Kaffeine in kde4

English Open Chat
1

Has anyone else noticed how well it works?
I had it playing a DVD tonight that VLC wouldn’t touch

Now it was always the case that we would need it from Packman - But not now.
Yep, I do have all the codecs from Packman of course.

rpm -qi kaffeine
Name        : kaffeine                     Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 0.9+1.0pre2                       Vendor: obs://build.opensuse.org/KDE
Release     : 9.7                           Build Date: Fri 18 Dec 2009 21:20:00 GMT
Install Date: Mon 21 Dec 2009 21:04:58 GMT      Build Host: build36
Group       : Productivity/Multimedia/Video/Players   Source RPM: kaffeine-0.9+1.0pre2-9.7.src.rpm
Size        : 1281258                          License: GPL v2 or later
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Fri 18 Dec 2009 21:20:20 GMT, Key ID 58d8ff412e1efa87
URL         : http://kaffeine.sourceforge.net/
Summary     : Xine-Based Multimedia Player
Description :
Kaffeine plays all files and devices supported by Xine. For example,
MPEG files, AVI (if the codec being used is supported by Xine), MP3,
and Ogg Vorbis. It also handles Video CDs, DVDs, and DVB cards.
2

No for me it sucks, as it doesnt allow me to choose its backend or the drive the DVD is in.

3

Kaffeine of KDE4 lacks control of video and subtitle settings (brightness, contrast, and some others). Because of that, I am using Kaffeine of KDE3 in opensuse 11.2.

4

Kaffeine for KDE4 looked fine at first and then gradually died for me; so I am back to the KDE3 version.

5

john hudson wrote:
> Kaffeine for KDE4 looked fine at first and then gradually died for me;
> so I am back to the KDE3 version.
>
>

KDE3 konsole is better.
KDE3 krdc is better.
KDE3 kaffeine is better.

Because of this trend, is there something just fundamentally bad about
KDE4, or have all the applications developers just forgotten what
makes for a great interface experience??

Ok… so maybe there’s a few nice features in the KDE4 versions.
Why kill the neat features from the KDE3 version when moving to
KDE4? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

6

I think your sample is too limited.

At the office, for corporate meetings, KDE3 was not very usable for me because of its very awkward requirements for trying to clone the display of a laptop on an external projector. KDE4 with the proprietary ATI driver, and also with the older Intel driver “just works” for this and I can much more successfully now use openSUSE (with KDE4) for corporate meetings (where KDE3 failed miserably).

One might say KDE3 was simply not ready for corporate prime time in this regard, while KDE4 is ready in this respect.

And to add the needed capability to KDE3 simply was not very feasible given KDE3’s mostly unmaintainable code base.

There is another expression wrt KDE3 vs KDE4: YMMV (your mileage may vary).

Probably because you are not a developer who does not get paid for their programming efforts.

In openSource software, volunteers tend to do the coding, and they code for what itches them, not what itches someone else.

Anyway, FRANKLY, noone of this belongs on a “Kaffeine in KDE4” thread.

7

Kaffeine has been broken since 11.2 RC1.

My belief is that it’s part of the intentional crippling.

I install smplayer on everything now and it works, kaffeine for me is confined to the scrapheap.

Sad really because it WAS a good player.

8

Can you “define” broken?

After seeing this thread, I started using kaffeine in KDE4 on 3 different PCs and it plays back videos well on each PC. I’m not a kaffeine lover (I use smplayer and vlc most of the time) but I thought KDE4 kaffeine did a good job in the playback of the videos on my hard drive. I threw many different video formats/codecs at KDE4 kaffeine. Each of these PCs is running openSUSE-11.2 with KDE-4.3.4 and the hardware on each is completely different (2 are 32-bit and 1 is 64-bit).

I will not dispute there may be some features in KDE3 Kaffeine that are not in KDE4 kaffeine, but I would not call the superb playback that I saw in KDE4 broken. I think there are better more helpful descriptions.

9

I have found the KDE4 konsole better for my use; perhaps there has been uneven development of different aspects of the program.

10

I’m glad you tried it @oldcpu
Yep, it’s work in progress. But it gives really good playback.

All the harping back and axe grinding Re: kde3 seems pointless.

Get this: KDE4 is Now, the future and here to stay. I loved kde3 too, but we have to be progressive. If more of us concentrate our efforts with testing development kde4 - All the better.

11

I have still 11.1 and Kde3.5 and this combination begins to work NOW after quite a time to be of my taste. I have currently installed the Kaffeine 4.3 and it is substantially…crashing all the time, would be a case for a bug report. But currently I do not have time.
I do not think the interface is worse than 3.5.
It is just that I will wait to 4.5 and then I will … very prudentially shift.
It is just true that the overall impression of KDE4 is still a bit rough. But that will shape out with 4 as it did with 3.
If you need interoperability and to work with it, I guess 4 is straightforwardly the better choice.
And I still claim: we should compare 3.3 to 4.3 if one really wants. This would be much more honest, although it is tough to do this, one would like to claim “it is already a higher version”.
For the time being I am well (and completely satisfied) with my little beloved KDE3.5. :wink:

12

caf4926 wrote:
> I’m glad you tried it @oldcpu
> Yep, it’s work in progress. But it gives really good playback.
>
> All the harping back and axe grinding Re: kde3 seems pointless.
>
> Get this: KDE4 is Now, the future and here to stay. I loved kde3 too,
> but we have to be progressive. If more of us concentrate our efforts
> with testing development kde4 - All the better.

I understand this.

But please understand THIS… I deploy openSUSE. Yes, I know that’s
weird, but I have CORPORATE mom and pop users of SUSE technology.

Crashes, errors, weird behaviors, confusing dialogs, these things make
oS 11.2 undeployable for me.

oS 11.1 works. It has KDE 3.5.

I had high hopes that oS 11.2 would be workable, but after spending
many, many, many weeks trying to make things work reliably (well enough
to where the end user wouldn’t curse my name), I’ve decided that we’re
stuck with oS 11.1… and I’ll now hope for a better 11.3.

I respect that you view oS 11.2 as a “testing” and “development”
release… I agree with that.

13

john hudson wrote:
> cjcox;2094308 Wrote:
>> KDE3 konsole is better.
>>
>
> I have found the KDE4 konsole better for my use; perhaps there has been
> uneven development of different aspects of the program.

Can you set the terminal size of the Konsole of KDE 4 (e.g. 80x25)? No.
Are the KDE4 developers interested in adding this feature? No… well,
actually there may be some effort now to fix this major issue.

Why does it ONLY remember the last size of the last konsole you had?
Do people really want that behavior? It’s just weird… random…
I simply do not understand what on earth the KDE 4 developers are
thinking. It’s like they didn’t even look at the old KDE 3 apps.

I’m curious what feature of KDE 4 is vastly better than the KDE 3 konsole?

14

My mother has openSUSE-11.1 running KDE-3.5. It runs well.

But I have seen nothing in KDE-4.3.4 (other than a different interface) that would make think it is less table than KDE-3.5. That is with KDE-4.3.4. running on 4 different PCs. Indeed I have seen way more hiccups with KDE3 over the years, than I have ever seen on KDE4 since version 4.3 in KDE. But thats not a fair comparison since KDE4 has not been around that long.

Getting back on topic, I have not had one KDE4 crash with the KDE4 version of kaffeine playing.

If you are seeing so many highly repeatable crashes (or even no-repeatable but still many crashes), then it should be REAL EASY for you to write many different bug reports - n’est-ce pas ? How many have you written? Lets not forget that the ONLY way forward for a Linux distribution is for the users to contribute. If the users do not contribute then a Linux distribution WILL die. All the ranting will only speed the demise of the distribution.

All major distributions have stopped KDE3 support. There are no developers supporting KDE3. Ranting at KDE4 with no bug reports and no contributions is only serving to push Linux toward its death. The way forward to sort KDE4 problems if one has them (and I do not have KDE4 problems) is to write bug reports and contribute.

I now use KDE4 in corporate meetings with senior management because for what I use it for it is SIGNIFICANTLY superior to KDE3, where KDE3 from a functionality view point was not workable for corporate meetings. Thats a sad but true comment on KDE3, that after all its years, it was not usable in corporate meetings.

I agree KDE4 is not for anyone, but the lengths to which KDE3 users will jump on only remotely related threads and rant against KDE4, just because it has KDE4 in the title, NEVER ceases to amaze me.

15

oldcpu wrote:
> cjcox;2095538 Wrote:
>> … I deploy openSUSE. Yes, I know that’s weird, but I have CORPORATE
>> mom and pop users of SUSE technology.
>>
>> Crashes, errors, weird behaviors, confusing dialogs, these things make
>> oS 11.2 undeployable for me.
>>
>> oS 11.1 works. It has KDE 3.5. My mother has openSUSE-11.1 running KDE-3.5. It runs well.
>
> But I have seen nothing in KDE-4.3.4 (other than a different interface)
> that would make think it is less table than KDE-3.5. That is with
> KDE-4.3.4. running on 4 different PCs. Indeed I have seen way more
> hiccups with KDE3 over the years, than I have ever seen on KDE4 since
> version 4.3 in KDE. But thats not a fair comparison since KDE4 has not
> been around that long.

Again, I’ve already agreed that one of the main weaknesses of KDE4 is
the crashing bugs caused by its immaturity. But, for example, if you
find Perl 6 unusable, you can go back to Perl 5. Oh… but wait,
that option has been removed for KDE (at least officially).

>
> Getting back on topic, I have not had one KDE4 crash with the KDE4
> version of kaffeine playing.
>
> If you are seeing so many highly repeatable crashes (or even
> no-repeatable but still many crashes), then it should be REAL EASY for
> you to write many different bug reports - n’est-ce pas ? How many have

Can’t promise that all bugs have been submitted, but MANY have already
been submitted. I do check to avoid making duplicate submissions.

> you written? Lets not forget that the ONLY way forward for a Linux
> distribution is for the users to contribute. If the users do not
> contribute then a Linux distribution WILL die. All the ranting will only
> speed the demise of the distribution.

The ONLY way that things get better is when
problems get fixed. And they only way problems get fixed is by raising
the visibility. Even simple problems like the broken way that konsole
works now in KDE4 with regards to terminal size has been debated on and
on and on and is NOW only finally going to be fixed because enough
people have complained about something that was completely obvious.

KDE4 (which is NOT a successor to KDE3) took a very different approach
to certain things and in some cases, I personally believe they made
bad choices. But if you talk to the konsole developers they’ll tell
you that nobody wanted the ability to create fixed character WxH sized
konsole windows, and that everyone wanted ONLY the ability for konsoles
to remember the size of the last konsole. But if you think about what
a konsole is… then WxH has to matter… terminals being inherently
fixed size.

Similar things can be said about issues in the new kaffeine. Feel free
to peruse the bug lists… Ditto for krdc, and others…

>
> All major distributions have stopped KDE3 support. There are no
> developers supporting KDE3. Ranting at KDE4 with no bug reports and no
> contributions is only serving to push Linux toward its death. The way
> forward to sort KDE4 problems if one has them (and I do not have KDE4
> problems) is to write bug reports and contribute.

I agree, one should not rant without making bug reports. So, please
DO listen to oldcpu with regards to submitting bugs. To submit bugs
for KDE go to:
https://bugs.kde.org/

From there you can search existing bugs to find out if anything
you discover hasn’t been submitted. I already know of some items
that I need to submit.

I’m just being honest… and while I don’t agree with the strategy,
a lot of my friends dumped KDE4 and moved over to Gnome (which is insane
IMHO). And since nobody does Gnome like Ubuntu, many went ahead and
switched over to Ubuntu. It’s a free country… some of those that
left have come back to openSUSE for other reasons (esp. during oS 11.1
when they realized there was a KDE 3.5 option, and for other reasons).

>
> I now use KDE4 in corporate meetings with senior management because for
> what I use it for it is SIGNIFICANTLY superior to KDE3, where KDE3 from
> a functionality view point was not workable for corporate meetings.
> Thats a sad but true comment on KDE3, that after all its years, it was
> not usable in corporate meetings.

I use KDE3 for lectures, presentations, etc. all
the time… I also use KDE4. Sure, KDE4 has better xrandr support, but
all of that was easily worked around. I mean, really, I’ve been doing
presentations before we had any xrandr support.

>
> I agree KDE4 is not for anyone, but the lengths to which KDE3 users
> will jump on only remotely related threads and rant against KDE4, just
> because it has KDE4 in the title, NEVER ceases to amaze me.

I only respond to those who want to criticize a VALID response. You
were also once a KDE3 user… you just didn’t have any issues when moving
to KDE4. That’s not everyone’s experience.

You say “KDE4 is not for anyone(sic)”, but for those who do not want
KDE4, the KDE3 option is now gone… and I think that is truly sad.

This thread strayed when some considered the KDE3 kaffeine as better than
the KDE4 kaffeine (for… again, a variety of VALID reasons). Didn’t mean
to offend.

Sincerly,
Chris
(a KDE4 user, a KDE3 deployer)

16

Hmm… Why I cannot configure xine engine parameters from kaffeine in KDE4?? >:(

17

I haven’t found anything vastly better but copying and pasting to and from the console is easier than it was with KDE3 and that is what I use most.

18

And konsole integration in dolphin…

19

Actually, that is NOT strictly true for openSUSE. There is a KDE3 repository for 11.2 (which IS more than some other Linux distributions can claim), but YOU and OTHERS who really want to KDE3 to be easier to setup/use, will now have to provide specific and detailed maintenance support such as packaging and coding and testing for KDE3 because the rest of the community will not. The free ride for KDE3 is now mostly over.

And I am not just talking about openSUSE here. I’m talking about Fedora, Mandriva, Kubuntu, … etc … when I refer to the KDE3 option being mostly gone.

20

For kde3 the nails are already in the Coffin. At least as far as those already mentioned distros.