how can I play an internet playlist from mplayer GUI?

[dhdurgee]

I have been using the mplayer media player in sound & video to play internet streaming radio. Up to this point I have had individual streams to play. As of Monday, one of the stations I listen to has changed this and now returns a playlist of streams. i am able to play this from the command line using:

mplayer -playlist http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/ ... CAMAAC.pls

I have yet to determine a way to accomplish this from the GUI mplayer media player I have been using. I have tried the URL directly, but it appears not to recognize that a playlist is being returned. Adding -playlist to the URL line does not work. None of the other open menu entries appear to accept URLs. The playlist menu appears to also address only local files.

At the moment I am working around this by downloading the playlist and entering one of the streams on the URL menu, but this is a real kludge.

Dave

[Hezy]

dhdurgee, I downloaded the link you gave (right click, and "save as") then I dragged the WABCAMAAC.pls file into Gnome Player, and after a few seconds of caching I could listen to the stream. you can also look at the playlist in Gnome Mplayer by pressing F9 or selecting Playlist in the View menu.

[dhdurgee]

Given your experience I guess I will have to look into the Gnome Mplayer as opposed to the Mplayer Media Player. I would not have thought of trying a drag-and-drop, but I guess I can give that a try here with both of them. This is still an extra step, albeit a simpler one than extracting a stream from the playlist in a viewer.

Does the Gnome Mplayer remember previously used streams as the Mplayer Media Player does? I have a list of URLs that I move among as the day passes in the Mplayer Media Player and it would make it easier to switch players if a similar set of features were available with the ability to address an internet sourced playlist as well.

Dave

PS: I have downloaded the internet playlists and find that I can call up recent streams in Gnome Mplayer, so this appears to be a workable solution to the situation. It would be nice if the playlists could be directly addressed from the internet to deal with any changes dynamically, but I guess this is workable.

PPS: I am now encountering an unexpected side-effect of using the Gnome Mplayer that I would like to correct, if possible. It appears that Gnome Mplayer disables the screen saver when it is active. This is reasonable if video content is being displayed, but not in the case of audio-only content. This would not be a problem, except that I normally leave an internet stream playing at low volume as a kind of "canary" to warn me of internet problems. Looking at the preferences I don't see a way to allow the screen saver to function as it did when I was using the Mplayer media player. Am I missing something, or will this require software changes?

PPPS: I am now trying the Gnome Movie Player (totem) and find that it understands the internet playlist. The preferences imply that the screen saver is not disabled by default during audio-only playback, so this may also avoid the above noted issue.

[Hezy]

Totem is cool. if it works better for you, it's a good solution.

[dhdurgee]

The totem player seems to be doing the job. About the only problem I have with it is that I need to copy/paste the URI for the stream to start things off. Perhaps a "Recent" menu entry or a pop-up/drop-down of recently opened locations could be added to the player? At present I am working around this by viewing a file with the URI I need in mc and copying a URI to the clipboard prior to selecting "Movie->Open_Location" in the player. I also found I needed to turn off visual effects while playing audio in order to have the screen saver function, despite leaving the disable button unchecked. Perhaps this is a bug?

Dave

[dhdurgee]

I am seeing occasions where totem stops playing a stream and indicates it is refilling the buffer. Are there any tools for determining buffer requirements using totem with the gstreamer backend to avoid pauses in the stream? This is only an audio stream, so I am puzzled I am encountering any issues at all with buffer under run conditions.

Dave