<sect1 id="howto-slaves">
<title
>Afspelen vanuit &kde; I/O-slaves</title>

<sect2 id="howto-slaves-about">
<title
>Wat zijn &kde; I/O-slaves</title>

<para
>&kde; has a great way to access all kinds of data through a system known as <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slaves. They are little programs that let you represent many different sources of data as <acronym
>URL</acronym
> like addresses, and open them in &kde; programs like &konqueror; and &kplayer;. For example you can access a network host over <acronym
>SSH</acronym
> with a <acronym
>URL</acronym
> like <filename
>fish:/host/path/</filename
>, or a zip file with <filename
>zip:/home/cooldude/my.zip</filename
>.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="howto-slaves-using">
<title
>How &kplayer; uses them</title>

<para
>Many of the &kde; <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slaves can return video and audio files and streams, for example <literal
>fish:</literal
>, <literal
>sftp:</literal
>, <literal
>webdav:</literal
>, <literal
>tar:</literal
>, <literal
>zip:</literal
>, <literal
>audiocd:</literal
> and so on. &kplayer; will play them just like any other type of file. By default it will pass the data directly to &mplayer; through a named pipe. If that does not work for any reason, you can tell &kplayer; to use a temporary file for playing from &kde; <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slaves on the <guilabel
>Advanced</guilabel
> page either globally in <link linkend="settings-advanced"
>&kplayer; Settings</link
> or in individual <link linkend="properties-advanced"
>File Properties</link
>. &kplayer; will then download the entire file into a temporary directory before playing it, which will consume some disk space temporarily, but will allow seeking and length detection.</para>

<para
>Note that using the <literal
>audiocd</literal
> slave is not recommended. Instead you should use &kplayer;'s own support for disk devices. It will detect an audio <acronym
>CD</acronym
>, find audio tracks on it and list them on a <link linkend="submenu-device"
>submenu</link
> under the <guimenu
>File</guimenu
> menu for easy playback, and will also try to retrieve the disk and track titles from an online database.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="howto-slaves-http">
<title
>HTTP, FTP and Samba</title>

<para
>The best way to play <acronym
>URL</acronym
>s that <link linkend="howto-installation-mplayer"
>&mplayer;</link
> supports is by passing them on to &mplayer; directly. But if &mplayer; cannot play an <acronym
>HTTP</acronym
>, <acronym
>FTP</acronym
> or Samba <acronym
>URL</acronym
> for any reason, you have the option to tell &kplayer; to use a &kde; <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slave. You can do that on the <guilabel
>Advanced</guilabel
> page either for that individual <acronym
>URL</acronym
> in its <link linkend="properties-advanced"
>File Properties</link
> or globally for all <acronym
>URL</acronym
>s of a particular type in <link linkend="settings-advanced"
>&kplayer; Settings</link
>.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="howto-slaves-cache">
<title
>Cachegrootte</title>

<para
>When playing directly from a &kde; <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slave, the <guilabel
>Cache</guilabel
> setting is important. It should not be too small so &mplayer; can detect the encoding type without discarding data, but on the other hand with large values it will take longer to fill the cache, especially with low bitrate streams like <link linkend="howto-streams"
>online radio stations</link
>.</para>

<para
>&kplayer; lets &mplayer; choose an optimal cache by default, but if you experience problems, you can try a cache size setting of one megabyte. The cache size can be set on the <guilabel
>Advanced</guilabel
> page either globally in <link linkend="settings-advanced"
>&kplayer; Settings</link
> or in individual <link linkend="properties-advanced"
>File Properties</link
>. Keep in mind that the global setting will also affect files played directly by &mplayer;, and changing it can cause unwanted side effects.</para>

</sect2>

<sect2 id="howto-slaves-playlists">
<title
>Playlist files</title>

<para
>When using a &kde; <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slave to play a playlist file, only the playlist file itself will be retrieved from the <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slave. All the <acronym
>URL</acronym
>s it contains will be played by &mplayer; directly. You have to give &kplayer; the <acronym
>URL</acronym
> contained in the playlist if you want it to be played through an <acronym
>I/O</acronym
> Slave.</para>

</sect2>

</sect1>
