[MPlayer-DOCS] how to make mplayer let realplayer play some files?

[The Wanderer]

quixote wrote:

> I'm new to mplayer, and love it, on the whole.  My one problem is
> that there's an .ra file that it tries to play, but can't for some
> reason.
> 
> Rather than try to work with mplayer to fix it (unless that's easy to
> explain in a step-by-step way), I'd like to be able to just use
> realplayer to play those files, which worked fine and doesn't require
> any extra effort from me.  But I can't find how to tell mplayer to
> leave .ra files alone.
> 
> There's only one site in question:
> http://www.cartalk.com/Radio/Show/online.html and I'm trying to
> listen to the concatenated link of all ten segments of the show. The
> mimetype shows up in mplayer as audio/x-pn-realaudio Object.  I use
> Firefox 1.5, run Fedora 3.
> 
> Mplayer launches when I click on the link, but does nothing.  The
> actions associated with files (under Edit-Prefs-Downloads-View and
> edit actions) won't let me point to a specific different plugin or
> program for that filetype.  I can only choose "default plugin' or
> 'save to disk'.  I tried editing pluginreg.dat manually, but I may
> have done it wrong because nothing happened.  "about:plugins" tells
> me mplayer is enabled to open pretty much everything, which (I think)
> is okay except in that one instance.
> 
> I've looked in the mozillazine forums, helixplayer / realplayer, the
> mplayer docs, and nowhere can I find anything about how to make 
> different plugins work together.  It's all about how to use the given
> plugin in isolation.

This is a plugin-related problem, not an MPlayer problem. You want the
either the mplayerplug-in documentation (and/or discussion forum) or
your browser's documentation (ditto). Note that mplayerplug-in is not
directly affiliated with MPlayer.

That said: under Mozilla, I would have looked in
Edit-Preferences->Navigator->Helper Applications. The options there
include "Open with default", "Save to disk" and "Open with:"; this last
has a Browse button with which to choose a program. If they've removed
that capability from Firefox (as opposed to just moving it someplace
else), I'm a) rather surprised and b) glad I never switched.

> Am I trying to do something impossible?  I should say that I get lost
> pretty quickly unless I have the exact commands I need to enter, so,
> if you can help, remember that you're dealing with a n00b!

If you understand MIME types well enough to have written that post,
you're not as much of a n00b as you think you are.

-- 
       The Wanderer

Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.

Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny.