ANNOUNCE gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.4b2

This is to announce the second and hopefully last beta for the 1.0.4
series of gecko-mediaplayer and gnome-mplayer

This beta includes fixes for the tunein.com website that enhance the
Windows Media Player emulation in javascript.

gnome-mplayer

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.4b2.tar.gz&can=2&q=

gecko-mediaplayer

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.4b2.tar.gz&can=2&q=


Please let me know if you have any issues with these packages.

ANNOUNCE gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.4b1

I am releasing the current SVN code to get some more testing exposure. I have been using the code for a couple of weeks and I am pretty satisfied with how things are working. I'm sure there might be a few bugs mainly due to the size of the changes in the code, but many of my test cases are working well.

The code can be obtained from here:

gnome-mplayer

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.4b1.tar.gz&can=2&q=

GTK3 support can be enabled in gnome-mplayer with the --enable-gtk3 flag
passed to configure.


gecko-mediaplayer

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.4b1.tar.gz&can=2&q=

New Asterisk Box

About six months ago I built an Asterisk box for my home network. It allowed my to manage the phones around my house much better and to give a little more control as to what rings where and when. Everything more or less worked ok, but I had built it on my main file server and due to a motherboard issue the Openvox A800P card I had would occasionally have interrupt issues and make the calls choppy. I was able to correct most of these issues by not using the FXS daughter cards on the A800P by using a Cisco/Linksys PAP2T phone adapter, but still could generate problems with large amounts of disk activity which on a file server happen quite often. Additionally, I wanted to make the phone server to be separate from the file server.

After looking around I found an ideal box for my new server. Jetway offers a tiny Intel Atom based server the JBC110C96-525-B which has just enough room to fit the A800P card into it, which was a concern. Actually, getting the card into the machine was kinda tricky and I was concerned I was going to break it. The machine was cheap (< $200 from NewEgg) considering it reports itself as a 4 core 1.8 Ghz processor (I'm sure two are hyperthreaded) and with 2GB of RAM in it, runs very nice. I had a spare 160GB laptop SATA hard drive that I used as the primary storage. You really only need about 20GB for a PBX in a Flash (PIAF) install, and even that is overkill. Tempting to run it off a flash drive.

My experience with PIAF has been hit and miss. I like that everything pretty much works as they say it does. However, I don't like that they don't bother to package all the customizations as RPMS like the base system. To me it would be a big win if they bothered to do that. I also needed to patch the dahdi drivers to support the A800P card. Which if I had not done it before would have been much more difficult. I'm not sure why PIAF can't just provide these drivers in the base install.

Second FreePBX the web management interface to Asterisk has some real problems. I could not get it to configure my outgoing calls to go the way I wanted them, so I actually ended up removing the FreePBX generated configuration files and ended up using my own from the last server. I'm sure I'm losing some features by doing this, but the frustration of making it work drove me nuts. Probably some of this had to do with me not understanding the software that well, but it appeared to me that I had configured it correctly.

All in all the hardware is great, cheap, and dead quiet. The box has plenty of power to handle multiple calls. I've very positive it could scale to at least 10 with no problem, and probably 25 to 30. If I could get a pair of 1.5TB 2.5" SATA drives that were cheap and reliable (seems to be some issues with the quality of these drives at the moment) I would be very tempted to replace my big file server with one of these boxes.

All in all, I'm happy with the hardware I chose, not as much with the software, but there doesn't seem to be any better option at this point.

Apple Trailers on Fedora 15

I just want to know if this is a local problem or not. I went to http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/thor/ to test some problems with Apple trailers in gecko-mediaplayer. The problem is that the option to select the trailers are no longer showing up. I have this same issue in chrome and in another account. So I'm wondering if it is Fedora 15 problem or something local here. My Fedora 14 machine shows the screen perfectly.

Note how on this screen the red box that is normally on the left is missing. Any ideas? It worked last Friday that I know of.

Gnome Mplayer 1.0.4 beta status

Over the weekend I battled with gnome-mplayer/gmtk. It kept hanging on startup or crashing after running for a short period of time. Eventually, I found the problem and it was something I should have known better to do. I was setting GTK values, size allocations and colors, in the thread. This is just something you don't want to do. I could have used thread guards, but I decided to put things into the GTK idle loop, which a technique I have used in the past that works well.

As part of the testing I wanted to make sure that the iPad playback was still working properly, and it appears to be so far.

Gnome Mplayer playing music off an iPod

Any testing that could be done on the current SVN of gnome-mplayer would be appreciated.

Gnome Mplayer Status

I've been working the last week to convert gnome-mplayer to use my gmtk_media_player widget backend. So far really good progress has been made and things are shaping up nicely. Found a few problems here and there vs the code I built to do the initial testing of gmtk_media_player before I converted to it, but that was pretty much expected.

The good news is that performance and memory usage seem to be about the same so far. Also, I'm really liking the event based structure of the code. It is much clearer what is going on with mplayer now to the main code.

gnome-mplayer, 1.0.4beta, GTK3

I have an idea of how to get zooming to work, but it might require clutter to do it. I'm thinking of embedding gmtk_media_player into a clutter actor and then taking advantage of the capabilities of clutter. I did this in fosfor about 6 months or more ago, and I noticed that totem recently started using clutter as well for the same purpose.

Gnome Mplayer ported to GTK3

While there are still some major issues with the application, gnome-mplayer does compile against GTK3 now. I'll probably have to spend a few days figuring out all the new tweaks that I need to make.

gnome-mplayer using GTK3

This is SVN r2002

ANNOUNCE: 1.0.3 of gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer released

gnome-mplayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.3 have been released you can download them from here

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.3.tar.gz


http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.3.tar.gz

Please note that these versions will use gsettings on glib 2.26 or higher which may cause all the configuration of these tools to be reset, you can force gconf with --with-gconf=yes and this is required for both applications.

If firefox crashes after installing gecko-mediaplayer, the most likely cause is gecko-mediaplayer using gsettings and gnome-mplayer is not. Please ensure that both are configured and installed properly.

gnome-mplayer changelog

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/source/browse/tags/v1.0.3/ChangeLog

gecko-mediaplayer changelog

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/source/browse/tags/v1.0.3/ChangeLog

GMTK Ported to GTK3

As part of the next release I wanted to be able to have gnome-mplayer be able to be compiled against GTK3. Since GMTK is the core of the next release, I needed to port it first. It only took about an hour to complete the work. gnome-mplayer will take more time to convert, but it should be something I should be able to do in a few hours.

GTMK running under GTK3

So I need to finalize 1.0.3 and then on to this work. It appears that GTK3 may not be able to be ported to Windows, because of the embedding in GTK3 being X specific.

Avant Window Navigator vs Gnome Shell Dock

The other day I wrote up how I liked the Gnome Shell Dock but it still left a little to be desired. Additionally, I was missing the weather app and some other functionality. So I installed the Avant Window Navigator and the AWN Extras package.

AWN with some minor customization

I found that this dock gives a little more flexibility. I particularly like the Simple Switcher and the Weather Applet. The Simple Switcher gives me the ability to flip between workspaces with just my mouse, something that I found missing in the Dock.

Gnome Shell Dock Extension

With Gnome Shell, I was feeling that I was going to the Activities menu quite a bit to switch tasks. The constant movement of the mouse from left to right was a little annoying.

I then found the Dock extension (RPM name is: gnome-shell-extensions-dock). And that actually seemed to make the shell much more enjoyable.

The dock is on the right of the screen

Clicking on the icons activated tasks that were active and I could start a new task by middle clicking on the icon, which is helpful for multiple terminals. I really recommend this extension.

Update: I have found that I prefer the Avant Window Navigator over the Dock Extension.. see this post 

Fedora 15 Bluetooth

After I upgraded from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15 I found that Gnome was not showing my bluetooth devices and in fact it didn't detect any. However, lsusb found them with no problems.

I found bug #695588 at RedHat and it looked like systemctl may have not started it.

#systemctl status bluetooth.service
bluetooth.service - Bluetooth Manager
      Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service)
      Active: inactive (dead)
      CGroup: name=systemd:/system/bluetooth.service

#systemctl enable bluetooth.service
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/dbus-org.bluez.service'
ln -s '/lib/systemd/system/bluetooth.service' '/etc/systemd/system/bluetooth.target.wants/bluetooth.service'

#systemctl start bluetooth.service

After running those three commands, gnome now shows my devices.

Bluetooth devices

 

Fedora 15 PreUpgrade

Well, I wanted to upgrade my primary machine to Fedora 15, so that I could starting working on making gnome-mplayer work with GTK3. It didn't go so well. I ran the preupgrade tool to go to the beta, and after a long download and a reboot, I ended up with a machine in limbo between Fedora 14 and Fedora 15. I think I am going to be able to recover from it without a reinstall, but so far I got kind of a mess.

Update:

I was able to recover from it, package-cleanup --cleandups and then reinstalling the kernel got me back.

Had some trouble with clutter, I had to remove some self installed source code, so did that one to myself.

Anyway, it is up and running now.

Gnome Mplayer 1.0.3 beta has been released

Gnome MPlayer and gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.3betas have been released

Mainly changes to use GSettings over GConf when possible. Also, support for Apple.com sites in Firefox 4.

Tar Files:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.3beta.tar.gz

http://code.google.com/p/gecko-mediaplayer/downloads/detail?name=gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.3beta.tar.gz

GMTK Media Player Zoom Feature

One feature I'm commonly asked for in Gnome MPlayer is a way to zoom in on the video, perhaps there is something needs closer examination or the viewer just wants to get rid of the black bars on the sides. So I began looking into how I could solve this problem. GMTK draws the video into a GTKSocket object, which is contained by a GTKFixed container. This allows me to properly center the video. I was under the assumption that using negative coordinates in the GTKFixed would not be allowed. Anyway I decided to try it to see if it would work just in case. And it actually did work with no problem. So my first attempt at this was to put the change into Gnome MPlayer. Gnome MPlayer uses a GTKDrawingArea instead of a GTKSocket so when I tried this technique I ended up with video overlaying other portions of the window, not good. But I figured I should try it in GMTK to see if it would work there anyway. It does actually work pretty well. So when Gnome MPlayer is converted to use GMTK (planned for 1.0.4) the zoom feature should come along with the code. Below are some screen shots showing it working.

GMTK at 100% zoom (I've made the window wider on purpose)

GMTK at 120% zoom

GMTK at 80% zoom

I may change the step size in the future to allow for more precise zooming, right now the steps are 10%.


Update: Looks like this feature will probably be dropped for gnome-mplayer 1.0.4, I had to make a change to the layout code to make GTK3 work correctly, and that change took away this feature.

Fedora 14's Clutter with r600g from GIT

I've been trying to run some Clutter based apps, like fosfor, on Fedora 14 for awhile now. F14 uses clutter 1.2 and the upgraded ATI ddx driver does vblank signaling differently than the original ATI driver shipped with F13. Which leads to the problems I've had with getting the clutter apps to redraw properly when using a newer DDX, including the one found in updates. Fosfor would not resize windows or things would come up blank when they should be correct.

Today I came across something in a mailing list that made it work.

CLUTTER_VBLANK=none

So I added that to my ~/.bashrc file and relogged in and since then my Clutter based apps have been working.

NeverWinter Nights on r600g

I've been testing NeverWinter Nights on the r600g driver for Linux and I have enabled s3 textures and tiling and NWN is looking great.

1680x1050 in Best Mode on an 3650 card ~20fps

gecko-mediaplayer in Chrome

gecko-mediaplayer and Chrome have not always got along so well together. But there are reports that the Chrome 11.0.686.0 and gecko-mediaplayer are working together, finally. gecko-mediaplayer had been blacklisted due to a bug the gecko-mediaplayer exposed in Chrome.

You can see the post on the mailing list here:

http://groups.google.com/group/gecko-mediaplayer/msg/a8d32ff049320d2f?hl=en

ANNOUNCE gnome-mplayer 1.0.2

Just a note to announce the release of gnome-mplayer 1.0.2

please note that there is not a gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.2 available at
this time. But gecko-mediaplayer 1.0.0 should continue to work with this
release.

Significant changes to gnome-mplayer 1.0.2 over 1.0.0

New audio device handling compatible with ALSA and Pulse devices if
support is compiled in
Several bug fixes
GTK 3 support is not yet enabled, but code should be GTK 3 clean
Audio Meter enhanced to use cairo drawing
DBUS is now optional (disables gecko-mediaplayer integration)
Code should compile and run on Windows under mingw
Get rid of VDPAU error message
Seeking on streaming media if supported by mplayer
Updated translations

Full changelog is here:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/source/browse/tags/v1.0.2/ChangeLog


Download the code here:

http://code.google.com/p/gnome-mplayer/downloads/detail?name=gnome-mplayer-1.0.2.tar.gz&can=2&q=

RIP: Gateway 22" monitor

Well after at least 7yrs of service my Gateway 22" display died today. Off to shop for something new. I know I want something with at least 1920x1080 resolution, but not sure if I want to go larger than 23".

Such a tough decision...