[MPlayer-users] Time needed to start playback

[The Wanderer]

Oliver Seitz wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> does anyone know which checks and tests take the most time in the
> delay between starting mplayer and the actual start of the video
> playback?

AFAICT from somewhat limited experience, the primary source of delay in
this respect is filesystem read times - which is going to vary
considerably depending on where on disk the file is stored and how
recently it has been read (and thus whether or not it is buffered in
memory). I doubt much can be done on MPlayer's end to affect the delay.

> There's no big delay, some tenths of a second, but I try to minimize
> it.
> 
> The videos do not contain subtitles and no GUI is needed, but mplayer
> tries to load fonts. It might save time to skip that, but there
> seems to be no means of telling mplayer not to load a font.

My understanding is that the font is needed for the OSD, for the
"OSD:Enabled"/"OSD:Disabled" display if nothing else.

> Automatic stream type detection is great, but would it save time to
> name a certain file type?

To override container detection, look at the '-demuxer' option. To
override codec detection, look at the '-vc' and '-ac' options (or, for a
little less precision, the '-vfm' and '-afm' options).

-- 
       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.