First time user please be kind

[Sarlac]

I have the free distro.
I do not expect full support.

That said I would like to have a functional and usefull OS on my PS3.

I consider myself a power user with many years of experience with pcs but almost no linux exposure.

I have installed YDL, networking is all good. I have updated via yum, tested the add remove thinger in the gui, and both are working well.

What I need is help with getting codecs installed for mp3, divx, etc.

I have downloaded "mplayer" but I need help with compiling/installing for gui.

Any help will be greatly appreciated.

[thedevilsjester]

Did you download the source? Or the RPM? Or some other package?

The divx codec is called XVid. Look for it on yum servers or www.xvid.org

If you are trying 'other' codecs you might want the win32codecs package, I am unsure if the YDL yum servers contain this because of its qasi-legal status.

If you downloaded the source code, simply extract it into a folder, navigate to that folder via a terminal/console, and copy&paste the following line:
./configure && make && make install

A warning about compiling mplayer though, it takes along time and 9 times out of 10 it will not compile (in my experience)

Your best bet is to find a player on yum. There are many options other than mplayer and I am sure yum has one or two of them. Totem, Xine, Kaffeine, KMplayer, etc...

I dont remember the MP3 codec offhand. My recommendation, dont use this outdated format, upgrade to patent free, OGG format.

[vishvender]

STEP 1: Download mplayer and essential codecs from mplayerhq.hu, save them (do not unpack them) in Desktop or other folder under root
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... c1.tar.bz2
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel...061022.tar.bz2
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/Blue-1.7.tar.bz2

STEP 2: open a terminal / shell session, first unpack and compile mplayer - copy paste all below to the terminal window
cd `find /root -iregex .*mplayer[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -i ".tar."`
cd `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."`
./configure --enable-gui

STEP 3: copy paste all below to the terminal window (this will take awhile as it compile the source files)
make
make install

STEP 4: this will unpack and move codec to /usr/local/lib/codecs
cd `find /root -iregex .*essential[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i essential | grep -i ".tar."`
mv `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."` /usr/local/lib/codecs

STEP 5: unpack Blue-1.7.tar.bz2 and copy to /usr/local/share/mplayer/skin/default (you may need to create "default" folder)

STEP 6: type mplayer <filename> or gmplayer (gui version)

I got all this from another user on ps3forums.com

[F-Man]

STEP 1: Download mplayer and essential codecs from mplayerhq.hu, save them (do not unpack them) in Desktop or other folder under root
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... c1.tar.bz2
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel...061022.tar.bz2
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/Blue-1.7.tar.bz2

STEP 2: open a terminal / shell session, first unpack and compile mplayer - copy paste all below to the terminal window
cd `find /root -iregex .*mplayer[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -i ".tar."`
cd `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."`
./configure --enable-gui

STEP 3: copy paste all below to the terminal window (this will take awhile as it compile the source files)
make
make install

STEP 4: this will unpack and move codec to /usr/local/lib/codecs
cd `find /root -iregex .*essential[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i essential | grep -i ".tar."`
mv `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."` /usr/local/lib/codecs

STEP 5: unpack Blue-1.7.tar.bz2 and copy to /usr/local/share/mplayer/skin/default (you may need to create "default" folder)

STEP 6: type mplayer <filename> or gmplayer (gui version)

I got all this from another user on ps3forums.com

Awesome!

I just set up all my media files to open with it, everything works now.

Only two problems I'm wondering how to fix:

1- Can't find New_Face font when opening it up. No font is in the MPlayer font folder, so where could we find this New_Face?

2- Fullscreen only adds a black border around the video and doesn't really stretch it.

[vishvender]

STEP 1: Download mplayer and essential codecs from mplayerhq.hu, save them (do not unpack them) in Desktop or other folder under root
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releas ... c1.tar.bz2
http://www3.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/rel...061022.tar.bz2
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/Blue-1.7.tar.bz2

STEP 2: open a terminal / shell session, first unpack and compile mplayer - copy paste all below to the terminal window
cd `find /root -iregex .*mplayer[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -i ".tar."`
cd `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."`
./configure --enable-gui

STEP 3: copy paste all below to the terminal window (this will take awhile as it compile the source files)
make
make install

STEP 4: this will unpack and move codec to /usr/local/lib/codecs
cd `find /root -iregex .*essential[^/]*tar.* | perl -ne 's/(^.*)\/.*$/$1/; print;'`
tar -xvf `ls | grep -i essential | grep -i ".tar."`
mv `ls | grep -i mplayer | grep -v ".tar."` /usr/local/lib/codecs

STEP 5: unpack Blue-1.7.tar.bz2 and copy to /usr/local/share/mplayer/skin/default (you may need to create "default" folder)

STEP 6: type mplayer <filename> or gmplayer (gui version)

I got all this from another user on ps3forums.com

Awesome!

I just set up all my media files to open with it, everything works now.

Only two problems I'm wondering how to fix:

1- Can't find New_Face font when opening it up. No font is in the MPlayer font folder, so where could we find this New_Face?

2- Fullscreen only adds a black border around the video and doesn't really stretch it.

Hi i'm glad it helped you but i tried it my self and no luck. It keeps giving me errors while it compiling the code. Did you do anything else to make it work. Any help would be appreciated.

[thedevilsjester]

Hi i'm glad it helped you but i tried it my self and no luck. It keeps giving me errors while it compiling the code. Did you do anything else to make it work. Any help would be appreciated.

As I said, compiling mplayer is a PITA. Its not worth it in my opinion, there are much better media players available than mplayer, try another one.

[Sarlac]

ok i tried this too and the compile bombed in teh same way every time.

So I took your advice and looked for an alternative. I got a few new repos.
used yum to install xmms and mp3 codec, the files would play, however they were crazy garbled.

Then the doorbell rang.
it was UPS with my 160GB drive. So flash to now, the new drive is installed, and YDL is installing.

now that i have these repos i have tons of choices that will install for me. This is going to be the day of trial and error. Oh, and I bought a $50 fedora 5 book, It's learning time!

btw i have over 40gb of mp3 files I'm just not feeling like converting my entire library to ogg or anything else.

[StarKnight83]

thedevilsjester: what problems do you have w/ mplayer? Ive been able to get it comple on any *nix based system "out of the box" or almost so on some of the odder ones

[CronoCloud]

I've got a PS2 Linux kit, which aslo didn't have mp3 support right out of the box and this is what most kit owners did:

install smpeg from the SDL project, that will give you the command line plaympeg tool

install xmms from source.

[Sarlac]

ok so now i have xmms installed and it will play mp3 but with glitchy garbled audio

also ive installed xine with the same glitchy audio on every file i try

mplayer is now working (mostly) it was crashing alot at first but that seems to have gone away when it's working it plays things fine other than the next problem >

my next problem is that none of these players have volume control working. not even mute.

so of the 3 players i have tried mplayer is the one that seems to work best.
I like the look of xine though (plus it is the only one of the 3 that scales video) and would love to get it play things properly.

ideas for fixing this wonky audio issue?

[thedevilsjester]

thedevilsjester: what problems do you have w/ mplayer? Ive been able to get it comple on any *nix based system "out of the box" or almost so on some of the odder ones

As far as compile issues, I dont think I have ever really gotten mplayer to compile, about %60 of the distros I use require it to be compiled (either they dont include it in their package system, or its a distro like Gentoo), and I dont think I can honestly remember a time it compiled correctly.

As for player issues, its not so much bugs, but the interface and dialogs that deter me from using it. Where as something like KMPlayer or Kaffiene have much better, cleaner interfaces imo.

Also its a pain to get MPlayer to play menu'ed DVDs right. (like episode dvds). I have only gotten it to play them properly once, ever other time it just plays the first video file on the dvd. Whereas I have never, out of the box (as long as the dvd menu package is installed) had a problem with Kaffiene.

But if you like it, and it works for you, more power to you.