[MPlayer-users] Quick (and hopefully simple) Mplayer query

[Paul Strickland]

Thanks Alexander

I'd seen slave mode and was hoping to avoid it, but if that’s the way to go, I'll try it.

To give you a bit of background, it's a complex cinema like set up. 3 PCs, 3 projectors, playback synchronisation absolutely critical. No visible commands/interaction on playback screen(s). I don't need/want a separate screen with a command line interface. All I want to do is run a .bat file and have mplayer pause immediately. I can then drop house lights, remotely open up shutters on projectors, and just hit the spacebar to start the show.

I'm using Mplayer specifically because the -udp-master / slave options work brilliantly for the playback synchronisation. Nothing else come close (without paying a lot for dedicated hardware players). In this particular case, I only have to start the -udp-master, as the first few minutes are blank on the -udp-slave videos, so I can fire them up later (with shuttered projectors). Too much detail..... sorry

I tried your example and I sort of understood what was happening. There is no need for me to worry about specifying the file name in the command line as I'm running from a .bat file. Everything can be pre-built. So I got the file to open, and pause, good so far. But I could only control it from the command line window. If I was in the playback window (as I would be in the final setup) hitting <space> to unpause playback caused the screen to lock.

I'm probably making this all too complicated. I can achieve what I want by just starting the file, and immediately hitting the spacebar manually. I was just trying to make it slicker.

Cheers

Paul 



-----Original Message-----
From: MPlayer-users [mailto:mplayer-users-bounces at mplayerhq.hu] On Behalf Of Alexander Strasser
Sent: 28 October 2019 21:45
To: MPlayer usage questions, feature requests, bug reports
Subject: Re: [MPlayer-users] Quick (and hopefully simple) Mplayer query

Hi Paul!

On 2019-10-28 06:39 -0000, Paul Strickland wrote:
[...]
>
> I need to automatically pause a video being played, as soon as it starts.
> This will allow me to do various set up tasks, before I just hit SPACE to
> get the whole thing going. I suspect it's a simple parameter, but for the
> life of me, I can't see how to do it.

Disclaimer: Not sure why you need to pause exactly. Maybe there are better
ways to achieve your goal in general.

If you can use slave mode, you can consider using the -slave together with
-idle to avoid having to specify a file to play in the command line.

Then you can either do what you need to do and start playing after
calling loadfile with the name of the file to play. Or if you prefer
starting immediately and pausing you could use "pausing loadfile" to
achieve that.

For details on slave mode and the available commands have a look at:

  https://mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/tech/slave.txt

To give you an example. If you the following into a text file
slave-commands.txt:

    pausing loadfile test.avi

Then start MPlayer with

    mplayer -idle -slave -input file=slave-commands.txt

It should start decoding the file and should pause after displaying
the first frame. The key controls should still work as expected, so
you can then unpause the video or quit or...


> I'm running Mplayer, on windows 10, from a .bat file.


  Alexander
_______________________________________________
MPlayer-users mailing list
MPlayer-users at mplayerhq.hu
https://lists.mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users