[MPlayer-users] mplayer slow to start displaying video

[James Board]

I'm running mplayer on a linux machine with a 64-bit OS.  The mplayer command is
    mplayer -fs -vo sdl filename.mpg
When I do that, the screen goes blank for 3 seconds before playing video.  When I quit, the screen goes blank for 3 seconds before exiting.

This is too cumbersome when I'm looking through several files in a playlist: 3 seconds to start each file, then another 3 seconds at the end of each file means that's about 6 seconds between each file.

There are only two error/warning messages, and they are displayed immediately, before the delay:
    mplayer: could not connect to socket
    mplayer: No such file or directory

If I don't use the '-vo sdl' switch, there's no delay, but then the video only displays in a small part of the screen: it isn't scaled to full screen.

What is causing this delay and how can I get rid of it?