Mplayer install help
 

I really want to play DVDs... I'm a total :newbie: and I just got my first linux distro (redhat 8), so I'm not sure how to go about installing this. If someone would be kind enough to put up detailed instructions that'd be great :cool:

- Thanks ~

there are LOTS of instructions in the documentation at their site, http://mplayerhq.hu that's that it's there for...

Yeh, I read those and really didn't understand them. Need simple instructions.. btw that link doesn't work.

well there are plenty of generic instructions on this site, jsut use the search facility

Then build MPlayer:

./configure
make
make install


HUK? This does nothing, and I'm not sure how to extract the MPlayer-0.90pre10.tar.bz2 to anywhere... god I made a horrible horrible mistake:jawa:

well try searching this site for a thousand identical instructions on how to use tar ... if you do you'll just see...

tar jxvf mplayer-0.90pre10.tar.bz2

which will extract it to the current directory.

hmm weird.. it doesn't work.. I pasted it directly, so I couldn't have made a mistake.. gives me this error.. "no such file or directory".. I know it's in the directory I'm in.

Got everything installed, but the playback seems to skip every other second.. kinda like laggy I guess you could call it. I read the doc and it said to enable DMA via the command:

"hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 [cdrom] "

my line looks like this: "hdparm -d1 -a8 -u1 /mnt/cdrom"
and it gives me a uh oh saying "/mnt/cdrom not supported by hdparm"

Any ideas?

I fixed that and got the settings working, but it's still jerky... any ideas?

Have you tried any other video options ??

mplayer --help for more details.

What kind of hardware are you running this on ??

This is running on an athlon 1.47 ghz, 512 ddr, geforce 4 ti4600 (gainward golden sample), maxtor 20g, ata 133 7200 rpm, SB live! 5.1, kg7 RAID. The DVD drive itself is a creative "ovation" 16x. I'm gonna look through the help thing, but I doubt it'll help much :( .. I'm afraid I just wasted $$ on the dvd drive.

Check out this link for the docs on video output. http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/video.html#normal

Most likely you just need to try a different vo output.

And don't doubt your new dvd, you didn't waste money. I have just a 900mhz machine with a ATI Xpert 98 8MB video card with 512 Megs of RAM, Pioneer 10x DVD drive and mine works like a charm.

Well, I tried to -xv vo thing or whatever, I checked to see that my setup supported it, but alas nothing seems to work. Just constant jerkiness.. it freezes every other second. I have the latest nvidia drivers... although I did remember getting a warning about GLX or something, even though Ut2k3 works flawlessly.

Try either passing -vo sdl or maybe -vo x11 and see if those work if you haven't tried those.

nope, neither of those work :( Looks like I'm screwed, I have no clue why either. I tried disabling sound as well and that had no effect on it, so at least that narrows it down a bit.

Not sure myself at this point. Maybe try a different DVD disc ? Could be the codecs used, maybe they don't like that DVD player... Hmmm...

Nope, it does it with several dvds. While I'm at it, how do I uninstall mplayer? No point in it wasting a huge amount of space.

It doesn't waste much space actually, it's very small. To uninstall most software, if compile from source, you enter the directory where you typed:
make install
and type:
make uninstall

And that should be it.

But you might wanna try fiddling a bit more, it's one of the best programs around.

What's the line you type to play it anyway?

Cool

I've tried several different ways of playing it, but the line I use it is:

"mplayer -dvd 1 -dvd-device /dev/cdrom"

Ok, well you are specifying alot, but I don't think it'd be causing you problems like that, just try:
mplayer -vo xv -dvd 1

OR
mplayer -vo x11 -dvd 1

Cool

When I type those it says, cannot find dvd device "/dev/dvd" which leads me to believe that linux doesn't recognize that this drive is in fact a DVD drive, which would mean that I flushed 80 bucks.

Here's the exact output:
"
Playing DVD title 1
libdvdread: Can't stat /dev/dvd
No such file or directory
Couldn't open DVD device: /dev/dvd
"

Nah, that just means you don't have the symlink setup correctly

No biggie

Do this in the terminal:
ls -l /dev/cdrom

Notice the device it's pointing to, now link /dev/dvd to it:
ln -sf /dev/WHATEVER /dev/dvd

where /dev/WHATEVER is what you find from:
ls -l /dev/cdrom

Cool

weird, I did what you said, and it won't link it

ln -sf /dev/hdc /dev/dvd

hdc was what it was connected to..

Oh nm.. it worked ok, didn't have the dvd in LOL... but still is jerky as hell :(

Don't give up just yet, Acid_Kewpie is the resident expert and might have some other options for you, like drop frame and things.

Also, try caching maybe:

mplayer -vo xv -dvd 1 -cache 128

I don't know, might help

Cool

it gives me an error saying my system is too slow to play this when I do the cache thing

It tells me that I have a slow CPU.. I guess 1.4ghz is slow nowadays, but lol...

I tried -cache 8192 and it helped a little bit, but it still was jerky and I lost the ability to type anything outside of the dvd window.

Oh, you might also wanna try compiling mplayer with different options, like this for example:
--enable-runtime-cpudetection Enable runtime CPU detection [disable]

That's something I used for better performance.

Cool

So by compile you mean "make" and "make install?".. I'm kinda new at this lol

Hmm I played it with -nocache and it ran well until I opened up Mozilla, then it said something about "broken pipe"

"No bind found for key MOUSE_BTN0 4% 10.6% 49 0 0%
Broken pipe 81.2 A-V: -0.012 ct: -0.155 2425/1940 12% 4% 12.1% 78 0 0%"

dunno if that has anything to do with anything... but thereafter it was jerky again :(

Probably killed your cache, but yeah it's make make install thing, like this though:

./configure --with-runtime-cpudetection
make
make install

But you can find more options with:
./configure --help

And then go from there.

Cool

Don't worry about the message stating that your machine is too slow, mine does that too and shouldn't affect it.

Also to add, Mozilla is a resource hog itself. Can you run like top and see how much memory/swap is being used ? Not sure if that would have any affect but it is strange how it was running good there for a moment til you opened up Mozilla.

looking at the error again, it said that that could be a possible reason, not necessarily what is wrong with it. Which utility should I use to check the resource consumption?

Just type top and it should start the display of all processes running and your memory and swap usage. Hit q to quit.

Oh and just noticed, when you ran that command for hdparm, you tried to specify your cdrom ?? You can't run that command (that I know of or its new to me) for you cdrom or dvd player, that's why you got errors.

Try this command:

hdparm -d1 /dev/hdX

Where the X in hd is your particular hard drive. Most likely if its the primary IDE, it would be hda. So it would read like this:

hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

And see if that does any better at getting rid of the jerkiness and lag.

k, I ran that and noticed the moment CPU usage went over %16, the jerkyness started heavily. Just moving the mouse boosted me up 6 or 7 percent, so mozilla definitely put me over that figure. Still mystified about this whole thing... I could run like 10 apps and play a dvd on winblows2kpro with no problems.

That command hdparm -d1 /dev/hda helped a bit... noticed it didn't jerk out as easily.. but after moving the mouse around and switching to mozilla it instantly started

I Re-Read the mplayer FAQ and Docs, you should be able to set the hdparm for your cdrom.. but try the actual device instead of the symlink, and also make sure your logged in as root for access with the hdparm command.

But something is definitely wrong. With your system you shouldn't have any problems running several apps and playing dvd's.
Yours is better than mine and I've had anywhere to 10 to 15 Galeon windows opened, evolution running, mplayer going with Gaim, several terminals going while compiling an app.. with no problems.

I would try that hdparm command again and also try the cache option when running the movie again.

Do you have any other browsers installed, like Galeon. Galeon is much lighter on resources. Might want to try that out but go ahead and test it with the cache option and also try with the video option of -vo x11 and see what happens, without opening mozilla.

How big is your swap and how much of the memory was being used ??

I have a 1024 mb swap, and while I was running it, 414 mbs of phys ram was being used out of 512 .. seems like a shitload. I noticed the slowdown started when the dvd stopped spinning.. then when it started respinning it was jerky.

Don't worry about the RAM amount, that's normal in Linux.

Well, is this the same DVD you had while using Windows ? Seems like it could be a hardware related issue with that last description. Did you try running that hdparm for the dvd device again as root and using the actual device name like /dev/hdc or something along those lines. I know you did with your hard drive, but maybe try with the dvd drive.

Well, my eyes are watery and burning from staring at this screen for too long... time to go to bed. Hopefully we can get you fixed up soon. Acid should see this thread here soon, maybe he can give us some insight on it.

I'll try to keep working on it, thanks much for your help :)