WMV MOVIE PLAYER ON RED HAT 8.0 How to play .wmv at Red Hat 8.0 Linux and other movie files such as .mpg as well (and do conversion of movie files) by A.Tacoma, May 2009 [rh8-wmv.txt] I have written much against the "addiction to videos" -- especially addiction to hour-long Hollywood-style movies which make the pretense of life more important than life; but when it comes to videoclips, a moderate use of them can be just as stimulating as viewing a series of interesting photographs or watching a good graphics program unfold for a while, quickly. I do not think a careful, considerate, intelligent use of clips of videos, by them mpg, wmv or flash or whatever, is against the growth of intelligence. So that is said. [[A note on Flash movies: in the hints.. series at top of yoga6d.com there is a brief reference to a file called sth like experimental_extension.zip, which is file found under yoga6d.com/ by typing it in yourself, as all the other ones: it turned out that the ie55 browser listed there, running under wine in an advanced way, could run such as a somewhat newer version of Flash than what I thought -- and it does work with www.cnbc.com on currency updates, on www.bloomberg.com and so on, I think also youtube.com works with it -- but this particular wine browser must be, in this context, used only on such occasions where it is particuarly called for and a number of features of it must not be used, for it works only partially, and more partially than the 'wine firefox' option (for instance, avoid 'Favorites'; do not also usually open more than one window at a time; it is complicated at surprising places). The newer version of Flash that it installed automatically when prompted came up in some websites, and then it did it actually all automatically; but this Flash is not the newest of them all, merely a somewhat newer one than that used for wine firefox, and I don't use Flash all that often that I noticed which version exactly. I just mention it in case you want to push the functionality of Red Hat 8.0 still further and wants some hints in this direction.]] ===> Please respect the open source copyright licenses involved in their entirety. I include them here in an educational benefit-for-all spirit, for those who have an affection and an attitude of care to their Red Hat 8.0 Linux and will keep on having it in the coming decades, becoming better and better at it and in handling the extensions which are necessary and/or fun. For many so-called "upgrades" are merely complicating and error-prone additions which clutter the machine with too many options. /============================================================= / This text is yoga4d.com/cfdl.txt open licensed / for further distribution when complete and / unmodified; it is written by Aristo Tacoma, May 29 2009. / This text is here: http://www.yoga6d.com/rh8-wmv.txt / and it refers to this zip: http://www.yoga6d.com/rh8-wmv.zip /============================================================= The source files -- all acknowledgements and licenses are included -- are all entirely unmodified and extracted from the libraries at the open source site http://www.mplayerhq.hu with nothing added and nothing substracted, where exactly and all that is necessary to get Red Hat 8.0 and similar platforms to work is included and every key that has to be typed in, after the .zip is put to the top directory and one has got up a terminal window, being logged in as root and, as the standard I recommend for those who are adequately security-aware and like to have control over their PC and use Internet carefully, to actually use the whole Linux being logged in as root all the time (this will however generate a lot of messages e.g. when one runs xcdroast and it will not accommodate screensavers very well usually). SO, be logged in as root. Put the rh8-wmv.zip that I've made, and which is [always] at http://www.yoga6d.com/rh8-wmv.zip, to top level, the / level. This particular text you are reading now is found twice inside that .zip, in the /backup4 and in the /backup5 it unzips to. Be sure you have no files of significance in /backup4 or /backup5 before you begin. They will be used in the process. You can empty them afterwards. Do the following commands with enormous care, especially the -fr commands (which removes the directories without any question), without any change in upper or lowercase, and no extra spaces inserted except where there already are spaces!!! cd / rm /backup4 -fr rm /backup5 -fr unzip rh8-wmv Then go to FIRST just below. [[Note: I have tried to write exactly what I typed in, and the installation is to exactly Red Hat 8.0 as you find as the three CD's R1, R2 and R3 (USB Extension Partition, I also call this standard open source package, which can be updated to virtually anything which Linux folks have developed later on, year after year -- a free package according to the gnu.org/copyleft license, which, from RedHat.com, became the free Fedora instead of going to version 9.0). This had the options given at the Bridge2 applet, all at yoga4d.com and yoga6d.com, first installed (whether or not that makes a difference). The PC was a standard one according to the Y2000-type: 3*4 shape monitor, a sound driver compatible with the standard types for Red Hat 8.0, a vesa-compatible videodriver with RAM enough for a little more than 1024*768 and a little more than 256 colors, without any secret MS-based passwords or complicated driver installations at all. But there MIGHT be some minor elements I have typed in too hastily in what I have written in what follows, so use your mind and keep your eyes open. But I think there is no mistake -- I have tested it but an hour ago, without any fuss.]] FIRST, cd /backup4 bunzip2 *.bz2 tar -xf *.tar cd wi* This is a very manual way of unpacking the files, and there are shortcut commands for doing this, but I have taken a fancy to first-hand programming also in the sense of doing each step a bit slowly so that one's awareness can be more deeply entwined with the process. Here, you can also do ls first and then cd followed by the whole directory name instead of the quick way of doing it, naturally. mkdir /usr/local/lib/codecs cp * /usr/local/lib/codecs And you can check this by typing ls /usr/local/lib/codecs That should show a healthy bunch of files. Drives for the program, which is installed next. These are part of what is generously and beautifully delievered by the above-mentioned open source site. Avoiding these extra driver files is not a clever idea if you want to see, as well as hear, .wmv windows movie files. SECOND, cd /backup5 bunzip2 *.bz2 tar -xf *.tar cd M* ./configure make After the command "make" a great deal of compilation time, and ditto messages (including "warnings" which can be ignored, however there shouldn't be any significant "errors"), the install happens by the next line, in the next command, make install. Installation means in this case that the considerable amount of compilation work done so beautifully by the above command is put into the various directories pertaining to your own Red Hat 8.0 Linux, and the commands become available throughout the entire environment without need of any ./ prefix or anything like that. So this is the next command -- it will have a lot of messages that, too, but perform much much faster than the above: make install THIRD, A subfolder called 'etc' in the compilation file folder we have just worked in contains the usual options for starting mplayer correctly. This need to be put in place manually, or else one can only start mplayer by typing in lots of things on the command line each time. (Note that if you have already tried the mplayer before, the mkdir will probably be unnecessary for the /root/.mplayer folder already exists, and it will instead be necessary to confirm overwrite with a letter y and a press on lineshift when you do do the cp command on the next line.) cd /backup5 cd M* cd etc ls mkdir /root/.mplayer cp example.conf /root/.mplayer/config Make sure you get the dot in before the mplayer in this case (dots before program names under /root directory is the convention, in linux-type environments, when you operate them from root, as for where the options for the program is stored). I have included a standard font file .ttf which is exactly the same as one courier found in my standard wine installation for Red Hat 8.0. Put this in same place: cd /backup5 cp subfont.ttf /root/.mplayer/ THEN TRY IT, AND, WITH LUCK, IT WORKS!!! Then fetch some .wmv (for instance), e.g. to /backup5, (if you are lucky you'll see that there is a pretty good example of a pretty elegant thing, some seconds of a free sample with a copyright given in the name of the tiny little file, from a site I have nothing to do with and do not know whether to recommend or not -- see info on my attitudes and ideas of how artists with a healthy real interest in skinny young anatomy can relate to questions of nudity and the like in the info indicated when you type JPG-BROWSER in my BRIDGE2 frame), and do something like cd /backup5 mplayer *.wmv If you have a standard enough PC, and a standard enough installation of Red Hat 8.0 or a compatible later version, this will run smoothly. You can start a series of viewings by wildcards *.wmv and you can proceed from the present to the next, if any, by ENTER. Pressing SPACE bar while running will give temporary pause. The program gimp can be used for File-> Aquire->Screen shot, as one example. Many messages will be given, usually not of importance given ordinary viewing if it works; options are also shown by simply typing mplayer or mplayer | more The source files in /backup4 and /backup5 are not necessary after the program is installed. The clip file is not for any further distribution as it is a free sample belonging properly to the commercial site which offered it; but it is just a few seconds long, persumably, they claim, of one 18 years, and I think they haven't got anything against the extra pr they get by the inclusion here. I include it also because the girl obviously have exquisite health and joy in what she's doing, and has that skinny anatomy and longleggedness which an artist with a spiritual dimension know how to extract esthetical information from. Frankly, I did all the work on this page merely to make sure that I could see those few seconds: and if you look at human history, you will see that the girl-motivation factor in action is far more penetrating than what it is sometimes (and by some) portrayed as. Please respect the open source copyright licenses involved in their entirety of these vast programs. There are other programs also included with their excellent package, including mencoder which can convert e.g. to mpeg format. GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!! GOOD LUCK!!!