The xine engine FAQ

+ The xine engine is a free media player engine. It comes in the form of + a shared libarary and is typically used by media player frontends + and other multimedia applications for playback of multimedia streams + such as movies, radio/tv network streams, DVDs, VCDs. +

What's the aim and scope of this text?

The primary goal of this FAQ is to cover all recurring questions related + to the xine engine. Frontend specific questions are not covered here. +

My question is not yet covered here - where can I ask for help?

First of all be sure that your question is really not covered here and + that you haven't just been a bit too lazy to read through all of this + text. ;-). Also check out the xine HOWTO and documentation specific to + the frontend (e.g. xine-ui or gxine or + totem ). +

That said - you are welcome to mail to our user mailing list: + + <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net> + + Please provide some info about your setup so people have a chance to + help you, e.g. include information about your audio/video hardware + and drivers you use, operating system, cpu type and some console + output/any error messages. Also include command line parameters you + have specified and information about the type of stream you're + trying to play back. Also very important is the version of xine + you're using and information about any additional plugins you + may have installed on your system. +

What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine, ... modules in cvs for?

Some time ago xine just became too complex to be just one big program. + Therefore it was split into two major parts. +

xine-lib is simply speaking the engine of xine. It contains all plugins + and is necessary to run anything that relies on xine (this is the part that + is covered in this FAQ). +

Then there are frontends - applications that use xine. The most + common frontend is that of a media player. There are currently + two frontends being developed in the xine project, xine-ui (skinned + dvd-player style frontend directly based on xlib) and gxine, + a desktop media-player style frontend using the standard gtk widget set + and comes with a mozilla browser plugin. + External projects like sinek and totem develop additional frontends. + In the future you will likely see more and different types of apllications + being developed which will use the xine engine for video processing + and other multimedia purposes. +

If you simply want a media/dvd player, you'll need to install xine-lib + first and then choose and install a player frontend like xine-ui or gxine. +

Other modules in CVS: xine-plugin a mozilla browser plugin + for streaming media playback using xine, xine-www the + xine project website sources. +

Where and how do I get the latest development version?

Be advised that end-users should stick to the official xine releases. + CVS is only intended for developers. +

To check out xine-modules from CVS, first do this: +

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login + [empty password] +

then, to check out individual modules (e.g. xine-lib, + gxine, xine-ui): +

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co modulename +

Where can I find pre-compiled binaries, e.g. RPMs?

The xine project does not provide pre-compiled binaries for legal + reasons (some parts of xine may be covered by patents in some countries). + Some OS projects/vendors (e.g. debian, freebsd, ...) offer binaries + for their distributions - please contact them for further info. + You can also find links to third parties providing xine RPMs on + the xine homepage. +

See the next chapter of this FAQ for instructions on how to build xine + from source. +

Chapter 2. Building and installing xine from source

What do I need to compile everything properly?

First of all an official and stable release of gcc. Also be aware + that patched gcc versions may break parts of xine and are therefore + not supported by the xine project. +

Furthermore you'll have to use GNU make to compile xine. On most GNU/Linux + systems "make" is GNU make - on other platforms use "gmake" instead. + Also, zlib iss required (including the appropriate header files, which are + often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar.) +

If you want to compile xine from CVS, you'll need to have the autobuild tools + installed (automake, autoconf and libtool - in recent versions). +

Frontends might need additional libraries, e.g. for gxine you'll need to have + GTK installed. Make sure you have not only the shared libraries themselves + but also the header files (often packaged seperately as so-called -dev packages) + on your system. +

Some plugins that come with the xine engine need additional libraries (otherwise + they will not be built). For example, libogg and libvorbis (plus their include files) + are needed for ogg/vorbis support. +

Don't worry about this too much right now, xine's configure + (see below) will check for all the stuff needed and will tell you what's missing + (which means that you should check the output it produces carefully ;) ) +

How do I compile xine?

Simple build instructions for beginners

Download the latest xine-lib and gxine/xine-ui tarballs, then follow + these instruction. To unpack a tarball, use: +

        tar xfvz tarballname.tar.gz
+

The following instructions will install xine in /usr/local for all + users. You need root privileges to do this on most systems. +

First unpack xine-lib, then: +

        ./configure
+	make install
+

Make sure your /etc/ld.so.conf contains + /usr/local/lib, then: +

        ldconfig
+

Now unpack your frontend (gxine or xine-ui or ...), then: +

        ./configure
+	make install
+

Complete build instructions

The build process is the same for all of the xine modules. +

You have to start with xine-lib. If built and installed successfully, you + can continue with the frontend(s). +

If you have installed xine-lib to a non-standard prefix, make sure you + that you have $prefix/bin in your PATH and that your linker finds + libs in $prefix/lib - otherwise trying to build modules that + rely on xine-lib will fail with configure complaining about not + finding certain parts of libxine. Using bash you can do something like: +

      export PATH="$prefix/bin:$PATH"
+      export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$prefix/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
+

to make sure libxine can be found by the frontend(s). +

Last but not least. Here the build instructions. As stated earlier, + those are the same for every xine module. +

      ./cvscompile.sh [-> *only* if you checked your sources out of CVS]
+      ./configure
+      make
+      make install
+

Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui)

Basically you will only have to issue one command, if you have just + downloaded a source tarball from our web site: +

rpm -ta THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_SOURCE_TAR_BALL +

This will start the binary and source RPM building. After compiling is + finished, a binary rpm is placed in your rpm binary directory which is + usally /usr/src/RPM/RPMS/[YOUR_ARCHITECTURE] and a source RPM is written + to your rpm source dir (e.g. /usr/src/RPM/SRPMS). +

In case that you have a fresh CVS checkout, you will need to do the + following first in order to get a tarball release out of it which you + can later use with the rpm -ta command above: +

./cvscompile.sh && make clean && make dist +

In any case, please keep in mind that you have to build and install + xine-lib first before you can proceed with xine-ui. +

Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?

Yes, you can do so by setting the CFLAGS variable and then run + configure again. +

This can be useful to specify additional include paths or library paths + to the compiler. +

Example: export CFLAGS="-I/usr/include -L/home/guenter/xine_libs" +

Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon (TM) ) available? Can I build them?

If you have a recent gcc you can try to compile "more" k7 support in (esp. + better instruction scheduling). If the configure script should fail to + detect your processor/gcc correctly, try setting the xine_BUILD envvar + explicitly to a valid description string for your configuration, e.g. +

    export xine_BUILD=k7-pc-linux-gnu
+    rm -f config.cache
+    ./cvscompile.sh
+    make
+    make install
+

Build problems: xine engine (xine-lib)

The package doesn't compile at all!

In order to be able to compile xine-lib, you need (amongst other things) + the zlib compression library plus the appropriate headers, which are + often found in a package called zlib-devel or similar. +

Read again carefully the output ./configure + produced and/or compiler warnings and error reports, they often contain + helpfull information to find out what's going on. If you're stuck here + and decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, + make sure you include these outputs. +

The Xv video-out plugin fails to compile!

If you want to have Xv support compiled in, make sure you either have + a shared Xv library on your system, e.g. + ls /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv* + should give you some .so libs, like this: +
/usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.a + /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so + /usr/X11R6/lib/libXv.so.1 +
+

Alternatively you need to have libtool 1.4 or newer installed. If not + and you only got libXv.a you can create the shared versions yourself: +
ld --whole-archive -shared -o libXv.so.1 libXv.a + ln -s libXv.so.1 libXv.so + ldconfig +
+

Now you should be ready to build the Xv video-out plugin on your system. +

Build problems: frontend (gxine/xine-ui/...)

I have installed xine-lib but the frontend complains about not finding it!

First of all take a closer look at the compilation instructions above again. + You will probably find your answer there right away. +

As stated there (there again that hint *grin*), make sure that you + have $prefix/bin in your path and that your + linker is able to find + libraries installed in $prefix/lib (by the way, $prefix is where you + installed your xine-lib to earlier (yes, installing xine-lib with + make install would be a good idea before trying to compile + the frontend ;)). +

Can I install xine in my home directory (without being root) ?

yes. first set up a subdir where you install your private software, eg +

      $ mkdir ~/usr
+

then you have to set a few environment variables - it's probably a good + idea to add this to your ~/.bashrc (or somewhere similar): +

      export PATH="$HOME/usr/bin:$PATH"
+      export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
+      export CFLAGS="-I$HOME/usr/include -L$HOME/usr/lib -O3"
+      export ACLOCAL_FLAGS="-I $HOME/usr/share/aclocal"
+

now you can unpack tarballs e.g. in ~/usr/src + (mkdir ~/usr/src if necessary) and do a +

      $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
+      $ make install
+

Chapter 3. Playback of various stream types

DVD Playback with xine

How do I play back DVDs with xine?

Newer xine (1.0.x) releases come with a full-featured + DVD plugin that should be able to handle any unencrypted, + non-locked DVD with full menu navigation support. No external + plugins are required anymore here. +

To get DVD playback working, first make sure you have + a symlink /dev/dvd pointing to your + DVD device on your system. For example, if your DVD drive + is the master ide drive on the second IDE channel, + /dev/dvd should point to + /dev/hdc. Please note that if you + are using the ide-scsi emulation on your system, it is + likely that you dvd drive got mapped to a scsi device + node even though it is an ide drive. In that case first + check out you boot/kernel logs (or run cdrecord -scanbus ) + to find out which device it got mapped to and set the + symlink accordingly (should be something like /dev/scd0, + /dev/scd1, ... in that case). + Also make sure you (as a user) have sufficient (read) permissions + on your dvd drive (this could mean you either have to change the device + permissions or add your user to a special group + (e.g. addgroup cdrom username), + depending on your setup and/or distribution. +

It is highly recommended to switch DMA mode on for yout DVD drive + (without it even very recent machines will have trouble producing + smooth video output). Use a command like + hdparm -d 1 device + on your dvd device. Please note that even if you're using ide-scsi + you will have to set the dma flag on the ide device node (e.g. + /dev/hdc), not the mapped /dev/scd + scsi device. +

To be able to play back encrypted dvds you need to have + libdvdcss installed on your system (please check if this is legal where + you live). +

+ Newer (post-2000) dvd drives (so-called RPC-2 drives) check the dvd + region, which means they'll prevent you from playing back dvds that have + a different region code from what the drive is set up for (most drives + come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can only play back + region 0 dvds and there are not many of those available). The easiest + way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from + http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvd/dvd_disc_20000215.tar.gz. +

Once you have everything set up, try something like + gxine dvd:// or xine -p dvd:// + to start dvd playback. Some frontend also offer so-called autoplay + buttons or menu entries that start dvd playback immediately. +

Important: do not try to mount the DVD. Just insert it and hit the DVD autoplay + button or start xine from the command line. +

If things do not work as expected, try running the xine-check + shellscript that comes with libxine to see if this gives you further hints on + what could be wrong. +

DVD playback works, but it takes a long time until playback starts

This points to a region code problem. Some versions of libdvdcss can play + back DVDs from other regions than the RPC-2 DVD drive is set up for, + but this usually means a cryptographic attack (which takes time) has + to be used to access the DVD. +

You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: + http://linuxtv.org/download/dvd/dvd_disc_20000215_css.tar.gz + +

Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 + drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will + stay locked to the region you last set it up for. +

I have problems setting up my RPC-2 drive for the right region!

You can download a tool to set the region code of RPC-Drives here: + http://linuxtv.org/download/dvd/dvd_disc_20000215_css.tar.gz + +

Warning: Please be aware that the number of region code changes in RPC-2 + drives is limited (usually about 5 times), after that your drive will + stay locked to the region you last set it up for. +

Can I watch Video CDs (VCDs)? SVCDS ? CD-i?

xine supports VCD and SVCD playback out-of-the box. Similar to DVDs, + make sure you have a /dev/cdrom alias pointing + to your CDROM drive which you will use to play back the (S)VCD. +

At the moment, CD-i formats are not supported by xine. +

Do not try to mount the (S)VCD. Simply insert it into your CDROM drive + and hit the VCD autoplay button or start something like +
gxine VCD:// +
+ from the command line. +

Can I watch Quicktime (.mov, .mp4) files using xine?

Quicktime is just a system layer (container format) which can contain various + different audio and video formats. The system layer itself is fully supported + in xine. However, only very few typically used quicktime audio/video codecs + are natively supported yet. Luckily, if you are using a x86 compatible machine + (any recent PC hardware should do) you can install and use the original + Quicktime DLLs and watch most streams (trailers) that can be downloaded from the net. +

Possibly the most convenient way to get the Quicktime DLLs is to download + them from the mplayer website + http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/. + The package is called "QuickTime5 DLLs". Unpack it and move everything you find + inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them + anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll + have to set codec.win32_path in your + xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be + able to watch Quicktime trailers. +

Real Network files/streams

Can I watch Real (.rm, .ram) files using xine ?

The situation with real files and streams is pretty similar to the situation + with Quicktime Streams (see above). Most newer real audio and video formats + are only supported by using binary-only codecs which are available from + real networks but are not included in xine. +

One way to get these codecs is to download and install RealPlayer from + RealNetworks, for example in /usr/local/RealPlayer8 or + /opt/RealPlayer8. If you installed it in one of these + places, xine should automatically find and use the real binary codecs. + If it doesn't work, try to find out the exact path to where the real codecs + are installed on your system (look for a file named rv30.so.6.0 + which should reside in a directory called Codecs in the + directory where you have installed RealPlayer in) and set + codec.real_codecs_path in your xine config file + accordingly. +

What about (live) network streams (pnm://, rtsp:// style urls) ?

xine supports both pnm and rtsp streaming. However, digging out the actual + pnm/rtsp url can be tricky as they're often packed into heavy JavaScript and + HTML code on most websites. You can either use a combination of your + browser's "save source" function and wget or use a xine browser plugin + (currenlty the gxine frontend comes with a simple mozilla plugin, + for example). When you decided to dig out the url by hand don't get fooled + by the many redirectors that are often placed around the actual url. + Use wget to download any http://-style urls and use less to look inside + the downloaded .ra/.ram files where you will find the actual pnm/rtsp + url which can be opened using xine. +

Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv) files using xine?

While the container format (system layer) ASF (wmv is just an alias) + is fully supported in xine, for newer windows media 8 and 9 based streams + you'll need to install windows binary codecs (.DLLs). +

Possibly the most convenient way to get the windows DLLs is to download + them from the mplayer website + http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/. + The package is called "Win32 Codecpack". Unpack it and move everything you find + inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them + anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll + have to set codec.win32_path in your + xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be + able to watch windows media streams. +

Can I watch Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcast) using xine ?

At the time of this writing DVB support is a very new and experimental + feature in xine. The number of supported cards is pretty limited at the moment. + See doc/README.dvb (in the xine-lib tarball) for details. +

How do I play streams from STDIN?

Use something like: +
cat stream.mpg | gxine stdin:// +
+

How can I watch files with external AVI subtitles?

This is not supported in current xine 1.0.x releases (but it is being + actively worked on, so please be patient :) ). In xine 0.9.13 + this used to be: +
xine foo.avi%bar.sub +
+

Chapter 4. Running xine

I have a lot of dropped frames - what can I do?

Your hardware might be too slow for xine. Make sure you turn on all + speed optimizing options. A few things you should check: + +

first of all, run the xine-check script included in xine-lib + package (probably already installed in your system). + xine-check will report several of the most common problems + listed here. Sample output from xine-check: +
$ xine-check + Please be patient, this script may take a while to run... + [ good ] you're using Linux, doing specific tests + [ good ] looks like you have a /proc filesystem mounted. + [ good ] You seem to have a reasonable kernel version (2.4.18) + [ good ] intel compatible processor, checking MTRR support + [ good ] you have MTRR support and there are some ranges set. + [ good ] found the player at /usr/local/bin/xine + [ good ] /usr/local/bin/xine is in your PATH + [ good ] found /usr/local/bin/xine-config in your PATH + [ good ] plugin directory /usr/local/lib/xine/plugins exists. + [ good ] found input plugins + [ good ] found demux plugins + [ good ] found decoder plugins + [ good ] found video_out plugins + [ good ] found audio_out plugins + [ good ] skin directory /usr/local/share/xine/skins exists. + [ good ] found logo in /usr/local/share/xine/skins + [ good ] I even found some skins. + [ good ] /dev/cdrom points to /dev/hdc + [ good ] /dev/dvd points to /dev/hdc + [ good ] DMA is enabled for your DVD drive + [ good ] found xvinfo: X-Video Extension version 2.2 + [ good ] your Xv extension supports YUV overlays (improves MPEG performance) + [ good ] your Xv extension supports packed YUV overlays + [ good ] Xv ports: YUY2 YV12 I420 UYVY +
+

use a recent kernel which is optimized for your hardware +
use the latest gas/gcc +
close other applications (use a tool like "top" to find out + what applications are using up CPU power) +
if you are not using Xv, make sure your display is set up + to 16bpp, not 24 or higher (reduces memory bandwith) +
make sure the hard drive (or cdrom/dvd drive) which supplies the + video data is in DMA mode (if supported) +
On most linux-based systems, you can use hdparm to check this. + Example: +
hdparm /dev/hda + + ... + using_dma = 1 (on) + ... +
+
You can enable DMA mode with the following command: +
hdparm -d1 device_of_your_drive_that_supplies_video_data +
+
More information about this may be found here: + http://oreilly.linux.com/pub/a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html + +
xine needs high speed memory access which depends on your chip set. + Make sure you enable all speed-improving options. +
Especially the via apollo pro chipset is known to be quite weird, + (most of all on my gigabyte board). If you can't configure the ram + access thoroughly using the bios you might want to try some really + nasty tricks, as explained on (for example): +
http://www.overclockers.com/tips105/index03.asp +
This website centers around a windows-tool to tweak the chipset, you + can do the same on FreeBSD with pciconf. + On some linux distributions there are similar tools. +
a nice performance tuning tool can be found here: + http://powertweak.sourceforge.net +
enable MTRR support in your kernel. If you are still using XFree 3.x, + you'll have to tell the kernel yourself where the graphics memory is. + You'll find details about that in the linux dvd howto. +
If you're using XFree 4.x, enabling MTRR support in your kernel should + be enough. +
Try a cat /proc/mtrr - if the file exists and you find an entry + corresponding to the amount of graphics memory you have, everything + should be fine. +
set up and use raw devices for dvd access. +
Raw devices should be available in linux kernel 2.4.x and there are + patches for older kernels available from: + ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/sct/raw-io/ + +
To use raw devices, first connect a free raw device to your dvd + device, use something like: +
raw /dev/raw1 /dev/hdc +
+
then create a link named "rdvd" pointing to that raw device: +
raw /dev/raw1 /dev/hdc +
+

+ +

I have problems when using xine on FreeBSD, Solaris, ... !

Check out the the corresponding README files in the directory xine-ui/doc +

What is aalib? How do I use it in xine?

aalib is an ascii art library. xine comes with an aalib video output + plugin so you can watch movies in your xterm, on the console or on your + old vt100 - very cool ;> +

To use it make sure you have aalib installed correctly before you + configure/build xine-lib and xine-ui. In addition to the xine binary a + binary named aaxine should get built and installed. You can then use + something like: +
aacine foo.mpg +
+ to use aalib video output. +

What do all these ~/.xine/config entries mean?

You can find information about them in xine-ui/doc/README.config_en. +

Chapter 5. Audio related questions

What audio drivers does xine support? OSS? Alsa? Arts? Esd?

Currently xine support audio output via OSS (kernel audio drivers), + ALSA 0.9.x (ALSA 0.5.x is no longer supported), arts (KDE's sound daemon) + and esound (esd, gnome's sound daemon - not recommended because it has + serious issues with a/v sync). +

When I'm watching a movie, the sound effects ar much higher volume than the voices

Congratulations, you seem to have an original movie audio track there. +

Uhm. So you don't like it. Well, there are two things you can do: + +

You can enable xine's audio compressor. Most frontends have + a settings window and in that you'll find a slider for the + compressor setting. The values are percent values, so a + slider setting of 200 means that xine will double the volume + of silent parts of the movie (loud parts stay the same). +
If you have a dolby digital (AC3) soundtrack, you can try + to enable liba52's dynamic range compression setting +
codec.a52_dynrng:1 +
+ in your xine config file (or use some gui config dialog). +

+ +

When I play this stream, xine shows video but there's no audio!

Well, first try a different audio driver ( gxine -A oss , + gxine -A arts ...). +

If this problem only occurs with one specific stream, maybe switching to + a different audio channel (using the gui) helps. Some DVD streams have + audio on strange channels. +

If all this doesn't help, maybe you're missing an audio codec or you found + a bug. If you decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, + make sure to include all console output xine produced and also clearly + state what type of stream you tried to play back or, even better, make + a test stream available somewhere for developers to download and try. +

Can xine produce 4-/5-channel surround audio output?

Yep, it can do that using OSS or ALSA drivers, provided that the driver + supports it. On startup xine tells you what modes are supported by your + audio driver, e.g: +
audio_alsa_out : supported modes are mono stereo (4-channel not enabled + in xine config) (5-channel not enabled in xine config) (5.1-channel not + enabled in xine config) (a/52 and DTS pass-through not enabled in xine + config) +
+

On this machine 4-channel surround would be possible. However, since xine + cannot detect if there are actually speakers connected to the additional + channels, you'll have to activate that feature manually. +

You can do this either in the config dialog while xine is running (press + the config button on the xine panel and go to the AUDIO tab) or have it + the complicated way by editing the config file yourself which is located + in your home directory in .gxine/.xine: +
# 4-channel: + audio.four_channel:1 + + # 5-channel: + audio.five_channel:1 + + # 5.1-channel + audio.five_lfe_channel:0 +
+

What about ac3 output via spdif to an external ac3 decoder?

xine can do that too. Pretty much the same story as for 4-/5-channel + surround (see above). You can either use the config dialog or edit + the config file (~/.xine/config/~/.gxine/config) + yourself: +
audio.a52_pass_through:1 +
+

Changing the volume with the GUI control has not affect! What's up!?

Some xine drivers do not support volume changing although the GUI + will show the volume bar. Usually this is not xines fault: aRts C + API, for example, doesn't offer any volume property to applications. + Similarly, with ac3 pass through it is not possible to set the volume. +

Chapter 6. Video related questions

I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!

Probably your hardware is simply too slow - see above for some + hints on how to speed things up. +

How can I make xine use the Xv extension and what drivers do I need?

xine will normally use Xv by default if it is available. In some cases + you might need to choose Xv playback manually (when the ~/.xine/config + file for some reason says that you want to use XShm): +
xine -V Xv foo.mpg +
+

If this doesn't work for you, it may be possible that Xv is not present + on your system. +

First you need to install/use XFree 4.x. Once you got that you have to + make sure the XFree drivers you're using are supporting Xv on your + hardware. Here are some locations to look for suitable drivers: +
CARDS WITH OUT-OF-THE-BOX XV SUPPORT IN XFREE86 4.x: + + 3dfx (voodoo) (URL: ?) + i815 (URL: ?) + Matrox G200/G400 (URL: www.matrox.com) + NVidia (URL: www.nvidia.com) + Permedia 2/3 (URL: ?) + + CARDS WITH YET UNKNOWN STATUS: + + ATI cards (take a look at GATOS: www.linuxvideo.org/gatos/) + Savage (URL: www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html) +
+

Some parts of my X Desktop get transparent when xine plays the video!

Looks like some colors on your GUI match the colorkey Xv uses. You can + change the colorkey value to avoid this. There should be a line like: +
video.XV_COLORKEY:2110 +
+ in your ~/.xine/config file where you can change the color that's used + by xine for the video overlay. +

The aspect ratio of the video is wrong!

Try pressing "a" to change the aspect ratio +

What is the difference between discarded and skipped frames?

Sometimes xine will output a message like that: +
200 frames delivered, XX frames skipped, YY frames discarded +
+

The difference between these counters is a little subtle for the non + developer. There are two threads running in order to display video: + the decoder thread will deliver frames to the video output thread. + The later is responsible for scheduling the frames to be displayed at + the right time. +

If your system can't keep up with decoding requirements, decoder will + deliver overdue frames. Imagine if it finished decoding the frame + tagged for displaying at 11:30 but xine clock marks 11:31. When this + situation is detected, xine will try to skip decoding a few frames + to recover. Not every decoder may support this feature. +

When the frame is decoded to be show somewhere in future but the + output thread doesn't get scheduled in time by the operating system + to complete the operation, the frame is discarded. One cause might + be the disk access operation, which may halt the system for a few + miliseconds without DMA. See section above. +

Note that if a decoder can't skip frames for some reason, you would + never see frames skipped (they would be all discarded). +

Chapter 7. Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do

Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!

You can select the audio driver using the -A option. So try: +
xine -A null +
+ If you have ALSA drivers installed, try: +
xine -A alsa +
+ If you run ESD (not recommended), try: +
xine -A esd +
+ If you run artsd, try: +
xine -A arts +
+

"no video port found"

You got the Xv extension, but your video card driver doesn't support it. + First try to find a driver that does support Xv on your hardware (check + your graphics card vendor). If your driver has Xv support but you can't + get it working, try at a lower resolution (1024x768 is enough even for + anamorphic mpeg-2). +

If all that fails, you can still use plain X11/XShm: +
gxine -V XShm foo.vob +
+

Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)

You probably don't have /dev/dvd (check that). If so, simply create a + link /dev/dvd that points to your DVD device. Something like... +
cd /dev + ln -s hdc dvd +
+ ...should do the job. +

"demux error! 00 00 00 (should be 0x000001)"

Probably xine can't access your input source. Most commonly this happens + when you're trying to play locked/encrypted DVDs. Remember that xine + can't play such DVDs out-of-the box for legal reasons (see above). +

If it is legal where you life, you can try to install libdvdcss. Once + you have done that and re-start xine, it should automatically detect + and use it to play back encrypted DVDs. +

Another reason could be that your (RPC-2) DVD drive isn't set up + for the right region (see above). +

"audio driver 'oss' failed, using null driver instead"

First of all, make sure that your OSS Audio drivers are working (i.e. + you can play music with other software). Maybe you're using alsa? + If so, try gxine -A alsa to see if this helps. +

The most common reason for oss not working is that some other program is accesing + your audio device. If you're using linux, the command fuser /dev/dsp + should give you the PID of the process. +

If you are using GNOME, chances are that this is caused by ESD. Now you + have two possibilities. Either deactivate ESD (temporarily) by right + clicking on the sound monitor applet and selecting "Place Esound in + standby" or just kill it. Then xine will use OSS audio output. The other + method is to make xine use ESD for audio output with: +
gxine -A esd +
+ This may result in worse playback - exact syncronization is not possible + with esd, so using oss should be preferred. +

If you are using KDE, there is the possibility that the aRts sound + daemon is currently running and thus blocking your sound device. You + can check that by starting the aRts control (in your KDE menu it should + be under Multimedia). If it is running, you can either use the aRts + audio output plugin: +
gxine -A arts +
+ Or you suspend the aRts daemon by checking the appropriate option in + your aRts control. (recommended) +

Newer versions of arts have an auto-suspend mode - this can lead to + some nondeterministic behaviour of xine if it is set up to use + the audio device directly. Using arts is recommended in that case, + however you will loose the ability to do four/five channel audio output. +

video_out: throwing away image with pts xxx because it's too old

This is a performance related problem. + + If you have a fast computer and this message shows from time to + time playing dvd/cdrom, it's very likely that your drive is not + DMA enabled. +

"No video plugin available to decode 'xxxxxx'."

You have tried to play a stream using a unknown or unhandled codec. + Possibly the file uses some obscure proprietary format and no + information is available on how to decode it. +

If you're on an x86 platform (e.g. PC hardware) you might want to + try installing binary-only windows medial, real networks and + quicktime codecs (see above). +

"w32codec: decoder failed to start. Is 'xxxxxx' installed?"

You probably don't have the win32 dll needed to decode this file. +

xine just crashed on me - i didn't get any error message

OK, yes, that shouldn't happen and you're upset. We can understand that. + But, to help you and of course to fix this, we need some information. + So, let's go through the checklist and maybe prepare a nice bug report + for the xine-user mailing list: +

did xine really crash (segfault) or did it hang (deadlock) ? +
can you reproduce the bug? (e.g. do you remember what you + did and when you do it again it crashes again?) +
check the console output (and include it in a bug report), maybe earlier + there is some output that points to the problem. +
Your X server just froze on you? unfortunately that's a know problem + with some chipsets and drivers (most commonly Savage chipsets) when + using Xv. You might want to try running gxine -V XShm + to see if the problem is related to the Xv driver. This will unfortunately + be much slower, as lots of things are now done + in software instead of hardware scaling/colour space conversion. +
Maybe at the time you read this, there's an XFree upgrade which fixes + this for the Savage driver. If that works for you, please notify the xine crew at + < xine-user@lists.sf.net >, so they can update this FAQ! +
Even though we try to make each release as bug free as possible, xine is + still under heavy development (nice excuse, isn't it? *grin*). +
Please take a look at our bug report form which is located in the xine-lib + package (doc/bug_report_form). Fill it out accordingly and sent it to our + user mailing list: <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net> +
Thanks for taking the time to help improve xine. +