Hi all

I am a newbie running Slackware10.2.
Recently I installed the pkg "Mplayer-1.0pre7try2-i486-1asz" (from linuxpackages.net) but when I try to play a video from my HDD It gives me the following error

*********
Fatal error!
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
*********

but "gxine" can play the video.

mp3s are not giving me any trouble though, they run fine on both of them.

So... can anyone please tell me what is it that I am doing wrong.

Thanks
Emon

...

*********
Fatal error!
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
*********

...

You can try

to find your correct video driver. One of the options should work for you.

Fluxx.

Gxine uses xine backend and mplayer is its own player. THe problem as explained above is the video driver.

Solution:
Right click on the mplayer video screen.
Go to Preferences
Go to the Video tab
Change the driver to xv X11/Xv
Press OK/Apply.. or w/e it is nowadays
If that doesn't work, change it to the other available drivers.

This isn't exactly along the lines of the question, but I would recommend xine for most of your movie playing needs. And if you are going to use Mplayer, I _highly_ recommend compiling it from source. I tried the linuxpackage version, and it was complaining about many dependencies, whereas when I compiled it ./configure picked up what was available and created a version perfect for my install.

The problem is that the default video driver doesn't work for you. If whoever compiled it had the /dev/mga_vid
device i think this is the default driver. You need to try a different driver as Fluxx said.

try "xvinfo" to see if your card supports the XV extension.
If it does then you choose the XV driver. It will be the fastest.
Write a mplayer.conf and put some values in there so you don't write them every time you play a movie.

If the mplayer binary is /usr/local/bin/mplayer then the config file is /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf
edit it or create it if it doesn't exist and put something like the following:

There are tons of options you can use. I just show you some of the ones that are used mostly.

Thanks for the suggestions guys


I changed the driver to 'x11' and now video is playing fine.
BUT (there is always a but, isn't it) there is new a problem. If I choose to play a video at "full screen" the whole screen goes black with the video playing in center, maintaining it's original size!!
The reason I did not switch to the 'xv' driver is because then the video quality gets degraded (I will try to explain the meaning of "degraded" later). Somebody suggested that can use the "x11" driver but should put the following line in "~/.mplayer/config"

zoom=yes

now I get full screen using x11 driver but the video quality is always degraded, whether I use x11 or xv; or full screen or original size.
This not the first time this has happened, before MPlayer the other two GUI player that I used are xine & gxine. xine gives degraded video while gxine performs OK.

So I removed "zoom=yes" from "~/.mplayer/config" and now at least I get good video while using the x11 driver with original video size.

Now I will try to explain the meaning of "degraded" as best as I can.
Back in those days when I used to play NFS2 on win98, the game had an option of changing the image quality by pressing F2; one of the option was "interlaced". In this option you get a lot of closely spaced horizontal lines on your screen (don't ask me why, I don't have a clue). Now my problem is not exactly that, but the video kind of slightly breaks up into closely spaced horizontal lines, and then it becomes OK agin. One second it's degraded, the next second it's OK... and so it goes on.
My apologies in advance for putting you guys through probably the most idiotic explanation ever, but honestly don't know how else to explain it.

Is it possible to take a screen shot of the video and then send it to you guy as attachment?? if so please let me know how to take screen shot of video in gmplyer.

Also I am using a custom compiled 2.6.13 kernel, could it have any thing to do the problem??

Here are few more details on my machine, if it helps

Processor: Duron 850MHz
RAM: 512 MB (running at 266MHz)
AGP: 64MB (GeForce4 MX 440 AGP 8x)
I am using a driver that I downloaded from the nvidia site.

Thanks again
Emon

Hey, I got a similar problem. When I use mplayer on my dell inspiron 710m. My screen resolution is at 1280x800 (widescreen)

I've tried all the -vo output drivers, and I can't get fullscreen to work on the X11 driver which is the only one that holds the real aspect ratio of the video... Im watching everything stretched... here's the output for mplayer when I run it.

any ideas...? this is freakin weird man...

forget i wrote anything, i fixed it!!! yeah!!!

i just wrote a little config
vo=x11
zoom=yes

thanx a lot for the insider tips!