[Fedora-music-list] Compiling and running gst123-0.1.2 on Fedora

FYI: http://space.twc.de/~stefan/gst123.php is a nice command-line audio/video file-playing utility that should be part of Fedora or PlanetCCRMA. It uses the gstreamer interface so it provides better-integrated access to your audio devices or servers. Below are some simple tips on compiling on fedora. ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Niels Mayer <nielsmayer(a)gmail.com&gt; Date: Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 2:43 PM Subject: Re: [LAA] gst123-0.1.2 To: Stefan Westerfeld <stefan(a)space.twc.de&gt; Cc: Linux Audio Developers <linux-audio-dev(a)lists.linuxaudio.org&gt; On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 9:11 AM, Stefan Westerfeld <stefan(a)space.twc.de&gt; wrote: Stefan -- very nice and useful program. Thanks for making this available! FYI -- To compile on Fedora, I had to install the following to get 'configure' to stop complaining: 1) yum install 'gstreamer-devel' (obviously) 2) yum install gstreamer-plugins-base-devel (less obvious as config complains:    No package 'gstreamer-interfaces-0.10' found // No package 'gstreamer-video-0.10' found ) 3) yum install ncurses-devel The application compiles and works nicely after that. However, I have some questions/issues/bugs: (1) I do not have pulseaudio running, and all gstreamer apps have a pause as they attempt to contact pulseaudio, and then emit a message: "socket(): Address family not supported by protocol" ... in a GUI app, this might make less of a difference, since you don't end up having the app respond to ^C signals. However, gst123 does -- and during the period when gstreamer is contacting the pulseaudio socket, the application becomes temporarily unresponsive, even to signals like ^C.  By the time it starts responding again it's already loaded the next file and gone unresponsive again due to timing out on the nonexistent pulseaudio socket. This makes the program very hard to interrupt.  Question: is there a way to disable checking for pulseaudio for each new file when specifying multiple media files. e.g.: "gst123 *.ogg" ? For example: do it once at application startup, or even better, a way to prevent it from happening all-together via environment variable, configuration, etc. Best would be some kind of environmental check so that the timeout on socket needn't occur.The timeout significantly slows down operation of the program even when not issuing ^C's. (2) For HD Video recorded off digital broadcasts, but not for regular def broadcast video, there's a problem when issuing the '->' (forward arrow) or '<-' (backward  arrow) commands to skip forwards or back: As you go forward, there's an increasingly longer delay before the audio syncs up and starts playing. Hit '->' a few times and the audio never seems to sync up, and sometimes the video stays paused on the same frame, even though the time display in the terminal continues updating. Note that the files producing these errors have some oddball results output from "ffmpeg -i" but that's how mythtv's mpg files look, for HD broadcasts: ............... [mpeg2video @ 0x1c2fcd0]mpeg_decode_postinit() failure    Last message repeated 7 times [mpegts @ 0x1c2b5f0]MAX_READ_SIZE:5000000 reached Input #0, mpegts, from '/home/npm/Videos/1551_20100407195900.mpg':  Duration: 02:06:59.36, start: 55515.108733, bitrate: 10490 kb/s  Program 1    Stream #0.0[0x7c0]: Video: mpeg2video, yuv420p, 1280x720 [PAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 38810 kb/s, 62.39 fps, 59.94 tbr, 90k tbn, 119.88 tbc    Stream #0.1[0x7c1]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 192 kb/s    Stream #0.2[0x7c2]: Audio: ac3, 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 192 kb/s At least one output file must be specified ................ (3) Note that if the above file is played out of a list 'gst123 *.mpg' then at least it gets audio playback. The same file, started standalone, shows video, but gives plays no audio: ............. gnulem-346-~> gst123 /home/npm/Videos/1551_20100407195900.mpg Playing file:///home/npm/Videos/1551_20100407195900.mpg ** (gst123:12323): CRITICAL **: gst_mpeg_descriptor_find: assertion `desc != NULL' failed ** (gst123:12323): CRITICAL **: gst_mpeg_descriptor_find: assertion `desc != NULL' failed No accelerated IMDCT transform found ** (gst123:12323): CRITICAL **: gst_mpeg_descriptor_find: assertion `desc != NULL' failed ** (gst123:12323): CRITICAL **: gst_mpeg_descriptor_find: assertion `desc != NULL' failed No accelerated IMDCT transform found socket(): Address family not supported by protocol Codec   : Dolby Digital (AC-3) (audio)                    Bitrate : 192.0 kbit/s ............................ Niels http://nielsmayer.com PS: Feature request: decode caption information from videos, and display in video. And/or output a timed-text, SMIL or other file containing the caption information and time-of-presentation information. This can be very useful in searching content of video files.