Media Play in 2.0bc for linux

Marek_McGann · Newbie Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 3

Just downloaded and installed the 2.0bc for linux. I've had the 1.9-65 version running for a while and I had exactly the same problem, which is this:

I cannot embed images or sounds in presentations, and the media player (from the Tools menu in Impress) won't load any files. The error message I get, no matter what kind of files I am trying to load is:

"The format of the selected file is not supported"

Is there some codecs I should be downloading, or pointing the player to?

Or is there a way to use some other player in linux, like mplayers or vlc?

Other than that, 2.0's looking very nice indeed Wink

zingale · General User Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 14

I have the same problems, and I have posted bug reports about it in bugzilla, but the claim is that it works for them. Perhaps it is just a really restricted set of formats that work with the JMF player that OOo 2.0 uses. I haven't found any that work thus far.

Marek_McGann · Newbie Joined: 02 Mar 2005 Posts: 3

Having looked around further I think what's causing the problem is setting the paths (that is, the environment variables) for the JMF player. I've tried a number of things at this point and just can't get the damn thing to work (the classpath in particular is the bugbear I think).

Don't really have time at the moment to try and work it all out, so I'll just have to go without media for the mo', I think.

Ah well.

zingale · General User Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 14

my bug report is here:

http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=43282

they say you need to restart after setting the class path, but this did not seem to do it for me either.

The document describing media in OOo 2.0 is:

http://specs.openoffice.org/appwide/media_player/MediaPlayer.sxw

but those directions still don't solve it for me. It would be nice to have somewhere posted a movie that is known to work in OOo 2.0, so we could then atleast determine if it is the encoding of the movies that we are trying that are at fault, or if it is an installation problem.

zingale · General User Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 14

a little more information. If I set the CLASSPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, following

http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jmf/2.1.1/setup-linux.html

then I find that I can play MPEG-1 movies from the command line by running
jmstudio in the JMF bin/ directory. Still cannot embed the movies in OOo, nor does
the diagnostic applet at

http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jmf/2.1.1/jmfdiagnostics.html

zingale · General User Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 14

ok, after more and more experimenting, I have finally had some success, although I don't know yet how reproducible it is. I was able to embed an MPEG-1 movie into an Impress presentation on a Redhat 8.0 system. I will try later with my FC2 and FC3 systems at home, but RH8 is what is on my work machine currently.

Here are the steps I used:

1. install JMF:

sh ./jmf-2_1_1e-linux-i586.bin

2. make sure that the jre and mozilla-jre packages are installed. I used the RPMs from
Dag's archive.

3. set up the environment. In your .cshrc add:

setenv JMFHOME /home/username/JMF-2.1.1e/

setenv CLASSPATH $JMFHOME/lib/jmf.jar:$JMFHOME/lib/mediaplayer.jar:$JMFHOME/lib/multiplayer.jar

setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH $JMFHOME/lib:${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}

setenv PATH ${PATH}:$JMFHOME/bin

and source .cshrc

4. open OOo and add $JMFHOME/lib to the tools/options/java/classpath dialog
and exit OOo

5. run $JMFHOME/bin/jmfinit

6. launch mozilla and go to http://java.sun.com/products/java-media/jmf/2.1.1/jmfdiagnostics.html

make sure it says:

JMF Version... 2.1.1e

All Java Build
Native Libraries Found

7. finally, run openoffice and insert movies

As I said, so far, I only tried this on one machine, but it is working there. I was fooling around a lot, so I may have missed a step, but I believe this was the process. I will try to confirm on my laptop (FC2) later today.

zingale · General User Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 14

one more step, perhaps the most important, which I overlooked above.

cp JMFHOME/lib/* /usr/lib/jre/lib/ext/

then try the diagnostics page -- make sure it works before playing around with openoffice.

bryancole · OOo Advocate Joined: 13 Jun 2003 Posts: 305

I got JMF to work in OOo-1.7.79, on FC3 by:

1) uninstalling all gcj java-compat libs. (there's some sort of conflict when the gcj stuff is installed)
2) installing JRE-1.4.2 (* JRE-1.5 doesn't work*) from Sun
3) setting the CLASSPATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH as instructed in the JMF install instructions.

... and then it'll work

helmerj · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 5:10 am Post subject:

ocwong · Newbie Joined: 04 May 2005 Posts: 1

Hi guys,

Following zingale's advice, I have managed to get Quicktime movies to run in OpenOffice.
However, I can't get mpg files to do so.

Does anyone have any clue?

Thanks in advance.