Mplayer in 5.9 <solved>

[InTheWoods]

I am unable to open mpeg files directly with Mplayer by clicking on them in Thunar. If I run mplayer or gmplayer from the terminal it works fine. It will also work if I open Mplayer first and then select open file.

I am using Vec 5.9
Any ideas?

[Joe1962]

I've had this problem and assume it's related to spaces in the names (haven't tested one without spaces though). Drag and drop works. I have other caveats with mplayer on 5.9, so I might as well add them here, since you beat me to the thread...

- Only one theme, and an ugly one to boot... ok, I know that is subjective, but we used to have lots of them in 5.8.

- When in fullscreen mode, the control gui won't go to the background, but stays on top... very nasty.

It's too bad, since mplayer is my fav player and I don't have time to try and build it for the foreseeable future.

[InTheWoods]

 I attempted a file with no spaces in the name with the same result.

Only one theme, and an ugly one to boot... ok, I know that is subjective, but we used to have lots of them in 5.8.

Not my personal favorite either.

I don't have time to try and build it

There is a build script in Vpackager for Mplayer but it has an error

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/Skin/BlueHeart-1.5.tar.bz2 ( the present theme )

should be

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/BlueHeart-1.5.tar.bz2

Therefore it fails to complete the download and fails to create the package.
For some reason Vpackager will not let me modify it. I get the error

Code:

[45]File or directory does not exist.
MBuild From Crux.?.0

[InTheWoods]

It appears there is a bug in Mplayer itself. In an ArchLinux forum post
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/8550
this was suggested.

replace "Exec=gmplayer %U" with "Exec=gmplayer %F

I tried it without success

here
http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-619836.html
is another interesting attempt to solve this. I was unsuccessful with it as well.

Code:

Make a file called opensesame.sh
touch opensesame.sh

Now we're going to open it up...
cat > opensesame.sh



Copy and paste the below, and then hit control+c
MAKE SURE YOU HAVE /usr/bin/gmplayer

#!/bin/bash
MPLAYER_BIN=/usr/bin/gmplayer
exec $MPLAYER_BIN "$*"


Make it executable
chmod +x ./opensesame.sh



And lastly set the proper file association in nautilus so that video files open with opensesame.sh.

I was also unsuccessful in building a package from both source and the svn repository.

[InTheWoods]

On a whim I opened a file from thunar as root. That worked so I went back to my normal user and it works fine every time even for files with spaces in their names. If any one else tries this remember I also ran

Code:

mcedit /usr/share/applications/mplayer.desktop

and changed

Code:

Exec=gmplayer %U
to
Exec=gmplayer %F

Other people were able to correct the problem merely by changing the codec used in preferences. I also tried this and that too may be a factor.

[tomh38]

Just to throw in my $.02 on the subject of themes, my favorite is Ater.

Here's a screenshot of it:  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/images/skins/Ater-01.jpg

And download is here:  ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/skins/Ater-1.2.tar.bz2

Just unpack it in your .mplayer/skins directory in your home folder and you should be good to go.

[InTheWoods]

Themes are a personal thing. Good of you to show people their are many other choices that can be easily added tomh38.

I marked this solved but I am still having trouble opening some files. In particular the ones from my video camera. This was not a problem after updating the codecs in 5.8. I have done that here. I can get them to open but not play properly. I get an error that says something like " too many packets in the buffer"

[tomh38]

InTheWoods,

I don't know how much you know about this stuff, so if the following post is a bunch of stuff you already know about, it's nothing personal.

I've gotten that exact error with some video files.  I did a Google search with "mplayer" and "too many packets in the buffer" - 9,270 results.  I don't know anything about making video from video cameras, but it could be something as simple as the file being too big, so you might try using mencoder to re-encode your videos to xvid or something like that which is more compressed and consequently less resource intensive.  There's a lot of stuff out there on the web about how to use mencoder, so try a Google search.  Avidemux can also be helpful in re-encoding files, but it won't touch anything in *.wmv or *.mov formats (possibly others, I don't know).

If experience is any guide, someone more intelligent and knowledgeable than I will come along soon here and offer better advice.  Still, I hope this is helpful in some way.

Tom

P.S. Mencoder is a command-line tool that's part of Mplayer.  There are probably some graphical front ends for it out there but right now I don't know what they might be.  I'm pretty sure Avidemux is in the repos, so you should be able to get it via Gslapt.

[uelsk8s]

InTheWoods,
try playing the file with ffplay

Code:

ffplay (filename)

I am thinking a nice zenity script to play files with ffplay would be nice 

[exeterdad]

Heh, heh....  Me thinks Uel has found a new favorite zenity toy.

[InTheWoods]

I don't know how much you know about this stuff, so if the following post is a bunch of stuff you already know about, it's nothing personal.

Never assume I know much of anything and don't worry about me taking it personal.

These are mpeg files. Some that I have already encoded with Avidemux. Some are quite small files ( I thought about the size issue too ). These files play fine on the 5.8 installation on the same machine.



try playing the file with ffplay

The file plays fine with ffplay and with xine. The problem is specific to Mplayer.

[tomh38]

InTheWoods

All I can think of is "weird" ... which sums up a lot of my experience with Mplayer.  As much as I love Mplayer (it's my favorite video player) lots of things vary with how it was compiled, what options you have set in preferences, etc.  At least you can play the files with Xine and ffplay.

[InTheWoods]

Even more inexplicable... I can play these files by running mplayer from a terminal ( root or user ) and they play just fine.

[Joe1962]

Even more inexplicable... I can play these files by running mplayer from a terminal ( root or user ) and they play just fine.

Remember, mplayer is not exactly the same as gmplayer. In fact, mplayer called from the terminal is way lighter, as in: "I can run 12 movies at the same time without framedropping, with the CPU throttled down to 700 MHz".

[InTheWoods]

Remember, mplayer is not exactly the same as gmplayer

OK now were getting somewhere. Mplayer run from the terminal doesn't have a control panel or anything. Gmplayer has the same problems being run from the terminal as selecting Mplayer from the multimedia menu.

But Gmplayer runs the very same files with 5.8 on the same computer or an older PIII 900MHz desktop.

Did 5.8 have a lighter version of Gmplayer?

Without looking I think there was something called Mplayer lite on the initial install of 5.8.