Baslinux mailing list

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

On Thu, 19 May 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > > Does mplayer -ao pcm work now?? There is no way that it should depend
> > > on a good sound driver.
> >
> > It had a DMA conflict, apparently.
>
> I'm very puzzled. How would a DMA conflict affect something that's
> basically a filter?

> From the little I understood after doing a web search, something times out 
when you write to /dev/dsp.  For some people it took 5-15 sec to time 
out but for me it was immediate.  The only thing I had to do to fix that 
problem was specify high dma (dma16).  The error message said I probably 
had a DRQ or IRQ conflict.  IRQ 7 worked in DOS and Windows.  High DMA 5 
worked in DOS and Windows, so I specified the same settings for linux.  I 
had to use three OS'es to get mplayer working in linux - DOS to diagnose 
the problem, Windows to change the settings.

What is a DMA and what does it do?  (I used to work for the Defense 
Mapping Agency).

I just found a parport card that lets you choose IRQ5 or IRQ7 but I may 
leave things as is (working), rather than change parport card and then put 
the sound card back to IRQ 5.

> > Yes -ao pcm produces an audiodump.wav file, about 10 times the size
> > of the mp3 file.  This is using the mplayer for the p2.
> >
> > The version of mplayer for alsa (version 2) has the same problem it
> > did before I got the sound working with version 1 and mpg123, which
> > are still working.  It gets as far as  Detected cache-line size is
> > 32 bytes.
>
> No other clues?

Do you want me to copy out the lines before that too?  (Tomorrow).
Maybe the most recent version will work better.


> > Maybe version 3 (once I get an uncorrupted copy) will work on both computers?
>
> I just finished uploading a new version. I still don't know what corrupted
> the first one. I should download and test it now.

It is 1 am here so I will try it another time.

Do you want to post the correct md5sum?

> > > Try without a -vo option, so you can see the output of MPlayer. Are
> > > there any errors/warnings which may be relevant?
> >
> > Without -vo specified (from the CLI) I am now getting sound!!!!!
> > mplayer -dvd-device /dev/hdd dvd://1
> >
> > Maybe VESA interfered with sound.  I will try with X11 (Xvesa),
> > first loading X.
>
> Is there still no sound with vesa?

I did not try again.  I tried several times earlier with vesa (no sound) 
and then several times with no video (got sound) or X11 (got sound).
How would trying again change anything?
> > mplayer -vo X11 -dvd-device /dev/hdd dvd://1
> >
> > Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.
>
> It's "x11" not "X11". MPlayer is picky about capitalization.

Okay, but it found it anyway.  It looks for fb and x11 but not vesa.

> > Without -vo:
> >
> > mplayer -dvd-device /dev/hdd dvd://1  WORKS!
>
> X11 is automatically detected. I assume that sound worked too.
Yes.

> > I tried to maximize the window but the picture stayed small.
>
> Add the "-zoom" option to scale things up.

Okay.  Like zgv -z for filling the screen?

I can't imagine why anyone would want to watch a movie in half the screen, 
but then I can't understand why people want two TV stations at once.

> > I have about an 8" screen - is this adjustable?
>
> Yes. The manpage details the options to set the size on the
> command line.
>
> > The VESA picture was full-screen.  I could
> > try setting up X SVGA and fiddling with settings.
>
> It should behave the same way. For more speed, set the X
> resolution to the size of the DVD playback window. (The X11
> output driver will use software scaling if card-specific
> drivers are not correctly installed. Software scaling is
> slow.)

Xvesa --screen 854x480x16 ?

I think that is already the size of the window - about 2/3 of the width of 
my 1280 screen.  I can experiment.

The little monitor on the lower right of icewm showed nearly all green 
(full cpu usage) but top said it varied from about 45-49%, with about 3% 
memory usage.  Very little cpu or memory used by Xvesa.  The video card 
must be doing half the work in its 64MB RAM.  It has all sorts of other 
features related to being usable in a dual-monitor system, which came in a 
12MB Windows driver download.

The picture and sound were perfect (no lost bytes).

> David

Sindi