Baslinux mailing list

[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

On Sun, 8 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > > What does "jobs" say?
> >
> > Nothing.  which jobs  - no jobs in .......
> > What is jobs?

When I typed 'jobs' nothing seemed to happen.

> jobs, like fg, is built into the shell. The ash manpage
> should be able to tell you more about it than I can.

Do some programs work okay in the background (perhaps wget?) but mplayer 
and play do not?

> > If I remove the & and everything following it, your method works:
> >
> > mkfifo audiodump.wav
> > mplayer -ao pcm http:  (or pnm: etc.)  WITHOUT & or fg
> > switch vt's
> > play audiodump.wav    - the file is 4096 not 0 now and stays that size.
> >
> >
> > I probably misunderstood very clear directions for use and left in the &.
> > If I type Ctrl-Z mplayer stops doing anything, fg brings it back.
>
> Normal.
>
> > Play audiodump.wav & does not play either, works without the &.
> > If I start running out of terminals I will use 'screen' to make ten
> > terminals out of one.
>
> Keep reading for a script which will work with just one terminal,
> and greatly simplify what you need to type.
With bated breath!

> > I am getting lovely sound quality from wdav now.  I have only a 4K
> > .wav file but no skips.  It sounds far better than the radio.
> > Mplayer said something about a cache - maybe that is acting to
> > buffer the file before it gets into the .wav file.  Player is
> > telling me
> > A: 6:52.3 (time elapsed) 3% 15%
> > The 3% went down to 2.9% and the 15 alternates with 16 and 17.
>
> You can use the -cache option to change the size of the buffer.
> e.g. mplayer -ao pcm -cache 8192

The default cache seems to be 320K and it works perfectly.  I think I can 
start playing before the cache actually fills up, at about 7%.

> > On a previous occasion the middle figure was 92% and rising - is
> > this something to do with buffering or lost clusters?  You did not
> > include docs for mplayer.
>
> I included the manpage in the package. Both the regular one (if you
> have man on BL2) and a version that works on regular BL3.

Thanks, I somehow missed it.  I have man2html in BL2 and a script called 
mann that looks for the man page and converts and displays with lynx.  I 
will look up what the numbers mean.

> > ps now tells me there are five copies of mplayer running.
> >
> > I killed them all and started over, and after I started playing I
> > again have five copies running.  Sizes about 8K, three are State T
> > and two state S.  I have one copy of sox and none of mpg123 or
> > play.  The same process numbers keep coming back except for the
> > last two copies of mplayer.
> >
> > The second to last is taking up 3% of cpu and the others 0%, but
> > they are all taking up about 1-1.5% of memory.
> >
> > If I kill the first three it keeps playing.  If it kill the fourth
> > it stops.  The fourth is the one at the top of the list in 'top'.
> > What are the others doing?
>
> I think this is a scheme to improve performance. Certain CPU features
> (for example, SMP, HyperThreading, MMX) can greatly improve performance
> if a program is split into several threads or processes. (Mozilla does
> the same thing.) Likely, one thread handles networking, another audio
> output, another handles the status output. The fourth is probably the
> master process (or "parent"), so killing it also kills the child
> processes.

But without the first three child processes it still works and I don't 
notice any degradation in quality.

> > Sox is using 1.3% of cpu and 0.4 % of memory.  What else besides
> > compiling and gzipping uses more cpu?  Image manipulation?
>
> Try playing a DVD on a framebuffer with anything slower than a P4
> and watch the CPU usage climb to 100%. Or try mp3 decoding on a 386
> or slow 486.

A DVD involves image manipulation.  I have played mp3s in DOS on a 486.

> > For some reason this 200MHz computer (which I think came with this
> > cpu in the board, set to its maximum speed of 200MHz), is
> > identified by mplayer as AMD K6 324.0 MHz (Family: 5, Stepping; 2).
> >   dmesg tells me the computer has a 200461 KHz processor.  I think
> > the cpu was also labelled that way, or we looked up its number to
> > get the speed.
>
> The two CPU models may share the Family and Stepping codes.

So is mplayer wrong here?

> > A friend says the 300 and 350 MHz AMD cpus, even in a super socket
> > 7, are i686 and ought to work with your first mplayer and that any
> > board which can go over 233 MHz is 686.
>
> I think that the Pentium MMX 266 and lower are merely i586. I know
> that all other Intels 233 or higher are 686s.

But what is an AMD K6 350MHz?  It did not work with the first mplayer you 
compiled.  In super socket 7.  Did your version actually require Intel? 
That may determine where we put the DVD drive.  I am not at that computer 
right now but how would I check if it is equivalent to i686 intel?

> > Perhaps you live in Australia?
>
> No, NW Oregon. Quite a ways from Australia.
You are probably not getting our warm dry sunny weather.

> I've figured out that MPlayer only needs the fg junk if it is sent
> to the background. Sox doesn't have this problem. So, here is the
> updated script:
>
> #!/bin/sh
> mkfifo /tmp/audiodump.wav
> play /tmp/audiodump.wav &
> exec real_mplayer -ao pcm -aofile /tmp/audiodump.wav "$@"
>
> # End of script

I have already renamed the second mplayer to mplayeralsa  (and the first 
version to mplayerp2).  I will try this when next in linux (now in DOS).
The "$@" means I can put more than one argument after mplayer?
Does the -aofile /tmp/audiodump.wav tell it where to make the .wav file so 
I don't need to be in /tmp?

> See the real_mplayer? I think that for convenience you may want to
> rename /usr/local/bin/mplayer to /usr/local/bin/real_mplayer, then
> put the above script into /usr/local/bin/mplayer. chmod +x. You
> should then be able to merely run:
>
> mplayer http://www.foobar.com/radio/music.mp3

And I could paste the URL in with gpm (or screen once I figure out how). I 
had Realplayer8 in linux working with links on one computer, but I can't 
think of a way to coordinate mplayer with links or lynx since I first need 
to extract the URL from files of various formats such as .pls or .m3u or 
whatever is used by realaudio and windows-media.  I bet Steven or you 
could come up with some script that looks for things starting in http:// 
or pnm:// or rstp:// (?) and cuts off anything preceding, except that some 
of these little files have TWO URLs in them with words in between.

> and get sound. You can also add options directly to the command
> line, since I used the "$@" tag. All you need is a writable /tmp
> directory to put the audiodump file in.
>
> > My question was, why someone would broadcast in MP3 and also OGG -
> > does OGG have some advantage, better compression or something?
>
> I answered your second question and completely neglected the first
> one. Oggs sound better to my ears, all else being equal. Also,
> don't forget the patent issues with MP3. Not everyone wants to
> deal with those.

I will try to hear the difference once I find a 20K OGG broadcast.
All the formats I have tried sound infinitely better than listening to 
radio broadcasts from 60-75 miles away, even at 20K, though this is 
supposed to be less than FM quality I think (is that 64K?).

> > So mplayer can't handle this realplayer format for some reason. What
> > is afm?
>
> Audio File (or Format) Manager?
>
> > I presume it looks for three variants by name and then by
> > number.  Is this something I can add later or must it be compiled in?
>
> It may need the binary codecs from the MPlayer website. The Linux ones
> should work on a PC with my MPlayer binary. Setup may be a bit tricky.

It said to compile them in.  I have no idea what to do with a codec, 
whatever that is.  No big deal, now that I have 20 MP3 and some usable 
RA and WM stations.  I will try your script soon.

> David
> --
> _______________________________________________
> NEW! Lycos Dating Search. The only place to search multiple dating sites at 
> once.
> http://datingsearch.lycos.com
>
> _______________________________________________
> BasLinux mailing list
> BasLinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/baslinux

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