Trying to play video using pix_film and I'm getting "opening ... ... ... giving up! Unable to open file" errors.

Patch works under Windows, and it works if I change pix_film for pix_image and load a picture.

Error is exactly the same if I manually enter a wrong file name.

The video files play fine with mplayer -- so the codecs are there (and made several versions of the video in all the usual codecs).

Any ideas? I've been through all the forum posts I could find on this topic.

Here's the full error message:

GEM: Only using 8 color bits
GEM: Direct Rendering enabled!
GEM: GLEW version 1.5.1
GEM: Start rendering
[pix_film]: opening /home/ccrma/mark/video/testvideo1.mov with format 1908
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... 
[pix_film]:  ... giving up!
error: [pix_film]: unable to open file: /home/ccrma/mark/video/testvideo1.mov

Forgot to mention one (likely important) thing: The error occurs upon opening the file with [openpanel]. Behaviour is as if it can't find the file, although the file is there (picked with [openpanel]) and permissions are okay.

You are 100% sure the path is correct?

Have you gotten any videos to work with pix_film?
From pdPedia:

[pix_film] is able to use quicktime4linux/libquicktime to decode quicktime-MOVs,

When you start pd, or intantiate [pix_fim], does it give you any messages regarding codecs, etc?

The path and file names are correct. Plus [openpanel] automatically puts the path in and the same error appears.

No videos work at all with pix_film. Pictures with pix_image works fine.

No messages at all regarding codecs.

Hmmm, I've had trouble with pix_film in Ubuntu too. Sadly, the default solution is usually "Use the Source." Meaning: recompile Gem from source packages. I've always gone this route anyway, since the Ubuntu repo version of Pd is usually a bit behind(same for gem). If you want to avoid this, the other Linux rote-response would be to make sure all of your packages are up to date using apt-get:

yourname$ apt-get dist-upgrade gem
yourname$ apt-get dist-upgrade puredata

apt-get dist-upgrade *should* upgrade the (meta) packages and dependencies.
(just an explaination, assuming intermediate knowledge of debian.)

if the above processes do not mark libquicktime for installation, you may want to check it with

yourname$ apt-get upgrade libquicktime

I had already made sure everything was updated. I updated the rest of the libraries, and now get a different error when opening a video:

[pix_video]: could not find a backend for driver....

Well, this might be one for the pd mailing list, or Hans.
What are the specs of the machine/graphics card?

Again, you might try compiling from source. If you do, make sure you have the -dev version of your media libraries (quicktime,mpeg,...) installed.