Questions about mplayer

[nfasano]

I was hoping someone out there could help me with a couple of mplayer related issues.

According to the mplayer osx site, the latest binaries of mplayer support aac audio. I have installed the updated binary, but I am still getting the following error:

Opening audio decoder: [faad] AAC (MPEG2/4 Advanced Audio Coding)
FAAD: Failed to initialize the decoder!
ADecoder init failed
ADecoder init failed
*** Try to upgrade (null) from etc/codecs.conf
*** If it still does not work, read DOCS/codecs.html!
Cannot find codec for audio format 0x6134706D.

I have tried to upgrade the codecs.conf file, but I'm not sure where to upgrade from. The DOCS/codecs.html file is not helpful, either. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong in regards to AAC audio?

The second question was that I have been trying to use the CLI directly from the terminal and shell scripts within an Applescript application. I have been using ./mplayer -framedrop <filename> as the shell command, but I can't seem to get the on-screen display features that you get with the GUI. Is there some option that I'm missing? Also, is there a way to get the display in fullscreen mode right off the bat?

Sorry I have so many questions. Hopefully we can all benefit from the exchange of ideas that this discussion will hopefully start. Thanks in advance.

Nick F

[nfasano]

Well, I answered one of my questions myself. As it turns out, the commandline option to start in fullscreen is -vm, so the command I have now is ./mplayer -framedrop -vm <filename.avi>. The onscreen display options still do not work with the commandline version, though, just the Mplayer GUI.

Has anyone noticed that the CLI is much more responsive in general than the GUI. I know that this in itself is not that surprising, but the degree of this is pretty dramatic. On my 1GHz TiBook, there can be a 10-20 second lag when playing a movie! Anyway, the CLI is great and I have figured out how to control it within an applescript (essentially creating my own GUI).

Still looking for the AAC answer, although I have now decided just to reencode everything with forty-two since it's now so easy! Great job Kai and Bile!

Nick