VLC not working on Ubuntu 9.10 64 bit ?

[jan]

Hi

I find Advene a very promising project. Unfortunately, currently I'm unable to use it on a rather standard Ubuntu 9.10 system (amd64). When I just run it, it tries to use gstreamer

Code: Select all


$ cat ~/.advene/advene.log
Advene v. 0.41 release 20100505 (svn 6445) run at 13:31:40 CEST on linux2
Using localedir /usr/share/locale
mediacontrol: using gstreamer
gstreamer: using xvimagesink
/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5/cherrypy/_cpserver.py:67: DeprecationWarning: quickstart does nothing now and will be removed in 3.2. Call cherrypy.engine.start() instead.
DeprecationWarning)
check player
start() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/advene/core/controller.py", line 315, in process_queue
method(*args, **kw)
TypeError: start() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/advene/gui/util/dialog.py:199: DeprecationWarning: use set_markup() instead
if not dialog.label.get_text():
set_visual 20971644
Cleaning up /tmp/advzLi02f

despite vlc is correctly installed:

Code: Select all

$ vlc --version

VLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye
VLC - wersja 1.0.2 Goldeneye
Skompilowana przez buildd@yellow.buildd
Kompilator: gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8)
Na ten program nie ma ŻADNEJ GWARANCJI, w zakresie dopuszczonym przez prawo.
Można go dalej rozpowszechniać na warunkach Ogólnej Publicznej Licencji GNU;
szczegóły znajdują się w pliku COPYING.
Napisane przez Zespół VideoLAN; zobacz plik AUTHORS.

When I try to enforce vlc mode i get:

Code: Select all

$ advene -pvlcnative
Usage: Advene - annotate digital videos, exchange on the Net.
advene [options] [file.azp|file.xml|alias=uri]

advene: error: option -p: invalid choice: 'vlcnative' (choose from 'dummy', 'vlcorbit', 'vlcctypes', 'xine', 'gstreamer', 'quicktime', 'gstrecorder')


It falls back to dummy id i use vlcorbit or vlcctypes.

Now the problem is that advene with gstreamer just doesn't work with some files (No matter which video output is used). Advene just freezes, even if the file can be played under totem with no problem at all.
This happens under 0.39, 0.40, 0.41 installed from deb package as well as under 0.40 run from source. One difference is that one of the older Advene versions complained about inexistent libvlc.so

Any ideas ?

[oaubert]

Hello

The vlcnative player plugin is obsolete and not used anymore (it used the vlc.so native vlc binding). If you want to use VLC, you have to use the vlcctypes plugin, which needs the vlc.py binding module that you can grab from http://www.advene.org/download/python-ctypes/ . Note that it will work only for vlc 1.0 (which you have installed).

However, for an optimal experience of Advene, the gstreamer plugin is recommended. Do you have any output of the Advene process when the gstreamer player hangs, and information about the container format/codec of the faulty video files, so that we can try to debug that?

I find Advene a very promising project. Unfortunately, currently I'm unable to use it on a rather standard Ubuntu 9.10 system (amd64). When I just run it, it tries to use gstreamer

Code: Select all

$ cat ~/.advene/advene.log
Advene v. 0.41 release 20100505 (svn 6445) run at 13:31:40 CEST on linux2
Using localedir /usr/share/locale
mediacontrol: using gstreamer
gstreamer: using xvimagesink
/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.5/cherrypy/_cpserver.py:67: DeprecationWarning: quickstart does nothing now and will be removed in 3.2. Call cherrypy.engine.start() instead.
DeprecationWarning)
check player
start() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/advene/core/controller.py", line 315, in process_queue
method(*args, **kw)
TypeError: start() takes exactly 1 argument (2 given)

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/advene/gui/util/dialog.py:199: DeprecationWarning: use set_markup() instead
if not dialog.label.get_text():
set_visual 20971644
Cleaning up /tmp/advzLi02f



despite vlc is correctly installed:

Code: Select all
$ vlc --version

VLC media player 1.0.2 Goldeneye
VLC - wersja 1.0.2 Goldeneye
Skompilowana przez buildd@yellow.buildd
Kompilator: gcc version 4.4.1 (Ubuntu 4.4.1-4ubuntu8)
Na ten program nie ma ŻADNEJ GWARANCJI, w zakresie dopuszczonym przez prawo.
Można go dalej rozpowszechniać na warunkach Ogólnej Publicznej Licencji GNU;
szczegóły znajdują się w pliku COPYING.
Napisane przez Zespół VideoLAN; zobacz plik AUTHORS.



When I try to enforce vlc mode i get:

Code: Select all
$ advene -pvlcnative
Usage: Advene - annotate digital videos, exchange on the Net.
advene [options] [file.azp|file.xml|alias=uri]

advene: error: option -p: invalid choice: 'vlcnative' (choose from 'dummy', 'vlcorbit', 'vlcctypes', 'xine', 'gstreamer', 'quicktime', 'gstrecorder')


It falls back to dummy id i use vlcorbit or vlcctypes.

Now the problem is that advene with gstreamer just doesn't work with some files (No matter which video output is used). Advene just freezes, even if the file can be played under totem with no problem at all.
This happens under 0.39, 0.40, 0.41 installed from deb package as well as under 0.40 run from source. One difference is that one of the older Advene versions complained about inexistent libvlc.so

[jan]

Thank you for a quick reply !

Advene indeed hangs on large mpg files recorded by MythTV. Since I only have very large such files (2 gigabytes or so) it'd be difficult for me to share them with you. Maybe in a few days I'll have the time to record something shorter to see if the problem persits. If it does, I'll send you the file.
But there's also a problem with nuv files of the same origin - Advene plays them correctly with gstreamer but is unable to do a fast forward or to jump to a particular moment in the file (clicking on Timeline or forward button does nothing) - could it be it's a limitation of gstreamer itself ?

I'm doing a research project using TV footage with more than hundred individual files. I ended up converting all them to mkv format which works fine with gstreamer and Advene, but this is a suboptimal solution - it took three days to complete the conversion. Tip for anyone trying to use Advene to analyze MythTV footage - use Mythnuv2mkv to convert the files: http://web.aanet.com.au/~auric/?q=node/6 .

[oaubert]

Hello

Advene indeed hangs on large mpg files recorded by MythTV. Since I only have very large such files (2 gigabytes or so) it'd be difficult for me to share them with you. Maybe in a few days I'll have the time to record something shorter to see if the problem persits. If it does, I'll send you the file.

But there's also a problem with nuv files of the same origin - Advene plays them correctly with gstreamer but is unable to do a fast forward or to jump to a particular moment in the file (clicking on Timeline or forward button does nothing) - could it be it's a limitation of gstreamer itself ?

We have other Advene users that use it on 24-hour recordings, but they also had to convert them to an appropriate container: not all containers are equal when considering seeking. Mpeg files are notoriously bad for this. avi or mkv are better containers. As for nuv, it is very possible that the gstreamer support is suboptimal, given its relative confidentiality. Just a wild guess: do you have the specific nuv-related plugins (such as nuvdemux), or are you using the ffmpeg-based demuxer ffdemux_nuv? The first one should be better.
Anyway, you can send me an example file, I will have a look at this.

I'm doing a research project using TV footage with more than hundred individual files. I ended up converting all them to mkv format which works fine with gstreamer and Advene, but this is a suboptimal solution - it took three days to complete the conversion. Tip for anyone trying to use Advene to analyze MythTV footage - use Mythnuv2mkv to convert the files: http://web.aanet.com.au/~auric/?q=node/6 .

Nice. Let us know if you have other issues or specific needs.