Gnome and Totem … previews and codecs

So I just installed Gentoo again because I miss being in linux. I am running amd64, so the first problem I had with totem is that it wouldn’t create thumbnails or play certian video files due to missing codecs. Some of codecs I was missing was MPEG-4 and some of the WMV codecs. If you’ve ever used the x86 branch, you know that by enabling win32codecs, you can get all of the neccisary codecs installed. Of course, this doesn’t work in the amd64 branch, but after a bit of googling, I tried installing gstreamer-plugins-ffmpeg. Once I got that installed, thumbnails started showing up and videos started playing just fine. If you don’t really like totem, I can’t say I blame you, there’s also VLC which with the proper use flags works fine as well for watching videos.

Another issue I came across was when I was browsing around some files and realized that Nautalis wasn’t displaying thumbnails for .flv files. I remember coming across this a long time ago and never finding a solution for the problem, but today things have changed. One thing you will need is gstreamer-plugins-ffmpeg installed. From what I understand here, thumbnails don’t show up due to Totem not getting the right mime type for FLV files. The comments mention that this is fixed in Totem 2.23.4, but amd64 only has 2.22.2. You’ve probably already noticed the XML file on the link, but I couldn’t make it work in its current format. So, I recreated the file using a format that worked fine for me. To load the file into your configuration just run the command `gconftool-2 –load flv_thumbnailerschema.xml`. Once I ran that command, I refreshed a directory with .flv files and saw thumbnails. YAY!

Here’s the download link for the XML file: flv_thumbnailerschema.xml

Anyway, I hope all of this has helped someone out.

Tags: codecs, Computers, flv, Gentoo, preview, Totem

Totem and GStreamer properties

Recently I was trying to watch a DVD on my laptop. I’m running compiz-fusion with my ati-drivers, and had a problem with the video showing up. I kept getting a blank screen with a few frames showing up once in a while. I fixed this issue in vlc by setting my video output to x11. I use Gnome for my desktop, and by default, it uses totem as its media player. I tried everything I could think of to find a way to change the backend settings for totem which uses gstreamer.

Finally, after some google searching, I found the solution. gstreamer comes with a configuration tool to change the audio and video settings. It’s called gstreamer-properties who would have thought? After running this I changed the video settings to use X11 for gstreamer as well, opened up totem and the DVD played fine! Just thought I’d share this little tidbit.