MPlayer2 log: cache not responding

[brittney24]

In my other post about (some) type of issue w/ caching / buffering * possibly * not working correctly (per mplayer log errors) viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6652
I mentioned couldn't seem to set cache high enough on a pretty fast machine, to keep up w/ streaming an HQ vid.

Downloaded latest smplayer-portable-0.8.5.5481-x64 & this time used mplayer2 w/ default settings, to play a short, low res sample Vista vid.
Mplayer2 log (attached) - still showing error about "cache not responding!." Even using mplayer2, still seems to be problem w/ caching. I wonder if same cache problem is RELATED (causing) the issue w/ the HQ Stones vid, in my other post?

How can I debug what the actual problem is about "cache not responding?"
NOTE: When I was streaming the HQ Stones vid, looked at network d/l volume & did NOT see it constantly maxing out at my DSL speed limit. Even though the vid was stuttering / stalling & mplayer log showed entries "buffer empty," the network traffic was not constantly at it's peak.

In fact (from memory), d/l would drop off to near nothing at times, while streaming the vid (that was complaining about buffer being empty). And that was after I increased buffer capacity to 8k - 10k KB.
My CPU was no where near maxed out during the Stones vid. Even if my ISP was throttling my d/l for streaming vid, that doesn't explain the log error for a local, low res vid - of "cache not responding."

Thanks.

[brittney24]

Found quite a few similar complaints about mplayer / mplayer2 & caching issues, incl. "cache not responding." Complaints about that have been around for yrs. So far, I found no answers.
Here's one bug report on SF: http://sourceforge.net/p/mplayer-win32/bugs/116/

Note: when look in default mplayer2 conf.ini, after running SMP & playing a vid, it shows nothing about cache size. It's out of my league, but perhaps cache settings in SMP aren't being used by mplayer / mplayer2?

[rvm]

[brittney24]

Thanks. I read about some of that in the mplayer manual. I don't think turning OFF cache is the answer here.

I only experimented a bit w/ the "-cache" option. NOTE: to get that option to be recognized, by entering in SMP, I had to use two dashes "--" - not one, as shown in the manual, or 1 that's shown in front of the included option, "-nofontconfig." If I used one dash, it threw an error.

Just changing the cache value in SMP prefs seemed to have an effect, but looks like maybe? to stream an HQ 1920 x 1080 music vid, on a 3.0 Mbps DSL connection (I get ~ 2.6 Mbps, or ~ 300 - 315 KB/s actual speed), I'd have to set the cache VERY high. Raising it to 10k KB helped, but wasn't quite enough for an HQ vid.

One thing I don't know is, after what initial % of the set cache size is loaded, does SMP start to play (by default)? If it's only after say, 50%, then on HQ vids, it may quickly run out of buffer at my connection speed.
Setting the -cache-min <percentage> option to 100% might help, for a bigger head start. I just may have to set the cache value extremely high.

I didn't see that changing the SMP option for youtube quality had any effect (in the short time I fooled w/ it). If it was set to 720p & I was playing a 1080p vid, it didn't seem to affect the data amount being d/l. Maybe others know more about that option.

[redxii]

There's no solution to "cache not responding" since it isn't an error, from the developer: "meaning MPlayer sits there waiting
for data when it could already decode the next frame." http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.vi ... user/66524 mplayer2 is a fork of mplayer so they have the same message.

I bet you are just having the same mysterious problem everyone else has when playing YouTube videos, even with much faster connections.

[brittney24]

OK, thanks. Seems in my case (w/ HQ streaming vids) - there's the "Those are no errors, just warnings," issue (from your linked article / post) & cache actually running empty.

In my case, only w/ very HQ vids, the vid does stutter / stall (as it refills empty cache). When that happens, I see "buffering" appear in lower, L corner. So, it actually is running out of buffer (at my connection speed).

So far, I see 2 possible solutions (suggestions welcome).
Increase the cache setting to > 20,000 KB (20 k wasn't quite enough to stop the stalling, though DID help a LOT over default 2048 or even 9182).
MAYBE setting the -cache-min <percentage> option to a high #, so it builds larger buffer before playing. I did NOT see what SMP's default was to begin play at what % of cache being filled.

If SMP's default is 50%, then setting -cache-min <percentage> to 100% might help. Only drawback is, these type settings aren't needed to play most youtube vid & take a good bit more time for cache to fill before playing. So really need to reset the cache value to default for faster start times on avg youtube vids. Then reset again for HQ vids... A bit of a pain.

If this works, it'd be kind of nice to have some sort of "caching / cache options" profile list to choose from (say, drop list), to quickly select user defined cache values / mplayer options, depending on the quality (data stream size) of different vids. Not many want to continually reset cache values & add / delete mplayer options. Nor, for avg quality vids, do they want to wait for 30 - 40 KB to cache before play starts.

[cootmaster]

whats going on w buffer/cache
it sits sits
or SMP crashes
how i fix it
C:/Program Files/SMPlayer/mplayer/mplayer.exe -noquiet -nofs -nomouseinput -sub-fuzziness 1 -identify -slave -vo directx, -ao dsound -nokeepaspect -priority abovenormal -nodr -double -wid 8652230 -colorkey 0x020202 -monitorpixelaspect 1 -ass -embeddedfonts -ass-line-spacing 0 -ass-font-scale 1 -ass-styles C:/Documents and Settings/Owner/.smplayer/styles.ass -fontconfig -font Arial -subfont-autoscale 0 -subfont-osd-scale 20 -subfont-text-scale 20 -subcp ISO-8859-1 -subpos 100 -volume 71 -cache 1000 -osdlevel 0 -prefer-ipv4 -vf-add screenshot -noslices -channels 2 -af scaletempo,equalizer=0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 -softvol -softvol-max 110 http://r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com ... C5&itag=18

MPlayer Redxii-SVN-r36541-4.6.3 (C) 2000-2013 MPlayer Team
Compiled against FFmpeg version N-58950-g8e5a298
Build date: Tue Dec 10 01:59:48 EST 2013

\


Setting process priority: abovenormal

Filename is too long, can not load file or directory specific config files

Playing http://r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com ... C5&itag=18.
Resolving r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com[173.194.54.12]: 80...

STREAM_ASF, URL: http://r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com ... C5&itag=18
Resolving r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com[173.194.54.12]: 80...

Failed, exiting.
Resolving r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com for AF_INET...
Connecting to server r6---sn-vgqs7nes.googlevideo.com[173.194.54.12]: 80...

Cache size set to 1000 KBytes


TODAY 12 18 '13 seems be bit better