[MPlayer-users] Playing over network from mencoder to mplayer

[Colin Johnston]

Greetings fellow mplayer'ers

I've recently moved my (only) DVD-ROM from my 200MMX Pentium with a DXR3
card to my main machine which is 1.11 Ghz Athlon.

I previously used the Pentium 200 to watch DVDs on my TV using the DXR3
using mplayer; and it performed quite admirably (~90% perfect). 
However, I've grown tired of the drive noise, and would like to have
"flawless performance" on DVDs (not to mention the CPU power to watch
DIVX, etc) so i'm trying to get mencoder/mplayer using both computers
working together for a kind of "thin client" approach.

DVD-ROM -> mencoder -> FIFO -> socket -> mplayer
				  |
Athlon                            |        Pentium
				  |

The idea is that the DXR3 has hardware for MPEG 1/2 video and raw audio,
which i will encode using mencoder on the Athlon and send to the Pentium
over the network.

I almost have it working, but i'm having trouble getting mplayer to
recognize pcm audio from mencoder; here are the settings:

(on the athlon to encode)
mencoder -dvd 1 -of mpeg -ovc copy -oac pcm -ofps 29.97 -o
/dev/mplayerbuff

(on the pentium to the DXR3)
mplayer - -ao oss:/dev/em8300_ma -vo dxr3:sync -cache 8192

The problem is that mplayer does not find the audio:

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MPlayer 0.90pre10-2.95.4 (C) 2000-2002 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS)

CPU: Intel Pentium MMX P55C (Family: 5, Stepping: 3)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 0 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX

Reading /root/.mplayer/codecs.conf: Reading
/usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 44 audio & 110 video codecs
font: can't open file: /root/.mplayer/font/font.desc
Font /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc loaded successfully! (200
chars)
Using usleep() timing

Playing test8.mpg
Cache fill:  0.00% (0 bytes)    Detected MPEG-PS file format!
Maybe you are playing a non-interleaved stream/file or the codec failed?
For .AVI files, try to force non-interleaved mode with the -ni option.
MPEG: No Audio stream found...  ->  no sound
----------------<look here!>--------------------------------------------
VIDEO:  MPEG2  720x480  (aspect 3)  29.97 fps  10752.0 kbps (1344.0
kbyte/s)
VO: [dxr3] Opened /dev/em8300-0
VO: [dxr3] Opened /dev/em8300_mv-0
VO: [dxr3] Opened /dev/em8300_sp-0
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [mpegpes] MPEG 1/2 Video passthrough
VDec: vo config request - 720 x 480 (preferred csp: Mpeg PES)
VDec: using Mpeg PES as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.78:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [dxr3] 720x480 => 854x480 Mpeg PES 
VO: [dxr3] Setting up for NTSC.
VO: [dxr3] Setting aspect ratio to 16:9
Selected video codec: [mpegpes] vfm:mpegpes (Mpeg PES output (.mpg or
Dxr3/DVB card))
==========================================================================
Audio: no sound!!!
FPS forced to be 29.970  (ftime: 0.033)
Start playing...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

I tried using the -rawaudio switch, but all i get is static.  Anyone
have any ideas what combinations of settings will get me going here?

I'm not adverse to using -of avi with mencoder, but mplayer complains
about a "missing video stream!?" as well.

Anyone done something like this or have comments/suggestions? :-)

Thanks
Colin

ps. 
the "test8.mpg" is a file captured from the socket to let me test
different settings on mplayer without having to start/stop the stream
over and over