Getting Phonon to work on Non-Development (Windows) Machines

[Brit]

Thanks. I had included phonon4.dll, but adding the plugin directories seems to have fixed some of the problems. I have audio working now, but not the video. I'll look into it some more to get that fixed, but this is a step in the right direction. Thanks, again.

[SIFE]

Thanks. I had included phonon4.dll, but adding the plugin directories seems to have fixed some of the problems. I have audio working now, but not the video. I'll look into it some more to get that fixed, but this is a step in the right direction. Thanks, again.

In order to make the video work, you should install vlc or gstream in the targeted machine.

[Brit]

In order to make the video work, you should install vlc or gstream in the targeted machine.

Will all of my users will need to install this? There isn't any way to simply add a dll to my install? I'm looking all over the place trying to figure out where to get the VLC installer. Is this it or is this something else? http://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/1.1.4.html

I've looked through pages of google search results to try to get this working. I'm surprised Qt/phonon hasn't made this easier.

[SIFE]

I found the download link in this page:http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vlc/...2.exe/download

[Brit]

After doing some more testing, I discovered that *.mpg files can be played on my Windows, non-development machine. Presumably the /codecs and /phonon_backend directories contain all the necessary dlls to make that happen.

I can't play *.mov files, and I tried installing the VLC Player, but it didn't fix anything. I don't know why my development machine can play the *.mov files - either the necessary dlls are inside the QT install or maybe some other video-player installed the appropriate codecs.

[Brit]

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, I was able to get the video to play on my non-development Windows 7 machine. It only works if I play *.mpg files and doesn't work if I try to play *.mov files. Now, I've run into another problem: if I attempt to play video on WindowsXP or WindowsVista machines it doesn't work (the video is black, but the audio plays). I'm seriously considering not using Phonon since it seems to be limited to Windows7 machines, documentation is scarce, and nobody seems to know how to fix this problem.

[Tabs]

Hello,

a late answer to this post but that might help others with the same troubles.

From what I understood Phonon relies on some backends to play multimedia content. When installed on windows (for instance with the Qt SDK) phonon uses the DirectShow backend. You can also compile Qt with a different backend such as VLC. This is the reason why you need to add the backend directory in the directory of the application. You can find it at this place:
%QTDIR%\plugins\phonon_backend
this directory will contain a dll (this is the important file) that has a different name depending on the backend you use (in my case phonon_ds94.dll, for Directshow backend, it would be something like phonon_vlc.dll for the VLC backend I guess).

Some say you also need the directory:
%QTDIR%\plugins\codecs
but I am not sure about that last one.

Finally, and I think this is your problem here. If you are using the Directshow backend you will be able to only play videos from which you have a the adequate pluggin installed. Basically just try to open the video with the windows media player. If it works than you should be able to play the video with phonon. If it does not then you should install the pluggin necessary for directshow (DivX, Xvid, etc...). SO I am nearly sure that the problem does not come from phonon but rather from these %&ç%& pluggin that you always need to install. This is the reason why some prefer to use VLC that is able to read (almost?) any media file easily.

I hope this will help someone !