Video playback not working anymore on ubuntu 14.04

[Beuh]

Hi,

I have installed ubuntu 14.04 on my new computer. I have a presentation that works perfectly under okular, with video playback, loop and showcontrols. Since okular uses gstreamer and libpoppler fort playing videos in the PDF, it should work the same with pdfpc.

For some reason, it does not play in pdfpc. I have the latest github version installed, but it keeps saying me that my gstreamer installation is missing a plugin (I will update later with the exact error), which is not true since it plays in totem and in okular.

Any ideas ?

[einhander]

I think okular uses gstreamer-1.0, but pdfpc uses gstramer-0.10.

[Beuh]

Yes, maybe ... but both are installed on the system, with the dev libs as well.

Could it be that there is a conflict ?

[andybarry]

Did you resolve this? Updates to my instructions would be good if needed: http://abarry.org/the-new-complete-guide-to-embedded-videos-in-beamer-under-linux/

[emigdioz]

It doesn't work for me as well. Andy, although the guide is nice, it will better if you update it for which library/version applies and what specific setup are you using in order to replicate it, since now that people are using newer versions for Ubuntu/Kubuntu (14.10/15.04) it doesn't work. I'm really eager to make it work since I really love pdfpc.

[andybarry]

Hmm, yes this is now not working for me as well. If you find a good solution, let me know and I'll update the guide. If I get to it and figure it out, I'll let you know.

[rschroll]

I've noticed that the problem only occurs on some movies, and even then the audio still works. It appears to be some missing video codec, but I can't figure out which it is or where to get it.

Since GStreamer 0.10 is getting pretty old, I tried updating the code to use GStreamer 1.0. You can find the branch here: https://github.com/rschroll/pdfpc/tree/gst1.0. It seems to mostly work, but there is some weirdness when the aspect ratio of the movie doesn't match the aspect ratio of the display rectangle. In most cases, that won't be an issue.

[emigdioz]

Thanks, I'll try it myself. If the only issue is the mismatch rectangle, it's definetly not a deal breaker

[andybarry]

@rschroll: perhaps we should talk about making a fork / maintaining pdfpc ourselves. I'm hesitant to commit to maintaining it by myself, but if you wanted to co-maintain it (assuming @davvil doesn't want to pick it up again) I'd be up for it. There's a bunch of pull requests waiting to go forward that look pretty good. Making a new release that included video playback would also be high on my list.

Thoughts?

[Beuh]

Hi all,

I'm no hardcore programmer, and don't have much free time, but I really love that software, so I'd also be glad to participate if some momentum is again there on the development :)

First off, I'll try the gstreamer-1.0 port and let you know how it works on my computer !

[emigdioz]

Well, I compiled gstreamer-1.0 fork with no luck. I'm still getting message (pdfpc:7531): CRITICAL **: pdfpc_view_behaviour_pdf_link_implementation_on_clicked_external_command: assertion 'arguments != NULL' failed Since I saw same error in other users I know I'm not alone on this. @andybarry I agree with you, and whatever you decide, I'm in

[Beuh]

Hey,

After quick testing, here is where I am :

Compiling is OK, though I had to mess around a bit with valac version in order to get around the gtk-2.0 errors

Playback of videos still doesn't work with the fork. I get the following error on the console output whenever I click on a video that is playing well in okular (error message might not be exact, it's a translation from French) :

Gstreamer error : Your GStreamer installation is missing a plugin Gstreamer error : GStreamer encountered a general stream error

Am I missing something ?

[rschroll]

@Beuh: In my experience, cmake is remarkable stupid about realizing that CMakeList files have changed (as they have in my branch). My first guess is that you're still compiling against gstreamer 0.10.
Before we go further, can you try building in a new, empty directory and seeing if that works any better.

@emigdioz: pdfpc.View.Behaviour.PdfLink.Implementation was removed in June 2012. I'm not sure how you're getting it to give a critical error at this point (though I am impressed!), so please try a clean build directory.

@andybarry: I've considered doing that myself, but it always seemed like too much work. But if you (and others, potentially) are interested in helping out, it'd be nice to not let this die.

My worry, though, is that the code needs some serious updating. We really ought to move to GTK3, so that we can use modern valacs, but that will require changes in how bitmaps are handled. And quite of lot of pdfpc is handling bitmaps.

Before we do anything, though, let's give @davvil another day or two to register any objections.

[andybarry]

@rschroll: sounds good. Let's see if @davvil says hi and then think about moving forward. I agree, modern valacs are on the list and likely not the most pleasent thing to work through. And since I'm thinking about my wishlist anyway, we should move prerendering out of the GUI thread.

[Beuh]

@rschroll build tried in a fresh git clone from your fork ... I'll look at the cmake output to see which gstreamer is there

[rschroll]

I've created a project for us to collaborate on pdfpc. I describe it in this bug report: pdfpc/pdfpc#1. Please comment there with any thoughts about this. Right now, @davvil, @andybarry, and I are in change, but if you're interested in joining, please say so!