mplayer cache is either too small or too big

[GoogleCodeExporter]

What steps will reproduce the problem?
The cache size under 'MPlayer' -> 'Enable MPlayer cache' is only configurable 
to 32KB, 522KB or something higher, it is either too small (32K), making the 
sound choppy, or too big(544K), requiring too long to start playing 

What is the expected output? What do you see instead?
64KB or 128KB should be better, but these are not configurable

What version of the product are you using? On what operating system?
Ubuntu 12.04

Please provide any additional information below.
BTW, what's the use of the cache size in the 'Plugin' tab?

Original issue reported on code.google.com by wwych...@gmail.com on 29 Oct 2012 at 12:22

[GoogleCodeExporter]

With the current version the audio and video caches are separate and has been 
since version 1.0 (released November of 2010). These sizes are completely 
adjustable from with in the preferences in gnome-mplayer in the plugin tab. But 
which cache is used is dependent on how the media is tagged from the web site. 
The cache size cannot be altered once the caching starts so the audio cache is 
only used when the website advertises the content as audio only, otherwise the 
video cache is used.

The default sizes as shipped are 128K for audio and 2048K for video. These 
sizes have been determined by me to be the optimal values for most uses, and 
generally do not need to be changes. Some websites throttle the amount that can 
be downloaded so cache loading in some cases may appear to be slow due to the 
limits of the site.

Original comment by kdeko...@gmail.com on 29 Oct 2012 at 1:32

[GoogleCodeExporter]

Hi

Thank you for replying. So what is the use of the 'MPlayer cache'? And now I 
understand that the radio site I am listening to is using the video cache. But 
the smallest size of video cache 256K is a bit large for audio, can it be 
adjustable to 128K?

Original comment by wwych...@gmail.com on 30 Oct 2012 at 1:38

[GoogleCodeExporter]

I've found that when the video cache size is used and a video is played cache 
sizes smaller that 256 result in mplayer not having enough buffer and the video 
usually ends sooner than expected. That is why I set the minimum value to be 
256.

The mplayer cache is used for locally played files, most of the time is is not 
needed, but for some situations it can be helpful devices that are slow, but 
mplayer does not know they are. mplayer is normally left to manage its own 
cache for local files.

Original comment by kdeko...@gmail.com on 30 Oct 2012 at 12:42

• Changed state: Done