Hi:

Let's take a multimedia player. Say MPlayer. Two cases:

(a) I play a file of this type: 640 x 272, 25.00 fps, video: XviD, audio: MPEG-1 Layer 3 (stereo, 48000 Hz).
(b) I play a CDDA.

In case (a), my machine is fast enough so that I can watch and listen perfectly well. In case (b), it seems my machine lacks speed or memory, for the sound is heard as if each second mplayer had to load some buffer and must stop playback for a few milliseconds. "Each second" actually means "at random intervals nearly one second long.

Because the movie (case a) is a compressed format, the actual amount of information is low. But we are speaking about video here (I'm beginning to feel the impression that I'm speaking about what I do not know). Plus, the CPU has the extra work of decoding.

On the other hand in case b, no decoding needed.

So, in view of mplayer's performance in each of those cases, 640 x 272, 25.00 fps is less info than Stereo, 44100 Hz? What is the explanation for this phenomenon: A motion picture less work for the machine than a CDDA?

If by CDDA you mean playing an audio CD directly, there are other factors at work too. You have the speed and ability of the drive to read the disk (including the condition of the disk itself), the size of the drive's cache, possible driver bugs, and the speed and quality of the bus connection.

I'd be willing to bet that one or more of these are actually causing your slow-down, since CD audio is simple uncompressed PCM and would need much less processing than the compressed xvid/mp3 streams.

Try ripping the audio to an uncompressed .wav file and see if it still causes playback problems.

Thanks. Yes, I mean Red Book. I hope you did not bet. KsCD has no problem playing the CD (same machine, same drive, same disk). Where as any audio CD will beat the monster program called mplayer.

However, your idea about transferring to a WAV file could perhaps give a clue. Regards.

EDIT
I ripped a CD to WAV, played the WAV. Result: no problem. I played the CD and the result was the same as before. Always speaking about mplayer.

When I compiled the source from the official site the result, in regard to this behaviour, was the same as now, when I am using a slackbuilds.

My usual audio cd usage with MPlayer is:

Perhaps the cache settings will help in your case? And of course if cddb:// does not work you can use cdda://. This is Tip 7 from here btw:

Top 10 Tricks and Tips for the svn MPlayer
http://www.andrews-corner.org/mplayer.html

1 members found this post helpful.

These settings seem to work fine for my machine (thanks for the link) although what I'd actually like to know is the reason behind it:

640 x 272 pixels= 174080 bits= 21760 bytes
21760 bytes * 25 frame/s = 544000 byte/s
plus decoding.

2 bytes * 44100 Hz * 2 = 176400 byte/s

I do not understand. Perhaps, for movies, mplayer by default uses a large cache. IDK. But I can use mplayer to play CDs for the first time. Thanks a lot.