BASIC media playback ONLY

[tommot82]

I want to build a rig which displays media!

THATS IT!!!!!

i dont need it to do ANYTHING else just display short mpegs and still images in a slide show.

I would like to be able to remotely update the images/movies featured in the slide show via a network connection as well.

Now i am a Noob to linux, the only experience i have is with freeBSD, but i am thinking it will be the way to go for this project.

I literally want to be able to boot the system and automaticaly run the slideshow. I have been peeking at gentoo but i need a little shove in the right direction as to what OS i should use and how i could go about doing this. Any ideas?????

[KarrottoP]

I would say you need a line something like this in your xinitrc startup script:
mplayer -loop 0 /path/to/mpeg

you could have sshd and sftpd connections available so you could easily remotely access the box and add files to it, and work in the machine from a remote location (say with putty in windows for ssh and a ftp client of your choosing)

[ArgPirate]

how about this http://projects.sault.org/mebox/

[knute]

Or this: http://www.geexbox.org/en/index.html

[je_fro]

mythtv may be what you're looking for too...it's a nice video player. as is mplayer.

[psych-major]

Here's one (http://movix.sourceforge.net/) that you can embed on a media cd, making it bootable and viewable on any PC you encounter.

[tommot82]

Thanks guys. I have only had a quick peek at those suggested, but i will have to sit down and have a serious look at the weekend.

As i said before i am an extreme Noob to linux, so its going to take me a while to sift through the blurb and decide exactly what i need.

I am sure it will be simple enough. I will want the booting "pc" to ONLY ever display the media files (mpegs/jpegs) in a slideshow, and never give the user of the booting pc ANY control over what is displayed. I hope to be able to update the displayed media remotely.

Thanks for all your help, i have a feeling i will be asking for more from you guys ;)

[tommot82]

ok, i have had a bit more of a chance to take a look and it seems that mplayer is the most likely to be used (it looks like the most "basic") as i dont want to give the user of this system ANY control. Infact the system will not have a keyboard/mouse at all, so i will just want it to play the media automatically.

I need to test a few of these things out! what do you suggest is the best OS distribution to use? I think i have an old P2 lying around somewhere so i wont have to bother dual booting. Any suggestions?

[KarrottoP]

Thats a loaded question, but giving your experience with linux I think I can make a suggestion:

Use an easy linux distro for a noob...
Fedora for a free system
Redhat or Suse for a supported and stable system (maybe check out mandrake)

Its all personal opinion (and believe me there are many opinions)

[IsaacKuo]

I need to test a few of these things out! what do you suggest is the best OS distribution to use? I think i have an old P2 lying around somewhere so i wont have to bother dual booting. Any suggestions?

While Gentoo would be the most BSD-like, I'm guessing you wouldn't want to spend endless hours waiting for everything to compile on an old P2. My personal preference would be Debian--its package management system is excellent and the packages are binary so you don't have to wait for endless P2 compile times.

However, Debian is best if you have a high speed internet connection. If not, then a Debian based live-CD distribution like MepisLite or Kanotix may be better.

Hmm...maybe MepisLite is best for you. I'm not sure, but I think it comes with mplayer. Mplayer is NOT in the default Debian repositories, but it is in unofficial repositories.

[tommot82]

ok, so i am going to have a go at putting all this together tomorrow! i have one question left (for the time being ;) ). If i want to update the media files i am playing back, and i want to update them via FTP, whats the best way.

I run an FTP server application in windows for this task, but i am wondering what the best way to do this in linux is??

Is there an FTP server built into any free distributions by any chance :D

cheers for all the help so far guys, much appreciated. As i said i will be putting it all together tomorrow so i will let you know how i get on.

[je_fro]

heh..it's all free. the only catch is that you are expected to intelligently report bugs, if you find any.
as for a linux ftp client, I like gFTP.
One other word of advice...the people who have the hardest time using linux are so called "wondows experts". Forget everything you know about windows when you are in GNU/Linux.

[tommot82]

cheers je_fro. I will take the advice onboard. But i am after an FTP server to run on the box (i think!!!). I want to be able to ftp into the linux boxso i am presuming i will need to run an FTP server on the linux box. I was just wondering if that was embedded in the OS by any chance

[knute]

cheers je_fro. I will take the advice onboard. But i am after an FTP server to run on the box (i think!!!). I want to be able to ftp into the linux boxso i am presuming i will need to run an FTP server on the linux box. I was just wondering if that was embedded in the OS by any chance

LOL

Tom,

There are tons of servers that are available in linux. Most people have more servers running than they actually use! :eek:

You would probably be better running ssh than ftp though. (openssh or something), then you can use sftp, and have a secure connection to log in, rather than an open connection that is easier to get into.

HTH

[IsaacKuo]

I think most major linux distributions ship with a free open source ftp server, including Debian. It's not something you necessarily have to add on later, but I'm not positive about that. One which looks good is: http://vsftpd.beasts.org/

In Debian, you'd install vsftpd with the command:

apt-get install vsftpd

Run that command as root (i.e. using su).

[tommot82]

:p :p :p :p

oops

i just did a better google than last i did last night and found loads!!! Sorry out that one

thanks for the reply about ssh, i will take a look.

struggling to decide on a distribution atm, but i think i am gonna give fedora a try

thanks again
tom

[tommot82]

ok spet about 2 hours reading about some of the differant distributions and i am STILL stuck as to which to use.

They all seem massive, and since i only want some very basic features i was hoping for a nice LITE version.

mepisLite is ticking the most boxes atm, but i can work out what i need to download atm :blush:

i know i need the i386 version (its being installed on a P2) but the rest is a bit confusing to me. public release, maintenance release, traveller disc, :s :s

also the list of mirrors HERE (http://www.mepis.org/node/1462) all seem to point to "simplyMepis" and not "mepisLite"?????????

[IsaacKuo]

I wish I could be more help--I've never used mepisLite, just full simplyMepis. By default, it's too bloated for my tastes (struggles a LOT on a system with only 128mbytes).

My personal choice for this project is Debian. The minimal FTP install lets me install only what I want and little else. It's not quite as lean as a minimal Linux-From-Scratch or Slackware install, but a LOT easier to learn.

However, I hesitate recommending it to you because I've had some difficulties installing mplayer in the past. I gather that most people have no trouble installing mplayer. I had difficulty once, and didn't bother trying again ever since then. I just use xine based media players. Unlike mplayer, xine is in the standard Debian software repositories.

Note that both mplayer and xine have evolved into modular systems with separate modules for the player engine backends and the gui/non-gui user interface frontends. There are minimal remote-controllable frontends for both mplayer and xine. (By remote-controllable, I mean controllable by another program/script.)

I'm not sure I understand why you need to eliminate user control. It sounds like this is for a slideshow picture display appliance, which wouldn't have any keyboard or mouse anyway. I'd think that any media player with a full screen command line switch and the option to quit on end of file playback would work. For example, part of the script could be:

...find next filename and put it in $FILENAME...
xine -f $FILENAME
...repeat...

You'd need to set up xine to quit on end of file, but that only needs to be done once. Actually, I'm pretty sure xine has a switch for starting in fullscreen by default also, so the "-f" switch is not even needed.

Am I missing something?

[tommot82]

thanks IsaacKuo,

cheers for that. I will trust your experience and try it all with debian.

You were spot on with the yoiur guess, it is for a slideshow picture display appliance ;) hence i ONLY need ot to boot to the media player and repeat loop through all media files (jpegs and mpegs) in a perticular directory.

Cheers for the advice. I am off to myself a copy of debian :D

[IsaacKuo]

BTW, I just installed mplayer on my Debian Stable workstation with no problems whatsoever. The steps I took:

1. Inserted the following line into /etc/apt/sources.list

deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ stable main

2. Ran "apt-get update"

3. Ran "apt-get install mplayer-nogui"

That was it! This installs mplayer from an unofficial software repository.

I didn't need to install "w32codecs" because I had already manually installed them for my xine player. You'll probably want to install it using apt-get with the command "apt-get install w32codecs".

Oh, in order to play a video clip in fullscreen mode with mplayer, use:

mplayer -fs videoclip.avi

This will play the clip in fullscreen mode and then quit when it's done.

Hope this helps...