[MPlayer-users] [wishlist] linking MPplayer to TiMidity

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

Hi Y P!

 On 2007.09.25 at 11:42:24 +0200, Y P wrote next:

> Mplayer should be able to play it by using the right application, and the
> right application is here Timidity?

Funny thing is - a long time ago that was possible, though xmms-timidity
plugin and xmms plugins support in mplayer. However, since mplayer
migrated to gtk2 it can't be done easily AFAIR, since xmms support
requires linking to gtk1 and there was some kind of problem with linking
both of them (maybe it was something related to my system though, can't
say for sure).

Anyway xmms-timidity plugin really sucked, it was kind of broken and
it seems that it used timidity incorrectly, so sound was worse than
when you played back midi file through timidity - mplayer also suffered
from this, of course. It was working fine in other aspects though, like
seeking.

So as quick solution, you might try recompiling mplayer without gui and
with xmms support, maybe it'll work. You'll need xmms, xmms-devel and
xmms-timidity plugins installed though.


As for the right solution, probably it would be making mplayer use alsa
midi/sequencer devices. You'll need to run timidity or fluidsynth as
midi server, and mplayer would work as regular midi client this way.
Like pmidi, amidi and so on.. It'll support not only timidity, but
fluidsynth and h/w midi passthrough this way.

On the other hand, this is dreams ;) I hardly believe mplayer would ever
work as correct midi client.

-- 

Vladimir