mplayer is broken

WernerL · 2009-05-21 16:19:27

Hello,

I really don't know what I did but mplayer completly disappeared. In kmenu there is no mplayer entry anymore, when I click with my right mouse button on a videofile mplayer is missing in the 'open with' list, and when I type 'mplayer' in the 'open with' window it starts mplayer but not as it is supposed to start.

The panel with the play/stop etc. buttons don't appear, and the rightmouseclick menu doesn't work either. I just have the movie but I can't stop/pause it, can't select a subtitle.. The only thing I can do with mplayer is close it.

WTF is going on?
I already tried to re-install it but that didn't work.

I'm using KDE4 if that's important. I hope someone knows a solution for this because I wan't to watch a movie.

//edit
Hmmz the command 'gmplayer' doesn't work anymore.. :+

Last edited by WernerL (2009-05-21 16:34:54)

R00KIE · 2009-05-21 16:51:52

Have you tried to reinstall it with pacman? It might solve the problem although the mystery of why it disappeared in the first place would remain.

schuay · 2009-05-21 16:56:56

the gui was removed from the mplayer package, have you tried other frontends like smplayer?

stefanwilkens · 2009-05-21 20:52:39

arch devs decided to compile mplayer without the GUI for some reason, the discussion is in the mail archives.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=70881

As this wasn't in the news, some people might be a tad surprised

R00KIE · 2009-05-21 21:41:51

Well I didn't notice that as I have been using smplayer since I've started to use mplayer.
The gui that came with mplayer sucked in my opinion, it was terribly slow, good riddance.

WernerL · 2009-05-22 18:56:04

I like the default GUI..
I downgraded yesterday and I have the GUI back but i'm gonna take a look at smplayer, thanks.

Gen2ly · 2009-05-23 01:12:34

stefanwilkens wrote:

arch devs decided to compile mplayer without the GUI for some reason, the discussion is in the mail archives.
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=70881
As this wasn't in the news, some people might be a tad surprised

The mplayer GUi hasn't been updated in years, good move on devs part. I always used the the nogui version and i like it (just takes awhile learning the keyboard shortcuts).

DaveCode · 2009-05-23 02:51:42

( Ref. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=70881 )

The Arch devs may be right, I don't have an opinion, except that I got aggravated. They should have put news on the home page, and/or warnings on pacman output. A blurb on the home page news scroll would have been fine.

Although, it isn't a question of "agreeing with the developers" or not. Nor of "read the developer list" - only developers should need to. That's why it's called a *developer* list.

I agree totally with the earlier comment,

"Imo all other guis for mplayer really suck and it would have been a better decision to support a --no-gui package next to the one we already had than simply dropping the gui without notifying the community before."

A dual-package model would have satisfied all. What I'm seeing is a "lecture" that SMPlayer is better and we should all use it. Excuse me. SMplayer it is Qt, which many of us prefer to avoid. I found Qt buggy compared to GTK+ even before v4. Qt is actually ((C++)+) where the third + is their funky preprocessor, while GTK+ is straight C. I think that explains a lot of the buginess difference.

Besides, SMplayer pretends that we want it remembering all our history and filling up disks with private data. They call it a feature, I call it a bug. I symlink playlists to tmpfs. And I can live without the bloated features in SMplayer even if they work. No gmplayer isn't great, but for mp3's it works fine, and some of us don't view DVDs on our PCs.

I'm aggravated that normally flawless Arch upgrades just arbitrarily break user setups, and then we get a lecture about why we shouldn't be using the programs we use. If you want to get users involved in these sorts of design cuts, then don't limit discussions to the developer's lists. Put some polls on the home page, start a forum topic, etc.

But, thanks to Arch devs for keeping on top of the programs out there, and the usual fantastic work, even if there are different strokes for different folks. Just keep us a little more in the loop. A/V programs affect the user experience more than most.

Last edited by DaveCode (2009-05-23 03:01:23)

Raffles10 · 2009-05-23 04:01:59

I've just spent a frustrating hour trying to figure out why mplayer had all but disappeared, why leave out the gui ? Give people a choice and let them use it how they like.

bangkok_manouel · 2009-05-23 04:52:40

Raffles10 wrote:

I've just spent a frustrating hour trying to figure out why mplayer had all but disappeared, why leave out the gui ? Give people a choice and let them use it how they like.

use ABS, you'll get the GUI back in no time.

DaveCode · 2009-05-23 05:54:05

bangkok_manouel wrote:

use ABS, you'll get the GUI back in no time.

Actually, this archive seems to be corrupt.
ftp://ftp.archlinux.org/other/mplayer/m … 18.tar.bz2

So it might be prudent to wait. If you can unpack it please post something. I tried tar and bunzip and two separate downloads but no dice.

WernerL · 2009-05-23 08:02:21

I'm starting to like dragonplayer as well... This isn't really an issue for me anymore.
mplayer never worked right with dvd menus (couldn't click on buttons) but dragonplayer does.. much better.

But now I opened a thread about movieplayers, a few days ago I wanted to wacht a movie on HD format (1080p) but I couldn't select a subtitle. The only thing I could do is play the movie, without menu, and without subtitles. Is there any movieplayer out there that supports bluray for 100%? I googled a lot but didn't find anything so far.

Last edited by WernerL (2009-05-23 08:04:57)

DaveCode · 2009-05-23 08:42:54

For newbies, dragonplayer is KDE, and therefore Qt, and therefore, in my view, carries the same problems as KDE/Qt/((C++)+).

There's gnome-player as a lightweight GUI for mplayer. The web site claims minimal use of GNOME stuff, which I like, running OpenBox as I do.

pacman -S gnome-player

If you have mplayer, this command just installs gnome-player ELF. That's how gmplayer should install: just add the ELF. A proper gmplayer package would not repack everything. It would just have one ELF inside, depending on console mplayer for the rest.

WernerL · 2009-05-23 08:47:44

I'm using KDE so it's not a big deal for me.
And gnome-player wasn't really what I was looking for.. a 'bit to simplistic..

Last edited by WernerL (2009-05-23 08:47:53)

Raffles10 · 2009-05-23 18:54:57

Well I downgraded mplayer but the older version won't run, it complains about 'libx264.so' missing dependency. So now I'm using gnome-mplayer it's basic but it'll do. Like DaveCode I want to stay away from kde/qt dependencies as I'm using xfce and if I wasn't it would be gnome.

rvm · 2009-05-23 22:37:31

DaveCode wrote:

Besides, SMplayer pretends that we want it remembering all our history and filling up disks with private data. They call it a feature, I call it a bug.

That feature can be disabled.

WernerL · 2009-05-24 11:01:01

Raffles10: I had that problem too when I downgraded.
I symlinked libx264.so.66 to libx264.so.67 and it worked..

Rorschach · 2009-05-25 09:44:40

@Raffles10: there's a new mplayer version with the gui enabled in aur: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=26668

Nepherte · 2009-05-25 11:49:12

As a rule I always build mplayer from svn myself with my own ./configure line. Suits me very well. Once you've settled with the configuration you want, you can periodically install a new svn version in an easy way.

karol · 2009-05-25 22:00:29

@Nepherte
Ummm, you don't get any errors whatsoever or did you disable everything?

Nepherte · 2009-05-25 23:06:17

I don't get any errors (not sure if you're referring to something particular here?). I only disable things I don't need: the gui, audio outputs I never use, tv, dvb, radio, languages other than english, lirc ...

karol · 2009-05-25 23:10:43

That falls under 'disable everything' :-)
I was referring to some errors I got that went away when I disabled some 40 things I didn't need.
Long live Ockham!

skottish · 2009-05-26 02:17:52

Nepherte wrote:

I don't get any errors (not sure if you're referring to something particular here?). I only disable things I don't need: the gui, audio outputs I never use, tv, dvb, radio, languages other than english, lirc ...

I've disabled a few things also. Here's my current configure line:

 ./configure --prefix=/usr --confdir=/etc/mplayer \
      --disable-gui \
      --disable-faad \
      --disable-faad-internal \
      --disable-runtime-cpudetection \
      --disable-faac \
      --disable-faac-lavc \
      --disable-libdv \
      --disable-aa \
      --disable-mencoder \
      --disable-liblzo \
      --disable-speex \
      --disable-fribidi \
      --disable-smb \
      --disable-openal \
      --disable-x264 \
      --disable-esd \
      --disable-jack \
      --disable-gl \
      --disable-fbdev \
      --disable-mp3lib \
      --disable-dvb \
      --disable-dvbhead \
      --disable-libvorbis \
      --disable-musepack \
      --disable-directfb \
      --disable-nas \
      --disable-liba52 \
      --disable-libavutil_a \
      --disable-libavcodec_a  \
      --disable-libavformat_a \
      --disable-libswscale_a \
      --disable-libpostproc_a \
      --disable-tv \
      --disable-tv-v4l1 \
      --disable-tv-v4l2 \
      --disable-tv-teletext \
      --disable-v4l2 \
      --disable-dga2 \
      --disable-dga2 \
      --disable-vidix

karol · 2009-05-26 02:22:18

@skottish
IIRC you posted your setup somewhere on the forum and I've used it for making mine :-) Why did you leave liba52-internal? What is the benefit of having a separate ffmpeg?

skottish · 2009-05-26 02:41:03

karol wrote:

@skottish
IIRC you posted your setup somewhere on the forum and I've used it for making mine :-) Why did you leave liba52-internal? What is the benefit of having a separate ffmpeg?

I left a52 internal because for some bizarre reason the Mplayer devs don't want to use FFmpeg's AC3 code. This is unfortunate because FFmpeg's works right now and Mplayer's is broken.

The benefit of using FFmpeg internal? It's from some obsessive-compulsive need of mine to reduce duplication in programs. Even MPD on my system used only FFmpeg libraries until FFmpeg broke their vorbis code. I reinstalled that (temporarily).

Arch Linux

#1 2009-05-21 16:19:27

mplayer is broken

#2 2009-05-21 16:51:52

Re: mplayer is broken

#3 2009-05-21 16:56:56

Re: mplayer is broken

#4 2009-05-21 20:52:39

Re: mplayer is broken

#5 2009-05-21 21:41:51

Re: mplayer is broken

#6 2009-05-22 18:56:04

Re: mplayer is broken

#7 2009-05-23 01:12:34

Re: mplayer is broken

#8 2009-05-23 02:51:42

Re: mplayer is broken

#9 2009-05-23 04:01:59

Re: mplayer is broken

#10 2009-05-23 04:52:40

Re: mplayer is broken

#11 2009-05-23 05:54:05

Re: mplayer is broken

#12 2009-05-23 08:02:21

Re: mplayer is broken

#13 2009-05-23 08:42:54

Re: mplayer is broken

#14 2009-05-23 08:47:44

Re: mplayer is broken

#15 2009-05-23 18:54:57

Re: mplayer is broken

#16 2009-05-23 22:37:31

Re: mplayer is broken

#17 2009-05-24 11:01:01

Re: mplayer is broken

#18 2009-05-25 09:44:40

Re: mplayer is broken

#19 2009-05-25 11:49:12

Re: mplayer is broken

#20 2009-05-25 22:00:29

Re: mplayer is broken

#21 2009-05-25 23:06:17

Re: mplayer is broken

#22 2009-05-25 23:10:43

Re: mplayer is broken

#23 2009-05-26 02:17:52

Re: mplayer is broken

#24 2009-05-26 02:22:18

Re: mplayer is broken

#25 2009-05-26 02:41:03

Re: mplayer is broken

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