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Moho in Linux - question

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 7:41 pm
by Banterfield
Any tips with installing moho in Linux? I have a fresh install of Ubuntu. Should it have by default the required GTK and Glibc packages? When I attempt to run the "moho" script nothing seems to happen. Will the script fail if the font path isn't correct?

I'm a total noob on Linux, so I apologize in advance for my meat-headedness.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 7:44 pm
by jorgy
How are you trying to run moho? Are you clicking on it from a gui? Try starting a command line prompt, "cd"ing to the directory where it's installed and and typing "moho" and see if you get any errors.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 7:48 pm
by Banterfield
I'll give that a whirl and let you know what happens. Thanks, Jorgy.

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:35 pm
by Banterfield
Hi Jorgy,

So, I opened a terminal window, went to the moho directory and attempted to run it (hopefully terminal and command line are synonymous).

It said something to the effect of "Bash doesn't recognize command: moho" which to me means it doesn't know it's a script.

I modified the file with a text editor and changed the font directory and entered an explicit directory path for the moho files. Still no joy.

When I attempt to run the script file from the gui, it gives me the options to "run in terminal" "display" "cancel" and "run". Running in terminal brings up a terminal window, but shuts it off before I can read what has transpired. Display opens the file in the text editor. Run doesn't seem to do anything. Any suggestions?

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:47 pm
by Banterfield
Okay, I changed the terminal so it wouldn't shut after executing. It said, "Dirname too many arguments" then the script popped up the message "Please edit the startup script before running moho".

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 10:10 pm
by jorgy
For some reason, moho is unable to tell the directory from which you are running it (the 'dirname' error). Using a text editor, put in a line at line 19 that looks like:


MOHO_DIR=/home/bla/bla/bla/moho-dir

where the right hand side is the full path of the directory where moho is installed. Let me know how this goes.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:12 am
by Banterfield
Argh. Here comes my meat-headed question.

Is the terminal window supposed to recognize "moho" as a script automatically, or do I have to give it a command to execute it as a script? Because it doesn't and I can't figure out how to make it execute.

I'm trying to run it under Mandrake, which I've heard is a more complete installation, and can't figure out how to get it to run the script.

Thanks

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:35 am
by Banterfield
I should mention that under Ubuntu I got an error that said a library resource was missing. Because I couldn't tell if I had GTK 2 (which I think I did have) or glibc (which it appeared I'd have to compile to use) I switched over to my existing installation of Mandrake, on my second drive on my Linux box. .... So I'm not being completely flighty.... not completely...

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:39 am
by jorgy
I'm not too much of a gui person. I usually start moho on the command line (yeah, terminal is the same thing). Try typing "sh moho" from your terminal program since it's a shell script and see what happens, and if you get a different error message.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 5:51 am
by Banterfield
Awesome! It didn't work but at least it execued the script. I got a "Please edit the startup script before running moho".

I'll fiddle a bit more here and see if I've got any path issues.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:16 am
by Banterfield
I got my path issue straightened out and it gave me the following error.

moho_4.6: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so. 5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Is this pointing to a glibc thing?

Thanks

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:37 am
by jorgy
These are libraries for std c++. On my Fedora Core 4 box, I have these RPMs installed:

Code: Select all

libstdc++-devel-4.0.2-8.fc4
compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-47.fc4
libstdc++-4.0.2-8.fc4
You will probably need to have a 4.x version and a 3.3 version installed.

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:36 am
by Banterfield
Well, I finally got everything working. I installed both 4.6 and 5.3. I was missing those gcc packages mentioned in the readme. It took some doing, but I eventually I got all the right stuff in place.

So, it looks like the things that were really key to getting installed were:

1.) Getting that "sh" command for the terminal so I could run the scripts
2.) Getting the path right
3.) Having those packages installed, as mentioned in the readme.

Now... what do I install in order to render to a video format? All I can see for options are single frame picture formats. Any recommendations?

By the way, thank you VERY MUCH for being so generous with your time, Jorgy. I've been banging my head against this all evening, and it wouldn't have happened without your assistance.

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:15 am
by jorgy
Video format on linux? Are you kidding? The only thing that comes close is swf export. What I do is get all of my animating just the way I want it, and then copy it over to a PC running windows for final render into quicktime format, and then convert to mpeg for DVD authoring.

However, this is one alternative: rendering to a series of frames and then turning them directly into mpeg. You will need the mjpegtools RPM. I worked and worked on this, but I was never able to get good quality. I'm sure there is a way since there are so many options to the arguments, but I just got impatient after wasting weeks and weeks.

To convert the frames to video it would be something like:

Code: Select all

png2yuv -f 24 -  -j k%04d.png | yuvfps -r 30000:1001 | mpeg2enc -f 8 -o video.m2v
Let me know if this is the route you want to go - I have some more resources to point you in the right direction. You will also have to mplex in your audio.

So your two basic choices are swf and mpg. What kind of format were you wanting?

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:00 pm
by Banterfield
Uncompressed Quicktime would be ideal. If I can't get quality with mpg on Linux, perhaps I'll render frames then concatenate them on my pc.

Do you know of anything that will generate video from frames on the pc? It seems like there was a thread here discussing that.