Yet another mplayer question...

Got it installed...it opens using the neutron skin ( cool! )...but no DVDs play. I haven't tried a CD, yet. I know I have to set up the misc screen, for /dev/scd0 ( it's a Toshiba atapi ), or /mnt/cdrom, or dev/dvd or somesuch , but I'm a newbie, and this is one area that REALLY confuses me, this 'mounting' stuff. Thanks in advance if you can help a recovering Winblows user make any sense of any of this.

By the way, I seem to remember that I got RealPlayer up and running too, by some long, circuitous route...nevermind. Xine is installed and won't play anything, either, but Ogle is great, and works just fine...watched 'Analyze This" last night...somehow I lucked out and set it up right...lol.

I have an ongoing hair-pulling date with DVDRip...it won't recognize fping, vcdimager, nor the subtitleripper ...I posted a more explanatory note on another forum, at http://www.linuxforum.com/forums/ , if anyone has any thoughts.

Keep smileyin'...

Just make a symlink of your cd drive to /dev/dvd. Do that with ln -sf /dev/scd0 /dev/dvd. Ogle is a great program, I use it because mplayer doesn't support dvd menu's yet.

open a terminal
type su to become root
type grep -i cdrom /etc/fstab
fidn the line that has /mnt/cdrom in it. it shoudl have somethig like this dev=/dev/scd0 in it.
remember/qrite down the /dev/scd0 bit (might be /dev/hdc for you)

right click on the mplayer window and click preferences.
click the misc tab.
down the bottom it says what is dvd drive.
replace /dev/dvd or whateve rit says with the bit u wrote down before.

now it shoudl work when u click play dvd.

What, more exactly, is it that you don't understand with mounting? I could probably rant on for hours about the internals of mounting, but that might not make it any clearer for you. =)

I really do appreciate the help. Here's the state of things now: etc/fstab has /dev/cdrom mnt/cdrom, although I seem to recall that the drive responds to the scd0 setting consistently. Ogle plays everything first time and every time, but I cannot make the Edit>Properties menu open up to examine the settings. Xine plays a DVD only IF I use "ln -sf /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd" . How do I make this permanent after a re-boot? Change it in fstab? What program set this file up, and how did it decide not to use /dev/scd0 nor /dev/dvd?
Mplayer is just a no-go, no matter what I do. I keep getting the error message "Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo ) device". I have both DVD device and CDROM device set up as /dev/cdrom in the preferences>misc tab, since I've used the symlink...? I think I've tried every combination of settings. I would like to learn more, and make all three players work, to feel like I've gained a foot-hold on understanding the problem better. My ultimate goal is to get DVDRip working...

As for the details and finer points of 'mounting', I would love to know/understand everything I can! Perhaps there's a good reference? Thanks again. :o

if it doesnt work with the current video out device, go to preferences | video | video out device and change it.

As for your confusion about /dev/cdrom, if you run "ls -l /dev/cdrom", you will probably find that it is a symlink that points at scd0.

As for mplayer, can you post the output of "mplayer -vo help"? Also, if the first listed output driver is "xv", please check so that the "xvinfo" command returns a sensible result (should be a couple of hundred lines listing visual modes, but not an error message).

As for mounting... I'll have to take that later. I don't have much time right now. Please remind me. =)

Hi,

I have just joined and of cos would like to seek help on mplayer.
i have fin ./configure, make, make install, but how do i exectue the mplayer? when i type mplayer in terminal, nothing comes out.

I m linux newbie as well.

many thanks ahead.

xfiles_wolvie: run mplayer /home/xfiles_wolvie/movies/myfilm.mpeg (change to the real location of course!). That is if you want to use the command line which frankly is easyer and faster than the gui.

What you probably mean is that no gui appears. To get the gui type "gmplayer" instead of just "mplayer"

dHarryBear: You probably want to recompile mplayer with this command:

./configure --disable-mpdvdkit --enable-dvd

There seems to be some confusion about the mpdvdkit side of things.. personaly I think it sucks. When you get mplayer recompiled with dvd support you can use it to rip dvds (or dump the uncompressed stream) which will allow you to copy them. (of course I mean your dvd's of all those home movies you made.. not feature films hehe)

Hi variant,

err, sorry for asking this, but do u run the command u gve me in a terminal or in the
menu-> run ?

If i were to uninstall the mplayer n do a fresh install, how do i go about doing it?