IDE settings (WAS: [MPlayer-users] DVD playback)

[Frank Boehme]

> Wil Reichert wrote:

> Messing with mplayer DVD playback & encoding.  Watching DVD's on a
> console (via mga driver) is just too cool.  Had problems with some
> choppiness so I did the RTFM thing, but the hdparm command didn't
> help.  Finally read the man page, the solution presented itself as the
> -cache parameter.

Actually, I found that on my system the proper IDE flags have more
influence than -cache, especially when playing DVD. So hdparm helps,
until I get a dma timeout or some other event which resets the IDE
device. After such a soft reset, dma access and unmasking other IRQs is
disabled and the movie begins to jerk. Now, hdparm has the -k parameter
which tells the device to keep its flags over a soft reset but my CDROM
does not adhere this. So I think, I will try to set up some sort of
watchdog that watches /proc/ide/mydevice/settings for changes or catches
the kernel messages (hdx: dma timeout...) and fires up hdparm with the
right switches whenever this happens.


Frank