playing wmv and wma files on SuSe 9.2

[dragonforce]

I've been trying to play wma's and wmv files on my SuSe9.2; but Ive installed all the MPlayer windows codecs from their site and still kaffiene and xine tell me no plugin found. Installing VLC is a mission due to the fact you need to install more packages that is not readily available on the net. Even MPlayer has the same problem. Any help; I just need the codecs or maybe there is a setting on xine. kaffiene using the xine engine.

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DragonForce
-Is it wrong to be strong
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[jstreich]

WMV and WMA are both container formats that contain different compressed audio and vissual streams. The issue is generally not with the container formats but the evil formats inside the compression layer. There are some formats that don't have codexes because of copyright or patent issues, others that are only legally availible outside the US and others that just take a bit of looking. You may want to try to add a few non-us and non-free sources to your package manager. I use debian, which is apt based, so I don't think I can help you with finding said repos for SUSE RPMs.

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[dragonforce]

I think SuSe has its own online update tool but Ill have to check. Ive tried to install codecs from other sites like AceMega codec pack for linux. All the codecs must sit in the /usr/share/codecs directory. I also have a link in their called win32 which points to /usr/share/codecs. I cant remember if it was /usr/share/codecs or /usr/share/lib/codecs.

Could there be a sort of converter for linux. converts wmv/wma to mpeg2 or something. I can play AVI alright but the Windows media is giving me uphill.

/*******************************

DragonForce
-Is it wrong to be strong
*******************************/

 

[jstreich]

That's always been an issue because of copyright. I've gotten about 1/2 of WMV and WMA files to play in Linux in Debian.

If worst comes to worst, download WindowsMediaPlayerClasic and run it through wine. WMP-Classic has about every codec you can stuff in a WM container, but it is a windows player... Expect it to run slow. Through emulation it will run slower than native solutions, so look through yum or apt for missing codex.

As for convesion, the conversion tools use the same libraries as the players do... If you can't view them normally, you can't transcode them. If you want to transcode them, after you get playing working, look for transcode, fmpeg and tools of the sort.

[plug=shameless]

http://game-master.us/phpx-3.4.0/

[/plug]

 

[OldTechGuy]

You can try the packman repositories. They have a lot of things that are not available in some countries. You can try packman.unixheads.com then go to /suse/9.2. I didn't check everything they have. I'm on 10.2 now. You may also checkout

http://www.softwareinreview.com

by Jem Matzan. He has a number of hacking instructions. I didn't see any for SUSE 9.2, but looking at some of the instructions for some of the later versions of SUSE may give you some ideas. I particulary liked the Hacking Opensuse 10.2 and Hacking Opensuse 10.1 articles. I found it very informative on how to get a number of things working that are not provided in the stock distribution.

Good Luck

Old Tech Guy