gmplayer video problem: "video out device not compatibe"?

[moon2js]

I have a machine with a fresh install of Ubuntu, and I've followed the multimedia howto for Ubuntu to the letter, but I'm still having a bunch of problems.

For starters, mplayer will play things, but it won't display the picture on video properly. It refuses to show any picture in windowed mode, and on fullscreen, the image is side shifted so that there is a blue bar going down the center right with the image spliced on either side of it. The audio seems to be fine.

Can anyone tell me how to fix this? I know I've been able to play video well on Mandrake in the past, so I don't know how to fix this problem.

Here are some of the error messages I get when I run gmplayer from the terminal:

Reading /home/james/.mplayer/codecs.conf: Can't open '/home/james/.mplayer/codecs.conf': No such file or directory
Reading /usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 73 audio & 180 video codecs
Font /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully! (206 chars)
Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts.
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/james/.mplayer/input.conf: No such file or directory

Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
VDecoder init failed :

Can anyone help me out?

[cybertron]

Your first set of error messages aren't really that important. MPlayer should still work fine with those, they're just telling you some stuff you could do if you wanted to.

For the second set, you might want to try a different vo setting. If you're using it from the command-line you can specify it like:

mplayer -vo xv filename.avi

There are a number of different things you can put after vo. Do

mplayer -vo help

to find out what they all are.

[pickarooney]

The latest non-CVS version of the mplayer GUI has a bug that causes an error-message to flash up constantly when trying to playback video streams, although I don't think this is that partiular error. Just to be on the safe side, test with the command line mplayer until the problem is fixed.

As cybertron says, try the different vo settings, check that you're using the proper driver/XConfig setup for your graphics card and also make sure you have all the necessary codecs installed. I think mpleyer comes with a fairly complete pack, but you might need DivX/Xvid/Ogm/FFMPEG codecs.

[cybertron]

Whoops, I forgot you were using the GUI, but I agree that you should try it from the cli to eliminate one possible problem. If it turns out to be a vo change that is necessary I'm sure you can do that in the GUI (I don't use it myself so I'm not sure exactly how).

[moon2js]

Thanks for the help, guys. Changing the vo in the console makes it work.

I'm that much closer to having the my desktop linux system all set up!

[moon2js]

OK, two more questions. What's the difference between xv and x11. I've heard there is a performance issue, but as I described before, xv doesn't work for me.

Also. when I use x11, I have to use the zoom option in order to be able to resize the window or go to fullscreen mode. Is there a way to put this in a config file so that it automatically uses this option so I don't have to run gmplayer from the console?

[pickarooney]

In your file associations, use this as the command for avi/mpg

/usr/bin/gmplayer -fs -zoom

[cybertron]

x11 uses the X server to display output, and it's the only one I know of that you can take screenshots with and have the video actually show up. My understanding is that it is slower (although I've never noticed it), and as you've noticed it also doesn't support the normal fullscreen scaling. XV (short for XVideo?) bypasses X and writes directly to the screen (not technically correct, but I don't know exactly how it works myself). XV is generally preferred because it's faster and supports all the scaling and whatnot.

As far as making MPlayer automatically start with certain options all the time, check out man page (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html#USAGE). It gives a brief introduction about how to do this.

While I was poking around the docs, I came up with an explanation of the different video out drivers. Try the following for xv.

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/devices.html#xv

[moon2js]

OK, so I've tested it with a movie, and well it works, but there is a noticable drain on resources using X11. Mouse movement tends to cause skip.

My Inspiron doesn't actually have a dedicated video card, it's built into the motherboard or something (Intel 815EM), so I wonder if I can even use xv, but according to the specs, it claims hardware-accelerated video support.

I don't care about making screenshots, so I'd like to try xv to compare performance if only I could figure out how to correct that strange video display problem.

I've searched the mplayer manpages, and I'm wondering what's the difference between the xv and xover options. Gmplayer won't run with the latter, but according to Overlay Troubleshooting (http://howtos.linux.com/howtos/DVD-Playback-HOWTO/x383.shtml#overlaytrouble), it may be my problem as well.

Any suggestions?

[cybertron]

If you run mplayer -vo help, do you get xv as one of the options? I think it should only show vo's that are actually compiled in, so if xv doesn't show up that might be the problem.

As far as xv vs. xover, the latter doesn't work on my system either but xv is fine. I hadn't tried xover before you mentioned it though, so I can't help you much with that.

[moon2js]

gmplayer -vo help:
Available video output drivers:
xv X11/Xv
x11 X11 ( XImage/Shm )
xover General X11 driver for overlay capable video output drivers
dga DGA ( Direct Graphic Access V2.0 )
png PNG file
null Null video output
pgm PGM file
md5 MD5 sum
mpegpes Mpeg-PES to DVB card
yuv4mpeg yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools (to "stream.yuv")
vesa VESA VBE 2.0 video output
xvidix X11 (VIDIX)
cvidix console VIDIX
tga Targa output


If I try to watch a dvd with mplayer -vo xover, I get an error "VO XOverlay need a subdriver."

If I try to watch a dvd with mplayer -xv, it will run, but the video will be messed up, and here's a message in the terminal that I think explains what's wrong:

Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Mpeg PES)
Could not find matching colorspace - retrying with -vf scale...
Opening video filter: [scale]
The selected video_out device is incompatible with this codec.
VDecoder init failed :(
Opening video decoder: [libmpeg2] MPEG 1/2 Video decoder libmpeg2-v0.3.1
Selected video codec: [mpeg12] vfm:libmpeg2 (MPEG 1 or 2 (libmpeg2))

hmmm...still searching for answers...