Linux and free software

[adam808]

You can play Commander Keen or Wolfenstein 3D

[Daisensei]

Here's the link for zoom player: http://www.inmatrix.com/zplayer/
and bsplayer: http://bsplayer.com/
though I don't think they do encoding, just playback.

I was browsing around my favorite Linux sites, then I found VLC Media Player, whose homepage is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. I haven't tried it yet, but seems to have impressive specs. Its drawback is the lack for support of Real streams. 

[Threaux]

I was browsing around my favorite Linux sites, then I found VLC Media Player, whose homepage is http://www.videolan.org/vlc/. I haven't tried it yet, but seems to have impressive specs. Its drawback is the lack for support of Real streams. 

I have VLC, it works good.  It's basically the media player classic program with the k-lite codec pack on it.  Its great for playing strange and rare encodes like x-vid ogm's.  I used it to view the new Swat Kats X-vids I recieved last week and I'm impressed.

[MM007]

I like darn Small Linux, and Fedora.

darn Small Linux is nice for computers that are old, or newer computers which need fast requirements and have a decent amount of RAM.  It can store the OS in RAM, since it's only 50MB with all applications.  This includes Mozzilla, media and office programs,full GUI,  etc.

Edit: "darn" isn't the actual name.  It's the other word.

[Threaux]

I like darn Small Linux, and Fedora.

DSL is a good tool.  I run the OS on my old 250 mb flash drive.  It's neat how it can run inside windows as well, kinda like VM ware but a real full feature OS.

[Blackcat]

HELP ME IF YOU CAN!!!!

I really really need something to replace ffdshow, cause it great but it haven’t been updated in two years. Any idea? I don’t want to use codec packs again, they have more that you will ever use and cause problems.

[Threaux]

Mplayer.  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/news.html

"MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies..

Another great feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI, SDL (and this way all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA compatible card, even without X11!) and some low level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and ATI), too! Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+.

MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO 8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub). DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions) are supported as well."

[Blackcat]

I guess you don’t want to give a detailed description of how to set the codecs default directory of Mplayer in windows…

[Threaux]

I guess you don’t want to give a detailed description of how to set the codecs default directory of Mplayer in windows…

See if this helps http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/codecs.html

or

If your just want a media player for windows and not Linux/cross-platform just get Winamp.
http://www.winamp.com/

[Blackcat]

It doesnt, but dont worry, I installed Media player classic, real alternative and the cursed DivX codec. Is a pity they discontinued ffdshow(That "2005" version is fake).

[Methid Man]

Yeah, Media Player Classic is definitely a good alternative to playing RealMedia files. Pretty much everything you described about this 'ffdshow' or whatever made me think of WMP Classic.

What's best about it is it's so simple to install and very easy to use.

-- Sam the Methid Man

[Blackcat]

Yeah, Media Player Classic is definitely a good alternative to playing RealMedia files. Pretty much everything you described about this 'ffdshow' or whatever made me think of WMP Classic.

What's best about it is it's so simple to install and very easy to use.

-- Sam the Methid Man

Fffshow is a program that has a lot of free codecs in just a few megas…but it was discontinued.

[Daisensei]

I don´t know if this subject is off topic, but the later posts make me thinking of the need to encode SPC or KNT video files in some standard encodings, avoiding proprietary formats if possible. For example, Real Media format is very awkward to free software users. I'm not know well the goods and the bads of each format, so I'm waiting to someone more technically minded to clarify us.

[Daisensei]

To Linux user friends, a little gift from me. If you use Windows only, sorry but you'll find nothing interesting here. One of the most employed bootloader is Lilo. It has an option to choose between several booting configurations, that can be used for example to make dual boot system (Linux+Windows). Did you know that the Lilo boot screen can be configured to use any 640x480x4 BMP file you wish?
Follow the instructions below:
1- Save the attached file (rename it to otama.bmp) in /boot directory.
2- With your preferred text editor, add the following line to your /etc/lilo.conf file:
bitmap = /boot/otama.bmp
or, if you have a Lilo version prior to 22.3, must add the following:
bitmap = /boot/otama.bmp
bmp-table = 13,8;1,20,16,4
bmp-colors = 11,12,;12,11,
bmp-timer = 36,12;12,0,
3- Run at the shell the command:
lilo
4- Reboot the computer, and see the your new boot screen! 
The picture must be 640x480 size BMP file, with 16 colors, and can be compressed in RLE format.
More details you can find at /usr/doc/lilo or /usr/share/doc/lilo directory.

EDIT: a little improvement to the lilo.conf.

[Supersonic]

I don´t know if this subject is off topic, but the later posts make me thinking of the need to encode SPC or KNT video files in some standard encodings, avoiding proprietary formats if possible. For example, Real Media format is very awkward to free software users. I'm not know well the goods and the bads of each format, so I'm waiting to someone more technically minded to clarify us.

Well, as far as I know, all of EE's encodes are DivX or XviD. XviD is open source, and while DivX is proprietary, I don't think there's a single media player out there anymore that can't do it.

[Blackcat]

I finally got GNU/Linux and im looking for a mp3 player that is easy to install, I was two hours tryng to install Freeamp and nothing!

[fjdfjtj]

I adopt two procedures to capture an episode screen, I ... dump the video output of Mplayer as JPEG files.

Could you provide some details on how you do that, please?

[Daisensei]

In the shell you must type:
mplayer -vo jpeg -ss XXX videofilename
where XXX is the time in seconds of animation to be skipped.

From MPLAYER man page:

VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)
       Video  output  drivers  are  interfaces to different video output facilities.  The
       syntax is:

       -vo <driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>
              Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.

       Available video output drivers are:

       jpeg
              Output each frame into a JPEG file in the  current  directory.   Each  file
              takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.
                 [no]progressive
                      Specify standard or progressive JPEG (default: noprogressive).
                 [no]baseline
                      Specify use of baseline or not (default: baseline).
                 optimize=<0-100>
                      optimization factor (default: 100)
                 smooth=<0-100>
                      smooth factor (default: 0)
                 quality=<0-100>
                      quality factor (default: 75)
                 outdir=<dirname>
                      Specify the directory to save the JPEG files to (default: ./).
                 subdirs=<prefix>
                      Create  numbered  subdirectories  with the specified prefix to save
                      the files in instead of the current directory.
                 maxfiles=<value>
                      Maximum number of files to be  saved  per  subdirectory.   Must  be
                      equal to or larger than 1 (default: 1000).

[Schweinkenstein]

I got a small list for games and emulation for Linux.

ZSNES - Snes
VisualBoy - Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance,
ESPXE - PS1
AdvanceMAME and xMAME and LASEREMU.NET - CPS CPS2 NeoGeo and s***
Mupen64 - N64
Mednafen - PC Engine, SuperGrafx, Nintendo
Nestra - Nintendo

And then there's media and chat

Gaim - AIM MSN Yahoo ICQ IRC etc
VLC - A Media Player
FireFox - everybody knows

There's a TV Decoder program for KDE Desktops but I can't remember it right now.

[Blackcat]

I got a small list for games and emulation for Linux.

ZSNES - Snes
VisualBoy - Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance,
ESPXE - PS1
AdvanceMAME and xMAME and LASEREMU.NET - CPS CPS2 NeoGeo and s**t
Mupen64 - N64
Mednafen - PC Engine, SuperGrafx, Nintendo
Nestra - Nintendo

And then there's media and chat

Gaim - AIM MSN Yahoo ICQ IRC etc
VLC - A Media Player
FireFox - everybody knows

There's a TV Decoder program for KDE Desktops but I can't remember it right now.

"MPlayer" is the best video player for Linux

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html