[MPlayer-users] Problem with volume setting being reset to max when -loop is used.

[James Ronald]

On 10/25/07, The Wanderer <inverseparadox at comcast.net> wrote:
> James Ronald wrote:
>
> > I wrote a touch screen front end that controls mplayer in slave mode.
> > Everything seem to be  working wonderfully except the "-loop"
> > option. I'm using "-loop 0" on the command line when starting mplayer
> > in slave mode.
> >
> > ./mplayer -ac mad -quiet -slave -loop 0 -idle -input
> > file=/tmp/.mplayer_pipe movie.avi
> >
> > While running in this mode, if the volume setting is adjusted, on
> > each iteration of the loop, the volume seems to get reset to the
> > original setting.  Just like it was being run for the first time.
>
> Or, rather, as if a new file were being started - because volume changes
> during playback are preserved only until the next file.
>
> Based on a few tests and what little I know of the background, what
> '-loop 0' appears to be actually doing is looping the *playlist* over
> and over - in other words, when MPlayer reaches the end of its list of
> files to be played, it automatically jumps back to the beginning. When
> there is only one file, the effect is that the file is played
> repeatedly, but each time it is being treated as a new file and so the
> parameters return to the values they had at invocation time.
>
> (Or so I deduce from a little testing and what I know of the background.
> I haven't actually confirmed this in the source.)
>
> There was some discussion a while ago of providing the ability to allow
> people to specify whether a given mid-playback command should change the
> value for the remainder of the current session or only for the remainder
> of the current file, but nothing was ever implemented, apparently
> because the people involved do not have a sufficiently good
> understanding of the input layer to tell where and how to change it. (I
> am technically one of the people who was involved in that discussion,
> but I do not have a good enough understanding of *any* part of the
> MPlayer code to begin making serious modifications with any hope of not
> breaking things severely.)
>
> > I built MPlayer from  SVN r24633 for arm-linux 2.6.20 using gcc
> > 3.4.6.   Any ideas or a work around would be appreciated.
>
> If you actually do need to be able to adjust the volume in mid-playback
> and have it remain adjusted until changed again, I don't think you have
> any real options at the moment short of trying to further the adoption
> of the change I mentioned above - which would mean writing patches to
> support it, because the code for that really doesn't exist yet AFAIK.
>
> Alternately, you might consider having your front-end simply adjust the
> system's volume itself (assuming that MPlayer is not using -softvol),
> since that should be independent of anything MPlayer does. This is not
> an ideal solution, however.
>
> --
>        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.
> _______________________________________________
> MPlayer-users mailing list
> MPlayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
> http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users

Thanks for the great response.  I pretty much figured that it was a
case of "that's how it works and it's will be PITA to fix, otherwise
we would have already done so" kind of thing.  I figured that it
couldn't hurt to ask though.

JR