Launcher script for XBMC external mplayer-vaapi. First argument is the XBMC pid, the second is the filename to play. The script will send a SIGSTOP to the XBMC process, wait for mplayer to exit and send SIGCONT to resume XBMC.

launch_mplayer.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import os
import signal
import shlex

MPLAYER_PATH='/opt/mplayer-vaapi/bin/mplayer'
MPLAYER_OPTS='-vo vaapi:glfinish -ao alsa:noblock:device=hw=0.3 -fs -slang en -subfont-text-scale 2 -subpos 100'

if __name__ == '__main__':
   
    xbmc_pid = int(sys.argv[1])
    url = sys.argv[2]

    pid = os.fork()

    if pid == 0:
        args = [MPLAYER_PATH]+shlex.split(MPLAYER_OPTS)+[url]
        os.execv(MPLAYER_PATH, args); 
        sys.exit(-1)
    else:
        os.kill(xbmc_pid, signal.SIGSTOP)
        os.waitpid(pid, 0)
        os.kill(xbmc_pid, signal.SIGCONT)

    sys.exit(0)