Mplayer freezes shorty 3 times every 5-10 minutes.

Hi,

Since about 2-3 weeks I have this strange problem, that while watching with mplayer, it freezes for a second or two, 3 times in a row (2 secs freeze, 1 sec good, 2 secs freeze, 1 sec good, 2 secs freeze). It happens for about every 5-10 minutes.

I also noticed that CPU usage jumps up to 100% (for only one core and I have four of them).

I'm using xv driver for mplayer and it always worked like a charm. Even now it works pretty well, except for those short breaks. It usually consumes about 40% of the single core for FullHD videos.

What's interesting, when I use top or htop (as a root) I cannot see this 100% CPU usage (mplayer uses about 14% in htop at that problematic moment), but I can see it on my KDE panel monitor (as regular user). It's this one:

It seems that "something" is consuming my whole cpu leaving just about 14% to mplayer, which then cannot work correctly. I just cannot find out what is it :/

I'm using Slackware current and I update it with recent packages from time to time. I did upgrade some packages 4 weeks back, here is the list of those packages:

file:///var/log/packages/zlib-1.2.8-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xwd-1.0.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xset-1.2.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xscreensaver-5.22-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xrandr-1.4.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xprop-1.2.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xpdf-3.03-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/xlockmore-5.43-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xload-1.1.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xhost-1.0.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xfwm4-4.10.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfd-1.1.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-weather-plugin-0.8.3-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-taskmanager-1.0.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-systemload-plugin-1.1.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-session-4.10.1-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-screenshooter-1.8.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-power-manager-1.2.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-panel-4.10.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xfce4-clipman-plugin-1.2.3-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-xgixp-1.8.1-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-xgi-git_be3abf8570a-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-voodoo-1.2.5-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-vmware-13.0.1-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-v4l-0.2.0-i486-9
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-tseng-1.2.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-trident-1.3.6-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-tga-1.2.2-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-tdfx-1.4.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-sisusb-0.9.6-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-sis-0.10.7-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-siliconmotion-1.7.7-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-savage-2.3.6-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-s3virge-1.10.6-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-s3-0.6.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-rendition-4.2.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-r128-6.9.1-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-openchrome-0.3.3-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-nv-2.1.20-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-nouveau-1.0.9-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-neomagic-1.2.8-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-modesetting-0.8.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-mga-1.6.2-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-mach64-6.9.4-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-intel-2.21.15-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-i740-1.3.4-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-i128-1.3.6-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-glint-1.2.8-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-geode-2.11.14-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-cirrus-1.5.2-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-chips-1.2.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-ati-7.2.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-ast-0.98.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-ark-0.7.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-apm-1.2.5-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-wacom-0.19.0-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-void-1.4.0-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-vmmouse-13.0.0-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-synaptics-1.7.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-penmount-1.5.0-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-mouse-1.9.0-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-keyboard-1.7.0-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-joystick-1.6.1-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-evdev-2.8.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-aiptek-1.4.1-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-input-acecad-1.5.0-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/xcursor-themes-1.0.4-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/xconsole-1.0.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xcb-util-image-0.3.9-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/xcb-util-0.3.9-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xbacklight-1.2.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/wpa_supplicant-2.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/videoproto-2.3.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/util-linux-2.21.2-i486-6
file:///var/log/packages/tumbler-0.1.25-i486-4
file:///var/log/packages/taglib-1.8-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/sysvinit-2.88dsf-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/subversion-1.7.13-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/strace-4.8-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/startup-notification-0.12-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/sqlite-3.7.17-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/qt-4.8.5-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/poppler-data-0.4.6-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/poppler-0.24.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/pixman-0.30.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/php-5.4.19-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/perl-5.18.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/oxygen-gtk3-1.2.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/oxygen-gtk2-1.4.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/nmap-6.40-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/nettle-2.7.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/mkfontscale-1.1.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/media-player-info-18-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/mariadb-5.5.32-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/man-pages-3.53-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/lvm2-2.02.100-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/llvm-3.3-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/lilo-24.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/libxfcegui4-4.10.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/libxfce4ui-4.10.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/libxcb-1.9.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libwnck-2.30.7-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/libpciaccess-0.13.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libnl3-3.2.21-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libnl-1.1.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libgcrypt-1.5.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libdrm-2.4.46-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXfont-1.4.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/lftp-4.4.9-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/kmod-15-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-firmware-20130912git-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/iproute2-3.10.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/infozip-6.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/iceauth-1.0.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/httpd-2.4.6-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/hdparm-9.43-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gtk+3-3.8.2-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/gtk+2-2.24.20-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gstreamer-0.10.36-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/gnutls-3.0.31-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gnupg2-2.0.21-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gnupg-1.4.14-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gnome-icon-theme-3.8.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/glib2-2.36.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/git-1.8.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gdb-7.6.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gawk-4.1.0-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/floppy-5.5-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/ethtool-3.10-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/e2fsprogs-1.42.8-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/doxygen-1.8.5-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/dosfstools-3.0.22-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/dialog-1.2_20130523-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/dhcpcd-6.0.5-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/ddrescue-1.17-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/cyrus-sasl-2.1.23-i486-5
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-zh_TW-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-zh_CN-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-uk-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-tr-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-sv-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-sk-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-ru-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-pt_BR-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-pt-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-pl-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-nl-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-nds-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-nb-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-kk-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-it-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-hu-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-fr-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-fi-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-et-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-es-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-el-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-de-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-da-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-cs-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-l10n-ca-2.7.2-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/calligra-2.7.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/boost-1.54.0-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/bluez-4.99-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/blueman-r708-i486-3
file:///var/log/packages/bind-9.9.3_P2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/bash-4.2.045-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/amarok-2.8.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/Thunar-1.6.3-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/NetworkManager-0.9.8.2-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/MPlayer-1.1_20130819-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xcb-util-cursor-0.1.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/os-prober-1.63-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/help2man-1.43.3-i486-1

Just yesterday I upgraded another set of packages:

file:///var/log/packages/xrdb-1.1.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xorg-server-xvfb-1.14.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xorg-server-xnest-1.14.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xorg-server-xephyr-1.14.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xorg-server-1.14.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xmodmap-1.0.8-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xman-1.1.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xlsclients-1.1.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xkill-1.0.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xinput-1.6.1-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xinit-1.3.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-vesa-2.3.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xf86-video-dummy-0.3.7-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xclock-1.0.7-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/xclipboard-1.1.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/windowmaker-0.95.5-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/vim-gvim-7.4.050-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/vim-7.4.050-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/util-macros-1.17.1-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/udev-182-i486-7
file:///var/log/packages/twm-1.0.8-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/traceroute-2.0.19-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/sysvinit-scripts-2.0-noarch-15
file:///var/log/packages/system-config-printer-1.3.13-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/slackpkg-2.82.0-noarch-10
file:///var/log/packages/seamonkey-solibs-2.21-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/seamonkey-2.21-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/samba-4.0.9-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/rsync-3.1.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/rcs-5.9.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/mozilla-thunderbird-24.0-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/mozilla-nss-3.15.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/mozilla-firefox-24.0esr-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/mesa-9.1.6-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/mc-4.8.10-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/m4-1.4.17-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/lrzip-0.616-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/lm_sensors-3.3.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/links-2.8-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXv-1.0.10-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXrandr-1.4.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXpm-3.5.11-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXmu-1.1.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libXaw-1.0.12-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libX11-1.6.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/libSM-1.2.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-source-3.10.14_smp-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-modules-smp-3.10.14_smp-i686-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-modules-3.10.14-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-huge-smp-3.10.14_smp-i686-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-huge-3.10.14-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-headers-3.10.14_smp-x86-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-generic-smp-3.10.14_smp-i686-1
file:///var/log/packages/kernel-generic-3.10.14-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/imagemagick-6.8.6_10-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gnome-themes-standard-3.8.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/gmp-5.1.3-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/glibc-zoneinfo-2013d-noarch-7
file:///var/log/packages/glibc-profile-2.17-i486-7
file:///var/log/packages/glibc-i18n-2.17-i486-7
file:///var/log/packages/glibc-2.17-i486-7
file:///var/log/packages/getty-ps-2.1.0b-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/etc-14.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/efibootmgr-0.5.4-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/dejavu-fonts-ttf-2.34-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/dconf-0.16.1-i486-2
file:///var/log/packages/cdrtools-3.01a17-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/ca-certificates-20130906-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/sed-4.2.2-i486-1
file:///var/log/packages/pkgtools-14.1-noarch-1
file:///var/log/packages/glibc-solibs-2.17-i486-7
file:///var/log/packages/grub-2.00-i486-1

but this second updates didn't fix my problem

I did downgrade MPlayer package, so I got the one before problems, but it didn't solve the problem.

Now, what can I check to find the problem? What software would help me find out what is the exact process that consumes my cpu?

EDIT:
I also tried with Windows 7 (I have it on another partition) and it works fine there, so it's just a Linux issue.

try finding what is conusiming your cpu usage, or just give mplayer higher priority using nice or renice command.

After a while I tried once again to diagnose the problem. I have read a lot of articles about possible solutions. This is what I ended up with and I have no further ideas. Maybe anyone alse has some suggestions?

I installed iotop and checked what uses the hard disk (as I noticed that it always works hard when mplayer freezes). I found out that jbd2 was using a lot of /dev/sda5 when freezing was occuring.

So... I turned off jbd2 journaling on my ext4 partition (I have it synchronized to a backup disk every night, so it's okay for now) using command: tune2fs -O ^has_journaling /dev/sda5

This helped a little, but not entirely. Now the mplayer freezes just once per a time, not 3 times in a row. So I checked iotop again and I found out that it's the mplayer that is now using hard drive with 99% usage ratio!

This happens randomly, doesn't matter what is the video file. It happens for about every 5 or 10 minutes (randomly). Here is the "batch" output from iotop which represents the problem:

19:56:09 32179 be/4 googie    122.47 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:10 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.28 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:10 32179 be/4 googie    122.25 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:10 29672 be/4 googie      0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % chrome
19:56:11 32179 be/4 googie    122.28 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:12 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:12 32179 be/4 googie    122.35 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:13 32179 be/4 googie    244.69 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:14  1286 be/4 googie    122.40 K/s   11.48 K/s  0.00 %  2.03 % kdeinit4: plasma-desktop [kdeinit]
19:56:14 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.25 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:14 32179 be/4 googie    489.61 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:15 32179 be/4 googie    122.28 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:17 32179 be/4 googie    488.76 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  4.35 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:17 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.52 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:18 32179 be/4 googie    367.14 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  1.79 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:19 32179 be/4 googie    489.72 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  3.88 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:19 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.25 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:20 32179 be/4 googie    244.81 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.05 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:21 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:21 32179 be/4 googie    244.84 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:22 32179 be/4 googie    367.17 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  1.53 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:23 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.31 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:23 32179 be/4 googie    367.25 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:24 32179 be/4 googie    489.58 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  1.94 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:25 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:25 32179 be/4 googie    244.84 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:27 32179 be/4 googie    122.42 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:27 29707 be/4 googie      0.00 B/s   26.78 K/s  0.00 %  0.53 % chrome [BrowserBlocking]
19:56:27 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:28 32179 be/4 googie    244.56 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:29 32179 be/4 googie    122.43 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:29 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.25 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:30 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:30 32179 be/4 googie    244.73 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:32 32179 be/4 googie    367.45 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 % 99.99 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:32 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.28 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:33 32179 be/4 googie    489.47 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.09 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:33 29704 be/4 googie      0.00 B/s   65.01 K/s  0.00 %  0.05 % chrome [BrowserBlocking]
19:56:34 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.25 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:34 32179 be/4 googie    244.72 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:35 32179 be/4 googie    366.92 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  2.14 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:36 32179 be/4 googie    367.10 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  1.44 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:36 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:37 32179 be/4 googie    244.81 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:38 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.43 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:38 32179 be/4 googie    367.00 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.04 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:40 32179 be/4 googie    367.11 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  1.79 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:41 31044 be/4 root        0.00 B/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.26 % [kworker/2:1]
19:56:41 32179 be/4 googie    244.70 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:41 29694 be/4 googie      0.00 B/s   38.23 K/s  0.00 %  0.00 % chrome [Chrome_CacheThr]
19:56:42 32179 be/4 googie    244.43 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  0.00 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4
19:56:43 32179 be/4 googie    489.61 K/s    0.00 B/s  0.00 %  2.08 % mplayer Lambada High Definition HQ - Kaoma.mp4

Any ideas?

I have a similar effect with my USB 3 drive that seemed to be caused by it spinning down whilst a movie was playing. I think this was due to having a lot of the movie cached but I don't know why the cache would only be repopulated when it was empty.

Couple of months later, the issue I described before was getting more and more annoying (system - not only mplayer - was freezing from time to time). I tried iotop to see what's going on, but I couldn't observe anything unusual.

Finally, I got an idea, that maybe my hard disk is going down, very slowly, even that fsck didn't find any badblocks. I had the same disk (for a mirror) and that was it! I have switched disks, copied my whole linux to new disk (with dd) and it works like a charm!

Posting this for anyone looking for similar symptoms.

See if pulseaudio might be the problem. Try running it with -ao alsa:device=hw=0.0

No, pulseaudio wasn't the problem, I don't use pulseaudio.

As I already explained (my post above) - the problem was my hard drive, that was slowly, but surely getting more and more broken.

I have a 13 year old Pentium 4 box which I run headless with Debian Squeeze. I can play videos stored on it via ssh -X without any problems. It actually has a failing (or failed) hard disk, and it gives me failed DMA read errors before finally starting up.

KDE itself might be the problem. It might be polling some hardware, and waiting when the freezes happen. Try running a different WM, or just running Xorg and an xterm and playing a video there. Do you have any specific dmesg messages when the freezes happen?

In particular, if it works on Windows, then hardware might not be at fault.

What kind of hard disk do you have?

Dear DJ Shaji,

Did you even read my two previous posts? I've already solved my problem and I explained the solution. Are you serious, or just trolling?

Regards,
The Not Sure One

Originally Posted by googie Dear DJ Shaji, Did you even read my two previous posts? I've already solved my problem and I explained the solution. Are you serious, or just trolling? Regards, The Not Sure One

I wasn't trolling. I really thought that the disk wasn't the problem. I'm glad you've solved the problem, but the point I was making was equally valid. There are plenty of things which could have been wrong in this case. At the very least some dmesg output would have helped. Plus the information you provided did not indicate any signs of hard disk failure. I was in all earnest trying to save you the cost of buying a new one.