can't play some .asf files correctly

With respect to 1) I am not aware that any of the major video playing libraries (gstreamer, xine, mplayer, videolan) have native free WMV9 playback because it has yet to be implemented in ffmpeg. Having said that, there is native playback of WMV9 in Linspire which I believe is licenced from MS (see http://lwn.net/Articles/111588/ ). You may also be able to buy WMV gstreamer libraries from Fluendo for (see http://www.fluendo.com/press/releases/PR-2005-01.html ). If you have the windows DLLs it should be possible to get all 4 of the major video playing systems to watch WMV9 but gstreamer's Win32 library might not have been updated for the 0.10 series.

On closer inspection this bug appears to contain several different issues. If it is not narrowed down to just one issue I suspect it stands a good chance of being rejected...

Individual issues:
1. totem-gstreamer does not play WMV9 files.
2. audio stutters in WMV9 with xine (presumably with the w32codecs?)

gstreamer0.10-pitfdll is the dll loader updated and it's available from dapper

OK, let's assume this bug is about issue 1.

Nicolò:
Can you install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll and see whether totem-gstreamer can play the WMV file?

Ok, I'll try soon!

I have w32codecs installed and totem-gstreamer can play

Microsoft Windows Media 9 .WMV

but can't play a .ASF file it is detected as Microsoft Windows Media 9
but the resolution is 0x0 :(

anyway you can test is using this site:
http://www.allmusic.tv/streaming.asp

which works using totem-xine-firefox-plugin after having followed the
instructions of this site:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=136306&postcount=2

This stream now plays for me with totem-gstreamer (via the totem-gstreamer-firefox-plugin with gstreamer-bad and gstreamer-ugly) installed on Edgy.

Sorry, I mistook it for an audio stream. The video is still black.

I can hear the sound only without the w32codecs package. What abaut you?

Exactly the same - only audio/sound. My bad.

Describing several problems to a bug doesn't make it easy to update. Is that bug about totem-xine or totem-gstreamer? Could you update the title and description to make clear what the bug is about exactly? Do you still use dapper?

OK I have extracted the URL to the stream in question (so other folks won't have to go and install flash and battle the web site to test this). The URL is mmsh://live.mediaserver.kataweb.it/retea?MSWMExt=.asf .

On Feisty the video (images and sound) work on xine-ui with the ffmpeg codecs installed. There is no longer a need for the w32codecs to be installed in order to see this. With gstreamer-totem the play area remains black even after buffering finishes and there is no sound (although there does appear to be network activity). The following is produced on the console:

$ totem 'mmsh://live.mediaserver.kataweb.it/retea?MSWMExt=.asf'

(totem:20239): Gtk-WARNING **: Attempting to add `mmsh://live.mediaserver.kataweb.it/retea?MSWMExt=.asf' to the list of recently used resources, but not MIME type was defined
0:00:05.837002000 20239 0x863c400 ERROR ffmpeg :0:: warning: first frame is no keyframe

Nicolò:
The original problem described in this bug report (xine can't play this asf) has probably been fixed in feisty. If you want gstreamer-totem to be fixed I strongly recommend creating a new bug for that problem.

xine-lib bug fixed

opening a gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg task

In gstreamer, I think all this is related to streaming handling.
I'm using Feisty + totem + gstreamer + pitfdll +w32codecs.
The video at http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/WMV9/nokia_n90.wmv is very similar to the one in the description (WMV9 + WMA8).
If I play it through streaming (totem http://samples.mplayerhq.hu/V-codecs/WMV9/nokia_n90.wmv), the video is frozen after buffering (the same as with totem 'mmsh://live.mediaserver.kataweb.it/retea?MSWMExt=.asf').
If I download it, I can play it with no problems.
I think the video should work in Edgy, but I've not tested it yet.

I have problems with RTSP, also. Totem says:

** Message: Error: Could not read from resource.
gstrtspsrc.c(1461): gst_rtspsrc_send (): /play/source:
Got error response: 461 (Unsupported Transport).

It's being discussed at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+ticket/3655. In this case, I'm sure it works in Edgy.

Juan:
RTSP is almost certainly something different again from the problem reported here. Please file a separate bug report about that part...

I can play .asf files with gxine So far.