Video files debugging....

[Vincent Trouilliez]

> Now the explanation:
> MPlayer and Xine both have the ability to decode sound streams of type
> Windows Media Audio (version 1 and 2) in two different ways, either
> using the open source FFMPEG's ffwma decoder (this is the default), or
> the "wmadmo.dll" Win32 file/codec.  The problem is that the FFMPEGs WMA
> decoder is not mature enough yet! (the CVS version is, though). And
> since it's the default, everybody is thinking the problem is in the
> w32codecs which isn't!  The problem is that (older) MPlayer and Xine are
> using FFMPEG's instead of the Win32's. The fix for Xine (and hence for
> Totem) is to pump-up the priority (to 7 instead of the default 1) of the
> Win32 so that it override FFMPEG's (which has the priority of 6). And
> that's all (as for MPlayer for those who have the problem, just pass the
> option "-ac wmadmo" to it or put "ac = wmadmo," (note the "," at the
> end!) in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf to be the default always.

Ahhh, very interesting, thanks for that.

I draw 3 conclusions... :

1) When you install the w32codec from Synaptic, you don't really know
whether Totem uses them or not.

2) The w32codec are better than they originally "appeared"...sicne they
weren't actually used !

3) The ffmpeg/free codec are improving (CVS)


Point 1) is worrying, as it means that when you "install" the
w32codec... they are not really being used by Totem. 
But since the w32codecs are not in trhe Ubuntu repositories, you can't
possibly complain if they aren't installed properly in the first place.
So we should move them to the Multiverse so that we can ensure that all
the "priorities" are set in such a wa yas to make SURE, that the
x32codec will ACTUALLY be used to playback.

Points 2) and 3) are very encouraging, it means that video playback is
currently not *that* bad, and that it is soon becoming better, once
ffmpeg CVS becomes stable/released, and can be included in the default
Ubuntu install. This will keep us going, until Gstreamer is mature
enough to gives us this lovely unified/coherent multimedia framework for
Gnome, that will make things simpler and easier for the end user.

This is all very encouraging to me :o)


--
Vince