MPlayer playback pauses on startup; won't play

[loneblender]

All of the videos I've tried with mplayer pause at startup and won't play; there is also no audio. I can seek forward in time and the video displays the frames properly, but the movie pauses again but will not play by itself. The frames mplayer stops at are reproducible (see below).

I run Ubuntu 8.04 on a Dell Inspiron 530 with an nVidia geforce 8600 GT graphics card.

The mplayer version and output, as well as some OS information is below; any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

$ mplayer movie.avi
MPlayer 1.0rc2-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8200 @ 2.66GHz (Family: 6, Model: 23, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing movie.avi.
AVI file format detected.
[aviheader] Video stream found, -vid 0
[aviheader] Audio stream found, -aid 1
VIDEO: [DX50] 640x256 24bpp 23.976 fps 844.5 kbps (103.1 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
Software: VirtualDubMod 1.5.10.1 (build 2439/release)
xscreensaver_disable: Could not find XScreenSaver window.
GNOME screensaver disabled
================================================== ========================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
================================================== ========================
================================================== ========================
Forced audio codec: mad
Opening audio decoder: [libmad] libmad mpeg audio decoder
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [mad] afm: libmad (libMAD MPEG layer 1-2-3)
================================================== ========================
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 640 x 256 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 2.50:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 640x256 => 640x256 Planar YV12

A: 0.0 V: 0.2 A-V: -0.167 ct: -0.013 5/ 5 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
(I press the right-arrow key once, mplayer pauses again)
A: 12.6 V: 12.6 A-V: -0.085 ct: -0.005 304/304 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
(I press the right-arrow key once, mplayer pauses again)
A: 25.1 V: 25.1 A-V: -0.010 ct: -0.100 602/602 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
(I press the right-arrow key once, mplayer pauses again)
A: 42.6 V: 42.6 A-V: -0.008 ct: -0.100 1022/1022 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
(I press the space bar)
===== PAUSE =====
(I press the space bar again)
A: 42.6 V: 42.6 A-V: -0.003 ct: -0.100 1022/1022 ??% ??% ??,?% 0 0
(The movie is still paused)
...

$ uname -a
Linux host 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Wed Jun 18 14:43:41 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Please also let me know if other info would be helpful.

[zccpop]

I have met this problem.But I cannot find ideas to fix.
The mplayer is recover without anything.

[mc4man]

gmplayer - (from apps menu) see what happens if you switch audio output to alsa from pulse.
Or in cli specify alsa as the ao.

[Cresho]

This is rather old but for example, If I disabled xscreensaver in smplayer, it plays the videos after fine. It seems as if it tries to disable xscreensaver and fails. in smplayer, there is an option to disable it in general settings. I play with this switch and my videos play immediately.

I think its in general, general, video...remove checkmark that tells smplayer to disable xscreensaver and it works fast at startup.

my problem was starting up smplayer to play vide and it would pause for a few seconds..like 5

[pfifo]

I am running a fresh install of 8.04.3 mplayer was driving me nuts with the freezing, my solution may or may not be relevant cause in my journey to get this fixed I built mplayer from scratch via linuxfromscratch's directions, but it was still freezing afterwards.

Anyway, I noticed a message in mplayer's output complaining about the selected video output driver not being valid so i tacked on a '-vo x11' onto the command line and it worked. Then i did 'sudo gedit /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf' and changed the default vo driver in the configuration. Im now enjoying my wmv files in my favorite video player. Hope this helps out, and yes i registered just to post this fix

[andrew.46]

Hi pfifo,

then i did 'sudo gedit /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf' and changed the default vo driver in the configuration.

You might be better to use a local configuration file rather than a file that is more usually used for system configuration. The usual way to establish a local file of this type is to copy the system file to $HOME:

$ mkdir $HOME/.mplayer
$ cp /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf $HOME/.mplayer/mplayer.config

All the best,

Andrew

[GoMad]

I have this issue, I have to press a key to move the movie on. I have tried -vo xv abd -vo x11 and neither prevent this happending.

Any more ideas ?

Thanks.

[GoMad]

I don't think the 9.0.4 upgrade worls well, did a complete fresh install after downloading RC1 9.10 and all seems ok now, apart from ubuntu locking up but I am going to change the graphics card and memory to seeit that helps.

[shanedk]

I'm having this same problem (upgraded to 9.10 and the videos pause), and see how weird this is:

If I open a shell, and type precisely the mplayer string from the setup, with the video's file name in place of "%s" of course, then I still get the video pausing.

But if I close out of the MythTV frontend, then go back to the shell and type the exact same command, mplayer plays the video fine with no problems.

Why would this be? Hopefully it'll give someone a clue as to the problem.

[NTolerance]

I'm having this same problem (upgraded to 9.10 and the videos pause), and see how weird this is:

If I open a shell, and type precisely the mplayer string from the setup, with the video's file name in place of "%s" of course, then I still get the video pausing.

But if I close out of the MythTV frontend, then go back to the shell and type the exact same command, mplayer plays the video fine with no problems.

Why would this be? Hopefully it'll give someone a clue as to the problem.

I'm also getting this after upgrading to 9.10. The problem only occurs when launching mplayer from the MythTV frontend. I've tried these mplayer switches with no luck:

-vo xv
-vo x11
-ao pulse