hi folks. this question is slightly related to another post of mine found here:
http://linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=154373
i am trying to overcome my noobian handicap to use mplayer. all of the user guides i am finding on mplayer are but merely installation guides. is there a user guide for both the gui and cli that even a noob like me can understand?

i can't find how to actually use this thing. a standard dvd has multiple files and i can't seem to simply play a movie. i know this is seems rather rediculous but i still can't find the answer not even at mplayerhq.hu's website (although, i have seen plenty on how to install though).

even if you could simply point me in the right direction it would be greatly appreciated.

thanx everyone.

to play a movie its just
$mplayer moviename.avi
for dvds the command is ( assuming /dev/hdc is your dvd player )
$mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/hdc

its all there at mplayerhq
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/index.html

ok. thank you for the info. i did in fact see it on the link you provided. although, i woulnd't have guessed that the way they had it was generic enough for all systems. i thought that the "dvd-device" would be what fstab has it mounted as. thank you for the clarification.

i did in fact hit a snag that i'm not sure how to address (go figure.. a noob lost). here is the error i encountered:

Xlib: connection to ":0.0" refused by server
Xlib: No protocol specified

vo: couldn't open the X11 display (:0.0)!
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.


normally, i would think that i can't be root when i see this error but i got an error earlier stating that i do in fact need to be root for this. any thoughts?

again, thanks in advance folks.

Change your video driver. check the mplayer manual
$man mplayer
i havent got mplayer installed at the mo so i cant tell for sure but i think i used xv driver
the manual will tell you how to change it

what are you meaning by this ? are you saying your logged into your GUI with a normal
user and trying to run mplayer while logged into the terminal as root ?
if so, then thats partially the reason why you are getting that error ... as of selecting
a different -vo device an easier way is to type :
mplayer -vo help
and it will give you a list of the different -vo devices ...
and to use one an example would be ...
mplayer -vo x11 movie.avi

actually you are right. i was able to get it to work... sort of. i can use mplayer via the gui. the problem i suppose (other that trying to start mplayer as root from CLI) was that the mplayer was not set to look at the proper place where the dvd was mounted. in other words, it was at dvdr0 instead of the default location. and although i changed it in the settings, i guess i need to simply restart or reboot (i actually rebooted today and it worked).

i still haven't found a noob guide for mplayer tho.