Multimedia

[khagberg]

I loaded Kubuntu 5.10 on an IBM A20m P3 700 laptop with 256mb. I tried using the Multimedia programs that came with it, without much luck. Whenever I inserted a dvd, Kaffine would start, but would not and could not play the dvd. When I tried to listen to a cd with Kaffine, it was horrible sounding. Amarok kept giving me messages about not being able to play MP3 files. When i looked in Adpet at the gstream files, it said that gstream-lame was installed but broken and would not let me fix it.

Final load xine-ui and it plays everything fine. (had to set dma for smooth dvd palyback).

I was wondering if anyone else had issues like this. I have used Amarok on other distro's fine. I never had any real luck with Kaffine and dvd's.

Thoughts?

[Segovia]

Re: Multimedia

amaroK can use the GStreamer or xine backend.  By default it uses GStreamer without the mp3 plugin (which is trivial to install).  You may want to have a look here as to why these things are not included with Ubuntu (and Red Hat, and Fedora, and Suse, and Mandrake, etc..) and how to resolve it:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RestrictedFormats

Do yourself (and the world) a favor and use OGG Vorbis to encode your music!

Oh, I almost forgot - to get amaroK playing mp3's:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.8-mad

You'll need to have Universe enabled.

[khagberg]

Re: Multimedia

I tried to install the gstreamer-mad files, then amarok would identify the file and load it in the playlist but would not play. I think it has something to do with the broken gstreamer-lame file.

I dont have a problem with a distro not including the ability to play mp3's, dvd's and other restricted formats, but they may want to create a simple doc on how to add the ability. (unless they already have it and i missed it.)

[Segovia]

Re: Multimedia

I dont have a problem with a distro not including the ability to play mp3's, dvd's and other restricted formats, but they may want to create a simple doc on how to add the ability. (unless they already have it and i missed it.)

Well they do, and I gave you the link in my first post...    Two other great resourses are:

http://kudos.berlios.de/
http://ubuntuguide.org/

I'm not sure why amoroK isn't working right for you.  Could be related to the broken lame plugin, as you say.  I really don't know.  I do despise GStreamer though.  It has never worked well for me in Fedora or Ubuntu.  I always switch everything to use the xine backend, but in the case of amaroK, it seemed to work fine with GStreamer on my box, so I just left it alone.