[MPlayer-users] feature request - decode video but don't render to a window

[Chuck Crisler]

An app that I am working on needs to render video itself so that it can
render the controls on top of the video. It is designed to control the
video itself.p[-000000 I am working with the -vo x11 option to use
shared memory, hoping to get the video images transferred via a memory
region. Since that option writes video images (XImages) to shared
memory, it seems to me that mplayer, in this case, doesn't need to (or
shouldn't) render to a window, yet it does. The source file vo_x11.c,
line 374 calls vo_x11_create_vo_window(), which creates a window
(surprise). That window is used to render video.

Why?

It would be useful to me to have a way to specify options so that it did
not create or use a display window (unless that capability already
exists and I missed it). I am also concerned that my app (in a separate
address space) may not be able to access that SMR since it is created
with the IPC_PRIVATE flag. In this case, it seems that the SMR should be
created to be shared, perhaps with a name? I am willing to do the work
but will need a bit of guidance since I am new to mplayer. I am not new
to programming but am somewhat new to Linux (~6 months).

Thank you,
Chuck Crisler