[MPlayer-users] failed to init video_out device

[D Richard Felker III]

On Sat, Apr 05, 2003 at 05:27:43AM +0200, Olivier Blin wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]
> > This is not a bug report! In fact the above message is normal and
> > should always appear when playing mpeg1/2 files or dvd/(s)vcd! So if
> > you want help, follow the instructions and post a proper report!!
> > 
> > Rich
> 
> Perharps you've misunderstood his mail ...
> Actually, he isn't complaining about this error, he said that in spite of this message, mplayer continues to load, while no video_out device is supported.
> He's suggesting that if no video_out device is found, mplayer should stop.

The answer (again I think this is a matter of not RTFMing) is that
mplayer tries all the available codecs for playing a movie, and
separately tries initializing vo drivers for each of them until it
finds one that works. So if none work, it will exit.

But in this case, the case of mpeg1/2, mplayer first tries the
passthrough "codec", in case the vo driver supports hardware mpeg
decoding! So if you don't have a dxr3/whatever board, vo init will
fail, and then mplayer will drop back to the next codec, normal
decoding of mpeg1/2 in software. So this is NOT an error, just normal
behavior.

If he had taken the time to look at the other lines surrounding the
"error message", rather than just writing to the list, he would have
seen that the failing codec was "passthrough" and that nothing was
actually wrong.

Rich