On 27.11.2008, at 20:44, Lehni wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am trying to find out if it is possible to synchronize the playback
> of muplitple instances of Mplayer on multiple machines across the
> network. I would like to create a video wall based on HD resolution
> video files. Each of these files is a part of a video of an even
> higher resolution, and each would be played back by its own dedicated
> machine.
>
> I imagine one machine would be declared master (server), the other
> slaves (clients) for the time signal.
>
> Is there such a feature? If not, how hard would it be to implement it?
As the other replies already indicated, there's currently no such
feature available.
I did however write a script to at least allow syncronized starting of
movies. The script is started by cron or via ssh, and opens a port
where mplayer lists for commands. MPlayer is started paused.
To start all at the same time, use something like
> Controller
#!/bin/sh
PORT=44444
SERVERS="alpha.local beta.local gamma.local"
for DN in $SERVERS
do
echo pause | nc $DN $PORT
done
> Player Side
#!/bin/sh
PORT=44444
FIFO=rconmp.fifo
function tempname
{
# Generate an unlikely to be used name
dd if=/dev/random bs=16 count=1 | openssl base64 | sed -e "s/\///g" -
e "s/=//g"
}
FIFOFILE=${FIFO}.$(tempname)
mkfifo ${FIFOFILE}
nc -kl ${PORT} > ${FIFOFILE} &
NCPID=$!
echo pause | mplayer -slave -idle -input file=${FIFOFILE} "$@"
echo killing nc with PID ${NCPID}
kill ${NCPID}
rm ${FIFOFILE}
Needless to say that this will not address potential desync issues
that arise during playback. Also, you should not do that on anything
but a secure local lan, since an open pipe to mplayer gives a lot of
rights.
You can try to resync it by quitting all players and starting them
synchronized again, or by skipping to a known position (like the
start). An other possibility, if you use a playlist, is to feed that
playlist piecewise to the player via the network, which would again
give synchronisation points.
cbreak
>
> Is anyone else interested in working on this?
>
> Best,
>
> Lehni
>
>
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