The reason being partly "because it's there," I decided to switch Phonon's backend from GStreamer to VLC on my ThinkPad X1. It was, let's say, not quite so easy as a simple one-package install followed by a configuration change.
First I purged Kamoso, because it has a hard dependency on GStreamer. Then, in anticipation of trouble and thinking it might help the transition go more smoothly, I purged Amarok, Bangarang, and KMPlayer (all of which I've been experimenting with in vain effort to find one missing but important feature). I followed that with an autoremove.
Next, before removing phonon-backend-gstreamer, I installed phonon-backend-vlc. I switched Phonon's configuration to use VLC. I rebooted. I installed Bangarang. And I had no sound and no images. Movies would appear to play (the progress bar marched forward), but the window was empty and the speakers were quiet. Also, I had no event sounds. But aplay in a command window could play .WAV files just fine.
Thinking there was a conflict, I purged phonon-backend-gstreamer and its zillion no-longer-necessary dependents, including the good/bad/ugly plugins. Everything in libav-tools remained, of course, since VLC relies on those. But I was still unable to get audio or video files to play. Starting Bangarang from a command prompt revealed an error indicating that it was having trouble finding the codecs.
I searched around for any obvious left-over configuration files that might be pointing to the now non-existent GStreamer backend. Finding nothing, I decided to go one step further in the cleanup. I installed phonon-backend-null and rebooted. Then I purged the VLC backend, all of LibAV, and all of their dependencies. This required several runs, actually, because after each purge, deborphan would indicate a few more libs could go. I stopped once it showed no more orphans -- I wanted to ensure that every bit of multimedia was good and gone.
Then I re-installed the VLC backend, reinstalled LibAV, and switched many of LibAV's components to the "extra" versions. I rebooted, and during shutdown, KDE sang its logoff sound -- woo hoo! All is right with the universe once again. Bangarang merrily played everything I threw at it.
The real reason for switching, though, is because -- as much as I want to use a KDE-native media player -- all of them are missing an important feature: adjustable playback speed. I've downloaded a few hundred videos in .MP4 format that I want to get through: TED talks, Intelligence Squared debates, that sort of thing. I like to view these at 1.5X normal speed. The VLC media player can do this; the others don't. And since VLC can also provide backend services to Phonon, it seems sensible to go that route.
The VLC backend also fixed one other oddity: fast-forward. For some reason, none of the KDE-native media players could fast-forward through movies viewed over a network connection (in my case, an Smb4K mount to my Windows Home Server). Fast-forward simply didn't work. But with the VLC backend, fast-forward works fine.
First I purged Kamoso, because it has a hard dependency on GStreamer. Then, in anticipation of trouble and thinking it might help the transition go more smoothly, I purged Amarok, Bangarang, and KMPlayer (all of which I've been experimenting with in vain effort to find one missing but important feature). I followed that with an autoremove.
Next, before removing phonon-backend-gstreamer, I installed phonon-backend-vlc. I switched Phonon's configuration to use VLC. I rebooted. I installed Bangarang. And I had no sound and no images. Movies would appear to play (the progress bar marched forward), but the window was empty and the speakers were quiet. Also, I had no event sounds. But aplay in a command window could play .WAV files just fine.
Thinking there was a conflict, I purged phonon-backend-gstreamer and its zillion no-longer-necessary dependents, including the good/bad/ugly plugins. Everything in libav-tools remained, of course, since VLC relies on those. But I was still unable to get audio or video files to play. Starting Bangarang from a command prompt revealed an error indicating that it was having trouble finding the codecs.
I searched around for any obvious left-over configuration files that might be pointing to the now non-existent GStreamer backend. Finding nothing, I decided to go one step further in the cleanup. I installed phonon-backend-null and rebooted. Then I purged the VLC backend, all of LibAV, and all of their dependencies. This required several runs, actually, because after each purge, deborphan would indicate a few more libs could go. I stopped once it showed no more orphans -- I wanted to ensure that every bit of multimedia was good and gone.
Then I re-installed the VLC backend, reinstalled LibAV, and switched many of LibAV's components to the "extra" versions. I rebooted, and during shutdown, KDE sang its logoff sound -- woo hoo! All is right with the universe once again. Bangarang merrily played everything I threw at it.
The real reason for switching, though, is because -- as much as I want to use a KDE-native media player -- all of them are missing an important feature: adjustable playback speed. I've downloaded a few hundred videos in .MP4 format that I want to get through: TED talks, Intelligence Squared debates, that sort of thing. I like to view these at 1.5X normal speed. The VLC media player can do this; the others don't. And since VLC can also provide backend services to Phonon, it seems sensible to go that route.
The VLC backend also fixed one other oddity: fast-forward. For some reason, none of the KDE-native media players could fast-forward through movies viewed over a network connection (in my case, an Smb4K mount to my Windows Home Server). Fast-forward simply didn't work. But with the VLC backend, fast-forward works fine.
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