VLC and Ubuntu Linux 5.10

[Blue_MiSfit]

After much hassle I finally got VLC running nicely on Ubuntu 5.10. I can play my AC3/XviD MKV's just fine now across SMB. Took awhile to figure out.

One issue remains. When I try to decode an H.264 encoded video file, I get some dreadfully corrupted output - it looks like I encoded at CQ30!!!

I think I don't have the latest version of libavcodec or something... Does anyone have ideas? (I'm not too linux savvy but understand the principals)

~MiSfit

[Oline 61]

Always had the same problem, even on VLC compiled from the SVN. I use MPlayer from CVS and it works great for me.
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=85190

[rushin_911]

I have compiled VLC from the sources available on nightlies.videolan.org and it works fine (can play H264 video from MKVs etc..). I believe there is a problem in the libmatroska-dev package in the ubuntu repository and therefore have instead used the one from http://www.bunkus.org/videotools/mkvtoolnix/downloads.html#ubuntu . It's marked for breezy but seems to work on dapper.

To compile VLC I followed the instructions here http://www.nanocrew.net/?p=129 but skipped the part regarding the VC1 support since I couldn't grab the needed file

[Blue_MiSfit]

siiiighh.. why does linux have to be so difficult sometimes??

A total showstopper bug. Somehow reminds me of how impossible it is to deal with NTFS on linux. Yeah you can mount NTFS read-only, but forget about write support. And what use is a read-only volume?? Yeah I can play my media files, but forget about using NTFS drives for any sort of encoding work...

Blahh.. Im disgruntled :)

I will try mplayer later.. I'm using GeexBox for now. It's sweet, and looks great on my TV :D

~misfit

[rushin_911]

siiiighh.. why does linux have to be so difficult sometimes??

A total showstopper bug. Somehow reminds me of how impossible it is to deal with NTFS on linux. Yeah you can mount NTFS read-only, but forget about write support. And what use is a read-only volume?? Yeah I can play my media files, but forget about using NTFS drives for any sort of encoding work...

Blahh.. Im disgruntled :)

I will try mplayer later.. I'm using GeexBox for now. It's sweet, and looks great on my TV :D

~misfit

If you wish you could always use the mplayer binaries from the ubuntu repositories which I believe can play H264 video (although on dapper it seemed there was a slight lag)
As for NTFS support to my understanding unlike with the FAT volumes microsoft hasn't released enough information to the point necessary to add reliable write support to it from gnu/linux distributions. There is however I think ntfs write support in the latest Knoppix version (although I think it's a bit slow)

[Bandung]

Times have changed. You can mount NTFS in a read/write mode. There are two derivations, one being kernel based and the other implementation being in user space. The latter has more features, the former is more stable and faster.

http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsmount

This link describes the gotchas with the user space version (based upon Fuse). You can do more things with it than the kernel version like resize files, delete and create directories and even use sym links. The key thing is that the feature set is deliberately limited to prevent data loss.

The kernel mode will allow you to write as well as read with great speed and stability but the gotchas are more annoying. You can't use a text editor to change a file and then write it back to disk, as an example. You can copy a new file over top of an existing one, however. The explanation is somewhat obscure

http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=status
http://wiki.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=texteditorpitfall