[MPlayer-users] unable to play Real Audio stream

[The Wanderer]

Ross Gayler wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> My apologies if this is a really dumb question.
> 
> I appear to be unable to play http://woub.org/radio/woublive.ram with
> MPlayer Sherpya-SVN-r58803-4.2.2 (with MPUI 1.2-pre3 build 38).
> This contains
> rtsp://media.woub.org/qtencoder/woubfmlive.sdp?title="WOUB-FM 
> Live!"&author="WOUB Radio - woub.org"&copyright="2005 Ohio
> University"
> 
> The MPlayer output seems to suggest that it is being confused by the
> spaces in the query strings:

What is the exact command line involved? It is important, when reporting
problems, to always give the exact command line (copy-pasted, not
retyped) and the exact, *complete* text output.

With MPlayer revision 26091 (itself now a little old) and the first
obvious candidate command line, I get:

========
wanderer at archon:/tmp$ mplayer -playlist http://woub.org/radio/woublive.ram
MPlayer dev-SVN-r26091-4.2.3 (C) 2000-2008 MPlayer Team
CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ (Family: 15, Model: 
107, Stepping: 2)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 1 SSE: 1 SSE2: 1
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX MMX2 3DNow 3DNowEx SSE SSE2
Resolving woub.org for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: woub.org
Resolving woub.org for AF_INET...
Connecting to server woub.org[198.234.122.134]: 80...
Cache size set to 320 KBytes

Playing rtsp://media.woub.org/qtencoder/woubfmlive.sdp?title="WOUB-FM 
Live!"&author="WOUB Radio - woub.org"&copyright="2005 Ohio University".
Resolving media.woub.org for AF_INET6...
Couldn't resolve name for AF_INET6: media.woub.org
Resolving media.woub.org for AF_INET...
Connecting to server media.woub.org[198.234.121.103]: 554...
Cache size set to 320 KBytes
Cache fill: 17.50% (57344 bytes)
REAL file format detected.
Stream mimetype: audio/MPEG4-GENERIC
demux_real: invalid chunksize! (0)
No stream found.


Exiting... (End of file)
========

> I guess this may be a malformed/nonstandard rtsp URL, but Real Player
> is able to play this OK.
> 
> Any suggestions as to how I can work around this?

The problem itself looks to me like something to do with improperly
quoted command-line parameters, but I have not been able to reproduce
the problem on my own computer with several different obvious ways to
not correctly quote the URL. Since I have never heard of MPUI as far as
I recall, I suspect that it may be to blame for this.

I would suggest, first, trying to play the stream from the command line
rather than using a UI wrapper; if that still fails, try updating to a
more recent version; if it fails with the latest development version,
then either you are missing important libraries, the stream is not in
fact supported, or you have most likely found an actual bug.

-- 
    The Wanderer

    My usual .sig is on vacation while I adjust to my new computer