xine - A Free Video Player - FAQ
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FAQ

The xine engine FAQ


Table of Contents
General questions about xine and this document
What is the xine engine?
What's the aim and scope of this text?
My question is not yet covered here - where can I ask for help?
How do I pronounce "xine"?
What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gnome-xine, ... modules in cvs for?
Where and how do I get the latest development version?
Why is gxine's CVS module named "gnome-xine"?
Where can I find pre-compiled binaries, e.g. RPMs?
Building and installing xine from source
What do I need to compile everything properly?
How do I compile xine?
Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine)
Making your own .deb packages (xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine)
Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?
Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon™) available? Can I build them?
Build problems: xine engine (xine-lib)
Build problems in frontends (gxine/xine-ui/...)
Can I install xine in my home directory (without being root)?
How to compile xine for Windows?
Playback of various stream types
DVD Playback with xine
Can I watch Video CDs (VCDs)? SVCDS ? CD-i?
Can I watch Quicktime (.mov, .mp4) files using xine?
Real Network files/streams
Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv/.wma) files using xine?
Can I watch Digital TV (Digital Video Broadcast) using xine?
How do I play streams from STDIN?
How can I watch files with external AVI subtitles?
Running xine
I have a lot of dropped frames - what can I do?
Oki, xine doesn't drop frames now but video output still is not really smooth!
I have problems when using xine on FreeBSD, Solaris, ... !
What is aalib? How do I use it in xine?
Does xine support my dxr3 / hollywood+ card?
Audio related questions
What audio drivers does xine support? OSS? Alsa? Arts? Esd?
When I'm watching a movie, the sound effects are much higher in volume than the voices!
When I play this stream, xine shows video but there's no audio!
Can xine produce 4-/5-channel surround audio output?
What about ac3 output via spdif to an external ac3 decoder?
Getting SPDIF output from a SBLive 5.1 using OSS drivers
Changing the volume with the GUI control has no effect! What's up!?
Audio is stuttering and i see a lot of "metronom: fixing sound card drift by -2115 pts" on the console output
xine seems to lose sound arbitrarily during playback, especially with DVDs
Video related questions
I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!
I only see a blue (or green or black) video image most of the time.
The image looks strange, it is shifted, cropped or shows weird lines!
How can I make xine use the Xv extension and what drivers do I need?
Some parts of my X Desktop get transparent when xine plays the video!
The aspect ratio of the video is wrong!
What is the difference between discarded and skipped frames?
My xine is runing in black and white! / I only get a grey video output!
Which is the best video driver to use?
OSD and overlay related questions
What is this "unscaled" OSD about?
I can't see the OSD or it leaves a black box over the image!
Why colours of overlays/subtitles seem to be "leaking"?
Why external subtitles look so ugly?
Why subtitles can't be displayed outside the video?
What kinds of subtitle fonts does xine use?
How to create own xine subtitle fonts?
Encoding of external subtitles is bad. What is wrong?
Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do
Starting xine crashes X, I am logged out of my desktop!
Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!
"no video port found"
"Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)"
My drive doesn't work and the kernel says "status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }"
"demux error! 00 00 00 (should be 0x000001)"
"audio driver 'oss' failed, using null driver instead"
"video_out: throwing away image with pts xxx because it's too old"
"No video plugin available to decode 'xxxxxx'."
"w32codec: decoder failed to start. Is 'xxxxxx' installed?"
xine just crashed on me - i didn't get any error message

General questions about xine and this document

What is the xine engine?

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.

Since there are several frontends for the xine library available, this document has a problem when it comes to examples. The two most common frontends xine-ui and gxine are mixed in command line examples throughout this FAQ. When you use a different frontend, some of these will not work for you. The filename of the config file also varies amongst frontends. If you get confused, I recommend you try with one of xine-ui or gxine.


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 usually 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 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: 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.


How do I pronounce "xine"?

As long as people know what you are talking about, you are free to pronounce it the way you like, but the official pronounciation is [ksi:n], like the name "Maxine" with the "Ma" removed.


What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gnome-xine, ... 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 basic 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 kaffeine, sinek and totem develop additional frontends. In the future you will likely see more and different types of applications 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 are: 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 and for others who know why they use it.

To check out xine-modules from CVS, first do this:
   cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xine.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login
The password is empty, just press Enter.

Then, to check out individual modules (e.g. xine-lib or xine-ui):
   cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@xine.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co <modulename>

gxine's primary repository is at http://zap.tartarus.org/~ds/hg/gxine/. Its CVS module is updated from this from time to time. To check out the source:
   hg clone http://zap.tartarus.org/~ds/hg/gxine/ gxine


Why is gxine's CVS module named "gnome-xine"?

Historical reasons: gxine was originally named gnome-xine.


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 or use their package search tools for further info. You can also find links to third parties providing xine RPMs on the xine homepage at http://xinehq.de/index.php/releases.

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


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 is 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 GTK2 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. Most notably, if you want to see any video on your X11 desktop (and that's what you're here for, isn't it?), you need the X developer packages as well.

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 where it will be visible for all users. You need root privileges to do this on most systems.

After unpacking xine-lib, issue:
   ./configure
   make install

Make sure your /etc/ld.so.conf contains /usr/local/lib and continue with:
   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 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.
   ./autogen.sh [-> *only* if you checked your sources out of CVS]
   ./configure
   make
   make install


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

Basically you will only have to issue one command, if you have just downloaded a source tarball from our web site:
   rpmbuild -ta <THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_SOURCE_TAR_BALL>
(Older versions of RPM use rpm instead of rpmbuild.)

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 something like /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 rpmbuild -ta command above:
   ./autogen.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.


Making your own .deb packages (xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine)

You'll need a CVS or HG snapshot tarball or source checked out from the repository.

First, make sure that the "devscripts" package is installed. You'll then need the following commands (the first one isn't needed unless you're using a snapshot tarball):
   tar xzf <PACKAGE-VER.tar.gz>
   cd <PACKAGE-VER>
   ./autogen.sh noconfig
   debuild binary
     
(If debuild complains about unmet dependencies, then install them using aptitude install <PACKAGES> (as root) then re-run debuild binary.

Once the build has been successfully completed, you'll have some new .debs.
   cd ..
   ls *.deb
   su - -c 'cd '"`pwd`"' && dpkg -i <DEB_PACKAGES>'
     
Ubuntu users will probably want to use this instead of that su:
   sudo dpkg -i <DEB_PACKAGES>
     

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


Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?

Yes, you can do so by setting the CFLAGS variable and then running configure again. You can even pass them to configure directly. Example:
   ./configure CFLAGS="-march=i686"

Other user variables configure respects are:

  • CC to specify the compiler executable

  • CPP to specify the C preprocessor executable

  • LD to specify the linker executable

  • CPPFLAGS to pass additional include paths or other preprocessor options

  • LDFLAGS to pass additional library paths or other linker options

An example combining some of these would look like:
   ./configure CC="/opt/intel/bin/icc" LD="/opt/intel/bin/xild" \
   CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/dvdnav" LDFLAGS="-L/home/guenter/xine_libs"


Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon™) 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 passing the canonical system name for your machine to configure with the --host option, e.g.
   ./configure --host=k7-pc-linux-gnu


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 helpful 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, then libXv.a is sufficient. Otherwise 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 in frontends (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 or installing the corresponding distribution-provided -dev or -devel package would be a good idea before trying to compile the frontend ;) ).


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

Sure. First set up a subdir where you install your private software, eg.
   mkdir ~/xine

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="$HOME/xine/bin:$PATH"
   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/xine/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"

Now you can unpack tarballs e.g. in ~/xine/src (mkdir ~/xine/src if necessary) and do a
   ./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine
   make install

You also need to tell frontends using xine-lib, where to find it:
   ./configure --prefix=$HOME/xine --with-xine-prefix=$HOME/xine


How to compile xine for Windows?

For compiling xine under Windows with MinGW, CygWin or MS Visual C see README.WIN32.

For cross-compiling xine under comfortable unix-like environment with MinGW see README.MINGWCROSS.


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 your 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 and write) 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 your 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). If you do not understand what the term "encrypted DVD" means here: As a rule of thumb, every DVD you have to pay money for is most likely encrypted.

To make matters worse, apart from encryption, there is another obstacle to take: the region code. The DVD authorities decided to divide the world into eight geographical regions. Have a look at http://www.dvdforum.gr.jp/RegionMap.pdf if you want to know which number has been assigned to your country. It is now their idea, that you shall only play DVDs, which have been produced for your region. If you take a DVD off the shelf in your local store, you should find a little globe-like icon which shows the region code the disc is for.

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. Some drives come with a factory setting of region 0 so they can play back any DVD until a region code is set. Others refuse to play any DVD at all until they are told a region. The easiest way to handle this is to use the regionset utility from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .

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 xine 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://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .

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://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=31346&release_id=168415 .

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:/ or xine vcd:/ from the command line.


VideoCD troubleshooting guide

This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More lower-level information is given in the next section.

  • When you open the configuration dialog of your frontend, you should see a vcd config section. An important setting is default_device. If this is set to the empty string, the VCD plugin will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be /dev/cdrom and on Solaris it may be /vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0.

    If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom.

  • Your frontend should offer a VCD autoscan button or menu item. If you select this, you should see your CD disk light go on if you have one. And the CD should be read. You should get a playlist of what's on the VideoCD.

    If not something's wrong, possibly you configured the wrong drive. You might try to read a disk image of a VideoCD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. You can get a test VideoCD disk image to test here: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip . After unzipping this there should be files test_svcd_pal.cue and test_svcd_pal.bin. Run xine with the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:E0. If you see something playing then this is a hardware problem. You might also want to try starting playback-control with vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1.

  • There should be at least one "track", and one "entry" listed for the VideoCD and the names of these in the MRL list will end with "T1" and "E0" respectively. Often there are other playlist items, and if you have menus or still frames there will be "segments" as well. The simplest things to check are probably "entries" and "tracks". If there are no entries listed or none of the tracks or entries play, then there may be a problem with that particular medium. So as in the step above, you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. More likely if you get this far, some of the items listed work and some do not. There are a number of debugging switches that you can dynamically turn on and off that may be able to help in isolating more specific problems. See the section below.

  • Something plays now, but you do not get any menus? Well, first is there supposed to be a menu? In the last step you should have seen what is on the VideoCD. Still frames are always "segments" so see if you can find one in the MRL list and select that.

    If there are no segments listed, there aren't any still-frame menus. It's also possible to have menus in looping MPEG's. Use the vcddump tool to find loops. vcddump is also part of VCDImager. Another program that can help you examine the contents of a VideoCD is vcdxrip.

    To troubleshoot, start out with the known SVCD example that has a still-frame menu at the beginning: http://www.vcdimager.org/pub/vcdimager/examples/test_svcd/test_svcd_pal.zip Inside this is a largish file called test_svcd_pal.bin and another short text file called test_svcd_ntsc.cue. These are CD disk images; that is, something that could be burned to a CD drive such as with cdrdao. However you don't have to create a CD to view these with the xine VCD plugin. You should be able to play the VideoCD by running the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue. If you see a still frame on startup. Great! If instead you see what looks like the beginning of a movie (Blue Streak with Martin Lawrence) then go to the next step.

  • You have a VideoCD with menu and can see it, but there is no menu on startup? If you have the VideoCD from the last step, then run the MRL vcd:/test_svcd_pal.cue:P1 If this shows a still frame, but it just does not show when you hit either the "VCD" autoscan button or give a MRL without the P1 at the end then go to the next step.

    If you have another VideoCD, from the MRL list, you should also see "playlist" entries. Try selecting the one that ends "P1". If you don't see an entry with P1, then your VideoCD does not have playback control (PBC) and although there may be a still frame on the VideoCD it may have been authored so it is not easily accessed. Again vcddump or vcdxrip can help here.

  • You have a VideoCD with menu at beginning and can see it using an MRL with P1 at the end, but you want to see it by hitting the "VCD" autoscan button as well? Check to see that you have the configuration entry media.vcd.autoplay set to playlist.


VideoCD debugging

To facilitate tracking down problems we let you see what's going on dynamically. Various debugging settings will cause output to appear on xine's plugin log and/or on standard error output. See the config entry media.vcd.debug for details.

The tool vcd-info from the cdio branch of vcdimager can be used to show the entire contents of a VideoCD or selected portions of that. Until the cdio branch of vcdimager is completely merged with vcdimager, the cd-info branch version has a few more features. (However consult vcdimager for complete version of the program.)

vcdxrip can be used to extract portions of a VideoCD and or create an XML description file of the VideoCD. This XML file and the extracted files can be used by vcdxbuild to recreate another VideoCD.

And finally see also tools cd-info and cd-read from libcdio.


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, some quicktime audio/video codecs are not 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://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html . The package is called "essential". Unpack it and move everything you find inside to /usr/lib/codecs (actually you can place them anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your home directory, but then you'll have to set decoder.external.win32_codecs_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). The newer real audio and video formats are only supported by using binary-only codecs which are not included in xine.

Possibly the most convenient way to get the Real codecs is to download them from the MPlayer website http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html . The package is called "essential". Unpack it and move everything you find inside to /usr/lib/codecs and set the decoder.external.real_codecs_path in your xine config file to /usr/lib/codecs (actually you can place them anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your home directory, but then you'll have to set decoder.external.real_codecs_path accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be able to watch Real files/streams.


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 (currently 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/.wma) files using xine?

While the container format (system layer) ASF (wmv is just an alias) is fully supported in xine, for newer windows media 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://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html . The package is called "essential". Unpack it and move everything you find inside to /usr/lib/codecs (actually you can place them anywhere you want, e.g. someplace in your home directory, but then you'll have to set decoder.external.win32_codecs_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?

In xine 0.9.13 this used to be:
   xine foo.avi%bar.sub

Latest xine-lib modules (1-beta3 or newer) support external subtitles for any media file, not only AVI. In order to use it you can pass a special MRL construction like:
   xine test.mpg#subtitle:file.sub
The external subtitles support can also be used by any xine frontend. Currently xine-ui and kaffeine implement this feature with a subtitle selection dialog.


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 (in order of importance):

  • First of all, run the xine-check script included in xine 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 P