Bug#958865: mplayer: theora playback broken: vf_get_image: Assertion `h == -1 || h >= vf->h' failed.

[Stuart Longland <stuartl@longlandclan.id.au>]

On 26/4/20 4:03 pm, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
> MPlayer is no longer developed and largely replaced by mpv.
> 
> I can suggest to try use mpv instead. If you dislike the minimal builtin 
> user interface, then try one of the frontends gnome-mpv or smplayer.
> 
> I can play the above video just fine with mpv, but your problem might be 
> related to other parts of your system (graphics driver, X11 or Wayland 
> setup, etc.).

Right, wasn't aware of mplayer's demise… my use case was to play a
full-screen video without sound as the screen saver… so I have the
following:

stuartl@vk4msl-nb:~$ cat .screensavers/playrandom.sh
#!/bin/bash

if [ -n "$1" ]; then
        XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW=$1
fi

exec /usr/bin/mplayer -nosound -fs -really-quiet        \
                ${XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW+-wid}             \
                        $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW            \
                -nolirc -nostop-xscreensaver            \
                -shuffle                                \
                /home/stuartl/.screensavers/*.{mkv,mpeg,mp4}    \
                /home/stuartl/.screensavers/*/*.{mkv,mpeg,mp4}
stuartl@vk4msl-nb:~$ grep -C 3 playrandom.sh .xscreensaver
textURL:        http://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml

programs:
      \
                "Random video"
/home/stuartl/.screensavers/playrandom.sh     \
                                  $XSCREENSAVER_WINDOW
    \n\
-                               maze -root
    \n\
- GL:                           superquadrics -root
    \n\

This works well, with MPEG4 files, it crashes and burns with Ogg/Theora.

I'll have to see if mpv can pull off the same trick as mplayer.