[MPlayer-users] Dealing with dropped packets

[Chhaya, Harshal]

Hi,

I am testing a wireless network by streaming video over it and
using mplayer to display it on the receiving end.

When I play a mpeg file over the network and use mplayer to 
view it, the CPU usage creeps up and finally reaches 100%
(this is on a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 box running WinXP). The video 
also is a bit jerky - it slows down in a few places and 
then catches up again. I get the 'Your system is too SLOW 
to play this!' message followed by 'Too many video packets 
in the buffer (4096 in 8266202 bytes)'.

However, when I use the '-nosound' option with mplayer, the
CPU usage is fairly constant at about 40% and the video plays
smoothly.

Could it be that the wireless network is dropping some packets
and mplayer is working hard to maintain the audio-video
synchronization? Would this also explain the CPU usage to 
inching up as the movie plays?

I tried '-framedrop' but it doesn't help. If I use '-hardframedrop',
mplayer dies with a message saying 'mplayer interrupted by signal
11 in module: decode video'.

If I use '-autosync 30' the video freezes after a few seconds
and the sounds continues for a little while more. The sound
stops after the 'Too many video packets in the buffer (4096 
in 8270718 bytes)' message.

Any suggestions on what options to use to tell mplayer to 
ignore any missing packets?

I am currently using an mpeg-2 file to test the system. If
there is some other format that is more robust to dropped
frames and that mplayer can play, please let me know.

Thanks,
Harshal