mplayer can't initialize my video card..

Darkenedes · 08-20-2004, 02:57 AM

I have a Diamond Stealth III S540 w/ S3 Savage4 chipset... it's ancient, but mplayer used to play videos with it fine. I had to recently re-install mplayer (I didn't get the codecs right when I compiled it the first time) and in the process, my X server got messed up... I downloaded XFree86 because it was listed as a requirement for mplayer, but I was running Xorg and didn't know I didn't need Xfree86. Once installed, the settings got mixed up, and I couldn't start x. I had to go back to my Slackware CD to get Xorg working again. Now mplayer won't run videos anymore. Here are the cpu specs that mplayer brings up at load:

Code:

MPlayer 1.0pre5-3.3.4 (C) 2000-2004 MPlayer Team

CPU: Advanced Micro Devices Athlon K7 649.4 MHz (Family: 6, Stepping: 2)
Detected cache-line size is 64 bytes
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx

This is what I get when I try to run a video..

Code:

AVI file format detected.
VIDEO:  [DX50]  368x240  24bpp  29.970 fps  641.5 kbps (78.3 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
MP3lib: init layer2&3 finished, tables done
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 16000->176400 (128.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm:mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
open: Permission denied
vo_mga: Couldn't open /dev/mga_vid
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

I'm still pretty new to how linux works, so any suggestions?

edit - By the way, I've tried running it in as a normal user and as root, it's still the same error.

rjlee · 08-20-2004, 03:29 AM

First of all, look at the permissions of the /dev/mga_vid file:

Code:

 ls -l /dev/mga_vid

. You should see an “r” in at least one of the three columns.

You can also change the video filter with the comment:

Code:

mplayer -vo filter

Replace filter with the name of the filter; “sdl” is a good bet, and “x11” should show you something, albeit low-quality. You can get a list of the compiled output filters using:

Code:

mplayer -vo help

Hope that helps,

— Robert J. Lee

Darkenedes · 08-20-2004, 06:18 AM

Thanks, Robert. I have it working now. Everything's back to normal. Now on to p2p.