[MPlayer-users] MPlayer won't open filenames with non latin characters

[The Wanderer]

RVM wrote:

> This happens to me on Windows XP (in Spanish), I don't know what
> charset Windows uses, or how the filenames are stored in the hard
> disc (I'm using FAT32 partitions).
> 
> I created this bat file (launch_mplayer.bat) on the desktop:
> 
> cd "C:\Documents and Settings\Ricardo\My Documents\mplayer-r25386-mingw\"
> mplayer.exe %1 > mplayer_log.txt 2>&1

I'm having a hard time imagining why this approach might be necessary...

> Now if I drag a video file (with latin characters) to the
> launch_mplayer.bat icon, mplayer plays it. But if the filename
> contains characters from another alphabet then it doesn't.
> 
> I renamed a file to mewmew-vorbis-ssa-日本語.mkv (using 3 Japanese
> characters). When I try to play it, this is what mplayer says in the
> log:
> 
> MPlayer dev-SVN-r25386-3.4.5 (C) 2000-2007 MPlayer Team
> CPU: AMD Turion(tm) 64 Mobile Technology MK-36 (Family: 15, Model: 76, 
> Stepping: 2)
> CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
> Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
> 
> Playing D:\Videos\mewmew-vorbis-ssa-???.mkv.
> File not found: 'D:\Videos\mewmew-vorbis-ssa-???.mkv'
> Failed to open D:\Videos\mewmew-vorbis-ssa-???.mkv.
> 
> 
> Exiting... (End of file)
> 
> VLC, for instance, can open that file without problems.

How are you launching VLC? By a batch file in the same way, or by
file-type association, or via the Open command in the GUI?

I have a suspicion that you are not doing it by a batch file, and that
if you did you would see the same failure.

> Is this a bug?

I doubt it; it looks to me like a limitation of the command processor
involved, at least in the specific environment you're using.

> I don't know if this problem happens under Linux too. I couldn't test
> it. My system is configured to ISO-8859-15 and konqueror doesn't even
> allow me to create such a filename.

That's why you should A: always run every system as UTF-8 and B: do your
file renaming via the command line. (Admittedly switching over to UTF-8
if you are not already in it is not always trivial; I did it without
help, but it broke parts of my system for a good long while.)

Under Linux, I copied a known-good file, played it with 'mplayer
<filename>' to confirm still good, used 'mv' to add 日本語 to its name,
and played it again with the same method; it worked both times. MPlayer
is entirely capable of handling non-Latin characters in filenames, at
least under the right circumstances; it looks to me like this is a
problem with your environment, and probably specifically with Windows
batch files.

-- 
       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.