Playing DVDs in linux console. (mplayer installation)

Thu Mar 7 02:44:29 EST 2002

Short answer, No.

There is no way to render the graphics in the console that is needed to
watch movies. There probably are some 256 color movie program out there,
but thats not how you want to watch movies, if you can see. There is also
a aalib driver for mplayer which will play the movie in the console using
only ascii characters. But thats not how you want to see a movie either,
thats mostly for fun and showing off. To watch a movie using both a video
codec and audio you need to get X running, install sdl libraries,
recompile mplayer so that it supports SDL. (Or GGI or X11libs or some
other graphics lib) and run it using -vc sdl, or -vo sdl.

Johan

On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Igor Gueths wrote:

> Hi. I read most of this in the mplayer docs available on the site. One question though. By the way, nice guide! Anyway, can sighted people see the video from the console? Or do you have to have x running before you can do that? I'm just asking because once I get my system up, I want to be able to watch divx with friends and stuff. I used to do this on the winblows box.
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Johan Bergström <johbe at linux.se>
> To: <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
> Sent: Wednesday, March 06, 2002 1:51 PM
> Subject: Playing DVDs in linux console. (mplayer installation)
>
>
> > Alright, first off you need a working compiler and the make program and
> > all the standard development libraries. I'm not going into detail how to
> > get that, I'm going to assume you have it all working and concentrate on
> > getting the movies rolling. Oh, and you also need X developement
> > libraries. If you run debian, you can just run,
> >
> > apt-get install xlib6g xlib6g-dev
> >
> > If you have apt setup, which you should have if you run debian. :-)
> >
> > Otherwise, you'll have to search through your CD's or something for X
> > libraries and the X developement enviroment. Its only needed for the
> > compilation, you wont need to run X to run mplayer to watch movies.
> >
> > You need to download quite a few files, here are some URL's stright to the
> > files you need, you can use wget <url> or lynx or whatever you wish to
> > save them.
> >
> > http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/dist/libdvdcss-0.0.3.ogle3.tar.gz
> > http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/dist/libdvdread-0.9.2.tar.gz
> > http://www2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/w32codec-0.60.tar.bz2
> > http://www2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/cvs/MPlayer-current.tar.bz2
> >
> > Now, start by uncompressing the libdvdcss and libdvdread files and install
> > them in the standard way, something like this,
> >
> > tar xzf libdvdcss-0.0.3.ogle3.tar.gz
> > cd libdvdcss-0.0.3.ogle3
> > ./configure
> > make
> > make install
> > cd ..
> > tar xzf libdvdread-0.9.2.tar.gz
> > cd libdvdread-0.9.2
> > ./configure
> > make
> > make install
> >
> > Both those make install commands has to be run as root, since they install
> > in /usr/local/lib.
> >
> > Next, uncompress w23codecs-0.60.tar.bz2,
> >
> > tar xIf w32codec-0.60.tar.bz2
> >
> > Then create the directory /usr/lib/win32 and move the files under
> > w32codec-0.60 into that dir.
> >
> > Now make sure you have a link in the /dev directory called dvd that points
> > to your dvd player device. Usually its the /dev/hdc or /dev/hdd device
> > thats the dvd player. Create if if it doesnt exist,
> >
> > ln -s /dev/hdc /dev/dvd
> >
> > Now its time for mplayer, uncompress it in the usual manor, and do the
> > standard commands.
> >
> > tar xIf MPlayer-current.tar.bz2
> > cd MPlayer-20020303
> > ./configure
> >
> > Here, in the output of the configure script, make sure you see these
> > lines, or something similar to it,
> >
> > Checking for DVD support (libdvdread - new style) ... yes
> > Checking for Win32 DLL support ... yes (using /usr/lib/win32)
> >
> > And either one of these,
> >
> > Checking for OSS Audio ... yes
> >
> > Checking for ALSA audio ... yes (using alsa 0.9.x)
> >
> > Preferably OSS Audio since Alsa audio is still very bad and distorted and
> > under developement in mplayer.
> >
> > If everything looks good, run make and make install as usual.
> >
> > Now we're almost done, just a few tricks more. First move the files
> > MPlayer-20020303/etc/codecs.conf and MPlayer-20020303/etc/input.conf into
> > a directory called .mplayer (obs, the dot) which should reside in your
> > homedir.
> >
> > The input.conf is a file where you can bind keys to features in mplayer
> > such as fastforward, volume controls and similar. The standard keys are
> > rightarrow equals fastforward 10 seconds, uparrow fastforward 1 minute and
> > pageup fastforward 10 minutes. Volume controls are 0 and 9 or, numpad /
> > and *. (Which I think speakup has already bound for other stuff.) P is for
> > pause/play and Q is for quit. Check input.conf for more.
> >
> > Create a file called config in the .mplayer dir and write this in it,
> >
> > vc=null
> > ao=oss
> >
> > alternativly
> >
> > ao=alsa9
> >
> > If you only have alsa sound. vc is short for VideoCodec, and since we
> > dont want to use that we just use the null device. ao is the Audio Output
> > driver.
> >
> > Now you are ready.
> >
> > To play standard mpg/avi/divx or whatever, just run mplayer /path/to/file
> > and to play DVDs put disc into the player and run the command,
> >
> > mplayer -dvd 1
> >
> > Thats all. Hope you all get it working.
> >
> > Bye,
> >
> > Johan
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Speakup mailing list
> > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca
> > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup
>
>
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