmv8ds32.ax.
You need to upgrade/install the binary codecs package.
Go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/dload.html
VDecoder init failed
Opening video decoder: [dmo] DMO video codecs
Creating new registry
DMO dll supports VO Optimizations 0 1
DMO dll might use previous sample when requested
GetOutput r=0x0 size:570240 align:1
StreamCount r=0x0 1 1
Decoder supports the following formats: YV12 YUY2 UYVY YVYU RGB8 RGB555 RGB565 RGB24 RGB32
Decoder is capable of YUV output (flags 0x1b)
VDec: vo config request - 528 x 360 (preferred colorspace: Packed YUY2)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is undefined - no prescaling applied.
VO: [xv] 528x360 => 528x360 Planar YV12
Selected video codec: [wmvdmo] vfm: dmo (Windows Media Video DMO)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 64.0 kbit/4.54% (ratio: 8005->176400)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm: ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (FFmpeg))
==========================================================================
AO: [oss] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
A: 89.7 V: 89.7 A-V: 0.001 ct: 0.037 257/257 14% 3% 0.9% 0 0
Exiting... (Quit)

After installing those codecs, playing wmv files with Mplayer in terminal seems ok too, but if I right click and choose to play in Thunar browser, then a message pops-up on screen say "ERROR : Could not open required DirectShow codec wmv8ds32.ax", but the file is still played.

@ AD28 :

I use "mount /dev/media/sdx" - sorry I'm not at home now so I don't have the HDD to verify. But this is for the first time or when the content is not shown, normally, I plug the USB in, wait for a while and the content of the HDD should be displayed on screen (for root account, for normal user, it's just a blank window with nothing inside).
On the other hand, USB thumbdrives work well, I don't need to configure anything, just plug in and the content is displayed, even for normal user. But for HDD, I need root access.

Last edited by Himari (2008-10-06 05:59:10)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-04 12:57:17

Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

#2 2008-10-05 12:55:52

Re: Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

#3 2008-10-06 04:10:44

Re: Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

#4 2008-10-06 04:14:57

Re: Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

#5 2008-10-06 04:15:21

Re: Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

#6 2008-10-06 05:54:10

Re: Problems with accessing external HDD & playing video files

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