[SOLVED] Xine DVD playback issues

[BlueMage]

Hey guys,

Just installed Vector SOHO 5.8 Final on my old win98 box (and hopefully didn't destroy my win98 partition in the process) for use as a media box.  Obviously then, playback of DVDs is going to be a fairly major issue.  Tried to play one of my DVDs, sound was a bit spotty and the video was horribly garbled (green squares and such).  Media isn't something I've ever really fiddled with before, so any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

[bigpaws]

Try this as root:

echo 1024 >  /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq

You will not get a response. Then try your DVD. If this works
add the above line to /etc/rc.d/rc.local.

Bigpaws

[BlueMage]

Thanks Bigpaws, but it didn't work In fact, now when I try to run the DVD, I get an error dialogue (which I can't read because I can't seem to resize fonts and this screen has odd resolution)

[bigpaws]

Reboot will reset back to the original.

There is a livecd called Geexbox if you are
not sure wether this is hardware related.

There are timing settings in gxine as well
you can experiment with.

Bigpaws

[nubcnubdo]

Your video driver isnt right. Try re-detecting video through VASM. You will need to upgrade libxine xine-lib, the xine engine, in order that audio and video be synchronized. Also, libgcrypt must be version libgcrypt-1.2.3 but that usually is the default libgcrypt in VL 5.8 SOHO.

[BlueMage]

Ah, excellent, I'll try that.  Thanks muchly.  As a point of interest, I've got an old nVidia card in there, from back in the days of when 32MB was awesomely powerful.

On further examination, I'm thinking the open-source nVidia drivers may be a source of problems.  Currently putting the legacy ones in to see if we get a different result.  Also, thank God for console and slapt-get.

[BlueMage]

Ahah!  Success.  DVD playback works now, no deinterlacing or poor video-audio sync.

A small problem still exists though

DVD plays in MPlayer - all well and good.  Now, if I scene-skip to the next scene, playback continues, all fine and dandy.  If I don't, MPlayer appears to have a small fit and playback stops.  It's not that MPlayer crashes, playback just stops.  I can't figure out what's causing this, and checking settings on my compaq vector box doesn't reveal anything that appears to control that.  So again, any help would be much appreciated.

[nubcnubdo]

Xine runs lighter than MPlayer. MPlayer is intended for use on computers faster than 500 MHz. What speed is your computer? Use only Xine on a computer less than 500 MHz.

[Joe1962]

Use only Xine on a computer less than 500 MHz.

Or perhaps vlc?

[BlueMage]

I'm toeing the terminator line then - this old girl runs at 500MHz.  Strangely, trying to play the DVD in xine fails at the moment.

[nubcnubdo]

At 500 MHz, you should use Xine for DVD playback. Also, VLC does well for DVD playback on low-end computers, but Xine is a little lighter than VLC. You might wanna get VLC for .FLV (downloaded youtube vid) playback--nothing does it better.

Operation instructions for DVD playback with Xine:
1. insert DVD in drive
2. Vector (start) > Multimedia > click Xine, to start Xine gui. There are two components, the display screen and controls. If controls are not visible, right click the display screen and select "Show controls"
3. click DVD button on lower edge of controls gui.

Diagnostics: run command "xine" from terminal, report errors here.

[rbistolfi]

not sure atm, but i think there is an argument you can pass to mplayer to play the hole dvd folder and not just a .vob

[BlueMage]

Alrighty, this is what I get from MPlayer when I use CLI to start it

Code:

media:$ mplayer dvd
MPlayer 1.0rc1-3.4.6 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Pentium III Katmai/Pentium III Xeon Tanner (Family: 6, Model: 7, Stepping: 3)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.

Playing dvd.
Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load: avisynth.dll, /usr/lib/codecs/avisynth.dll, /usr/lib/win32/avisynth.dll, /usr/local/lib/win32/avisynth.dll
Seek failed


Exiting... (End of file)

This is what I get from xine when started from command

Code:

media:$ xine --auto-play --auto-scan dvd
This is xine (X11 gui) - a free video player v0.99.4.
(c) 2000-2004 The xine Team.
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.9 for DVD access

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x0000012f
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x00000190
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB at 0x0000cb5b
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_0.VOB at 0x0000dba9
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_1.VOB at 0x0000dbf6
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_0.VOB at 0x0000f6d6
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB at 0x0000f723
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 3 VTS's
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0

Incidentally, video is choppy, audio is perfect.

VLC seems to be the opposite - perfect video and choppy audio   Here's the current output

Code:

media:$ vlc /dev/dvd
VLC media player 0.8.6a Janus
libdvdnav: Using dvdnav version 0.2.0cvs from http://dvd.sf.net
libdvdread: Using libdvdcss version 1.2.9 for DVD access
libdvdnav: DVD Title: MSN_ENDGAME
libdvdnav: DVD Serial Number: 3BDD7B5D___MVB__
libdvdnav: DVD Title (Alternative):
libdvdnav: Unable to find map file '/home/media/.dvdnav/MSN_ENDGAME.map'
libdvdnav: DVD disk reports itself with Region mask 0x00f50000. Regions: 2 4

libdvdread: Attempting to retrieve all CSS keys
libdvdread: This can take a _long_ time, please be patient

libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VIDEO_TS.VOB at 0x0000012f
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_0.VOB at 0x00000190
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_01_1.VOB at 0x0000cb5b
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_0.VOB at 0x0000dba9
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_02_1.VOB at 0x0000dbf6
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_0.VOB at 0x0000f6d6
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Get key for /VIDEO_TS/VTS_03_1.VOB at 0x0000f723
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
libdvdread: Found 3 VTS's
libdvdread: Elapsed time 0
[00000321] a52 decoder: A/52 channels:2 samplerate:48000 bitrate:224000
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
[00000359] a52 decoder: A/52 channels:2 samplerate:48000 bitrate:224000
No accelerated IMDCT transform found
[00000297] main playlist: stopping playback

Checking Htop while testing the three options showed that when the DVD played, the CPU was getting maxed out in all cases.  Conceivably, shutting off a few services might help in that, but I'm uncertain a) how to or b) which services I can remove.

Alternatively, I can try using 5.8 Standard, but by all accounts 5.8 SOHO runs faster than Standard even with KDE.  So yes, uncertain.

Again, any help is greatly appreciated.

EDIT:  Tried playing a few movie files (admittedly, over a network connection) and got similar results - MPlayer fails with same (gui) error, VLC seems to track audio perfectly while dropping a few video frames occassionally (small but noticeable) and xine (after the initially slow startup) exhibits video-audio desync.  Starting to think I'm asking too much from this old girl

[rbistolfi]

I think the first mplayer problem can be solved installing some codecs from the repo.
The sync problem with Xina has been solved by nubcunubdo before upgrading xinelib, you can do it with gslapt or slapt-get, if you like.
You can disable the services you dont use. My printer is death, so I disable the cups daemon, I dont share files with windows, so samba is out, and so on. You can use VASM to disable the services you dont use. Is a safe operation and you can get back easily if you want to.
We recommend using XFCE, if you have less than 256mb of ram, I think ram is more important than cpu here.

[nubcnubdo]

Both xine-lib-1.1.7 and libgcrypt-1.2.3 are in the Patches repo:
http://ftp://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/vectorlinux/veclinux-5.8/patches/libs/

The easiest and best way to install either is to enable (add) the Patches repo in Gslapt Package Manager.

GSLAPT > Edit > Preferences > Sources

After Patches repo is added, it's a simple matter to install with Gslapt.