Computer/Technical Help

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Originally posted by SmothPocket I'm finally on a server supporting PHP and the code isn't working for me. Is there something that I have to do before that code? To establish it as a PHP page. I know that I have to change the extension to .PHP but I was wondering if it is supposed to be written like a basic HTML page

You can add HTML tags, but they're not necessary if you're just testing the script. The opening tag "<?php" and the .php file extension are enough to tell the server to parse that code as PHP. If that code is not working, which (if any) error messages are displayed?

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In addition to this I was wondering if there would be a way to insert a news item or any text onto a site without having to go into the code and physically change it. Like if someone else that didn't know HTML could just type something into a box and hit the Save button and it would post it on the site

It's possible, but you need some way to store the data and retrieve it later. The two ways to do this are through a database (such as MySQL) or through a flatfile (usually a plain text file). Both of these methods are somewhat complicated if you're not familiar with PHP, so you might want to look for an existing news script here instead.

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Originally posted by Krang quote: Originally posted by SmothPocket I'm finally on a server supporting PHP and the code isn't working for me. Is there something that I have to do before that code? To establish it as a PHP page. I know that I have to change the extension to .PHP but I was wondering if it is supposed to be written like a basic HTML page You can add HTML tags, but they're not necessary if you're just testing the script. The opening tag "<?php" and the .php file extension are enough to tell the server to parse that code as PHP. If that code is not working, which (if any) error messages are displayed? quote: In addition to this I was wondering if there would be a way to insert a news item or any text onto a site without having to go into the code and physically change it. Like if someone else that didn't know HTML could just type something into a box and hit the Save button and it would post it on the site It's possible, but you need some way to store the data and retrieve it later. The two ways to do this are through a database (such as MySQL) or through a flatfile (usually a plain text file). Both of these methods are somewhat complicated if you're not familiar with PHP, so you might want to look for an existing news script here instead.

I'm not getting any error messages... it's just that the "file.txt" isn't showing up with that code.

The server has MySQL is there a way I could learn how to use this?

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Originally posted by SmothPocket The server has MySQL is there a way I could learn how to use this?

Contact your host and see if they have an MySQL Admin Tool you can use. Also, I'm good with PHP and MySQL. If you have any questions you can ask me.

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Originally posted by SmothPocket I'm not getting any error messages... it's just that the "file.txt" isn't showing up with that code.

Something must be missing, then, because if the PHP file couldn't read file.txt, it would display an error. Could you paste the entire contents of your PHP file here inside [code] tags?

I've read through the other topics about this on the VLC forums, and I've found that switching the video output to "Quartz Video" solves this problem most of the time.

I've gone through the preferences (set it to advanced settings), and looked through the video output settings, and I don't have the option to switch to Quartz.

Is there a codec or something that I need to install, to be able to switch to this?

I've also tried a program called "BigFix", which claimed to be able to fix the problem, but it has not. Also uninstalled FFDShow, since it was outdated.

Using Windows XP Sp2, VLC 0.8.2.



This is baically what I'm viewing (made the image, but you get the idea).


Videos play fine on BS Player, but when I'm downloading some videos and would like to 'preview' them, VLC is really my only choice.

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Originally posted by R.Smith I've read through the other topics about this on the VLC forums, and I've found that switching the video output to "Quartz Video" solves this problem most of the time. I've gone through the preferences (set it to advanced settings), and looked through the video output settings, and I don't have the option to switch to Quartz. Is there a codec or something that I need to install, to be able to switch to this? I've also tried a program called "BigFix", which claimed to be able to fix the problem, but it has not. Also uninstalled FFDShow, since it was outdated. Using Windows XP Sp2, VLC 0.8.2. This is baically what I'm viewing (made the image, but you get the idea). Videos play fine on BS Player, but when I'm downloading some videos and would like to 'preview' them, VLC is really my only choice.

Unless there is something else that shares the same name, I'm pretty sure that Quartz refers to Microsoft's DirectShow video technology. This is installed by default on all recent versions of Windows, so it should be available for you also. I don't have VLC installed right now, but I think that option is under the Video menu under "Output modules" (be sure to check "Advanced" also).

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Originally posted by Krang Unless there is something else that shares the same name, I'm pretty sure that Quartz refers to Microsoft's DirectShow video technology. This is installed by default on all recent versions of Windows, so it should be available for you also. I don't have VLC installed right now, but I think that option is under the Video menu under "Output modules" (be sure to check "Advanced" also).

Right, should be there, but isn't.

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Originally posted by R.Smith Right, should be there, but isn't.

Have you tried playing a video clip while selecting each of the options in that menu? If so, all I can recommend would be to uninstall everything that can possibly play DivX or XviD video (including any codecs or codec packs), then install the latest version of the codecs.

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Originally posted by Krang Have you tried playing a video clip while selecting each of the options in that menu? If so, all I can recommend would be to uninstall everything that can possibly play DivX or XviD video (including any codecs or codec packs), then install the latest version of the codecs.

Yup, some strange results with some, but none removed the green tint.

Hmm, alright, I had upgraded Divx/Xivd a day ago, so I'll start uninstalling in a bit (gonna take sometime to find all the codecs I've installed ).

Here's an unrelated question from my post above.


Why is it, whenever I save an mp3 file in FireFox, it never plays right, and I have to save it in IE?

Is there some settings I need to change, or something?

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Originally posted by R.Smith Here's an unrelated question from my post above. Why is it, whenever I save an mp3 file in FireFox, it never plays right, and I have to save it in IE? Is there some settings I need to change, or something?

Are you using the "Save" option or the "Open" option? If you're using the first, there should be no difference between Fx and IE unless there is some browser-specific code in the site you're downloading from. If you're using the second, it could be that the wrong program is configured to open MP3 files in Firefox.

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Originally posted by Krang quote: Originally posted by R.Smith Here's an unrelated question from my post above. Why is it, whenever I save an mp3 file in FireFox, it never plays right, and I have to save it in IE? Is there some settings I need to change, or something? Are you using the "Save" option or the "Open" option? If you're using the first, there should be no difference between Fx and IE unless there is some browser-specific code in the site you're downloading from. If you're using the second, it could be that the wrong program is configured to open MP3 files in Firefox.

Hm, I've found that either way, I get a messed up MP3.

Checked the configurations, Winamp is assigned to MP3's.

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Originally posted by R.Smith Hm, I've found that either way, I get a messed up MP3. Checked the configurations, Winamp is assigned to MP3's.

Is this just from one site, or from all sites that you download MP3s from? Also, one thing you can try is opening the MP3 file in a text editor such as Notepad. Sometimes, you are actually downloading an error page instead of the actual file, so if you see any legible text when you try that (rather than just random characters), that might be the case.

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Originally posted by Krang Is this just from one site, or from all sites that you download MP3s from? Also, one thing you can try is opening the MP3 file in a text editor such as Notepad. Sometimes, you are actually downloading an error page instead of the actual file, so if you see any legible text when you try that (rather than just random characters), that might be the case.

Just about all sites I'm pretty sure.


Ah-ah! I tried it with one I recently had trouble with, and it was doing just as you said!

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Originally posted by Krang quote: Originally posted by R.Smith Hm, I've found that either way, I get a messed up MP3. Checked the configurations, Winamp is assigned to MP3's. Is this just from one site, or from all sites that you download MP3s from? Also, one thing you can try is opening the MP3 file in a text editor such as Notepad. Sometimes, you are actually downloading an error page instead of the actual file, so if you see any legible text when you try that (rather than just random characters), that might be the case.

Isn't there always legible text in the headers of the MP3?

R. Smith: What's the size of the file? It'd be pretty messed up if they made you DL a 2 MB error page.

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Originally posted by X Prime R. Smith: What's the size of the file? It'd be pretty messed up if they made you DL a 2 MB error page.

This one was 1.62mb.

Here's the file btw, (first post) http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=4858

Here's what I was doing, I was right-clicking on it and "saving as", since when I clicked on it it opened a new page, and then QT would play it (never completes these in the window), and then I could either save it from that by going to "file" and "save page as", and that normally results in a normal sounding MP3 (just a long way around if you ask me).

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Originally posted by X Prime Isn't there always legible text in the headers of the MP3?

Sometimes there is if the MP3 has ID3 tags, but it is usually preceded (and always followed) by illegible characters anyway. I guess it wasn't the best choice of words, but R.Smith knew what I meant anyway, and that's all that mattered in that post.

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Originally posted by R.Smith Here's the file btw, (first post) http://forums.qhimm.com/viewtopic.php?t=4858

That file downloads correctly for me (I use Mozilla).

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Here's what I was doing, I was right-clicking on it and "saving as", since when I clicked on it it opened a new page, and then QT would play it (never completes these in the window), and then I could either save it from that by going to "file" and "save page as", and that normally results in a normal sounding MP3 (just a long way around if you ask me).

It seems like it should work just fine either way. What did the error page in the MP3 say?

That file is rather odd... On Opera it can't detect what size it is.

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Originally posted by Krang quote: Here's what I was doing, I was right-clicking on it and "saving as", since when I clicked on it it opened a new page, and then QT would play it (never completes these in the window), and then I could either save it from that by going to "file" and "save page as", and that normally results in a normal sounding MP3 (just a long way around if you ask me). It seems like it should work just fine either way. What did the error page in the MP3 say?

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5a0 HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 01 Nov 2005 06:30:14 GMT Server: Apache/1.3.26 (Unix) Resin/2.0.5 Cache-Control: private Keep-Alive: timeout=10, max=699 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: audio/mpeg

That's before all the random characters.

Hmm.. Did you set Firefox up to run some kind of proxy?