The xine engine FAQ

Copyright © 2001-2003 the xine project team

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Table of Contents
1. 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?
    What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine, ... modules in cvs for?
    Where and how do I get the latest development version?
    Where can I find pre-compiled binaries, e.g. RPMs?
   
2. Building and installing xine from source
   
    What do I need to compile everything properly?
    How do I compile xine?
       
        Simple build instructions for beginners
        Complete build instructions
       
    Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui)
    Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?
    Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon (TM) ) available? Can I build
        them?
    Build problems: xine engine (xine-lib)
       
        The package doesn't compile at all!
        The Xv video-out plugin fails to compile!
       
    Build problems: frontend (gxine/xine-ui/...)
       
        I have installed xine-lib but the frontend complains about not finding
            it!
       
    Can I install xine in my home directory (without being root) ?
   
3. Playback of various stream types
   
    DVD Playback with xine
       
        How do I play back DVDs with xine?
        DVD playback works, but it takes a long time until playback starts
        I have problems setting up my RPC-2 drive for the right region!
       
    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 Real (.rm, .ram) files using xine ?
        What about (live) network streams (pnm://, rtsp:// style urls) ?
       
    Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv) 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?
   
4. 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?
    What do all these ~/.xine/config (~/.gxine/config) entries mean?
    Does xine support my dxr3 / hollywood+ card?
   
5. 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 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
       
        Requirements
        The OSS driver is maintained by creative and can be downloaded at http:
            //opensource.creative.com/
        Setting up xine for SPDIF (AC3_passthrough) output
        The cable used for the SBLive can easily be self-made or buy a stereo
            3.5mm jack to dual RCA cable.
       
    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
   
6. Video related questions
   
    I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!
    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 gray video output!
    Which is the best video driver to use?
   
7. Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do
   
    Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!
    "no video port found"
    "Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)"
    "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
   
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Chapter 1. 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.

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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 not covered here.

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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 xine HOWTO and 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: <
xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net> 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.

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What are those xine-lib, xine-ui, gxine, ... 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 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
sinek and totem develop additional frontends. In the future you will likely see
more and different types of apllications 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: xine-plugin a mozilla browser plugin for streaming media
playback using xine (at the time of this writing unmaintained and somewhat
obsoleted by gxine's browser plugin), xine-www the xine project website
sources.

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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.

To check out xine-modules from CVS, first do this:

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login [empty
password]

then, to check out individual modules (e.g. xine-lib, gxine, xine-ui):

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co modulename

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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 for further info. You can also find links to third parties
providing xine RPMs on the xine homepage : http://xine.sf.net/index.php/about

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

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Chapter 2. 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
iss 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
GTK 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.

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 ;) )

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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 for all users. You
need root privileges to do this on most systems.

First unpack xine-lib, then:

        ./configure
        make install
      

Make sure your /etc/ld.so.conf contains /usr/local/lib, then:

        ldconfig
      

Now unpack your frontend (gxine or xine-ui or ...), then:

        ./configure
        make install
      
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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 you 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
      
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Making your own RPM packages (xine-lib, xine-ui)

Basically you will only have to issue one command, if you have just downloaded
a source tarball from our web site:

rpm -ta THE_NAME_OF_YOUR_SOURCE_TAR_BALL

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 usally /
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 rpm -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.

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Can I provide additional CFLAGS for compilation?

Yes, you can do so by setting the CFLAGS variable and then run configure again.

This can be useful to specify additional include paths or library paths to the
compiler.

Example: export CFLAGS="-I/usr/include -L/home/guenter/xine_libs"

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Are there binaries for my AMD K7 (Athlon (TM) ) 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 setting the xine_BUILD envvar explicitly to a
valid description string for your configuration, e.g.

    export xine_BUILD=k7-pc-linux-gnu
    rm -f config.cache
    ./autogen.sh
    make
    make install
    
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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 helpfull 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.

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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.

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Build problems: frontend (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 would be a good idea before
trying to compile the frontend ;)).

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

yes. first set up a subdir where you install your private software, eg

      $ mkdir ~/usr
    

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="$HOME/usr/bin:$PATH"
      export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH"
      export CFLAGS="-I$HOME/usr/include -L$HOME/usr/lib -O3"
      export ACLOCAL_FLAGS="-I $HOME/usr/share/aclocal"
    

now you can unpack tarballs e.g. in ~/usr/src (mkdir ~/usr/src if necessary)
and do a

      $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/usr
      $ make install
    
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Chapter 3. 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 you 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) 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).

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 (most drives come with a factory
setting of region 0 so they can only play back region 0 dvds and there are not
many of those available). The easiest way to handle this is to use the
regionset utility from http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvd/
dvd_disc_20000215.tar.gz.

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 libxine to see if this gives you further hints on what could be
wrong.

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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://
linuxtv.org/download/dvd/dvd_disc_20000215_css.tar.gz

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.

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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://
linuxtv.org/download/dvd/dvd_disc_20000215_css.tar.gz

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.

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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://
      
from the command line.

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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, only very few typically used quicktime audio/video codecs are
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://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/. The
package is called "QuickTime5 DLLs". Unpack it and move everything you find
inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them anywhere you want, e.g.
someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll have to set codec.win32_path
in your xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be able
to watch Quicktime trailers.

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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). Most newer real audio and video formats are
only supported by using binary-only codecs which are available from real
networks but are not included in xine.

One way to get these codecs is to download and install RealPlayer from
RealNetworks, for example in /usr/local/RealPlayer8 or /opt/RealPlayer8. If you
installed it in one of these places, xine should automatically find and use the
real binary codecs. If it doesn't work, try to find out the exact path to where
the real codecs are installed on your system (look for a file named rv30.so.6.0
which should reside in a directory called Codecs in the directory where you
have installed RealPlayer in) and set codec.real_codecs_path in your xine
config file accordingly.

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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.

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Can I watch Windows Media (.asf/.wmv) files using xine?

While the container format (system layer) ASF (wmv is just an alias) is fully
supported in xine, for newer windows media 8 and 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://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/. The
package is called "Win32 Codecpack". Unpack it and move everything you find
inside to /usr/lib/win32 (actually you can place them anywhere you want, e.g.
someplace in your homedirectory, but then you'll have to set codec.win32_path
in your xine config file accordingly). Restart xine then and you should be able
to watch windows media streams.

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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.

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How do I play streams from STDIN?

Use something like:
        cat stream.mpg | gxine stdin:/
      

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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 an special MRL
construction like:
        xine test.mpg#subtitle:file.sub
      
The external subtitles support can also be used by any xine frontend.
Currently, just xine-ui implements this feature with a subtitle selection
dialog (press control+shift+s to see it).

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Chapter 4. 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-lib 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 PATH
                  [ good ] found /usr/local/bin/xine-config in your PATH
                  [ good ] plugin directory /usr/local/lib/xine/plugins exists.
                  [ good ] found input plugins
                  [ good ] found demux plugins
                  [ good ] found decoder plugins
                  [ good ] found video_out plugins
                  [ good ] found audio_out plugins
                  [ good ] skin directory /usr/local/share/xine/skins exists.
                  [ good ] found logo in /usr/local/share/xine/skins
                  [ good ] I even found some skins.
                  [ good ] /dev/cdrom points to /dev/hdc
                  [ good ] /dev/dvd points to /dev/hdc
                  [ good ] DMA is enabled for your DVD drive
                  [ good ] found xvinfo: X-Video Extension version 2.2
                  [ good ] your Xv extension supports YUV overlays (improves MPEG performance)
                  [ good ] your Xv extension supports packed YUV overlays
                  [ good ] Xv ports:  YUY2 YV12 I420 UYVY      
                
   
  * Try to use the Xv driver, it greatly improves performance and quality
    because hardware does image scaling and color conversion. The video section
    contains important information about several Xv drivers.
   
    If Xv cannot be used for some reason, make sure your display is set up to
    16bpp, not 24 or higher (reduces memory bandwith). Some Xv drivers may also
    have better performance with 16bpp.
   
  * Make sure the hard drive (or cdrom/dvd drive) which supplies the video data
    is in DMA mode (if supported)
   
    On most linux-based systems, you can use hdparm to check this. Example:
                  hdparm /dev/hda
    
                  ...
                  using_dma    =  1 (on)
                  ...
            
   
    You can enable DMA mode with the following command:
                  hdparm -d1 device_of_your_drive_that_supplies_video_data
            
    In some cases where this fails it helps to specify the dma mode to use, for
    example:
                  hdparm -d1 -X 66 device_of_your_drive_that_supplies_video_data
            
    In RedHat 8.0 an additional entry in /etc/modules.conf
              options ide-cd dma=1
            
    should help (reboot for this change to take effect).
   
    More information about this may be found here: http://oreilly.linux.com/pub
    /a/linux/2000/06/29/hdparm.html
   
  * Use a recent kernel which is optimized for your hardware. Old kernels may
    lack support for accelerated instructions like SSE, for example.
   
  * Close other applications (use a tool like "top" to find out what
    applications are using up CPU power). Programs that update the system clock
    like ntp should also be disabled.
   
  * Enable MTRR support in your kernel. If you are still using XFree 3.x,
    you'll have to tell the kernel yourself where the graphics memory is.
    You'll find details about that in the linux dvd howto.
   
    If you're using XFree 4.x, enabling MTRR support in your kernel should be
    enough (use a recent kernel!).
   
    Try a cat /proc/mtrr - if the file exists and you find an entry
    corresponding to the amount of graphics memory you have, everything should
    be fine.
   
  * Have your X-server (usually XFree86) running with higher priority. Most
    recent linux distributions (like RedHat 8.0 or Mandrake 9.0) should do that
    for you, improving not only xine but desktop responsiveness in general.
   
    Use the "top" utility and verify under the "NI" column if the X process has
    a negative value, this indicates a higher priority. See "The X Window User
    HOWTO - Performance considerations" for further instructions http://
    www.tldp.org/HOWTO/XWindow-User-HOWTO/performance.html
   
  * Use the latest or a known-good gcc version.
   
  * Besides boosting X-server priority, sometimes it's possible to avoid
    discarding frames by making xine itself higher priority. This is not a
    recommended pratice since it will require to run xine as root, but you may
    give it a try if you want:
                    nice --5 xine
                  
   
  * xine needs high speed memory access which depends on your chip set. Make
    sure you enable all speed-improving options.
   
    Especially the via apollo pro chipset is known to be quite weird, (most of
    all on my gigabyte board). If you can't configure the ram access thoroughly
    using the bios you might want to try some really nasty tricks, as explained
    on (for example):
   
    http://www.overclockers.com/tips105/index03.asp
   
    This website centers around a windows-tool to tweak the chipset, you can do
    the same on FreeBSD with pciconf. On some linux distributions there are
    similar tools.
   
  * a nice performance tuning tool can be found here: http://
    powertweak.sourceforge.net
   
  * Set up and use raw devices for dvd access. Please note that this is usually
    not worth the effort as the performance gain from it is very small if any.
   
    Raw devices should be available in linux kernel 2.4.x and there are patches
    for older kernels available from: ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/
    people/sct/raw-io/
   
    To use raw devices, first connect a free raw device to your dvd device, use
    something like:
              raw /dev/raw1 /dev/hdc
            
   
    then create a link named "rdvd" pointing to that raw device:
              raw /dev/raw1 /dev/hdc
            
   
  * For slow / high-latency dvd drives it might help to increase the number of
    video buffers xine allocates. Try setting
              video.num_buffers:500
            
    to a higher value (e.g. 1000 or 2500)
   
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Oki, xine doesn't drop frames now but video output still is not really smooth

video output can be further improved by tuning your linux kernel:

  * set HZ to 1000 in /usr/src/linux/include/asm-i386/param.h
   
  * try applying scheduler patches, especially the O(1) and the preemptive
    patches have proven useful at the time of this writing (spring 2003).
   
linux 2.5/2.6 will probably have these improvements out of the box.

Miguel Freitas has written a nice article about his kernel multimedia
experiments here.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have problems when using xine on FreeBSD, Solaris, ... !

Check out the the corresponding README files in the directory xine-lib/doc

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is aalib? How do I use it in xine?

aalib is an ascii art library. xine comes with an aalib video output plugin so
you can watch movies in your xterm, on the console or on your old vt100 - very
cool ;> ... another nice option is to preview movies on a remote server in your
shell over ssh.

To use it make sure you have aalib installed correctly before you configure/
build xine-lib and xine-ui. In addition to the xine binary a binary named 
aaxine should get built and installed. You can then use something like:
        aaxine foo.mpg
      
to use aalib video output.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What do all these ~/.xine/config (~/.gxine/config) entries mean?

You can find information about them in xine-lib/doc/README.config_en. Frontends
may register additional config entries, you may find out more about them in
their documentation. Also the comments in the config file might help.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Does xine support my dxr3 / hollywood+ card?

while xine's focus is clearly on software decoding, the dxr3 is supported.

you can find more information about using xine with the dxr3 here (also covers
how to do tv output using the dxr3).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 5. Audio related questions

What audio drivers does xine support? OSS? Alsa? Arts? Esd?

Currently xine support audio output via OSS (kernel audio drivers), ALSA 0.9.x
(ALSA 0.5.x is no longer supported), arts (KDE's sound daemon) and esound (esd,
gnome's sound daemon - not recommended because it has serious issues with a/v
sync).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I'm watching a movie, the sound effects are much higher volume than the
voices

Congratulations, you seem to have an original movie audio track there.

Uhm. So you don't like it. Well, there are two things you can do:

  * You can enable xine's audio compressor. Most frontends have a settings
    window and in that you'll find a slider for the compressor setting. The
    values are percent values, so a slider setting of 200 means that xine will
    double the volume of silent parts of the movie (loud parts stay the same).
   
  * If you have a dolby digital (AC3) soundtrack, you can try to enable
    liba52's dynamic range compression setting
              codec.a52_dynrng:1
            
    in your xine config file (or use some gui config dialog).
   
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I play this stream, xine shows video but there's no audio!

Well, first try a different audio driver ( gxine -A oss , gxine -A arts , xine
-A alsa ...).

If this problem only occurs with one specific stream, maybe switching to a
different audio channel (using the gui) helps. Some DVD streams have audio on
strange channels.

If all this doesn't help, maybe you're missing an audio codec or you found a
bug. If you decide to post your problem on the xine-user mailing list, make
sure to include all console output xine produced and also clearly state what
type of stream you tried to play back or, even better, make a test stream
available somewhere for developers to download and try.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Can xine produce 4-/5-channel surround audio output?

Yep, it can do that using OSS or ALSA drivers, provided that the driver
supports it. On startup xine tells you what modes are supported by your audio
driver, e.g:
        audio_alsa_out : supported modes are mono stereo (4-channel not enabled
          in xine config) (5-channel not enabled in xine config) (5.1-channel not
          enabled in xine config) (a/52 and DTS pass-through not enabled in xine
          config)
      

On this machine 4-channel surround would be possible. However, since xine
cannot detect if there are actually speakers connected to the additional
channels, you'll have to activate that feature manually.

You can do this either in the config dialog while xine is running (press the
config button on the xine panel and go to the AUDIO tab) or have it the
complicated way by editing the config file yourself which is located in your
home directory in .gxine/.xine:
        # 4-channel:
          audio.four_channel:1
 
        # 5-channel:
          audio.five_channel:1

        # 5.1-channel
          audio.five_lfe_channel:0
      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What about ac3 output via spdif to an external ac3 decoder?

xine can do that too. Pretty much the same story as for 4-/5-channel surround
(see above). You can either use the config dialog or edit the config file (~
/.xine/config/~/.gxine/config) yourself:
        audio.a52_pass_through:1
      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Getting SPDIF output from a SBLive 5.1 using OSS drivers

The following explains how to get the above configuration going with xine. Some
parts of it may applicable to other configurations (cards that use the EMU10k1
chip) as well.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Requirements

 1. xine-lib >= 1.x.x
   
 2. OSS driver
   
 3. An external decoder
   
 4. A cable to connect the SBLive to the external decoder
   
The configuration described was tested using the following equipment :
Soundblaster live 5.1 (rev 7) Yamaha DSP-AX620 external decoder

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The OSS driver is maintained by creative and can be downloaded at http://
opensource.creative.com/

The driver package contains documentation on how to install it. Besides that
I'd like to add the following notes.

In order to compile and install these drivers, you need a valid kernel
configuration file. For RedHat Linux's pre-compiled kernels these configuration
files can be found in /usr/src/linux/configs After you've located the correct
config file for your kernel, you need to copy it to /usr/src/linux/.config For
example, when you run the 2.4.18-i686 kernel do :
         cp /usr/src/linux/configs/kernel-2.4.18-i686.config /usr/src/linux/.config
       
Make sure that the emu10k1 module that is currently installed is not loaded. To
unload the modules :
         /sbin/modprobe -rv emu10k1.o ac97_codec.o
       
If this mentions that the device is busy, some program is using the driver.
Some example could be a mixer application or sound daemon like artsd. You'll
need to close down the applications before continuing. At success it should
print something like :
         # delete emu10k1
         # delete ac97_codec
         # delete soundcore
       
Run make in the directory where you unpacked the driver and follow the
instructions printed at the end of each step. The last step should be:
         make install-tools
       
As the README of the driver package mentions the SPDIF AC3 output doesn't work
by default. In the directory utils/scripts an emu10k1.conf file can be found
which need to be placed in the default installation directory (/usr/local/etc).
After this the emu10k1.conf needs to be modified. The following settings worked
fine for me (I don't use the analog outputs of the card) :
         CARD_IS_5_1=yes
         USE_DIGITAL_OUTPUT=yes
         ENABLE_TONE_CONTROL=yes
         AC3PASSTHROUGH=yes
         ENABLE_LIVEDRIVE_IR=no
         INVERT_REAR=no
         MULTICHANNEL=yes
         ROUTE_ALL_TO_SUB=no
         ANALOG_FRONT_BOOST=no
         SURROUND=no
         PROLOGIC=no
         ENABLE_CD_Spdif=yes  
         ENABLE_OPTICAL_SPDIF=no 
         ENABLE_LINE2_MIC2=no    
         ENABLE_RCA_SPDIF=no     
         ENABLE_RCA_AUX=no
       
After modifying the emu10k1.conf, you need to modify your /etc/modules.conf and
make sure the following lines are in there.
         alias sound-slot-0 emu10k1
         post-install emu10k1 /usr/local/etc/emu-script
       
After saving the changes to modules.conf, run
         /sbin/depmod -a
       
Now, you're ready to load the new modules and set the correct options for it.
To load the modules run :
         /sbin/modprobe emu10k1
       

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Setting up xine for SPDIF (AC3_passthrough) output

You can either use the config dialog or edit the config file (~/.xine/config2)
yourself:
         audio.a52_pass_through:1
       
In case the setting is not in the file you can add it.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The cable used for the SBLive can easily be self-made or buy a stereo 3.5mm
jack to dual RCA cable.

   What you need to make the cable yourself :
   a) stereo 3.5mm jack plug
   b) RCA plug
   c) shielded cable (video coax 75 Ohm will do)

   Connect them as follows :
   
   center pin jackplug ------|----- center pin RCA plug
                   GND     __|__    GND
      

In order to test it use a DVD with AC3 or DTS track start xine and select the
right audio track from user interface or start xine as:
          xine dvd://1 -a 0 
        
The external decoder should display something like "Dolby Digital" in case the
selected audio track contains AC3 data or "DTS" in case the selected audio
track contains DTS data. Of course stereo audio also goes through the SPDIF
output, so the analog outputs of the SBLive 5.1 are not needed anymore.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Changing the volume with the GUI control has no effect! What's up!?

Some xine drivers do not support volume changing although the GUI will show the
volume bar. Usually this is not xine's fault: aRts C API, for example, doesn't
offer any volume property to applications. Similarly, with ac3 pass through it
is not possible to set the volume.

Note that recently we added support to "simulate" volume in aRts by changing
sample values on-the-fly before delivering them to the driver. Not as good as
having access to sound card's mixer but at least users will not complain about
lacking of volume bar anymore! :)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Audio is stuttering and i see a lot of "metronom: fixing sound card drift by
-2115 pts" on the console output

Might be a soundcard problem, if it only comes in longer intervals. Your
soundcard does not keep it's sampling frequency accurately enough, which
results in audio and video getting out of sync and xine has to compensate. If
you see the message only from time to time, you might remedy it by using the
resampling sync method. You can do this by setting the configuration entry
audio.av_sync_method to resample.

If you receive the metronom message more often, maybe switching to different
drivers (alsa to oss or vise-versa) can help here. It has also been reported
that setting the configuration entry audio.force_rate to the native sampling
rate of your soundcard (try 44100 and 48000) helps sometimes.

Another, whole different possibility is that you have some background process
running which is messing with the clock (like some ntp client - chronny, ntpd,
...).

Occasional messages of "fixing sound card drift" may happen on start and when
playing a long stream (like a movie). This is normal behaviour, nothing to
worry about.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

xine seems to lose sound arbitrarily during playback, especially with DVDs

You are using the OSS audio output plugin, right? In order to keep video and
audio in sync, xine regularly queries the audio driver for the amount of delay
induced by the current length of the driver's audio buffer. Unfortunately some
OSS drivers seem to be broken because the can return strange values here. This
confuses the xine audio subsystem and makes it drop audio.

You should try the various settings of the configuration entry
audio.oss_sync_method. The options getodelay and getoptr ask the driver and
might therefore show the problem. But chances are that only one is broken and
the other works, so you should try them both first, since they are the most
accurate. The option probebuffer does not ask the driver directly but tries to
determine the buffer length from outside. This should work with any driver and
is the way to go, of the driver dependent methods fail. softsync is the least
accurate and should be used only in emergency situations.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 6. Video related questions

I can hear the audio - but I don't see a picture!

Probably your hardware is simply too slow - see above for some hints on how to
speed things up.

Another possibility is that you using a buggy Xv driver, see the next question.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How can I make xine use the Xv extension and what drivers do I need?

xine will normally use Xv by default if it is available. In some cases you
might need to choose Xv playback manually (when the ~/.xine/config file for
some reason says that you want to use XShm):
       xine -V Xv foo.mpg
      

If this doesn't work for you, it may be possible that Xv is not present on your
system.

First you need to install/use XFree 4.x. Once you got that you have to make
sure the XFree drivers you're using are supporting Xv on your hardware. Here
are some hints for individual gfx chips:

  * 3Dfx: if all you get is a solid black window, upgrade at least to XFree
    4.1.0
   
  * ATI: if you only get "half a picture", try lowering your resolution or bit
    depth, disable DRI (looks like you ran out of video RAM)
   
  * Trident card: If you see vertical bands jumbled, upgrade to the latest
    xfree/experimental trident drivers (for the CyberBlade XP a driver exists
    here: http://www.xfree86.org/~alanh/ )
   
  * nvidia: With newer GeForce cards, Xv should work with XFree 4.2.0 or newer,
    for older RivaTNT cards use the binary drivers from nvidia (of course the
    binary drivers work as well for GeForce cards)
   
  * Mach64/Rage3D (not Rage128/Radeon) cards/chips get no XVideo with standard
    drivers, try GATOS drivers instead
   
  * intel: i815 has Xv support in XFree 4.x, others unknown
   
  * Permedia 2/3 has Xv support in XFree 4.x
   
  * Savage: at least some older drivers tend to lock up the whole machine, try
    the drivers available from www.probo.com/timr/savage40.html .
   
  * SIS: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in XFree 4.x
   
  * Chips and Tech 6555x, 68554, 69000, 69030 have Xv support in XFree 4.x
   
  * NeoMagic: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in Xfree
    4.x
   
  * SiliconMotion: certain controllers (more info needed!) have Xv support in
    Xfree 4.x
   
  * Matrox: G200 or newer (but not Parhelia) have Xv support in XFree 4.x. For
    parhelia, use the binary only drivers available from matrox' website.
   
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some parts of my X Desktop get transparent when xine plays the video!

Looks like some colors on your GUI match the colorkey Xv uses. You can change
the colorkey value to avoid this. There should be a line like:
        video.XV_COLORKEY:2110
      
in your ~/.xine/config file where you can change the color that's used by xine
for the video overlay.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The aspect ratio of the video is wrong!

Try pressing "a" to change the aspect ratio.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is the difference between discarded and skipped frames?

Sometimes xine will output a message like that:
    200 frames delivered, XX frames skipped, YY frames discarded
    

The difference between these counters is a little subtle for the non developer.
There are two threads running in order to display video: the decoder thread
will deliver frames to the video output thread. The later is responsible for
scheduling the frames to be displayed at the right time.

If your system can't keep up with decoding requirements, decoder will deliver
overdue frames. Imagine if it finished decoding the frame tagged for displaying
at 11:30 but xine clock marks 11:31. When this situation is detected, xine will
try to skip decoding a few frames to recover. Not every decoder may support
this feature.

When the frame is decoded to be shown somewhere in future but the output thread
doesn't get scheduled in time by the operating system to complete the
operation, the frame is discarded. One cause might be the disk access
operation, which may halt the system for a few miliseconds without DMA. See
performance section tips above.

Note that if a decoder can't skip frames for some reason, you would never see
frames skipped (they would be all discarded).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My xine is runing in black and white! / I only get a gray video output!

This frequently happens with new Xv drivers or when switching to a different
video card. Background is that different Xv drivers often use different ranges
for the contrast/brightness/saturation settings.

To fix this, try opening the xine settings window and try adjusting the sliders
for contrast, brightness and saturation.

Please note that some frontends save these settings in their config file so
when you have found a working combination, make sure you exit xine cleanly so
the values are saved.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Which is the best video driver to use?

xine support several video drivers for outputing the image. These will differ
on how the frames are copied to the video card memory, whether colorspace
conversion and scaling is done in software or hardware, among other things.
They may also differ on ease of use and stability.

Most of the time, Xv should give the users a good trade-off between quality,
compatibility and ease of use. This is why xine tries to use Xv by default.

However some users may want to explore better the available hardware
capabilities (eg. syncing frame drawing with monitor refresh). Also some Xv
drivers contain slow copies and accessing the video card directly may yield
performance gains.

Drivers that access hardware directly includes VIDIX (warning: requires root
priviledges) and SyncFB (requires kernel helper - Matrox only). User may try
one of those, but should be warned that with root access they can cause the
system to crash hard. The support is also limited to a couple of graphics cards
only.

Graphic workstations like SGI have usually a good support for OpenGL. In that
case, using OpenGL may be a better choice than XShm. However for most desktop
systems the performance of OpenGL will be quite bad.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 7. Error Messages: What they mean and what you can do

Starting xine fails with complains about audio drivers/devices!

You can select the audio driver using the -A option. So try:
        xine -A null
      
If you have ALSA drivers installed, try:
        xine -A alsa
      
If you run ESD (not recommended), try:
        xine -A esd
      
If you run artsd, try:
        xine -A arts
      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"no video port found"

You got the Xv extension, but your video card driver doesn't support it. First
try to find a driver that does support Xv on your hardware (check your graphics
card vendor). If your driver has Xv support but you can't get it working, try
at a lower resolution (1024x768 is enough even for anamorphic mpeg-2).

If all that fails, you can still use plain X11/XShm:
        gxine -V XShm foo.vob
      

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Unable to open dvd drive (/dev/dvd)"

You probably don't have /dev/dvd (check that). If so, simply create a link /dev
/dvd that points to your DVD device. Something like...
        cd /dev
        ln -s hdc dvd
      
...should do the job. Also make sure you have read access on the device the
symlink points to. See the dvd playback section for more information.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"demux error! 00 00 00 (should be 0x000001)"

Probably xine can't access your input source. Most commonly this happens when
you're trying to play locked/encrypted DVDs. Remember that xine can't play such
DVDs out-of-the box for legal reasons (see above).

If it is legal where you live, you can try to install libdvdcss. Once you have
done that and re-start xine, it should automatically detect and use it to play
back encrypted DVDs.

Another reason could be that your (RPC-2) DVD drive isn't set up for the right
region (see above).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"audio driver 'oss' failed, using null driver instead"

First of all, make sure that your OSS Audio drivers are working (i.e. you can
play music with other software). Maybe you're using alsa? If so, try gxine -A
alsa to see if this helps.

The most common reason for oss not working is that some other program is
accesing your audio device. If you're using linux, the command fuser /dev/dsp
should give you the PID of the process.

If you are using GNOME, chances are that this is caused by ESD. Now you have
two possibilities. Either deactivate ESD (temporarily) by right clicking on the
sound monitor applet and selecting "Place Esound in standby" or just kill it.
Then xine will use OSS audio output. The other method is to make xine use ESD
for audio output with:
        gxine -A esd
      
This may result in worse playback - exact syncronization is not possible with
esd, so using oss should be preferred.

If you are using KDE, there is the possibility that the aRts sound daemon is
currently running and thus blocking your sound device. You can check that by
starting the aRts control (in your KDE menu it should be under Multimedia). If
it is running, you can either use the aRts audio output plugin:
        gxine -A arts
      
Or you suspend the aRts daemon by checking the appropriate option in your aRts
control. (recommended)

Newer versions of arts have an auto-suspend mode - this can lead to some
nondeterministic behaviour of xine if it is set up to use the audio device
directly. Using arts is recommended in that case, however you will loose the
ability to do four/five channel audio output.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"video_out: throwing away image with pts xxx because it's too old"

This is a performance related problem. If you have a fast computer and this
message shows from time to time playing dvd/cdrom, it's very likely that your
drive is not DMA enabled.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"No video plugin available to decode 'xxxxxx'."

You have tried to play a stream using a unknown or unhandled codec. Possibly
the file uses some obscure proprietary format and no information is available
on how to decode it.

If you're on an x86 platform (e.g. PC hardware) you might want to try
installing binary-only windows medial, real networks and quicktime codecs (see
above).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"w32codec: decoder failed to start. Is 'xxxxxx' installed?"

You probably don't have the win32 dll needed to decode this file.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

xine just crashed on me - i didn't get any error message

OK, yes, that shouldn't happen and you're upset. We can understand that. But,
to help you and of course to fix this, we need some information. So, let's go
through the checklist and maybe prepare a nice bug report for the xine-user
mailing list:

  * did xine really crash (segfault) or did it hang (deadlock) ?
   
  * can you reproduce the bug? (e.g. do you remember what you did and when you
    do it again it crashes again?)
   
  * is that a specific media file or format which crashes xine? (have you tried
    other files types?)
   
  * check the console output (and include it in a bug report), maybe earlier
    there is some output that points to the problem.
   
  * Your X server just froze on you? unfortunately that's a known problem with
    some chipsets and drivers (most commonly Savage chipsets) when using Xv.
    You might want to try running gxine -V XShm to see if the problem is
    related to the Xv driver. This will unfortunately be much slower, as lots
    of things are now done in software instead of hardware scaling/colour space
    conversion.
   
    Maybe at the time you read this, there's an XFree upgrade which fixes this
    for the Savage driver. If that works for you, please notify the xine crew
    at < xine-user@lists.sf.net >, so they can update this FAQ!
   
  * Even though we try to make each release as bug free as possible, xine is
    still under heavy development (nice excuse, isn't it? *grin*).
   
    If you write to the xine user mailing list <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net
    > make sure you include a the above information (when applicable) and also
    some information about your machine (operating system, cpu type and speed,
    gfx card, sound card, ...) and please use a meaningfull subject line ("xine
    bug" is bad, "xine fails to play this quicktime trailer in fullscreen mode"
    ist much better).
   
    Thanks for taking the time to help improve xine.
   
