mplayer fatal error

[ahurd]

When trying to play an mpeg file (copied from a win2000 ntfs partition), I get the following message whick seems to have occurred with others:

Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

Could someone help a newbie. Thanks.

[Rog131]

Re: mplayer fatal error

man mplayer (konqueror man:mplayer) tells:

VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)
Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facili‐
ties. The syntax is:

-vo <driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.

Start mplayer (gmplayer) > Right click:


> Preferences > Video > Available drivers.. xv,x11, gl,gl2..


Here gl2 (OpenGL) is working fine.

[Rog131]

Re: mplayer fatal error

There is also userfriendly frontend for mplayer: SMPlayer

Options > Preferences > General > Output drivers:


It is in the repositories.

SMPlayer (Qt)
http://www.qt-apps.org/content/show....?content=61041

SMPlayer Home
http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/

[ahurd]

Re: mplayer fatal error

Many thanks, worked fine. What is the difference between the various vo drivers? Is one better than another?

[Rog131]

Re: mplayer fatal error

What is the difference between the various vo drivers? Is one better than another?

SMPlayer FAQ
http://smplayer.wiki.sourceforge.net/FAQ

3) Output drivers (directx, xv, x11, gl, alsa, oss...) what are they? Which one is the best?

MPlayer has several output drivers, for video and sound. SMPlayer allows you to select the one you want among all of them (Preferences->General).

For video it's recommended that you use xv (linux) or directx (windows). They use hardware acceleration and give the best performance.

The inconvenience about directx for Windows Vista users is that it disables Aero.

x11 and directx:noaccel are drivers without hardware acceleration. They give the worst performance. Moreover directx:noaccel gives a bad quality in fullscreen mode.

gl and gl2 will use 3D acceleration from the graphic card. They will give better performance than directx:noaccel and x11 but no so much as directx or xv. gl/gl2 can be useful for Windows Vista users.

For sound, you should usually use oss or alsa in linux. I don't like esd or arts, they use to use more CPU.

In windows the sound drivers are dsound and win32. I read that dsound can cause sometimes audio-video sync problems. If you notice that problem try win32 instead.

Other drivers allows you to save the video as image files or write the sound to the disk. These drivers are not officially supported by SMPlayer. Use them only if you know what you're doing.

[ahurd]

Re: mplayer fatal error

In quickly scanning documentation I notice one can specify a number of drivers. If I put in my choice for eg audio and video drivers, are these drivers chosen automatically when I click on an audio file and then at another time a video file. Also command line operation for various files (eg dvd) is very extensive. Do you know if these specifications can be pre-set so if I play eg a dvd from gui, they will be invoked?

[Rog131]

Re: mplayer fatal error

Do you know if these specifications can be pre-set so if I play eg a dvd from gui, they will be invoked?

Yes, that is the idea.

gmplayer saves settings in the ~/.mplayer/

config, gui.conf

smplayer saves settings in the ~/.smplayer/

smplayer_files.ini, smplayer.ini

Example:

Here dvd starts with gmplayer (setting is gl2):

yuv420p -> bgr24 special converter
VO: [gl2] 720x576 => 1024x576 BGR 24-bit
[gl2] You have OpenGL >= 1.2 capable drivers, GOOD (16bpp and BGR is ok!)
[gl2] antialiasing off
[gl2] bilinear linear
A: 14.2 V: 14.2 A-V: 0.003 ct: 0.076 357/357 14% 19% 1.1% 7 0
Exiting... (Quit)

Here dvd starts with smplayer (setting is x11):

mplayer -noquiet -nofs -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify -slave -vo x11 -ao alsa -zoom -nokeepaspect -input conf=/usr/share/smplayer/input.conf -stop-xscreensaver -wid 69206030 -colorkey 131586 -monitoraspect 1.6 -fontconfig -font Times New Roman -subfont-autoscale 1 -subfont-text-scale 5 -subcp ISO-8859-1 -subpos 100 -contrast 0 -brightness 0 -hue 0 -saturation 0 -dvd-device /dev/dvd -chapter 1 -dvdangle 1 -cache 2000 -osdlevel 0 -vf-add expand=osd=1 -noslices -vf-add screenshot -channels 2 dvd://1