Re: DVD players under Linux (was: Re: 2.4 kernels with potato and Movie players)

[Rogério Brito <rbrito@iname.com>]

On Mar 10 2002, user list wrote:
> Thanks for responding to my question.
(...)
> I have upgraded my box to woody (testing) and I've installed mplayer.

	That's good. Did you also use xine for watching the movies?
	I'd recommend that you install xine-dvdnav as it will provide
	you dvd menus.

	Try also to get libdvdcss1 from Videolan's site
	<http://www.videolan.org>, since Debian cannot distribute it.
	It will help you if you have CSS encrypted DVDs.

> I don't remember a liblame0.

	Indeed, that's because liblame0 is not a part of Debian. You
	would have to get the sources from the lame project
	<http://lame.sf.net/>.

	Unfortunately, the current stable version of lame (3.91)
	doesn't have a nice division of packages and lacks liblame0.
	After the 3.91 release, I joined the project as the Debian
	packaging developer and I already included (what I feel is) a
	nicer division of the package, including liblame0 and
	liblame0-dev (needed for compiling mplayer/mencoder with MP3
	support).

	But the lack of it isn't going to cause your computer to be
	slow. It will only mean that won't be able to create AVI files
	with MP3-encoded tracks, as far as I know.
	
> I ask because the movies are pretty slow. Here are the specs. of my
> box
> 
> 600 MHz Athlon
> 756 M CRAM
> Matrox Millennium G200 (16 MB)
> 12x DVD-CD rom drive
> 
> 30GB Hard disk

	No, it shouldn't be slow. In fact, it should be faster than my
	computer, I think. Mine is a 600MHz Duron, with 128MB of RAM
	and a Matrox G400 (16MB also).

> Two general questions:
> 
> 1. If this is a fast enough box, what are the switches that I need
> to improve speed.  I can't (or don't know how to) access DGA. Is
> this important?

	Well, first of all, install xine on your machine. It is easier
	to see if everything is working correctly with xine than with
	mplayer. After you make it work with xine, then use mplayer if
	you want to.

	Some general guidelines:

	1 - are you running XFree86 4 with XV support? This is
	    probably the most critical part of the system. X 4 is
	    much, much faster than X 3. See if XV is enabled (in X4)
	    with xdpyinfo and xvinfo.

	2 - are your drives working with DMA enabled?

	3 - what are the results of xine-check? They will almost
	    always tell you what are potential bottleneck points in
	    your system. To avoid it complaining, install libxine-dev.

> 2. If the box is not fast enough what is (are) the critical piece(s)
> to upgrade?

	There shouldn't be any need to upgrade your machine, I think.

> Thanks again for the response.


	Hope this helps, Roger...

-- 
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  Rogério Brito - rbrito@iname.com - http://www.ime.usp.br/~rbrito/
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