Arch Linux

dlind

Member

Registered: 2010-07-27

Posts: 18

Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

Hello,

I am trying to watch some videos with mplayer, my wm of choice is ratpoison.

My issue is that when I launch

mplayer -fs /path/to/file

from urxvt the window with the playback pops up as a very small window, not at all fullscreen as I requested.

What could I be doing wrong here? Is there something about ratpoison I should change or is it just something that has to do with mplayer?

/David

Last edited by dlind (2010-07-31 17:20:28)

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

That may also depend on mplayer -vo switch. Unlikely, but if the windows happens to be at the movie's native dimensions (e.g. 640x360 pixels) you may investigate in that direction.

rusty99

Member

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 253

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

This sounds like zoom setting, create a dir name .mplayer and inside that a file named config

mkdir .mplayer && cat > .mplayer/config << EOF
? zoom=yes
? EOF

Then try mplayer again

dlind

Member

Registered: 2010-07-27

Posts: 18

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

This sounds like zoom setting, create a dir name .mplayer and inside that a file named config

mkdir .mplayer && cat > .mplayer/config << EOF
? zoom=yes
? EOF

Then try mplayer again

That worked, kinda. The screen doesn't get totally filled by the mplayer-window, it leaves some small vertical spaces on the left and right edges. I would like to be able to fill the entire screen(besides from the 16px area at the top which is occupied by dzen2).

/David

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

This sounds like zoom setting, create a dir name .mplayer and inside that a file named config

mkdir .mplayer && cat > .mplayer/config << EOF
? zoom=yes
? EOF

Then try mplayer again

That worked, kinda. The screen doesn't get totally filled by the mplayer-window, it leaves some small vertical spaces on the left and right edges. I would like to be able to fill the entire screen(besides from the 16px area at the top which is occupied by dzen2).

/David

Maybe the movie has a different aspect than your screen e.g. 16:10 v 16:9?

splittercode

Member

From: WI, USA

Registered: 2010-03-16

Posts: 203

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

There are two ways to go about this.
First, you can add

unmanage MPlayer

to your ~/.ratpoisonrc.  This will leave mplayer completely unmanaged by ratpoison, meaning it won't respond to keyboard input and it can only be killed by typing 'killall mplayer' into the ratpoison exec bar.

A better way is to use the tmpwm command, which switches to another wm temporarily for all windows, and then transfers control back to ratpoison when that window manager is killed.  For example, to use openbox temporarily just execute or create a bind for

ratpoison -c "tmpwm openbox"

A clever trick is to bind the same key combo to start openbox within ratpoison as well as to kill openbox within openbox(or whichever other wm you want to use)

EDIT: I think tmpwm works best with the git pull of ratpoison, which I use.  I'm not sure how well it works in the standard repo version.

EDIT #2: Here's another way, which streamlines the whole process.  You can launch your videos like this.

ratpoison -c "tmpwm openbox" & mplayer -fs path/to/video && killall openbox

It will automatically send you back to ratpoison when you exit mplayer, so you won't even have to think about the fact that you're in another window manager.  You could make a simple bash function or script for that as well so you don't have to type it every time.

Last edited by splittercode (2010-07-31 17:26:09)

rusty99

Member

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 253

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

Try setting screen aspect in the config file. Can't remember what the default aspect setting is in mplayer,

cat >> .mplayer/config << EOF
? monitoraspect=16:9 #(change it to 4:3 if applicable)
? EOF

Try again

Last edited by rusty99 (2010-07-31 18:16:45)

dlind

Member

Registered: 2010-07-27

Posts: 18

Re: Ratpoison and mplayer [SOLVED]

Marking this as solved, the variable 'monitoraspect=proper/value' did the trick.

Thanks.

/David