[MPlayer-dev-eng] Re: [PATCH] support for playing from named pipes (fifo)

[Martin Josefsson]

On Sat, 10 Nov 2001, Marc Lavallée wrote:

> Martin Josefsson wrote:
> 
>  > I found myself having the need for playing from a named pipe
>  > and found out that it didn't work so I added support for it.
> 
> I applied the patch and tried to play a file through a named pipe,
> but the screen is all black... Would you please explain how to use
> this feature? An example would be appreciated.

I use it like this:

nc -l -p 9876 > /tmp/mplayerfifo &

mplayer -cache 2048 -autoq 63 -osdlevel 0 -fs -screenw 704 -screenh 576 -vo mga /tmp/mplayerfifo

I usually play movies in the console using framebuffer and mga_vid to be
able to get accelerated playback via tvout on my Matrox G400.

And if I use a normal pipe (nc | mplayer) nc has keyboardfocus so I can't
fastforward (yes you can fastforward in mpeg-streams). So I use named
pipes instead to solve this.

I use the above to play video via network from another machine without
having to download the files and without using any networked filesystem.

To simply test the named pipe support you can replace the 'nc' line above
with:

cat videofile > /tmp/mplayerfifo &

where videofile is a file containing an mpegstream.

I hope this helps.

/Martin

Never argue with an idiot. They drag you down to their level, then beat you with experience.