Green Flashes in dvd playback

[lmwashere]

I am having issues with .vob playback. I have a pretty extensive collection of movies stored on an external hard drive in .trp format. I can play them with GOM player with no issues. The problem is that I want to copy them to my core and play them with linuxmce. .trp files do not seem to be supported at all so I used convertXtoDVD 3 to convert one of them to dvd format. I don't want to burn a ton of dvd's to disks so I just copied the dvd folder to the core. It seems to work fine and shows up in pluto's database. When I select the file with an orbiter it brings up the menu and will play the movie. The problem is that about every few seconds it flashes a green pixillated screen for about half of a second and then goes back to the movie. The converted movie plays perfectly in windows with WMP and GOM player. It also plays fine with a puppy linux live CD. I suspect that it may be some kind of codec issue but I am not sure.

Does anyone have any ideas either for a format to convert the .trp files to, a way to play .trp files or what may be causing the green flashes?

Thanks in advance
Josh

[colinjones]

Yes, you will need the dvds either in the normal DVD folders and VOB files, or as a straight ISO rip for LMCE to play them....

As for the green flashes, don't know, never seen them - perhaps try playing the converted files back on the KDE desktop using Xine Player. Whilst LMCE doesn't actually use the Xine Player UI, it does use the underlying libraries and codecs, so if you see the same behaviour then you can assume the problem is in Xine's code/codecs and try to track down the bug upstream. Are you using 0810? Also bear in mind not every group's interpretation of a compression or container standard is the same, and so Xine maybe playing back just fine, just the transcode wasn't as good as it could be - and yes, just because WMP or some other player doesn't exhibit the same behaviour doesn't prove that the transcode isn't at fault, they may just be more tollerant of such transgressions. It would be worth using 1) another transcoder and 2) a different codec.

[lmwashere]

This is true,

I am using 8.10

I will give it a try from the desktop and post back.

The .vob files are in the regular folders IE MovieName>AudioTS/VideoTS etc.. I think that is why it had no issues with recognizing them.

My 8.10 installations seem to be sketchy at best. I have tried 5 or 6 times to get everything working in 8.10 as well as it was in 7.10 but I usually run into trouble. On this attempt the OrbiterInstall.msi file seems to be corrupted. I happened to save the one from my 7.10 install and re-used it. My install software section in the admin website and in the setup wizard also refuses to populate, and I installed libdvdcss and w32codecs from the terminal.  These are just examples but I am wondering if this issue may be related to a funky install. I am not sure if it has to do with rough downloads or something else.

When you said .iso rip, did you mean that it will recognize and mount an .iso file, or I would need to burn them to dvd then use the copy dvd function?

[colinjones]

the normal method to introduce a DVD to LMCE is by ripping it on an MD.. this rips it as a .dvd file (which is identical to a .iso file) If you have existing Audio_TS/Video_TS folders/files you can use PowerISO to create the necessary .iso files if you prefer. LMCE will use these exactly the same as a .dvd file. But note if you didn't rip it in LMCE then there will be no meta data so you will need to tag them yourself plus there will be no chapter marks.

[lmwashere]

That is awesome. When I get a minute, maybe in the morning I will try the .iso method.

So I went to the KDE desktop and tried the .vob file in mplayer, videolan, dragon player, and Xine. It played as smoothly as silk in all of them. I must say that I was surprised to see it play perfectly in Xine from the desktop.

Anyway I went back into LMCE and tried again, sure enough, green flashes every couple of seconds.

I don't think it is related but I'll throw it out just in case, when I start up, reload the router or regen the orbiters, it tries to start videolan server for a couple minutes, and then splashes a black screen telling me that it didn't start. I haven't searched for that issue yet as I have been busy with trying to make this work and trying to get it to change the channels on my DVR like 7.10 did. Just thought I'd throw it out because I figure I am still a rookie at this. For the moment.....

Thanks for all of your help so far!
Josh

[colinjones]

hmm very strange, videolan isn't used any more and by default it is turned off. I'm thinking you have accidentally turned it on at some point.... you should turn it off anyway as it could be intercepting certain container types. Go to Wizard->Devices->Media Directors, then on each of your core/MDs choose the Edit button next to "Software modules" and deselect Videolan

[lmwashere]

Ah, off it goes then. I was reading the description on it and it said that it was recommended to turn it on. Once it has had time to go kaput and I have reloaded everything I will post back if the flashes go away.

[lmwashere]

Must have unchecked that box last night around the time of my post. When I looked it this morning it was already unchecked. I rebooted and am still having the issue with videolan server and the green flashes. Is there somewhere else I need to go to disable it. I only have a hybrid right now so there are no other MDs.

Would it be a good idea to uninstall and possibly reinstall using the terminal or a package manager? I don't want to run the risk of breaking something in LMCE.... But it would be nice to get this little hiccup resolved.

Thanks,
Josh

[colinjones]

The information about recommending having it on is obsolete, it should be off.

I don't know what else you need to do once this has been enabled, to disable it again. Probably uninstall as you say, but I'm not sure which package. If you find out, use sudo apt-get to remove it..... but as with all these cases, it may just be easier in the end, to reinstall your core!

[lmwashere]

That is what I was afraid of. That will at least fix my other issues. Not sure if it will fix the green flashes though, they were there in 7.10 as well. Admittedly though that was a different dvd conversion.

Is there a time line for the release of an install dvd for 8.10? Or maybe the option to do a hash of the 8.10 download to ensure it's integrity. Most distros do have the check cd/dvd integrity option. I think that during my install download I might be loosing some data somewhere. Maybe a connection times out or something and the message gets lost in the river of text running up the screen. I do remember seeing some red text during a previous install however I don't remember what it was.

What would happen if I were to run the new_installer_latest script agian instead of redoing the whole thing? I am betting it would create a royal mess rather than just write over everything.

Can't thank you enough for your time. Without people like you guys helping the rest of us we would probably just give up on LMCE. That would be a drag because this really is an awesome project.

Josh

[colinjones]

As I say I've only ever seen those flashes (look like semi translucent clouds, that form from the left of the screen and sometimes intrude further and further right until the next I-Frame comes through and clears them) when playing back .mkv file content, never on DVDs...

No, there is no timing as yet - although the DVD version is being worked on so I imagine it can't be too long! No there is no way to do a hash compare as you don't actually have a monolithic download to compare the hash off... it dynamically downloads the content at install time, and once it is installed it isn't necessarily supposed to be an exact hash as it depends on the hardware you are using. You could always do an MD5 hash check on the 0810 installer image you downloaded, but I doubt that is where the problem is. Only once there is a DVD version (rather than downloading the packages dynamically) will it be meaningful to pursue a hash check. That all aside, I believe that the apt-get package installation process does a hash check whilst it is dynamically downloading and installing the packages, so they should be OK.

Yes, you will always see some red text during startup/installation, in most cases this is perfectly normal. Re-running the installer wouldn't achieve much, as the package management system would simply exit-early for every package it was told to install because they are already installed.

I think your next step needs to be to install from scratch to eliminate any possibility that the videolan module has screwed things up.....