[MPlayer-users] Re: Playing xcd image files

[Jonathan Rogers]

Martin Collins wrote:
> XCD was invented by Windows guys so maybe there is a technical reason
> they did it that way. I can see how it is useful to be able to mount
> one as a normal CD and see what's there, perhaps have ancilliary stuff
> like subs or jpegs available to regular tools.

Of course it's useful to have a mixed mode CD. Many ordinary audio CDs 
have one track with a filesystem, but this doesn't require the bridge 
technique. I think this may be unique to VCDs.

>>I have used cdrdao to write OGMs straight to Mode 2 CD tracks.
>>MPlayer won't read them with vcd://2, but it can read them using the
>>cdfs Linux driver.
> 
> 
> Shudder. cdfs crashes my machine hard, and I'm not the only one.

So, don't do it. It's worked fine on my machine, but I wouldn't rely on 
it, since it's Linux specific and isn't even standard Linux. It does 
seem like the type of thing that should be available everywhere, though.

>>Then, it would be easy to make a
>>bootable and self sufficient movie CD with eMovix or GeeXbox. Of
>>course, only mplayer would read it.
> 
> 
> Nice idea, but if someone gave me a movie that I had to reboot
> to watch I wouldn't watch it. Apart from the hassle of rebooting the
> potential for mischief is too great.

I wasn't planning on giving you any of my movies anyway, but I won't 
stop you from giving some of yours to me. ;) The main interest I've had 
in making self-playing movie CDs is if I suddenly want to play one on 
someone else's Windoze machine that doesn't have stuff installed to play 
OGMs, Theora, XCD, and whatever other nonstandard thing I've 
experimented with. Perhaps it would be better to just put a Winders 
build of mplayer on the CD. Do you know if it does vcd://?

What kind of mischief are you talking about? Unless software support for 
every aspect of the movie already exists on the machine where you want 
to play it, you'll have to install some new software or boot the 
self-sufficient CD. Which do you think has more potential for mischief? 
I'd much rather ask to restart someone's PC to play a movie than ask to 
install new software.

Jonathan Rogers