[MPlayer-users] mplayer works with file, fails with piped file

[Tom Evans]

2011/5/11 David Chernoff <chernoff at astro.cornell.edu>:
> I have a paradox:
>
> 1. mplayer file.avi
>
> 2. cat file.avi | mplayer -
>
> The first above succeeds. The second fails (after a promising start)
> with message
>
> ds_fill_buffer: End of file reached
> EOF 1 341 ...
>
> Here file.avi was created by concatenating several .avi files using
> mencoder. The failure probably occurs when mplayer is beginning to
> access the contents of the second concatenated .avi file though the
> screen playback has not yet reached that point.
>

Files are seekable, pipes are not. AVIs don't play well with non
seekable streams, and I don't think concatenating AVI files is the
'correct' method of joining AVI files.

Cheers

Tom