[MPlayer-users] null codec(?)

[Carl Fûrstenberg]

On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 14:23:04 -0700 (PDT), Loren Merritt
<lorenm at u.washington.edu> wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, [ISO-8859-1] Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
> 
> 
> > On Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:42:13 -0700 (PDT), Loren Merritt wrote:
> >> On Tue, 12 Oct 2004, [ISO-8859-1] Carl Fûrstenberg wrote:
> >>
> >>> checked -vc help in semilatest cvs, and found this:
> >>>
> >>>    vc:         vfm:      status:   info:  [lib/dll]
> >>>    (...)
> >>>    null        null      crashing  NULL codec (no decoding!)
> >>>
> >>> Is this a easter-egg, or what?
> >>
> >> You might want a null codec if you don't want to decode the video.
> >> For example, I sometimes use it to rip the audio track from a dvd:
> >>    mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device vobs/ -vc null -vo null -ao pcm -aofile foo.wav
> >> Sure, it's not required, but it takes much less CPU time this way.
> >>
> >> (The status "crashing" is just to make sure that it's never selected
> >> automatically.)
> >
> > so the label "crashing" is just a so called 'lousy hack'?
> > But... if null does nothing, i.e. does what it should do, then, isn't
> > it 'working' then?
> 
> Yes, it's a lousy hack, and -vc null really is working.
> When selecting a codec to play a given file, MPlayer runs through the
> list of available codecs, and first tries all "untested" codecs, then the
> "working" codecs, then the "buggy" codecs, and uses the first one that
> accepts the stream (where "accept" may involve different tests depending
> on the format in question.)
> "crashing" codecs are never selected, unless you explicitely specify them
> with -vc. Since null accepts anything, and we want MPlayer to complain
> about unhandled formats, not just use the null codec, null goes in the
> "crashing" category.
> 
> P.S. please reply to the list.
> 
> --Loren Merritt
> 
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> 
> 

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