Re: Basic help needed...

On Mon, May 11, 2015 at 04:49:29PM +0100, Lostgallifreyan wrote:
> Remember in a config file, the last volume setting.
> Set specific audio output ports (for an Echo Layla device), again remembered in a config file.

Not sure what specifically the problem was in finding that (though I
admit the manual/man page is intimidating).
The volume option is listed under
AUDIO OUTPUT OPTIONS
section and the dsound ao including the options under
AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS
That also mentions -ao win32 if you want to use the old API,
but that one doesn't have a device selection feature.
If you have no idea about the options at all, a GUI like SMPlayer
that allows you to select options by clicking and shows the command-line
it uses can help.
The config file syntax should be easiest to figure out by looking at the
example.conf

> Use CTRL or ALT keys to extend the available keys to bind to commands.

Which part is the problem?
You know about the input.conf and got it to work?
Key combinations are specified using -, e.g. "CTRL-.".
We had indeed no documentation of that it seems, I added
this into the example input.conf.
However most people would just press whatever keys they want
and the key name to use would be printed on the console.

> Load a file for playback, but always pause it immediately until I am ready to start it.

Note sure you can do that from the command-line, easily at least.
Closest I can offer is
mplayer -idle -slave

and then type "pausing loadfile some_file"
But it does play a short bit of audio before it pauses for me.

> Is there a guaranteed way to prevent the occasional green-screen seizure at close of Mplayer? This is much rarer than it used to be in Mplayer several years ago, but sometimes still happens. As the result is ABSOLUTE freeze, not even pointer movement or response to Ctrl+Alt+Del, there is no possible diagnostic, only hardware reset or power cycling to restore any passable resemblence to 'computer' as opposed to 'brick'. :) Whatever the cause, it seems to have never really been solved, and while the odds are better than they have ever been, I'd like to eliminate the risk so I can use Mplayer without having to avoid all critical work on the system in any session in which Mplayer is used.

I have some doubts that MPlayer has much to do with it, it could
prevent Ctrl+Alt+Del.
So a bad driver seems likely.
The green screen is not necessarily related, it just means the
DShow video surface is still active.
But just in case it is related to video drivers you could try
a more modern output method like -vo gl or -vo direct3d.
At least you will get a hang with a black instead of green
screen (well, -colorkey should also change the colour with
dshow, but the colour isn't your real problem anyway ;) ).