[MPlayer-users] Multiple slave modes not working

[Reimar Döffinger]

On 17 Dec 2012, at 19:16, houghi <houghi at houghi.org> wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 17, 2012 at 12:28:07AM +0100, Reimar Döffinger wrote:
>> The main MPlayer instance (which in this case will not display
>> any video but only play audio) needs to get the seek commands/key presses.
> 
> What works is the spacebar to pause. The message I get when I do a up or
> down arrow is 'Cannot seek in this file'.

Even pausing will not work right if you send the key to the video window instead of the terminal, the audio will not be paused correctly and even video behaviour will depend on things like the fifo buffer size the kernel is configured for.

> When I do a 
> `echo pause > /tmp/mp/mp1` (or any of the other fifo files) is that it
> closes all the mplayer windows.

Those are video data, not command fifos. Writing commands into them makes no sense and just breaks things, most likely by ending up killing all instances with a SIGPIPE.

> When I do this on some other fifo I already use, it pauses nicely.

If you want this, make the main MPlayer instance open a separate slave mode FIFO, that should work well.