| Linux Player for Colloquium Tapes |
Recently an open source player, mplayer, suitable for playing the EE380 Colloquium talks on some versions of Linux, has become available. The mplayer system can be downloaded from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage.
Follow the installation instuctions carefully. When running ./configure, the script may complain about the version of gcc you are using. RedHat shipped a broken compiler with some versions of Linux. The script checks for the bad version since mplayer triggers the bug(s). Emperically, it appears that the compiler shipped with RH7.3 as upgraded from the RedHat website is OK and generates a working player. I have not tried to compile with RH8.0 or any of the other distributions.
Be sure to download the Win32 codecs and install them as per the instuctions.
The video button on the web page is a hyperlink referencing the URL:
http://stanford-online.stanford.edu/courses/ee380/YYMMDD-ee380-100.asxwhere YYMMDD is the date of the lecture. The *.asx file is a play list of sorts and usually consists of a single entry:
ASF http://proedvid.stanford.edu/seminars/ee380/YYMMDD-ee380-100.wmvwhich is the actual Windows Media Player file.
While mplayer has a playlist feature, it does not seem to grok *.asx files. To play a Colloquium video, type at the command line
mplayer http://proedvid.stanford.edu/seminars/ee380/YYMMDD-ee380-100.wmvwhere YYMMDD is the date of the lecture to be viewed.
Windows Media Player has features that are not currently supported by mplayer, but mplayer does provide a path that makes CSL Colloquium materials available on Linux platforms.