[Wolves] Mplayer

[James Turner]

On Friday 19 March 2004 14:58, Old Dan wrote:
> Peter Cannon wrote:
(snipped talking about mplayer)
> > I tried looking at the AVI file posted yesterday and got:
> > Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-VO) device.
> >
> > OK lets put watching dodgy films on one side for a minute.
> >
> > I then tried the LUG Radio file now this is playing but with no sound
> > output (I can see the progress bar moving counter increasing) the VOL
> > control will not slide (jumps back to the start) and under the menu
> > panel MUTE is greyed out so I take it that my sound card is not detected
> > the sound card is an ESS Maestro 2E the graphics is an ATI Mobility
(snip)
> Try various -vo options (mplayer -vo help will give you a list) from the
> command line.

It may be that your graphics card doesn't support the XVideo extension. If 
this is the case it may work if you specify the "-vo x11" option.

> For audio it may be that artsd is interfering - I certainly have found
> that in the past with some applications - running mplayer through
> artsdsp (as in 'artsdsp mplayer -vo sdl
> dodgy_file_I_have_downloaded.avi'  :) ) may do the trick, but last I
> knew artsdsp was a kludge...

If sound works for other applications, your problem with the volume control is 
probably due to another program preventing mplayer from opening /dev/mixer to 
read or change the volume settings. artsd and esd are two sound-related 
utilities which tend to run in the background, hogging /dev/mixer 
and /dev/dsp (which is used for sound recording and playback). You could try 
and get mplayer to use them using the options "-ao arts" or "-ao esd" 
respectively, or you could try quitting them before you launch mplayer by 
using "killall artsd" or "killall esd".

James