Multimedia :: Streaming Media

Quote (lucky13 @ Mar. 10 2008,11:30)

Improper set up? Are you using mplayer console but not opening in a terminal? I don't know if that would freeze it or not. If that's your intention (to not open up all the skinned GUI apps), you may need to write a shell wrapper and then use it for whichever MIME types (I do that with various console apps).

Most online streams will be pls or icecast, not m3u playlists. I haven't tried playing m3u playlists online (much less with mplayer -- which is not in the base so this question probably belongs in extensions), but I would think xmms would do just fine with those.

I'm using the gui version of mplayer and xmms also freezes the computer.

Quote

I'm using the gui version of mplayer and xmms also freezes the computer.

Do you have xmms properly configured? Have you tried playing a local mp3 or ogg to make sure? Have you tried launching xmms with a URI to whichever website? I don't know if xmms will play remote m3us (unless maybe they include an accurate URI for each file in them) but xmms works perfectly fine for me in DSL for pls streams. Playing Real Media files in Linux requires proprietary codecs and/or Helix player from Real. I have no idea if Windows wax codecs are available for Linux but my guess is they aren't -- probably not for xmms anyway. Have you checked for pls streams of the stuff you're interested in listening to?

Load codecpak.dsl if using the old mplayer.dsl or mplayer-1.0pre8.uci to get the realmedia codecs.

You might like to post the link to the radio stream you want so we can get try to get it working for you.

OR easier: you could try the realpalyer uci from the uci section of the extensions repo.

I haven't used the mplayer extension in DSL but I just installed it in Debian. I noticed that it didn't automatically do anything for any MIME-types -- e.g., using "gmplayer" as the command for playing a MPG resulted in an error box saying I didn't select a video output (-vo) option. So I wrote a quick wrapper (put in ~/bin and named myvideowrapper) that included x11 for output:

Code Sample

#!/bin/bash
exec /path/to/mplayer -vo x11 "$@"

Then I did chmod u+x and added that as my default for mpg (also works for wmv) in firefox. Voila, it works. It also works as stand alone launcher if you want to use it in dfm for local video files. Use gmplayer instead of mplayer if you want the ugly looking GUI thing to control playback.

I also decided to try it on a local m3u and found I needed to set the -playlist tag. I just did the same thing with a saved pls playlist and with -playlist it connected right up to the Smooth Jazz Tampa Bay server:
ICY Info: StreamTitle='Metro - Metrocafe';StreamUrl='http://www.smoothjazztampabay.com'

So I've made another wrapper like the one above with -playlist for playlists that can be used in console or for firefox or opera, dfm, rox, etc.

myplaylistwrapper (chmod u+x)

Code Sample

#!/bin/bash
exec /path/to/mplayer -playlist "$@"

I don't know if any of this will be helpful in getting mplayer to work for you, but it really helps to open things from console to get output and see where the problems might lie. Like I wrote above, I don't know if the DSL package includes scripts for various flags but that might be where the problem lies.

EDIT/Clarification: Using wrappers in dfm and rox isn't necessary if you have all your apps set up as you want them for MIME-types, but can still be useful if you want to open things in different ways (e.g., you could use a wrapper for mpg321 in or out of a terminal if xmms is your default for playing mp3 files and you want another option available).

Edit2: Posted shot to show it works.
http://lucky13linux.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/553/

original here.