Didn't do any further experimentation today on encoding videos for streaming, but I have figured out how to integrate mplayer with Opera.

First, become root.

Then create a new file named /usr/bin/runmplayer

$ vi /usr/bin/runmplayer

Add these lines to it and save it:

Make it globally executable.

$ chmod 0755 /usr/bin/runmplayer

Stop being root.

Close all Opera windows.

Change to your Opera config directory:

$ cd /home/user/.opera

Copy your current opera.ini file (not sure if this version of Opera randomly overwrites opera.ini like the last one did).

$ cp opera.ini opera.mpl

Open it

$ vi opera.mpl

Under the "File Types" heading, add the following lines:

(Add any other file types you know about, note that the line ends with a comma followed by a pipe)

Save it, then copy it over opera.ini

$ cp opera.mpl opera.ini

Start up Opera and find a video link to click on and click on it.

After about ten seconds, the movie will start playing!

It's a bit of a hack (maybe something the Mplayer installation script/module could do automatically?) but it works!

You'll probably want to tune the options given to mplayer, especially when each new release comes out.

What I do is run Apache on my file server, and allow web browsers to display directory listings, so I can now browse my archive and just click on a filename instead of typing in a very long mplayer command plus URL with a stylus from the command line.

This will make testing encoding strategies for streaming a lot less annoying, so that's now my next job.