I’ve been an Ubuntu user for a number of years now. Recent curiosity has driven me to test out other distributions, largely due to my Gnome 3.8 interest. It sounds like OpenSUSE might be getting it rather soon so I figured it’d be a good time to fire up OpenSUSE after a 5 year hiatus and see what’s up.
During the Ubuntu installer (not to keep bringing that up but I need a reference point) there’s a checkbox to include multimedia codecs by default. In my experience, this makes both Totem (Videos) and VLC work just fine - at least for what audio/video files I threw at these applications.
Tonight I installed 12.3 and fired up the one click installer. It added the repos and all of that fun stuff and I rebooted for good measure. I fired up Nautilus and navigated to my server share (smb) that houses a few TB of concerts, TV shows, movies, etc. I was unable to play any of these files using Videos (Totem), but VLC worked fine. Despite the fact VLC is my preferred video player I still want to ensure that Videos is working as I strongly believe in having a backup application. I copied the file locally and it too did the same thing.
The messages I received were within Videos, citing that it is missing two items. MPEG-1 layer (mp3) decoder of some sort and MPEG video decoder. I’m a little confused here because I thought the one click add-on for Packman and the other repo automatically handled all of these things?
On top of that, I have another question. I am curious about the legality behind these codecs. I ask this question entirely out of curiosity as I work in a large Linux environment. It was explained to me that the codecs are legal in Ubuntu because the user has to manually check a box to enable them during the installation process. Since this requires user interaction it thereby concludes the codecs are not included by default, and therefore, fully legal. Is that the exact same story here as well with OpenSUSE and their 1 click installer to add the codecs? After all, it requires user interaction to add these items - but then again perhaps I was incorrectly informed from day one with the way Ubuntu handles them, so I could be entirely wrong.
Just a little side note. I am not a new Linux user. I am, however, quite a new OpenSUSE user. I cannot put into words how much I am loving what I’m seeing. The agnostic outlook on desktop environments (equally supporting several) and the level of advanced utilities that simply work, along with the obvious polish that the end user sees, is just phenomenal. I’m still in the test drive phase to see if OpenSUSE is something I like and want on my work systems, but so far, it’s looking darn promising. Thanks to everybody who made this project happen. You just might gain yet another user here.
For mpeg support in totem you need to install the package “gstreamer-plugins-bad” I think.
Well, I’d suggest to open Yast Softwaremanagement, search for “gstreamer” and install the following plugins: (totem uses the gstreamer 1.0 packages, so you don’t need the gstreamer-0_10-* ones…)
I installed those items via sudo zypper install gstreamer bad base good etc. Everything went without issue. Totem now only has 1 prompt for codecs, whereas it originally had 2. It’s still looking for MPEG Video Decoder. VLC, meanwhile, still works without issue.
:~$ zypper lr -rd
| Alias | Name | Enabled | Refresh | Priority | Type | URI | Service
Not to sound like an idiot, but just to be candid so I can understand this, I guess the 1 click codec pack offered by OpenSUSE doesn’t include the codecs required by Totem to work. Eh?
I copied what I could from the terminal and pasted it to a pastebin here - jasauders - Pastebin.com
Also, that libav package you recommended that I install seems to have done the trick!
Something I’ve done in the past with Ubuntu is every time I find an application I like, I tack it onto a text file and save it into ownCloud on my server. Then whenever I would do a fresh install I would copy the text and it would just be an absolutely massive apt-get install this that this that etc. I want to do the same with openSUSE so knowing packages like this that aren’t otherwise advertised on the main repo page is good to know about. I just have to wonder if I joined at an awkward time where the repo was missing the upgraded package required? Perhaps this is typically an easy step but this one package just fried Totem’s chances of playing without the libav package? Meh, at any rate, it works and I’m a happy camper.
Thanks for your insight folks. Now I can start tinkering around in other areas and see what kind of trouble I can get into.
Well, as I said, I don’t have this installed and it works fine here!
But I had a look through your list and you indeed have some gstreamer-plugins packages from the standard openSUSE repo. Especially “gstreamer-plugins-bad”, which provides the mpeg support (or better, doesn’t if it is the package from standard openSUSE )
The list of packages which should be changed to the packman versions instead:
Thanks! I kind of thought that was the case. Problem was when I went to the codec page I saw the 13.1, 13.2, and 13.3 steps. Once I saw terminal commands I just went to 13.3 since, well, that’s just me being me and being impatient to read through directions. Then once I got that done I thought, well gee, look at this nifty one click installer. I just HAD to try it and… bingo. Dual repos added.
Thanks for your help and insight on this. I appreciate it. I find it a little strange that we were seeing different things, but perhaps that’s the difference between trying to play AVI’s vs MKV’s or whatever else. In my case I was trying to play an AVI, which originated from a Pink Floyd concert on DVD that I ripped once upon a time. But at any rate, things work! rotfl!
After recent updates VLC from the Packaman repo has suffered a modification and in order to play various multimedia formats you to install vlc-codecs package to solve the issue. SO all you have to do is run sudo zypper refresh and the sudo zypper in vlc vlc-codecs to install the missing bits
kidx wrote:
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> What is doine to fix this ? I am lost and my VLC wont play any format
> and also I cant get Kdenlive to open any formats?
>
>
run this from terminal/konsole and then video again
)
