Re: VCD no go with MPlayer.

["Brian Durant" <interlists@gmail.com>]

Hi Sven,

On 12/14/06, Sven Arvidsson <sa@whiz.se> wrote:
> On Thu, 2006-12-14 at 19:04 +0100, Brian Durant wrote:
> > > I don't really understand what it is you're trying to do and what goes
> > > wrong? For example, what are you trying to accomplish with sox?
> >
> > I am a newbie... I just follow the instructions :-) I hope I didn't do
> > anything wrong.
>
> Hi,
>
> No, you didn't do anything wrong, I would blame debianhelp.co.uk for
> providing outdated and confusing information ;-)
>
> In their guide, they seem to capture a Windows Media Audio stream, and
> convert it to Ogg Vorbis using sox, not really related to getting
> MPlayer configured...
>
> > > How is mplayer set up on your system, what video output and audio
> > > outputs are selected? Have you done any configuration yourself?
> >
> > MPlayer is setup the way it came when I got the package (plus libs)
> > with Synaptic. Unless there was something in the above that you would
> > call configuration...
>
> [snip]
>
> > > I would first try this,
> > >  mplayer -vo xv,x11 vcd://3
> > > and see if I get any visible video, and later worry about sound.
> >
> > Wow, I've got video. No sound, but hey it's a start. I can't get video
> > with the GUI, however. In GUI I get the following:
> >
> > "Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device."
>
> Good, as for the GUI, it's not something I'm familiar with, but I would
> guess there is a way to make these settings somewhere?
>
> Do you know what kind of sound drivers you use (OSS or ALSA?) and if
> your system is set up with some kind of sound server (esd, arts, pulse
> etc?). MPlayer support them if all, so it's mostly a matter of trial and
> error if you're not sure what you're using.
>
> Try to start mplayer with -ao oss, -ao alsa, -ao esd or -ao arts etc, an
> see if anything works. I guess you could also try with a comma separated
> list, -ao alsa,oss,esd,arts.

The below works fine:

$ mplayer -ao esd  vcd://6

I added '-ao esd' to the .mplayer/config file and now 'mplayer
vcd://6' now returns the following:

$ mplayer vcd://6
MPlayer 1.0rc1-4.1.2 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.60GHz (Family: 15, Model: 2, Stepping: 9)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Option -ao needs a parameter at line 2

The GUI just crashes now. I have looked at the man pages, but as a
newbie I think it is often difficult wrapping my head around the
syntax of the files. I have understood enough that it is possible to
in some fashion write a seperate file like a "vcd.conf" to
.mplayer/config. I think this would be a good idea as it seems to set
a specific VCD configuration. The problem is that I really don't
understand how to do it :-(

> The manual page,
>  man mplayer
> provides lots of information, as do the "help" options,
>  mplayer -ao help
>  mplayer -vo help
>
> When you have found a working setup, you can put these options in the
> configuration file, I think it's .mplayer/config in your home directory.
>
> I hope this helps, and I haven't made things more confusing for you,
> MPlayer is quite powerful, but it has a myriad of options :-)
>
> --
> Cheers,
> Sven Arvidsson
> http://www.whiz.se
> PGP Key ID 760BDD22

Cheers,

Brian