WebCam

[ChuckM]

Hello fellow Libranetarians (I like that name Ben),

I'm going to miss my nephew's graduation, but he informed me that the ceremony can be viewed via a webcam that will be set up there. I don't have a clue as to what application software I will need to view this. Is there any?

Chuck

[fos]

The webcam should have a URL associated with it. Ask your nephew to see if it has been published.

fos...

[ChuckM]

I got the url and the webcast is sent out in wmv format. Supposeitly Mplayer will do this but the version I have does'nt decode/convert wmv. In looking around, this seems to be a problem under linux. I do have a Wi*dows partition on my machine. It is rearlly used but in this case, it might save me some grief. (sigh)

[shivandeveloper]

If you have a Windows partition and are willing to use it, make sure you run a Windows update beforehand and pay special attention to update Windows Media Player (alternatively, if you run Window's Media Player for more than an hour or so, it will likely demand that you let it update itself). You will be good to go.

If you really want to make this work in Linux you'll need the Windows codecs, etc. to make Mplayer do what you want. I'm no expert in this, but I would recommend you use Mplayer's site and forums to figure out how to make this work. If you need assistance that they cannot provide, let us know and we'll do our best.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/

[bhobjj]

If you have the windows dll files in /usr/lib/win32 most of the video players should work.

Download the win32codecs (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/movix/win32codecs.tar.bz2?download)

Copy the contents of the bz2 file to /usr/lib/win32
(you need to create this directory if it is not there)


-BoB

[bhobjj]

You can find some .mov files here (http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=mov%20AND%20mediatype%3Amovies) to test.

The mov (arf) format could be either mov1, mov2, and mov3 (version 9). Older codecs (last year) only supported 1 & 2.

To make things easier you might want install the video plugins for mozilla, so that your webbrowser automatically runs the video stream.

-BoB

[ChuckM]

Thanks for the iideas and suggestions. It will take me a few days to figure which approach to take. I will try to get linux to run. It appears I have a buffer over run problem with my W2k. So if I'm going to play, it might as well be with my preferred OS.

I'll give updates,

Chuck
(Nice to see the old gang hanging out here.)

[kmoffat]

Copy the contents of the bz2 file to /usr/lib/win32
(you need to create this directory if it is not there)


Good info. question:

I downloaded the win32codecs.tar.bz2, copied it to the /usr/lib/win32 dir, then ran bunzip and tar xvf on it, which created a directory, "win32codecs" in /usr/lib/win32. Is this correct or should I move the contents of that directory up to /usr/lib/win32?

[bhobjj]

I downloaded the win32codecs.tar.bz2, copied it to the /usr/lib/win32 dir, then ran bunzip and tar xvf on it, which created a directory, "win32codecs" in /usr/lib/win32. Is this correct or should I move the contents of that directory up to /usr/lib/win32?

They should be in /usr/lib/win32

I don't know if it will work in a subdirectory.

-BoB

[kmoffat]

Thanks.