[MPlayer-users] mplayer stream dumping error

[The Wanderer]

rwik wrote:

> greetings,
> 
> i was trying to download a video file from net. the size of the file
> is close to 50MB.
> i used mplayer for that with following command.
> "mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile xxx.rm rtsp://where/the/stream/is"
> although there was a report message "Stream not seekable!" still
> mplayer was  downloading it.
> but after some MBs of download downloading stops with following message.
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Cache size set to 180 KBytes
> Stream not seekable!
> Ahhhh, stream_chunck size is too small: 4
> Error while parsing chunk header
> Core dumped
> --------------------------------------------------------
> 
> i tried downloading several times and everytime downloading stops at
> different points but with same error message.

Very likely that was not, in fact, *quite* the complete error message.
If you look closely, the final line was probably "Core dumped ;)", with
a winking smiley at the end. (If that was not the case, then there
should now be a core-dump file in the directory from which you ran the
program.) This is considered a joke by the majority of MPlayer
developers; it means that the core of the stream was dumped into the
file.

You are not the first person to fail to realize this, but since most of
the developers seem to be of the opinion that "anyone who knows enough
to know what a core dump is should be able to spot and understand the
smiley" and that the joke is more important than the fact that some
people *do* demonstrably have problems with it, it does not seem likely
that there will be a change anytime in the foreseeable future.

-- 
       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.