What's the status of basic multimedia/codecs support in FreeBSD?

Agi93 · #1 February 16th, 2010, 00:09

FreeBSD's magical allure is coming to haunt me again. I really want to enjoy all the juicy goodness of ZFS, jails, and more UNIX-ness that I'm missing in Linux right now. The main things that are holding me back are hardware support and multimedia, and the former isn't too bad on my computer.

What I need to know is how far multimedia support is in FreeBSD. Are there ports for all the codecs and plugins I need to make my FreeBSD system as web- and media-ready as a Windows or Macintosh computer? I just need to be able to:

-Play DVDs (I'm pretty sure libdvdcss, libdvdnav, libdvdplay, and libdvdread are in ports, so there should be no problem here)

-Play and rip audio CDs (I found ripping in the handbook; does playing work out of the box?)

-View flash content on the web (Flawlessly. That means no memory leaking, skipping, crashing, frequent process killing, and all that garbage)
This includes:
--YouTube
--Hulu
--Flash games
--Flash-heavy websites (a lot of company sites like to add glitter and gloss for marketing purposes, but sometimes one cannot even access the site if flash does not work)

-Use java content on the web (I've seen how the handbook explains downloading some files, dropping them in /usr/ports/distfiles and running some diablo ports, so I should be good to go here).

-Stream Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Video (.wma and .wmv, respectively) from the internet either right in the browser or have a media player automatically open

-Watch the movie trailers on apple.com. Right now, this doesn't even work in Linux because the website is looking for a user agent of Quicktime/7.6.2, but there are scripts available to download these videos and play them. There is also an extension for firefox that allows changing of user agents on a per-domain basis (on that topic, can I install extensions from the add-on website normally in firefox?). All in all, this means I need to be able to play .mov files.

-Use all the patented code and codecs to play pretty much any media file format (with VLC or MPlayer or something)

Is it possible to accomplish all of this? I've seen a lot of problems around these forums with flash, even under Linux compatibility (hopefully they're fixed now!). I tried googling about codecs, and I found a port called win32-codecs, but a lot of it looks out of date or hampered by restrictions because of patent issues. Is this port any good?

I also googled for some guides about multimedia on FreeBSD, but they just say "Install VLC", "Install xine", etc. There is no talk about codecs or support for specific formats. This is odd, unless these codecs are included within these ports somehow.

The handbook covers some of this, which is great, but there are a few things I would like to know from the community here, like how well flash and java actually work at this point in time and if FreeBSD supports all the multimedia codecs Linux does. I've heard lots of FUD in the Linux community about FreeBSD's multimedia not being so up to par because of frequent crashes, old versions, and incompatibility, but I think (and hope) some or all of these assumptions might be obsolete or completely untrue.

Thanks in advance for any help.

aragon · #2 February 16th, 2010, 02:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

Are there ports for all the codecs and plugins I need to make my FreeBSD system as web- and media-ready as a Windows or Macintosh computer?

Pretty much all of the codecs are available, but certain delivery systems are kludgy (flash). Missing codecs in particular are the win32 codecs under AMD64 architecture, so you need to run i386 if WMV10 is important to you (not much content uses it with h.264 so popular).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Play DVDs (I'm pretty sure libdvdcss, libdvdnav, libdvdplay, and libdvdread are in ports, so there should be no problem here)

Yup, no prob.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Play and rip audio CDs (I found ripping in the handbook; does playing work out of the box?)

I haven't found anything that plays CDs digitally. Ripping is possible via audio/cdparanoia, but it's not quite as good as Exact Audio Copy.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-View flash content on the web (Flawlessly. That means no memory leaking, skipping, crashing, frequent process killing, and all that garbage)

As usual, Flash support on any free OS sucks, including FreeBSD. Crashy and bloated, but the linux flash player works under emulation (some say better than under linux itself). There's also graphics/gnash which I find stabler, but less compatible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Use java content on the web (I've seen how the handbook explains downloading some files, dropping them in /usr/ports/distfiles and running some diablo ports, so I should be good to go here).

This works well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Stream Windows Media Audio and Windows Media Video (.wma and .wmv, respectively) from the internet either right in the browser or have a media player automatically open

I don't know about the auto stuff, but video streaming works well with many of the media players (vlc, mplayer, etc.).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Watch the movie trailers on apple.com. Right now, this doesn't even work in Linux because the website is looking for a user agent of Quicktime/7.6.2, but there are scripts available to download these videos and play them. There is also an extension for firefox that allows changing of user agents on a per-domain basis (on that topic, can I install extensions from the add-on website normally in firefox?). All in all, this means I need to be able to play .mov files.

I just paste the mov link into my media player.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Use all the patented code and codecs to play pretty much any media file format (with VLC or MPlayer or something)

The only codec I haven't been able to play is WMV10 because I run AMD64. (see above)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

I also googled for some guides about multimedia on FreeBSD, but they just say "Install VLC", "Install xine", etc. There is no talk about codecs or support for specific formats. This is odd, unless these codecs are included within these ports somehow.

Well, I run mplayer and the port lets you select what codec ports to install along with the mplayer port.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

I've heard lots of FUD in the Linux community about FreeBSD's multimedia not being so up to par because of frequent crashes, old versions, and incompatibility, but I think (and hope) some or all of these assumptions might be obsolete or completely untrue.

FreeBSD keeps up perfectly fine. If you're just playing and/or transcoding videos I doubt linux will be any better. Real time editing of videos is another story.

As a side note, VirtualBox works great on FreeBSD.

Agi93 · #3 February 16th, 2010, 03:08

Thanks for such a complete post, aragon. It's great to hear so much multimedia works on FreeBSD. I also plan to install AMD64, so it's sad to hear WMV10 doesn't work. The only site I really use it on has links to video streams that actually download a .asx file, which VLC media player then opens and connects to (that's how I do it on my Mac). The only reason I think it's wmv is because the icons on the links are those of Windows Media Player, but they might have just put those there for familiarity for Windows users. Could you please go to mta.tv and click on one of the links that has the big WMP Play button on it to see if the video comes up?

About flash, I'll be happy if it works as well as it does in Linux (which I would assume so since I plan to use the linux compatibility layer). As long as I don't have to go through a bunch of nonsense every time I run into a flash website, I'll be alright with it.

I don't do any media editing, so there's no problem there.

Lastly, for playing audio CDs, is it only a matter of finding an app that does it, or are you saying you don't know how to make it work with the proper codecs?

aragon · #4 February 16th, 2010, 03:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

Could you please go to mta.tv and click on one of the links that has the big WMP Play button on it to see if the video comes up?

My mplayer plays the MTA1 300k stream no problem. It's WMV9.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

Lastly, for playing audio CDs, is it only a matter of finding an app that does it, or are you saying you don't know how to make it work with the proper codecs?

It's probably just a matter of finding an app. It's not a priority for me because I don't bother with CD audio anymore. All my music is streamed, downloaded or ripped from CDs and played from the hard drive.

Agi93 · #5 February 16th, 2010, 03:24

Beautiful! Once I get some spare time (probably next weekend), I'm definitely installing FreeBSD again. Yay!

Agi93 · #6 February 16th, 2010, 03:40

Oh yea, I forgot to ask: Which firefox port is the correct one for the latest stable version? There are so many version-specific ports that I'm not sure which one I should use. firefox-devel seems to be 3.6, but isn't this the unstable development branch?

sixtydoses · #7 February 16th, 2010, 04:29

Guess you wouldn't want to use Firefox 3.6.

From /usr/ports/UPDATING:

Quote:

20100207:
<snip>

The Java plugin will not work with Firefox 3.6. If you need Java in your
browser, please use www/firefox35 instead.

**phoenix** · #8 February 16th, 2010, 05:10

www/firefox35
That will install Firefox 3.5.7, and will only update to 3.5.x versions.

www/firefox is Firefox 3.6.

richardpl · #9 February 16th, 2010, 12:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-Play and rip audio CDs (I found ripping in the handbook; does playing work out of the box?)

Playing audio CDs works just fine for me on latest svn mplayer version, version from ports is for museum.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Agi93

-View flash content on the web (Flawlessly. That means no memory leaking, skipping, crashing, frequent process killing, and all that garbage)
This includes:
--YouTube
--Hulu
--Flash games
--Flash-heavy websites (a lot of company sites like to add glitter and gloss for marketing purposes, but sometimes one cannot even access the site if flash does not work)

youtube-dl works just fine, for other cases I use wine.

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The Following User Says Thank You to aragon For This Useful Post:
Agi93 (February 16th, 2010)