[MPlayer-users] MPlayer's sensitivity to disk activity

[Wiebe Cazemier]

I'm a poet and I don't know it :) 

Anyway, I was wondering. When I have µTorrent open, MPlayer has a tendency to get jerky. However, the same file under the same conditions plays perfectly on Xine. I've had this problem for years, and I mostly just play files with Xine when µTorrent is running. 

Over the years, I've also experimented with different cache sizes. I've tried everything from no cache to hundreds of megabytes. I also tried experimenting with the cache-min setting. But, the problem persists. 

It's unrelated to using vdpau or not. 

>From what I gather, Mplayer uses the audio to synchronize. Is that why it's more sensitive, perhaps? BTW, I've had this issue on my SB Live and new Asus Xonar DX. 

Is there something else to try? I like Mplayer a lot better, with is snappy seek and proper keyboard control, and I hope to solve this issue. 

My system: 

Archlinux 
Kernel 3.10.10-1-ARCH 
Athlon X2 3800+ (Dual core 2 Ghz) 
2 GB RAM 
2x WD15EARS-00Z5B1 in RAID1 (md RAID). 
Alsa 1.0.27 
No pulseaudio 
Xonar DX sound card 
Nvidia GeForce 9500 GT video 

Regards, 

Wiebe