The following section lists some common problems and their solutions. If you are a regular xine user and feel that there is a common problem not stated here, please e-mail the HOWTO maintainer:
richwareham@users.sourceforge.net
xine can use the TV-output features of some video cards to display video on TV screens. If you don't care about this feature or your card is not supported you may safely ignore this message.
If you get errors like the following in xine's output:
xine: could not connect to socket xine: No such file or directory
They may be safely disregarded. They are due to xine attempting to use a particular program called LIRC to allow control via a Infra-red remote control. If you don't have/wish for this feature, pretend the errors aren't there.
You can stop xine trying to use LIRC by passing it the '-L' command
line option.
There is a problem with 2.4.10 and upwards which can somtimes cause xine to pause at odd times. If you suffer from this problem, try downgrading the kernel to 2.4.9 or upgrading to 2.4.16.
Make sure that you have the /dev/dvd file setup correctly (see the
section on playing DVDs above).
There is a bug in the 2.4.1 kernel. You will need to upgrade.
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. xine can't play such DVDs out-of-the box (for legal reasons).
You could use an css-enabled DVD input plugin to avoid this. More information is available on http://xine.cjb.net/. Note that playing CSS encrypted DVDs is not an official feature of xine.
You may also have mounted your DVD drive. xine tries to bypass the normal
Linux filesystem and so wont work if the DVD is mounted. Try unmounting it
with the umount command.
Another reason could be that your (RPC-2) DVD drive isn't set up for the right region.
You may have selected the wrong audio channel or you're trying to play a stream that uses features xine doesn't support (yet).
Try another audio channel:
$ xine -a channel stream.vob
some .VOB files have audio on strange channels (e.g. 3, 7, 10). Also make sure you are not using the 'null' audio output pugin. Finally check that the volume slider is fully up :).
status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
To fix this error, try enabling `Use multi-mode by default' in your kernel (re-compile setting ATA/IDE/MFM/RLL support -> IDE, ATA and ATAPI Block devices -> Use multi-mode by default to `Y'). The relevant piece of kernel documentation states:
CONFIG_IDEDISK_MULTI_MODE:
If you get this error, try to say Y here:
hda: set_multmode: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hda: set_multmode: error=0x04 { DriveStatusError }
If in doubt, say N.
xine can play SVCDs but you'll have to experiment with the audio channels. Normally, you should find an audio track #8 and, for bilingual SVCDs #9, so
$ xine -a 8
should allow you to press the ``vcd'' button and play your SVCDs
Your hardware may be too slow for xine. Make sure you turn on all speed optimizing options. See the section entitled Increasing the Performance of xine for more details.
Check the Xv extenstion is working properly.
The AC3 via S/PDIF is supported by ALSA only for some soundcards (mostly those with Trident 4DWaveNX, YMF or Emu10k1 chips). So if you have a suitable soundcard use
$ xine -S -A alsa
The -S switch disables the internal AC3 decoder. For very
slow machines you could improve video playback (without
sound) when you start xine as
$ xine -S -A null
First a word of warning. The development version is just that. It is meant for developers. It may not even compile and may not function correctly if it does. If you have to be on the bleeding edge of development then check it out of our CVS:
$ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine login (enter an empty password) $ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co xine-lib $ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous@cvs.xine.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/xine co xine-ui
dvd:// MRL?
The DVD plugin delivered with xine currently does not support playback of locked and/or encrypted DVDs. Look at the Playing DVDs section for details for obtaining a special xine `plugin' which allows playback of there DVDs. Due to the uncertain legal situation regarding CSS encryption we do not include anything of that nature in the xine distribution, nor do we generally endorse the use of such software (you should check if the use of such software is legal where you live). We hope that this situation will change soon.
For unlocked/unencrypted dvds it is a good idea first to check what
files are on the dvd by mounting it. The files are called something
like .../VIDEO_TS/VTS_xx_x.VOB, where x are numbers.
If you look for the big .VOB files on a dvd these are probably where the
movie is in. Currently we don't support seamless playback of complete
movies - you will have to play back all of its individual parts.
To play that VOB file use something like
$ xine dvd://VTS_xx_x.VOB
Make sure you do not supply any path name (no VIDEO_TS/).
xine tries to open the dvd using /dev/dvd. On FreeBSD this will only work if you create a symlink to your dvd-devicenode for the time being.
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 dvdshould do the job.
use something like
$ cat stream.mpg | xine stdin://mpeg1
or, if you've got an mpeg-2 stream use
$ cat stream.vob | xine stdin://mpeg2
xine has the ability to have its user interface customised using `skins'. Eventually you will be able to change skin from the control panel but for now you have to edit a file.
Run xine at least once - it should write it's config file
.xine/config to your home directory. Now edit that file and change
the line "skin:default" to match the skin you would like to use.
At the moment this is only supported on some Xv drivers. You'll find three entries like these in our /.xine/config:
brightness:0 saturation:0 contrast:128
the values and possible ranges depend on your Xv driver so you'll have to experiment a bit to get a good picture.
Looks like some colours on your GUI match the colourkey Xv uses. You can change the colorkey value to avoid this. There should be a line like
colorkey:2110
to your ~/.xine/config where you can change the colour that's used by xine
for the video overlay.
First of all, make sure that your OSS Audio drivers are working (ie you can play music with other software).
The most common reason for this 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.
This should be fixed in xine 0.3.3 or later. However, this can only work if you exit xine the "correct" way (e.g. using the panel or pressing "q"). Do not simply close the video output window using your window manager - xine won't release shared memory in this case (!).
Check if you find what you are looking for in the file README.freebsd which is distributed with the xine source code.
It is pronounced [ksi:n]. ksi like the `ks' in `knocks' and n like the `een' in `been'.
xine is still in developement. Only the latest version of xine is supported by the mailing-list so if you don't have the latest version, please upgrade and try again. The latest version is always announced on and available from the xine homepage. If you still have problems, please contact us and send us a full bug report. Please include all xine console output and some details about your hardware (CPU, GPU, sound card,...) card and operating system. A bug report of the form `I cant play the x DVD' is not much use.
You can reach us via email:
xine Mailing List <xine-user@lists.sourceforge.net>