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  • From: sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [BL] MPlayer and DVDs
  • Date: Tue, 19 Jul 2005 21:57:44 +0000 (UTC)

Now that I have the DVD-ROM drive working properly without DMA/IRQ conflicts, and with the ISA AWE32 card, it would not play DVD's any more.

In CMOS I had to set IRQ5 to ISA/EISA rather than PCI/PnP so that I could read software CDs with the DVD-ROM drive - otherwise it was about 20 sec wait for it to time out on trying to use an IRQ and DMA. The sound card is ISA/pnp. The other IRQs were left at PCI/PnP. I have an ISA (I don't think pnp) modem (IRQ 3). Every single IRQ is taken in DOS (USB, scsi, ethernet).

The player was playing when I had a PCI sound card (despite having problems reading software CDs) but not when I switched to the ISA card. On four DVDs, it would play one for a few minutes, one for a few seconds, one for a millisecond, and one not at all. I was getting various error messages about slow CPUs, or end of file. Vesa or X -framedrop, same results.

So today I tried setting IRQ 3 (modem) and DMA channels 1 and 5 (sound card) to ISA. This seems to have fixed the problem with playing DVDs and it continues to mount CDs immediately (which required IRQ5 - ISA in CMOS).

S3 Trio3D AGP VESA 2.0 card and a 605MHz cpu.

On two other DVDs, a while ago, I could type
mplayer -dvd-device /dev/hdc -vo vesa dvd://1
and it would play the whole movie.
-vo x11 -framedrop also worked

DVD number one - track 1 (DVD://1) gets me as far as the FBI Warning and Image Entertainment then I just have a black screen (in VESA mode). I can select track 2 instead and it does the next track (which is longer - I got out of it with Ctrl-C).

DVD number two - Track 1 is a black screen. Ctrl-C exits. Next time I tried playing just track 2 (that worked, now that I have set the DMA's to ISA) but I again have a black screen after that track, and this time I cannot get out of it with Ctrl-C or Alt-F2 or even a warm reboot.

So I read the man page (mplayer.gz - use zless) and changed dvd://1 to
dvd://1-3 - I was already told there are three 'titles'. I now progress past the introductory screens to the actual movie.

p toggles pause
right arrow skips 10 sec forward, up arrow 1 min, PgUp 10 min

Very nice - I cannot do this with the hardware DVD player (lacking remote control).

/ and * - softer and louder
9 and 0 on the top row do the same
9 on the keypad gives me a black screen, possibly because I have numlock turned off. Ctrl-C won't exit, warm reboot.

v is supposed to toggle subtitle visibility and it does not seem to work. Good thing I know some German. I tried in both vesa and x11. In X I lost sound within a few seconds without -framedrop.

Die Fledermaus, with subtitle languages D GB F SP JP.
The credits are in French as is the producer, the jacket in English, the singing in German.

q for quit - again the black screen from which I cannot exit or switch consoles. (q worked on number 3, exited to a prompt).

DVD number 3 (dvd://1) would play for about 10 seconds yesterday then give me a black screen. Same thing happened today. Ctrl-C exits. There are two titles. I discovered this after typing dvd://1-3. I am now seeing the second part of this DVD. q is not working here at all, or ESC (in X) or Ctrl-C.


Probably the first two DVDs that worked with dvd://1 had just one 'title'.

How do I get at the subtitles? Everything else is now working perfectly and I can if I want skip past the warnings.

mplayer says it can work with svgalib but David seems not to have compiled for it. Would that take less cpu than vesa? It would work with more video cards.

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org




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