MPlayer RTC Setting (WAS: gentoo cd/dvd permissions problem)

[Jason Clinton]

Parker, Ron wrote:
>>>Also, mplayer likes access to a high frequency RTC
>>>
>>>Put this in /etc/conf.d/local.start:
>>>echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq
>
>
> I understand what the /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq setting does.  But
> does anyone know what difference this makes to mplayer?
>

The connection from software to the hardware BIOS clock call is
inherently slow. You can write an algorithm that compensates for the lag
but that's not very accurate if you have tons of IO going on (reading,
decoding and displaying a DVD). The RTC (real-time-clock) is a version
of the clock that returns 'ticks' and a set frequency that are read from
a memory register. This allows accurate sycronization of the audio
decoder stream with the video MPEG2. This is really important for DivX
streams too.

--
Jason Clinton
I don't believe in witty sigs.