[PLUG] mplayer Usage (WAS Re: Launch executable...)

[Paul Mullen]

On Sun, Nov 25, 2007 at 12:42:35PM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 
> In the three years that I have been using Linux I have always
> avoided Mplayer. The reason is that it has a bewildering array of
> options and I don't understand what any of them do.

The basics of mplayer are fairly straightforward. The manpage makes
things look a lot scarier than they are because, well... it's a
manpage. There's a lot of stuff in there about codecs, filters, etc.
that can be safely ignored.

> I lack the motivation to learn what they do because I have no
> interest in video.

mplayer is as much about audio as it is video. It has a nifty bag of
tricks that are worth learning if you ever find yourself needing to
transcode one format to another, rip audio out of a video track, etc.

> Having said that, I'd try Mplayer if I could get it to play both
> streaming radio and MP3s,

"mplayer happyfunmusic.mp3" is about as simple as it gets.

> but there seems to be no way to create a playlist anyway nor, could
> I figure out how to get it to play a streaming radio station, e.g.:

mplayer has to be told that you're feeding it a playlist, as opposed
to a file:

  mplayer http://shoutcast.omroep.nl:8148/listen.pls

It handled all of your streams just fine, but couldn't actually play
two of them (radiocult.asx, CatalunyaMusic.ram) due to codec issues
(namely, lack of support for newer Windows-y stuff). The others came
through great.

> Is there a way to create a playlist in Mplayer that contains radio
> station links like the above?

I've never bothered with the mplayer GUI, but the command-line version
has no support for creating playlists. It's designed for playback (and
transcoding), not collection management.

> Can I make the video window go away so all I have is the little
> control panel?

If you're playing a video via command-line mplayer and only want the
audio, you can always

  mplayer -vo null happyfunvideo.avi

to have the video omitted, and playback audio only. If the file has no
video track, the command-line version won't open a video window.


-- 
Paul