[MPlayer-users] audio/video sync help needed

[Ying Li]

I've always used Xine to watch videos, but lately for a couple anime 
AVI's, playback's been rather choppy so I want to switch to mplayer.  I 
would ideally like to use the GUI (gmplayer).

When using mplayer and gmplayer though, I get audio/video sync problems 
with some of the files that give xine choppiness problems.  Certain 
options let me play the videos fullscreen without sync problems in 
mplayer, but not in gmplayer.  I've included the summary of everything 
I've tried so far, and I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions or 
whether I should file a bug report.

---------

My hardware setup:
AMD Athlon XP 1700+ (1.47 GHz K7) with an Asus VIA motherboard
512 MB RAM (266MHz DDR PC2100)
SB Live!5.1 PCI sound card  (emu10k1)
ATI Radeon 9200 graphics card (AGP, 128MB video ram)

My XFree setup:
Version: 4.3.0
Video driver: radeon
Relevant XFree modules: GLcore, dri, extmod, glx

Running Debian unstable, kernel 2.4.22.  Got mplayer as a Debian 
package from marillat.free.fr.

----------

I tried exploring all the options in mplayer first, hoping to apply 
what I've learned to gmplayer.  What I've tried so far:

- turning off double buffering - this does not improve playback
- changing my audio driver to OSS or ESD - this eliminates the 
audio/video sync problem, but
   when I use the option -zoom, and go full screen, I get audio/video 
sync problems (but a
   little later, since the delay adds up as the video progresses).
- not using fullscreen (zoom) - no audio/video sync problems at all
- changing video drivers between xv and x11 - this does not affect 
anything
- using every combination of the following options:  "-mc 0", "-ni", 
"-forcexv", and
   "-nobps"/"-bps" - didn't really affect anything when I went 
fullscreen.
- using "-ao sdl:alsa9" and "-vo sdl:x11" (or "-vo sdl:xv") - for some 
bizarre reason, this
   produced no sound at all.  I entered "ao=sdl:alsa9" and 
"vo=sdl:x11"(or xv) in
   ~/.mplayer/config and then used "-ao alsa9" on the commandline, and 
this eliminated my
   audio/video sync problems.

-----------

So it seems the only thing that helped was SDL but the FAQ says not to 
use SDL with the GUI.  I tried it anyway, and voila - didn't work.  But 
when using gmplayer, even when not running this video at fullscreen, I 
have audio/video sync problems when using ALSA.  However, when playing 
some other videos it's fine.