SMPlayer - a new frontend for MPlayer [Archive] - Page 5

rvm

11th June 2007, 00:45

I have good computer and the video still dont wok with mplayer, i haev Core 2 duo 7200, 2 GB ram, ATI 16OO with 512MB , hope one day they will fix HD playback in mplayer.

In the mplayer-users mailing list, it's usually suggested to use -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all.

From mplayer manpage:
skiploopfilter=<skipvalue>

Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during H.264 decoding. Since the filtered frame is supposed to be used as reference for decoding dependent frames this has a worse effect on quality than not doing deblocking on e.g. MPEG-2 video. But at least for high bitrate HDTV this provides a big speedup with no visible quality loss.

<skipvalue> can be either one of the following:

none: Never skip.
default: Skip useless processing steps (e.g. 0 size packets in AVI).
nonref: Skip frames that are not referenced (i.e. not used for decoding other frames, the error cannot "build up").
bidir: Skip B-Frames.
nonkey: Skip all frames except keyframes.
all: Skip all frames.

You have a very nice mkv support for your player. We can see the name of the streams and all chapters. :thanks:
Unfortunatly 99% of my files are mp4 and for mp4 there is no support for chapters, streamnames and tags. It would be wonderful to have a full mp4 suport - do you plan to add something like this? :)

Unfortunately I don't have any mp4 video with chapters. If someone could point me to a mp4 sample video with chapters I could see if mplayer offers info about chapters.

rvm, I got a few more feature requests ^^

1. If I select Video -> Size -> 100% and then accidentally resize the window by hand, I can not go back to 100%, because 100% is already checked and cannot be clicked again. So I have to go to some other size first, before I can go back to 100%. Therefore I suggest you add something like "Custom" (maybe with a separator) to Video -> Size, which will be checked automatically as soon as the user manually resizes the window.

I'm aware of that problem. I'll try to fix it.

2. SMPlayer already has a "Software Volume Control" checkbox in preferences. Unfortunately the maximum volume is still limited to 100% when software volume control is enabled. The reason I sometimes used software volume control is that I want to go above 100% with some very quiet videos. Would be nice if I could go up to at least 300% volume with software control enabled. Also "Software Volume Control" in the "Audio" menu instead of Preferences would be fine for faster access.

I didn't know that was possible. Looking at the manpage I guess it's the -softvol-max option.

3. When speaking about volume: I also noticed that "Volume Normalization" is not available in SMPlayer. Well, I don't like MPlayer's volume normalization very much and only use it here and there, but shouldn't it be added for completeness?

I hardly use audio filters or audio options, so I don't know much about them. Thanks for the tip. I'll add that option.

Delerue

11th June 2007, 00:52

I have good computer and the video still dont wok with mplayer, i haev Core 2 duo 7200, 2 GB ram, ATI 16OO with 512MB , hope one day they will fix HD playback in mplayer.

Can you provide a sample?

ExtraEye

11th June 2007, 09:03

what LoRd_MuldeR suggested doesn't work. so if you could add cropping or maybe making it possible to zoom out, that would be great. in general the player is great. I like the way it remembers the settings used for each specific video and how it remembers where it stopped last time. it would be great if it was possible to disable that specifically for audio.
I'd like to know what's the difference between the different "output drivers" (openGL,directx, etc). which are recommended for use?
Also I couldn't find any keybord shortcut for switching to the next track in the playlist, it's not that awfull to fast forward all the way to the end but still, normally you could skip to the next track whith ease.
The volume control works nicely except that it usually plays at full volume for a sec, and then settles into the desired volume. so you should somehow make it take into account the volume control before it starts playing.

SealTooGreat

11th June 2007, 09:45

Unfortunately with some formats mplayer can't switch audio streams at run-time. I don't have any mp4 with 2 audio streams to test with, but I guess this is the case.
Although your suggestion is workable, you might find this mp4 with 2 audio streams (http://www.mytempdir.com/1352448) useful for developing purpose.

rvm

11th June 2007, 10:32

what LoRd_MuldeR suggested doesn't work. so if you could add cropping or maybe making it possible to zoom out, that would be great.

I think zoom out can be done. I didn't implement it because I didn't think it could be useful.

I'd like to know what's the difference between the different "output drivers" (openGL,directx, etc). which are recommended for use?

directx gives the best performance (it's the one that uses less CPU). The problem for Windows Vista users is that it disables Aero.

directx:noaccel on the other hand uses a lot of CPU and quality is very bad. It's not recommended.

gl and gl2 requires 3D acceleration in the graphic card. It gives much better performance than directx:noaccel, but not so much as directx. Quality is also very good. It can be useful for Windows Vista users. gl/gl2 didn't work quite well (inside frontends) until recent releases of MPlayer, and it still has some issues.

The other drivers just do funny things (like matrixview) or save the video as image files.

You can find more info in the MPlayer manpage (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html).

Also I couldn't find any keybord shortcut for switching to the next track in the playlist, it's not that awfull to fast forward all the way to the end but still, normally you could skip to the next track whith ease.

The shortcuts for previous and next item in playlist are < and > but I've just realized that they only work in the playlist window. I'll try to fix it.

The volume control works nicely except that it usually plays at full volume for a sec, and then settles into the desired volume. so you should somehow make it take into account the volume control before it starts playing.

Yes, the thing is that the volume is controlled by MPlayer, and SMPlayer has to wait until the MPlayer process is running to tell it to change volume.
I miss a -volume option to pass the initial volume in the command line.

LoRd_MuldeR

11th June 2007, 16:20

what LoRd_MuldeR suggested doesn't work.

What exactly doesn't work? :confused:

It works here to add black borders around the video via the "expand" filter. Isn't that similar to zooming out?

I hardly use audio filters or audio options, so I don't know much about them. Thanks for the tip. I'll add that option.

I personally don't like MPlayer's normalizer very much, because it's not very smooth. Nevertheless volnorm=2 seems to give much better results, as it will use several samples to smooth the variations.

ExtraEye

11th June 2007, 16:33

It is similar but it's not happening for some reason when I try to use it. :(
Besides, even if there's a way, I think having the ability to crop while the video is playing is important...

rvm

11th June 2007, 17:59

Although your suggestion is workable, you might find this mp4 with 2 audio streams (http://www.mytempdir.com/1352448) useful for developing purpose.

I tested it with one of the latest svn releases of mplayer (SVN-r23386), and audio switching doesn't work with the default demuxer. It does work with the lavf demuxer, although after switching the audio is not synchronized (can be fixed going back 10 seconds).

You can add -demuxer lavf in Preferences->Advanced, that way it'll try to use the lavf demuxer for all videos, but it doesn't work well with some formats, for example there are no subtitles in mkv videos.

It is similar but it's not happening for some reason when I try to use it. :(
Besides, even if there's a way, I think having the ability to crop while the video is playing is important...

I'll try to add options for zoom out (I think cropping is another thing), but right now you can add something like expand=-50:-50 in Preferences->Advanced->Video filters

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/1544/expand2bk3.th.jpg (http://img113.imageshack.us/my.php?image=expand2bk3.jpg)

and a border of 50 pixels will be added to all videos:

http://img505.imageshack.us/img505/4015/expand1cr6.th.jpg (http://img505.imageshack.us/my.php?image=expand1cr6.jpg)

olivierdb

11th June 2007, 18:37

Hi, Does SMPlayer play M4A, i.e. AAC (or even better: AAC+) audio?

It doesn't seem to work on my PC!!

Thank you.

ExtraEye

11th June 2007, 18:50

thx rvm, that worked well.

LoRd_MuldeR

11th June 2007, 18:53

thx rvm, that worked well.

That was exactly what I suggested before :p

rvm

11th June 2007, 18:55

Hi, Does SMPlayer play M4A, i.e. AAC (or even better: AAC+) audio?

It doesn't seem to work on my PC!!

Thank you.

Just tested some m4a and aac files from this samples directory (http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/samples/A-codecs/) and (at least in linux) they play perfectly.

LoRd_MuldeR

11th June 2007, 21:53

rvm, I just noticed another small "problem" with SMPlayer's Video -> Size menu: In some cases SMPlayer doesn't resize the main window properly. The video gets the desired size (e.g. 100%), but the window is too large. This results in black borders.

For example if I load a 640x480 video, it first looks fine. But as soon as I select Video -> Size -> 50%, then I get black bars on the left and on the right side, like this:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/5931/filesmplayerresize50lk9.png

When I then select Video -> Size -> 100%, I get (small) black bars on the top and on the bottom like this:

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/807/filesmplayerresize100dt0.png

Nevertheless, pressing Stop + Play resizes properly back to 100%.

Netuser

11th June 2007, 23:26

In the mplayer-users mailing list, it's usually suggested to use -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all.

Where is this option ? how to chaneg it ?

thanks

rvm

12th June 2007, 02:54

Where is this option ? how to chaneg it ?

Options->Preferences->Advanced. Type -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all in the Options field.

rvm, I just noticed another small "problem" with SMPlayer's Video -> Size menu: In some cases SMPlayer doesn't resize the main window properly. The video gets the desired size (e.g. 100%), but the window is too large. This results in black borders.

I think this is caused by the language toolbar. When the window is about to be resized the language toolbar is above, next to the main toolbar. But when the window is actually resized, the language toolbar doesn't fit and Qt moves it down, so the video window is smaller than expected and the video has to be reduced to keep aspect ratio, so black borders appear. If you hide in that moment the language toolbar (F6) you'll see that the video fits perfectly.

When you make the window bigger then it happens the opposite, the language toolbar is moved up because there's enough space for it, leaving the video window a little bigger than expected.

ExtraEye

12th June 2007, 10:17

That was exactly what I suggested before :p

yeah, it's my fault because when you told me to do it I put it in "options" while I should have written it in "Video filters". So when he showed the picture it helped me. So I apologize :P

LoRd_MuldeR

12th June 2007, 13:17

yeah, it's my fault because when you told me to do it I put it in "options" while I should have written it in "Video filters". So when he showed the picture it helped me. So I apologize :P

no prob ;)

The difference is, that "Video Filters" will automatically prefix the required -vf-add, while "Options" will not...

vio_man

12th June 2007, 16:41

Your installer creates a new entry on the Windows Add/Remove everytime users installs a new version. You should change that to overwrite previous entry.

ExtraEye

12th June 2007, 20:50

I was wondering if the inloop filter in AVC is working by default or am I supposed to enable "Deblock" for AVC content.

LoRd_MuldeR

12th June 2007, 21:01

I was wondering if the inloop filter in AVC is working by default or am I supposed to enable "Deblock" for AVC content.

Inloop Deblocking is a mandatory feature of the H.264 format! For example all P- and B-Frame refer to the already deblocked frames. Therefore every H.264 decoder has to use Inloop-Deblocking, always! If you force the decoder to by-pass Inloop-Deblocking this will result in corrupted output. Not only the picture will be more blocky, also you will get further artifacts due to invalid reference frames. So forcing libavcodec to disable Inloop-Deblocking is a trade-off: It might speed-up decoding, but you will have to live with distorted output. I would only use it, in case nothing else helps...

Also note that "normal" postprocessing/deblocking is something completely separate from H.264's Inloop Deblocking. In contrast to MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 ASP, you won't need further postprocessing for H.264 contents (well, when decoding properly).

// EDIT

Disabling the Inloop Deblocking only on "None Ref Frames" (hence B-Frames) might be the save solution to avoid distortions, but of course it won't speed-up decoding as much as full skipping.

rvm

12th June 2007, 22:38

Your installer creates a new entry on the Windows Add/Remove everytime users installs a new version. You should change that to overwrite previous entry.

My installer is quite simple and it doesn't take into account updates, so it's recommended to uninstall a previous version before installing a new one.

ExtraEye

12th June 2007, 22:54

i was asking if this inloop deblocking was taking place by default. not if there is a way to disable it :P it's o.k.

LoRd_MuldeR

12th June 2007, 23:10

i was asking if this inloop deblocking was taking place by default. not if there is a way to disable it :P it's o.k.

Yes, it is enabled by default, as Inloop Deblocking is an essential part of H.264 decoding/playback.
Disabling Inloop Deblocking is only a "hack" to speed-up decoding with the effect of distorted output.

ExtraEye

13th June 2007, 13:31

couple of small requests:
1)In the playlist it could be nice if one could delete an item with the delete key instead of having to use the mouse for that.

2)I'd like to have the ability to have the "ExtraStereo" filter for the audio in all videos and not only the current one playing.
(What's the command for that?)

3)It would be nice if there was a small guide that tells you how to do the basic things with the command line. Something for the beginners to copy-paste from. :P

4)Like I said before, having specific crop settings for specific videos would be nice. I have some old videos which are cropped in hight and width and it'll be nice if I could "de-crop" them with the player and have it remember to use that setting each time it plays that file.

Also, I have a suggestion for manual audio volume correcting. Some videos have higher or lower volume by default. Now if you add another audio control which the player will remember, one could control the audio strength that would count as a certain number. let me try to simplify this.
Say you set the volume half as maximum in the player. Then you play a certain video which has half the volume strength it's supposed to have for the volume strength you set in the player. So you set the other volume parameter to twice as "normal", say 4/4 instead of 2/4. And the player remembers this specifically for this file. So now whenever you play the file, the player will play it twice as strong as the volume that is selected in the player.
I hope I explained good enough...

LoRd_MuldeR

13th June 2007, 17:06

couple of small requests:
1)In the playlist it could be nice if one could delete an item with the delete key instead of having to use the mouse for that.

I second that.

Also a commandline switch to append files to the Playlist would be nice :)
Like: smplayer.exe -enqueue "C:\Path to file\Foo.avi"

2)I'd like to have the ability to have the "ExtraStereo" filter for the audio in all videos and not only the current one playing. (What's the command for that?)

Just look at Options -> View Logs -> mplayer and check out the command-line :p

-af extrastereo

3)It would be nice if there was a small guide that tells you how to do the basic things with the command line. Something for the beginners to copy-paste from. :P

Have a look at this doc:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html

It's a pretty big doc, but it contains everything you can do with mplayer.

rvm

13th June 2007, 17:25

couple of small requests:
1)In the playlist it could be nice if one could delete an item with the delete key instead of having to use the mouse for that.

You can. Preferences->Mouse & keyboard and assign the "Del" key to the pl_remove_selected action.

2)I'd like to have the ability to have the "ExtraStereo" filter for the audio in all videos and not only the current one playing.
(What's the command for that?)

Preferences->Advanced. Type extrastereo in the Audio filters field.

3)It would be nice if there was a small guide that tells you how to do the basic things with the command line. Something for the beginners to copy-paste from. :P

Yes, I think it's time to start to write some docs. But first I have to setup a help system.

You can take a look at the mplayer manpage (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html), and look for the video and audio filters. You can add the ones you want to smplayer in Preferences->Advanced by typing the filters (and optional parameters) in the video and audio filters fields.

Filters set this way would be used for all videos. If you prefer to use some filters for a specific file, you can do it too. Open the video and the select Options->View info and properties, and select the "MPlayer options" tab. There you can add options and filters to be passed to mplayer, but this time only the current file will be affected. And these options are saved and will be use again if you play the file later.

4)Like I said before, having specific crop settings for specific videos would be nice. I have some old videos which are cropped in hight and width and it'll be nice if I could "de-crop" them with the player and have it remember to use that setting each time it plays that file.

Just what I said above.

Also, I have a suggestion for manual audio volume correcting. Some videos have higher or lower volume by default. Now if you add another audio control which the player will remember, one could control the audio strength that would count as a certain number. let me try to simplify this.
Say you set the volume half as maximum in the player. Then you play a certain video which has half the volume strength it's supposed to have for the volume strength you set in the player. So you set the other volume parameter to twice as "normal", say 4/4 instead of 2/4. And the player remembers this specifically for this file. So now whenever you play the file, the player will play it twice as strong as the volume that is selected in the player.
I hope I explained good enough...

Sounds like the -softvol-max mplayer option. I'll add support for it soon.

ExtraEye

13th June 2007, 17:35

MetalheadGautham

13th June 2007, 17:41

How many of these features does this have?

well, my need is as follows:

1. support for infinite formats

2. no green bars in flv videos

3. opensource(if none, then freeware, but I HATE KMPLAYER)

4. tonnes of video filters

5. a 10 band equiliser with preset values for lots of stuff, especially for METAL.(I am a fan of SOAD, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, Zep, Megadeth, Sabbath, Maiden, rush, etc:cool:)

6. NO green bars in flv videos

7. the playlist, the EQ, the controls, the video and the visualizations in the same window, no multiple windows.

8. a built in and effitient transcoader and ripper(x264 and nero aac a must if not nero then faad)

9. cool looking icons for various filetypes

10. a good sound quality.

11. faster playback/slower playback, adjustable speed

12. god visualisations

13. a good library

14. EYE CANDY

15. less CPU usage

16. postprocessing, as a low priority process, so that when ram is available, it uses lot of it for postprocessing, but when applications start getting launched, it automatically adjusts the quality so that the other processors wont be affected

17. ompact mode

18. alw@ys on top

19. dvd menus

20. advanced transcoading functions including but not limited to partial extract, stream coppy, matroska, save streaming media, etc.

21. mozilla firefox plugin to replace real alternative, quicktime alternative, wmp plugin, etc.

22. cd burning support(lib-writina)

23. all advanced options accessable via gui

24. PROPER file type extentions. like MP3 Audio, Real Audio, AAC audio, etc, not Media file(mkv) or audio file(mp3) or m4a file

rvm

13th June 2007, 17:43

How cool. Most of the things I asked for are already available :P thx fot the help LoRd_MuldeR and rvm. The file specific mplayer options are really neat :D
Is there a way to assign a key for cropping?
Or in general, a way to assign keys for commands? If not that could be a cool feature!

You can change the key shortcuts in Preferences->Keyboard and mouse. In general you can only change or add shortcuts for options that appear in the menus.

SealTooGreat

13th June 2007, 19:06

@MetalheadGautham

You forgot ability to make coffee, bring drinks and popcorns, reading watcher's thoughts would be awesome as well, just to make sure that pleasant is achieved. My 2 cent. :D
Be patient, one by one implementation is the most suitable way to do. ;)

foxyshadis

13th June 2007, 20:57

Actually he's just looking for a checklist to compare different players, it looks like. (I'm not familiar enough with smplayer to say what it supports or doesn't.)

LoRd_MuldeR

13th June 2007, 21:15

How many of these features does this have?

1. MPlayer supports more file formats than any other player I'm aware off. It provides native support for more than 192 Video- und 85 Audiocodecs! (-> details (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html#vc))

2. yes

3. YES !!!

4. yes (see the mplayer docs -> link (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html#VIDEO%20FILTERS))

5. yes, but it's not implemented in the SMPlayer front-end, so you'll have to configure it manually (Prefs -> Advanced -> Audio Filters)

6. yes, still

7. no, SMPlayer has separated windows for playlist and video

8. well, that would be a job for MEncoder, not MPlayer

9. you can set this manually, no matter which player you use

10. MPlayer has same audio quality as any other DirectSound/WaveOut based player, I guess. I doesn't screw up anything at least

11. yes

12. nope, no such gimmicks

13. nope, not in the SMPlayer front-end. Other MPlayer front-ends might include a libraray

14. ?

15. MPlayer is one of the most CPU gentle player I'm aware of

16. yes, several postprocessing filters are available in MPlayer (see docs again)

17. yes, SMPlayer has compact mode

18. yes

19. nope, DVD Video is supported, but no menus (SMPlayer has it's own menus to change title/chapter/language/subtitle though)

20. again a job for MEncoder, not MPlayer

21. nope

22. nope

23. yes, SMPlayer has a lot of options implemented in the GUI. The rest can be configured from (Prefs -> Advanced)

24. Why should the player change any file extensions? It plays the files as they are. If your files have wrong extensions, then it's nobody's fault except your own ^^

MetalheadGautham

14th June 2007, 09:31

Actually he's just looking for a checklist to compare different players, it looks like. (I'm not familiar enough with smplayer to say what it supports or doesn't.)

exactly. I have my norms for all kinds of things. I find this newly made list very useful.

PS: I am thinking of making a software soon which can assign different features different priorities and points and rank a set of features. (just abuse the "if", "else" and "while" clauses in C). but I dont have any compiler. can someone try something like this?

LoRd_MuldeR

14th June 2007, 17:26

RVM, ir would be great if you could provide a static build of the latest SMPlayer.exe :)

rvm

14th June 2007, 18:35

I'll try to do it tomorrow.

And I think I can also get rid of the mingwm10.dll, so the binary won't depend on any dll.

LoRd_MuldeR

14th June 2007, 18:35

I'll try to do it tomorrow.

And I think I can also get rid of the mingwm10.dll, so the binary won't depend on any dll.

great news :D

rvm

15th June 2007, 22:17

smplayer_windows_0.5.14_static_without_mplayer.7z (http://downloads.sourceforge.net/smplayer/smplayer_windows_0.5.14_static_without_mplayer.7z)

Compiled with Qt 4.3, and this time it doesn't depend on mingwm10.dll. Surprisingly the binary is much smaller (now 8 MB), the compressed package less that 4 MB.

LoRd_MuldeR

15th June 2007, 22:33

ExtraEye

16th June 2007, 12:40

If it would be possible to make the control box show up in a little higher place in full screen mode it would be great. Right now it is displayed in the edge and so my TV screen swallows most of it.

p.s: it seems the subtitles support still isn't perfect. The player can't play some of the videos I have because they have subtitles. would you like me to upload a sample?

rvm

16th June 2007, 15:14

If it would be possible to make the control box show up in a little higher place in full screen mode it would be great. Right now it is displayed in the edge and so my TV screen swallows most of it.

I hadn't thought about it. I'll try to fix it.

p.s: it seems the subtitles support still isn't perfect. The player can't play some of the videos I have because they have subtitles. would you like me to upload a sample?

Yes please.

ExtraEye

16th June 2007, 21:19

can you give me an email address to send it too? or maybe you know where i can upload it to? just 5 megabyte.

Edit:
o.k something wierd. I just installed LoRd_MuldeR's newest package and the file worked...

LoRd_MuldeR

16th June 2007, 21:48

o.k something wierd. I just installed LoRd_MuldeR's newest package and the file worked...

Maybe different MPlayer build? :confused:

ExtraEye

16th June 2007, 22:12

umm another thing. sorry im asking so much :(
I use the command "dsize=1280:720, scale=1280:720 -sws 9" to resize my videos to my TV's resolution. the problem is the player still works by the aspect ratio of the videos so if he comes by a video with an aspect ratio of 16:9 it is displayed square instead of the dimensions I asked for. This is fixed whenever I change the settings of such a video to 16:9 (although at that point the cropping settings aren't as good anymore). I tried making the player not take the aspect ratio into account with the command "-noaspect" but that didn't work :(

rvm

16th June 2007, 22:30

I don't know what the dsize option is for, I have never used.

I think for scaling while keeping the aspect ratio of the videos you can use "scale=1280:-2".

LoRd_MuldeR

16th June 2007, 22:32

Why do you use dsize at all? It is used to change the aspect ratio. If you just want to resize, then scale should be enough. Also you can try scale=1280:-2, which will resize to 1280 x ?, where ? is chosen accordingly to the aspect ratio of the movie.

Also take care that you put scale= to the "Video filters" edit box (-vf-add not needed) and -sws 9 to the "Options" edit box.

[edit]

damn, rvm was faster ;)

ExtraEye

18th June 2007, 01:25

I do want the aspect ratio to change :P I want all my videos to show up full screen in my wide screen TV. Thus I wanted to resize the videos to the resolution of my TV and lose the aspect ratio. Unfortunately Smplayer disregards this and still displays the videos that are square, square (with borders at the sides).
It's more correct, I know. But I still want every inch of my TV covered :p

rvm

18th June 2007, 02:42

LoRd_MuldeR

18th June 2007, 14:54

Ok, if your TV screen is 16:9 and you want all videos to have that aspect, in Preferences->Advanced, type -aspect 16:9 in the Options field.

BTW, I think the scale filter is not necessary. It will just use a lot of CPU.

software scaler with Lanczos (-sws 9) gives significant better quality than letting Overlay do the resize, which would use Bilinear scaling, I guess...

LoRd_MuldeR

18th June 2007, 23:05

rvm, I got another request concerning Process Priority: SMPlayer already has an option to control MPlayeR's priority. Unfortunately this only effects the priority of 'MPlayer.exe', not 'SMPlayer.exe'. So when I use "High" priority and play something which causes heavy CPU load, then MPlayer.exe will eat all the CPU time and the SMPlayer GUI simply freezes. A short time after that MPlayer freezes too, as it seems to wait for response of SMPlayer. Only way then is to kill MPlayer.exe from Taskman. So I recommend that the priority of SMPlayer.exe should be set at least to the same level as MPlayer.exe. That's the way MPUI does it...