mplayer - command line and gui
 

Hi
When I load mplayer with "mplayer -vo xv -dvd 1" it is (more or less) fine but when I use the GUI I get errors (see below) and the image motion is choppy (and the sound isn't so good.)
************************************************
**** Your system is too SLOW to play this! ****
************************************************
!!! Possible reasons, problems, workarounds:
- Most common: broken/buggy _audio_ driver. Workaround: Try -ao sdl or use
ALSA 0.5 or OSS emulation of ALSA 0.9. Read DOCS/sound.html for more tips!
You can also experiment with -autosync 30 or other values.
- Slow video output. Try a different -vo driver (for list: -vo help) or try
with -framedrop! Read DOCS/video.html for video tuning/speedup tips.
- Slow CPU. Don't try to play a big DVD/divx on a slow CPU! Try -hardframedrop.
- Broken file. Try various combinations of these: -nobps -ni -mc 0 -forceidx
- For playback from slow media (nfs/smb mounts, dvd, vcd etc) try -cache 8192
- Are you using -cache to play a non-interleaved AVI file? Try with -nocache.
If none of these apply, read DOCS/bugreports.html!

Is this common when using the GUI? I'm happy to use the command line but OTHERS might not be.

Yes it's OK with GUI b/c GUI is in development state and it probably will stay there for as long as MPlayer exists :)
Command line interface is all you need to enjoy a quality product.

Oh good. I thought (as many of us do, I suppose) that I was doing something (obvious) wrong. Clearly not. The DVD does seem to be running a bit slow, even from the command line interface. It's a bit jerky. I'm sure that there are other postings related to this. So...no more GUI.

Enable DMA on your DVD-ROM device for more info
man hdparm

the gui should not affect the playback quality if you configure the program correctly

Sorry acid_kewpie - I don't quite understand. Do you mean configure mplayer? If so - that isn't so much of a problem. It's jerky but only a little. Do you mean the GUI? Should I reconfigure that?
I thought the GUI was just a layer on the program - mplayer from the command line seems okay (ish).

Well there are "preferences" in the gmplayer menu. You might check those out and try different options in there. I believe this might be what Chris is referring you to.

Cool

Ah-much clearer now. Thanks
And enabling DMA worked a treat. I can't believe the quality now.
:)