I was just wondering... Why is it that I could watch my SupermanI & II DVDs on my machine using Windows with no real trouble or distortion during playback (using WINDVD), but when I run them with MPlayer, I am told me that my machine is too slow and that I have to dumb things down a bit with various commands?

I'm not sure if it makes a difference, but I'm running Zenwalk on a Toshiba Satellite 1800-S200 with a 850MHz PIII and 512MB of RAM.

I'm very much a newb and since I'm just learning about everything here in general, any insight would be nice.

Cheers

Chance is you're using "vesa" as xorg driver. This is a generic driver that can be used on almost every configuration, unfortunately performances are not that good. Try using the proper driver for your video card This should fix the problem.
Ciao

I'm pretty sure I'm using the right driver. I'll check when I get home, but during the configuration I remember choosing the "trident" driver. My card is a Trident Cyberblade Ai1.

Thanks for the reply.

Is "dma" enabled on your DVD drive (hdparm /dev/hd?), may be this is the problem. Have you ever tryied using a different player ie ogle or xine ?
Ciao

I know that with SuSE linux, i had to do a cat /proc/cpuinfo and found out that acpi had slowed my cpu down dynamically. I had to adjust the power management so that it was "maximum" at all times. Then my CPU went from 800mhz to the proper 1.6

I really have no use for acpi most times, so you could boot with a acpi=off. Just a thought....


booyaa

urka,
thanks again for your help. DMA was not enabled. I enabled it, then when I tried to watch the dvd through mplayer's gui, it just closed. I tried running from the terminal and I got this:

jim[~]$ mplayer dvd://
MPlayer 1.0pre8-3.4.6 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel Celeron 2/Pentium III Coppermine,Geyserville (Family: 6, Model: 8, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 SSE

Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts.

Playing dvd://.
Reading disc structure, please wait...
There are 4 titles on this DVD.
There are 37 chapters in this DVD title.
There are 1 angles in this DVD title.
DVD successfully opened.
MPEG-PS file format detected.
VIDEO: MPEG2 720x480 (aspect 3) 29.970 fps 7500.0 kbps (937.5 kbyte/s)
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [liba52] AC3 decoding with liba52
Using SSE optimized IMDCT transform
AC3: 2.0 (dolby) 48000 Hz 192.0 kbit/s
Using MMX optimized resampler
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 192.0 kbit/12.50% (ratio: 24000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [a52] afm: liba52 (AC3-liba52)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
Try adding the scale filter, e.g. -vf spp,scale instead of -vf spp.
VDecoder init failed
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.4.0b
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm: libmpeg2 (MPEG-1 or 2 (libmpeg2))
==========================================================================
AO: [oss] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 720x480 => 854x480 Planar YV12
X11 error: BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)?,?% 2 0


MPlayer interrupted by signal 6 in module: vo_check_events
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn't happen.
It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
gcc version. If you think it's MPlayer's fault, please read
DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can't and
won't help unless you provide this information when reporting a possible bug.

I haven't tried using other video players yet, but I guess I'll give in and give them a go.

booyaadeewd,
I ran cat /proc/cpuinfo and this is what I got:

jim[~]$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
processor : 0
vendor_id : GenuineIntel
cpu family : 6
model : 8
model name : Pentium III (Coppermine)
stepping : 6
cpu MHz : 852.043
cache size : 256 KB
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 2
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse up
bogomips : 1705.00

I don't really know what to make of it. Can you help a brother out?

Thanks again for the help, guys.