Hrm… I downloaded some MPEGs from the Parsec website http://www.parsec.org/
and when I tried to play them with plaympeg, I only got audio.
I tried it with xanim and it displayed the video (but crappily and with a very
bad framerate, as usual… which is why I opt to use plaympeg over xanim).
So, I decided I’d ask on here if anyone can find out what’s so special about
these MPEGs that plaympeg only sees the audio stream.
I decided “hmm, I’d better find out what version I’m using”, so, I did:
% plaympeg --version
Warning: Unknown option: --version
hmm… all the other options are “–” (dash-dash) long-style options, but
maybe “version” snuck in with just one dash:
% plaympeg -version
Warning: Unknown option: -version
d’oh… ok, what about just plain ol’ “-v”?
% plaympeg -v
USERNAME=: Unable to open MPEG file
HISTSIZE=1000: Unable to open MPEG file
HOSTNAME=amiga.plush.net: Unable to open MPEG file
LOGNAME=kendrick: Unable to open MPEG file
HISTFILESIZE=1000: Unable to open MPEG file
INIT_VERSION=sysvinit-2.77: Unable to open MPEG file
…etc…
What the hell!? Ok, what is “-v” supposed to do again!?!
% plaympeg
Usage: plaympeg [options] file …
Where the options are one of:
–noaudio Don’t play audio stream
–novideo Don’t play video stream
–fullscreen Play MPEG in fullscreen mode
–double or -2 Play MPEG at double size
–loop or -l Play MPEG over and over
–volume N or -v N Set audio volume to N (0-100)
Ah… “-v” sets volume. So, why didn’t plaympeg check to see if there was
in fact an “N”? 
Looks like bad argument parsing. 
So, I dig up my smpeg tar file. Looks like I have version 0.3.2.
I’ll run to the SDL site to see if there’s a newer version.
Ah, while it doesn’t say it on the SMPEG page
< http://www.lokigames.com/development/smpeg.php3 >
(nitpick: it should SAY on the page somewhere!),
I can tell by looking at the download link that the latest version is 0.3.3.
Download… configure ; make ; make install
(Tip: This runs much faster when seti at home’s off )
Ok! Cool. smpeg 0.3.3 seems to handle the mpegs fine. But, there’s
still no “–version” and “-v” still does very funky things.
So… I made some changes and will supply some diffs in my next e-mail.
I’ve created a new “SMPEG_version” type, but it might be good enough to
just use the “SDL_version” type define in “SDL_version.h”, since it’s
exactly the same structure…
Thanks!
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/
(Can you tell I wrote most of this e-mail
while I was going about the process? )
PS - One last problem. On the smpeg web site, the “Overview” and
"Other projects" links on the right (next to the newsgroup link)
are broken.
Thanks again!