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User documentation

HOWTO

Henri <henri@via.ecp.fr> wrote a VideoLAN-HOWTO. It may be outdated since it only covered the stable version, but can be found here just in case.

Frequently Asked Questions

These questions are compiled by Sam <sam@zoy.org>.

How do I...

How do I read a DVD ? The commandline is like: vlc dvd:/dev/dvd.

How do I read an encrypted DVD ? It's exactly the same as for a normal DVD. You will need write access to /dev/dvd, because of the key negociation.

How do I switch to hardware acceleration ? Press 'y' in the video output window. You need to have SDL output.

How do I switch to full screen display ? Press 'f' in the video output window. You need to have SDL output.

How do I hide the mouse cursor ? Press the middle mouse button.

How do I read mp3s ? You can't yet. vlc does not support non-system MPEG files.

How do I read MPEG movies with no sound ? You can't yet. vlc does not support non-system MPEG files.

How do I use vlc if I don't want to install Gnome and all this #@!£% *$@&§% !@# bloat ? Just wait for us to write the appropriate output modules. Or do it yourself.

Compiling and Installing

The vlc complains about a missing plugins.h ! plugins.h was replaced by a more powerful API in modules.h, but not all plugins have been ported yet. Try to disable flags when launching ./configure.

I get a "can't find -ldb" error ! Install libdb2-dev or similar package.

I can't compile the vlc ! Try to find out if you have all required libraries, and the corresponding -devel packages installed. The current unstable version of vlc needs the Gnome and SDL libraries.

Troubleshooting

The vlc segfaults when trying to load 3 DVDs at the same time with the alsa drivers and framebuffer output ! OK. Calm down. Try to see where the problem may come from. For instance, try to launch the vlc alone, without any options. Try the --warn 0 option to add verbosity and see what the problem may be. If it doesn't even work here, you can be sure it's not a DVD problem. But if it works, then you can try to open the DVD. Also think about --noaudio and --video that completely disable audio or video in the case of a faulty video output or audio output driver. Hope this can help.

The vlc opens the video output window but then hangs ! And ^C doesn't work ! This may be due to the Gnome interface blocking while trying to connect to Esound. This is a bug in Gnome. To bypass it, try to launch esd and then launch the vlc again.

The vlc segfaults right at the beginning ! Interesting. This is probably a bug. Report it to vlc-devel and try to be as precise as possible regarding your CPU, hardware, distribution, and installed libraries.

The vlc segfaults after a while ! Interesting. This is probably a bug. Report it to vlc-devel and try to be as precise as possible regarding your CPU, hardware, distribution, and installed libraries.

I can't read half of my DVDs ! I have the latest 2.4.1 kernel, it should work, I want my money back ! 2.4.1 kernels seem to have a bug in the IDE CDRom driver. Try again with a 2.4.0 kernel before reporting this as a bug.

When asking to read a DVD, the vlc starts and does nothing ! Maybe it is spending some time cracking the CSS key. Wait a bit.

When asking to read a DVD, it jumps at the middle of the movie ! This is a known bug and is going to be fixed.

I get sound but no image ! This may be due to a bug in RedHat's gcc 2.96. Try to launch vlc with option --yuv yuv to see if it works better.

The sound is jerky It may be a bug. Try the esd.so audio output plugin to see if it works better. If not, then report it as a bug.

The sound does *click* when jumping around in a file It is quite hard to prevent this, but we are going to work on it.

The future

Will VideoLAN support ogg/Vorbis ? Yes.

Will VideoLAN support VCDs ? Yes.

Will VideoLAN support RTP ? Probably.

Will VideoLAN have cool skins and themes ? Probably not. We are not the skin'n'theme kind of guys. But if you fancy doing it, take the Gnome interface plugin and modify it so that it uses custom pixmapped widgets.

Will VideoLAN support DivX ? No. DivX is not an open standard, and we have no intention of using the crap DLL hack other players are using, which prevents properly debugging an application. Besides, it's x86-only.


VideoLAN  -  Paris, France  -  14 February 2001 valid XHTML 1.0 Strict & CSS