[MPlayer-users] rootwin gives me no video output in kde 3.5.7

[Giacomo Comes]

On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 08:02:36PM +0200, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
> Hello,
> On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 04:57:55PM +0200, Krzysztof Duchnowski wrote:
> > Leonardo De Luca pisze:
> > 
> > > This is the output of mplayer -rootwin anyfile.avi
> > 
> > > MPlayer 2:1.0~rc1-0ubuntu11 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
> > 
> > [cut, cut, cut my fingers... ups]
> > 
> > > Am I doing something wrong here?
> > 
> > Yes.
> > 
> > First of: you are useing prehistoric version of MPlayer, so old that 
> > oldest mayan people don't remember it too well;
> 
> Well, I think even their memory lasted a year. But nevertheless it
> should be emphasized that libavcodec (which is used by MPlayer and only
> a part of all code it uses) in good months has more than 400 commits.
> Seen that way, rc1 is several thousand versions out of date.
> 
> > Second of: you are useing thrid party compilation so no one can tell you 
> > how much it's scruded up.
> > 
> > Solution: compile themselves latest SVN version (see MPlayer webpage)
> 
> And try use -nocolorkey just in case

I think the problem described here has nothing to do with the version
of mplayer. 
Even compiling the svn of tomorrow wont help the user fix his problem.

The option -rootwin makes mplayer to use the root window of the X server
to show the video. Unfortunately with the feature rich desktop used
today (kde, gnome, etc) the root window is invisible all the time.
It is covered with the desktop window or may be some other windows.
With kde you can kill the desktop program (kdesktop) and then you
can see mplayer playing your video on the root window.
Other solution is to use a more simple (but still useful) windows 
manager like Motif (mwm).

Does anybody know if there is a way to make (in kde) the desktop window
transparent, so the content of the root window can be seen?

Giacomo