MPlayer - Movie Player for LINUX (C) 2000-2001 Arpad Gereoffy (A'rpi/ESP-team)
http://www.mplayerhq.hu
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Overview
1.2 History
1.3 Installation
1.4 What about the GUI?
2. Features
2.1 Video Formats, Audio & Video Codecs
2.1.1 Supported input formats
2.1.2 Supported audio & video codecs
2.1.2.1 DivX4
2.1.2.2 ffmpeg's DivX/libavcodec
2.1.2.3 Hardware AC3 decoding
2.1.4 Codec importing howto
2.1.4.1 VFW codecs
2.1.4.2 DirectShow codecs
2.2 Video & Audio output devices
2.2.1 Video output devices
2.2.1.1 MTRR
2.2.1.2 Xv
2.2.1.2.1 3dfx cards
2.2.1.2.2 S3 cards
2.2.1.2.3 nVidia cards
2.2.1.2.4 ATI cards
2.2.3.2 DGA
2.2.1.3.1 Summary
2.2.1.3.2 What is DGA
2.2.1.3.3 Installing DGA support for MPlayer
2.2.1.3.4 Resolution switching
2.2.1.3.5 DGA & MPlayer
2.2.1.3.6 Features of the DGA driver
2.2.1.3.7 Speed issues
2.2.1.3.8 Known bugs
2.2.1.3.9 Future work
2.2.1.3.A Some modelines
2.2.1.3.B Bug Reports
2.2.1.4 SDL
2.2.1.5 SVGAlib
2.2.1.6 Framebuffer output (FBdev)
2.2.1.7 Matrox framebuffer (mga_vid)
2.2.1.8 SiS 6326 framebuffer (sis_vid)
2.2.1.9 3dfx YUV support
2.2.1.10 OpenGL output
2.2.1.11 AAlib - text mode displaying
2.2.1.A TVout
2.2.1.A.1 Matrox cards
2.2.2 Audio output devices
2.2.2.1 Soundcard experiences, recommendations
3. Usage
3.1 Control from keyboard
3.2 Control from LIRC (Linux Infrared Remote Control)
3.3 Streaming from network or pipes
4. CD/DVD section
4.1 CD drives
4.2 DVD playback
4.3 DVD playback FAQ
5. FAQ section
5.1 Compilation
5.2 General questions
5.3 File playing problems
5.4 Video/audio driver problems
5.5 Feature requests
6. Misc OS'es
6.1 Debian packaging
6.2 FreeBSD
6.3 Solaris 8
6.4 StrongARM
A. Authors
B. Mailing lists
C. How to report bugs
1. Introduction
1.1. Overview
MPlayer is a movie player for LINUX. It plays most MPEG, AVI and ASF files,
supported by many native and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VCD, DVD and
even DivX movies too. The another big feature of mplayer is the wide range of
supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev,
AAlib, but you can use SDL (and this way all drivers of SDL) and some
lowlevel card-specific drivers (for Matrox) too! Most of them supports
software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. And what
about the nice big antialiased shaded subtitles (7 supported types!!!) with
hungarian, english, cyrillic, czech, korean fonts, and OSD?
I didn't write any codecs, just some players. I spent
a lot of time finding the best way to parse bad damaged input files
(both MPEG and AVI) and to do perfect A-V sync with seeking ability.
My player is rock solid playing damaged MPEG files (useful for some VCDs),
and it plays bad AVI files which are unplayable with the famous
windows media player. Even AVI files without index chunk are playable, and
you can rebuild their indexes with the -idx option, thus enabling seeking!
As you see, stability and quality are the most important things for me,
but the speed is also amazing.
1.2. History
This began a year ago...
I've tried lots of players under linux (mtv,xmps,dvdview,livid/oms,VideoLAN,
xine,xanim,avifile,xmmp) but they all have some problem. Mostly with special
files or with audio/video sync. Most of them is unable to play both MPEG1,
MPEG2 and AVI (DivX) files. Many players have image quality or speed problems
too. So I've decided to write/modify one...
- mpg12play v0.1-v0.3:
The first try, hacked together in a half hour!
I've used libmpeg3 from www.heroinewarrior.com up to the version 0.3,
but there were image quality and speed problems with it.
- mpg12play v0.5-v0.87:
Mpeg codec replaced with DVDview by Dirk Farin, it was a great stuff,
but it was slow and was written in C++ (I hate C++!!!)
- mpg12play v0.9-v0.95pre5:
Mpeg codec was libmpeg2 (mpeg2dec) by Aaron Holtzman & Michel Lespinasse.
It's great, optimized very fast C code with perfect image quality and
100% MPEG standard conformance.
- MPlayer v0.3-v0.9:
It was a pack of two programs: mpg12playv0.95pre6 and my new simple AVI
player 'avip' based on avifile's Win32 DLL loader.
- MPlayer v0.10:
The MPEG and AVI player in a single binary!
- MPlayer v0.11:
Some new developers joined and from 0.11 the mplayer project is a team-work!
Added .ASF file support, and OpenDivX (see www.projectmayo.com) en/decoding.
- MPlayer v0.17 "The IdegCounter"
The release version of the 0.11pre after 4 months of heavy development!
Try it, and be amazed! Thousands of new features added... and of course
old code was improved too, bugs removed etc.
- MPlayer 0.18 "The BugCounter"
2 months since 0.17 and here's a new release.. Completed ASF support,
more subtitle formats, introduced libao (similar to libvo but to audio),
even more stable than ever, and so on. It's a MUST !
1.3. Installation
If you plan to use MPlayer on x86 architecture, you possibly want to use
Win32 codecs. Download and unzip w32codecs.zip to /usr/lib/win32 .
Note: the avifile project has similar codecs package, but it differs
from our, so if you want to use all supported codecs, then use
our package! However, you can use our codecs package with avifile.
If you own a Matrox G200/G400/G450 card, then please see the 2.2.1.7
section in order to gain big speedup. It is important to do these steps
_before_ compiling MPlayer, otherwise no Matrox-specific support will be
built.
If you plan to use the ProjectMayo's DivX4 codec, check the
2.1.2.1 section before compiling.
Then build MPlayer:
./configure
make
make install
It is recommended to browse the output of ./configure , it contains info
about what will be built, and what won't. You may also want to view
config.h and config.mak files.
Though not mandatory, the fonts should be installed in order to gain
OSD, and subtitle functionality. Download mp_font3.zip and optional
(if exists) language updates.
mkdir ~/.mplayer/font
cd ~/.mplayer/font
unzip mp_font3.zip
unzip mp_font3_hu.zip
1.4. What about the GUI ?
I'm not a GUI programmer. I hate GUIs, I like the pure black 80x25 console.
So the player has only keyboard control from the controlling console/xterm now.
There is a GUI development for the player, coordinated by Pontscho/Fresh!
It's still under development, but it will be merged and released real soon.
BTW he needs some nice skins, if you are a good graphician, contact him!!!
2. Features
2.1. Video Formats, Audio & Video Codecs
2.2. Video & Audio output devices
3. Usage
file: mplayer [options] [path/]filename
VCD: mplayer [options] -vcd trackno /dev/cdrom
DVD: mplayer [options] -dvdauth /dev/dvd filename.VOB
net: mplayer [options] http://site.com/file.[mpg|avi]
mplayer -vo x11 /mnt/Films/Contact/contact2.mpg
mplayer -vcd 2 /dev/cdrom
mplayer -afm 3 /mnt/DVDtrailers/alien4.vob
mplayer -dvd /dev/dvd /mnt/dvd/matrix.vob
mplayer -abs 65536 -delay -0.4 -nobps ~/movies/test.avi
3.1. Control from keyboard
<- or -> seek backward/forward 10 seconds
up or down seek backward/forward 1 minute
pgup/pgdown seek backward/forward 10 minutes
p or SPACE pause movie (press any key)
q or ESC stop playing and quit program
+ or - adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 second
/ or * decrease/increase volume
o toggle OSD: none / seek / seek+timer
m toggle using master/pcm volume
z or x adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 second
(the following keys are valid only when using DirectShow DivX codec)
1 or 2 adjust contrast
3 or 4 adjust brightness
5 or 6 adjust ?
7 or 8 adjust saturation
3.2. Control from LIRC
Linux Infrared Remote Control - use an easy to build home-brewn IR-receiver,
an (almost) arbitrary remote control and control your linux box with it!
More about it at www.lirc.org.
If you have installed the lirc-package, you can compile MPlayer with LIRC
support using ./configure --enable-lirc
If everything went fine, MPlayer will print a message like
LIRC init was successful.
on startup. If an error occurs it will tell you. If it doens't tell you
anything about LIRC there's no support compiled in. That's it :-)
The application name for MPlayer is - oh wonder - mplayer_lirc.
It understands the following commands:
PAUSE - pause playing. Any other keystroke will continue replay.
QUIT - exit mplayer
RWND - 10 secs back
FRWND - 60 secs back
FWD - skip 10 secs
FFWD - skip 60 secs
INCVOL - increase volume one percent
DECVOL - decrease volmue one percent
MASTER - use master mixer channel
PCM - use pcm mixer channel
Don't forget to enable the repeat flag for RWND/FWD in .lircrc. Here's an
excerpt from my .lircrc:
begin
remote = CU-SX070
prog = mplayer_lirc
button = Tape_Play
repeat = 1
config = FFWD
end
begin
remote = CU-SX070
prog = mplayer_lirc
button = Tape_Stop
config = QUIT
end
If you don't like the standard location for the lirc-config file (~/.lircrc)
use the -lircconf [filename] switch to specify another file.
3.3. Streaming from network or pipes
MPlayer can play media from network, by using the HTTP protocol, and even
beta ASF streaming (FROM network) is available.
Configuring it is simple, just recompile MPlayer with
./configure --enable-streaming
MPlayer can read from stdin (NOT named pipes). This can be for example
used to play from FTP :
wget ftp://micorsops.com/something.avi -O - | mplayer -
4. FAQ section
5. CD/DVD section
6. Misc OS'es
6.1. Debian packaging
To build the package, get the cvs version, or .tgz and uncompress it,
and cd into programs directory:
cd main
fakeroot debian/rules binary
(... mplayer detects hardware/software, builds itself and.. )
dpkg-deb: building package `mplayer' in `../mplayer_0.18-1_i386.deb'.
And now just become root, and :
dpkg -i ../mplayer_0.18-1_i386.deb as root.
Here's how it looks like:
eyck@incubus:/src/main$ sudo dpkg -i ../mplayer_0.18-1_i386.deb
Password:
(Reading database ... 26946 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace mplayer 0.17a-1 (using ../mplayer_0.18-1_i386.deb)
Unpacking replacement mplayer ...
Setting up mplayer (0.18-1) ...
6.2. FreeBSD
To build the package you will need GNU make (gmake, /usr/ports/devel/gmake),
native BSD make will not work.
To run MPlayer you will need to re-compile the kernel with
"options USER_LDT" (unless you are running -CURRENT, where this is default).
If you have a CPU with SSE also use "options CPU_ENABLE_SSE" to use it
(FreeBSD-STABLE required, or use kernel patches).
If MPlayer complains about "CD-ROM Device '/dev/cdrom' not found!" make a
symbolic link : ln -s /dev/(your_cdrom_device) /dev/cdrom
There's no DVD support for FreeBSD yet.
Feel free to add it :-)
6.3. Solaris 8
AVI file playback works best on Solaris x86, because you have the
option to use the win32 codecs on the x86 platform. On Solaris SPARC,
you'll find quite a few AVI files with non working video and/or
audio playback, because the video/audio codecs using the win32 DLLs
are not available. However, DivX/OpenDivX movies should work,
when using libavcodec.
To build the package you will need GNU make (gmake, /opt/sfw/gmake), native
Solaris make will not work. Typical error you get when building with solaris'
make instead of GNU make:
% /usr/ccs/bin/make
make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 25: Unexpected end of line seen
On Solaris SPARC, you need the GNU C/C++ Compiler; it does not matter
if GNU C/C++ compiler is configured with or without the GNU assembler.
On Solaris x86, you need the GNU assembler and the GNU C/C++
compiler, configured to use the GNU assembler! The mplayer code on
the x86 platform makes heavy use of MMX, SSE and 3DNOW!
instructions that cannot be compiled using Sun's assembler
/usr/ccs/bin/as.
The configure script tries to find out, which assembler program is
used by your "gcc" command (in case the autodetection fails, use
the "--as=/whereever/you/have/installed/gnu-as" option to tell the
configure script where it can find GNU "as" on your system).
Error message from configure on a Solaris x86 system using GCC
without GNU assembler:
% configure
...
Checking assembler (/usr/ccs/bin/as) ... , failed
Please upgrade(downgrade) binutils to 2.10.1...
(Solution: Install and use a gcc configured with "--with-as=gas")
Typical error you get when building with a GNU C compiler that does
not use GNU as:
% gmake
...
gcc -c -Iloader -Ilibvo -O4 -march=i686 -mcpu=i686 -pipe -ffast-math
-fomit-frame-pointer -I/usr/local/include -o mplayer.o mplayer.c
Assembler: mplayer.c
"(stdin)", line 3567 : Illegal mnemonic
"(stdin)", line 3567 : Syntax error
... more "Illegal mnemonic" and "Syntax error" errors ...
For DVD support you must have the patched libcss installed. Patch:
http://www.tools.de/solaris/mplayer/
Due to two bugs in solaris 8 x86, you cannot reliably play DVDs using a
capacity >4GB:
- The sd(7D) driver on solaris 8 x86 driver has bug when accessing a
disk block >4GB on a device using a logical blocksize != DEV_BSIZE
(i.e. CDROM and DVD media). Due to a 32bit int overflow, a disk
address modulo 4GB is accessed.
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22516)
- The similar bug is present in the hsfs(7FS) filesystem code (aka
ISO9660), hsfs currently does not support partitions/disks >4GB,
all data is accessed modulo 4GB
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22592)
6.4. StrongARM
MPlayer is reported to compile on StrongARM. Use the following command line:
./configure --target=arm-linux --disable-css --with-x11libdir=/usr/arm/lib
--with-x11incdir=/usr/arm/lib --disable-gcc-checking
Appendix A - Authors
NOTE: Do *NOT* send bugreports, help & feature requests directly to the authors!
===== Read Appendix C and subscribe to mplayer-users mailing lists.
========================== The MPlayer project: ===============================
Árpád Gereöffy (A'rpi/ESP-team): [arpi@thot.banki.hu]
- player code (mpeg stream demultiplexer and avi/asf parser, A-V sync, seek...)
- mp3lib, based on mpglib sources [MP3 audio decoder]
- getch2 [keyboard handler]
- some changes in libmpeg2 code (progressive frames, bitrate & fps support)
- libvo improvements: adding OpenGL support, bugfix in mga driver...
- triple buffering & YUY2 support (for DivX/MPEG4) into mga_vid driver
- scripts in the TVout directory (TVout on Matrox G400DH, read documentation)
- hacking DivX/Mpeg4 VfW codecs to get YUV output
- opendivx decoder speed optimizations (see opendivx/ChangeLog)
- OSD & SUB display code
- ffmpeg/libavcodec integration
- DivX4Linux (ProjectMayo) support (see documentation)
Zoltán Ponekker (Pontscho/Fresh!): [pontscho@makacs.poliod.hu]
- configure script and Makefiles for easy compile
- GUI system (near complete!?)
- 3DNow! support into mp3lib
- 3DNow! support into fastmemcpy.h
- various X11 driver changes (keyboard handling, fullscreen, bpp detect, etc)
- libvo: adding xmga driver, and fullscreen support to xv
- audio mixer (volume) support
Gábor Lénárt (LGB): [lgb@lgb.hu]
- ./configure script improvements
- Makefile improvements
- prelimenary DVD support
- another GUI code (is that so..?)
- various X11 cleanups and fixes
Gábor Bérczi (Gabucino): [gabucino@k2.jozsef.kando.hu]
- documentation maintainer
- hungarian translation of documentation
- second webpage design&gfx
- webpage maintainer
- testing, codecs quality & speed comparsions
- IRC channel #MPlayer operator
(devel channel, users earn kickban)
- experimental MINIX port
Szabolcs Berecz (Szabi): [szabi@inf.elte.hu]
- codecs.conf file parser
- config file and command line parser
- mga_vid fixes, module option etc.
- fbdev support in libvo
- type #7 subtitle support
László Megyer (Lez, Laaz): [lez@sch.bme.hu]
- SUB reader
- screensaver+DPMS disable for libvo
Gyula László (Chass, Tégla): [chass-@freemail.hu]
- first fonts (mp_font1.zip)
- third (current) homepage design&gfx
Zoltán Márk Vicián (Se7en): [se7en@sch.bme.hu]
- SVGAlib support in libvo
Alex Beregszaszi (Al3x): [alex@naxine.org]
- ALSA output driver in libao2
- vo_ggi output driver in libvo (www.ggi-project.org)
Andreas Ackermann (Acki): [asackerm@stud.informatik.uni-erlangen.de]
- LIRC support (see documentation)
- DGA support in libvo
Felix Bünemann (Atmos): [atmosfear@users.sourceforge.net]
- SDL driver maintainer
- Additional YUV formats fixes
- New font (mp_font2.zip)
- PNG file output support in libvo
- flipping support (for Indeo 3/4, etc)
- SDL audio driver in libao2
- RAW PCM/WAVE file writer for libao2
TeLeNiEkO: [telenieko@telenieko.com]
- spanish translation of documentation
Michael Graffam: [mgraffam@idsi.net]
- XF86VidMode support to vo_x11 and vo_dga
- Video mode switching code to vo_dga
Jens Hoffmann: [hoffmajs@gmx.de]
- Additional YUV formats support
- found the big BITMAPINFOHEADER problem -> solved ASV2 pixelization
Nick Kurshev: [nickols_k@mail.ru]
- memcpy optimizations for AMD K7 and Intel Pentium III (fastmemcpy.h)
- CDROM tune info
- further 3DNow! optimizations into mp3lib and libac3 and ffmpeg
- russian translation of documentation
German Gomez Garcia: [german@piraos.com]
- DVD .ifo parser and chapter selection [not yet in the main trunk]
- SPDIF AC3 output for SBLive!
Dariush Pietrzak (Eyck): [eyck@incubus.ar.lublin.pl]
- debian packaging support (see debian/* and this documentation)
- support for vplayer subtitle format
- prelimenary support for .RT subtitle format
Marcus Comstedt: [marcus@idonex.se]
- initial solaris8-x86 support
Jürgen Keil and Marcus Comstedt: [jk@tools.de] [marcus@idonex.se]
- patched MPlayer to work on Solaris 8 x86
- configure fixes
- various fixes (win32, configure, etc)
- SUN audio driver in libao2
Vladimir Kushnir: [vkushnir@Alfacom.net]
- patched MPlayer to work on FreeBSD x86
Bertrand BAUDET: [bertrand_baudet@yahoo.com]
- network streaming support
Artur Zaprzala: [zybi@fanthom.irc.pl]
- Complete font generator prog + OSD font (TOOLS/subfont-c)
lanzz@lanzz.org:
- GIMP font generator plugin (TOOLS/subfont-gimp)
Adam Tla/lka: [atlka@pg.gda.pl]
- osd/sub review, fixes, optimization, utf8 support
- various fixes
Folke Ashberg: [folke@ashberg.de]
- native AAlib driver (-vo aa)
Main testers:
Tibor Balázs (Tibcu)
Péter Sasi (SaPe)
Christoph H. Lampert
Attila Kinali
Dirk Vornheder
========================== The codecs, libs: =================================
Aaron Holtzman: [aholtzma@engr.uvic.ca]
- ac3dec (and libac3) author [AC3 audio decoder]
- mga_vid driver [Matrox G200/G400 YUV Back-end Scaler]
- mpeg2dec [Fast MPEG1/MPEG2 video decoder, currently used in player]
Michel Lespinasse: [walken@zoy.org]
- did large libmpeg2 changes for better speed and mpeg conformance
Eugene Kuznetsov: [divx@euro.ru]
- avifile author [AVI player library for linux, using Win32 VfW/ACM codecs]
- technical help about AVI and ASF formats, and how to get YUV using VfW...
- divx4linux techical support
Zdenek Kabelac: [kabi@informatics.muni.cz]
- current avifile maintainer(?)
- some technical help about the win32 stuff and timers
Gerard Lantau: [glantau@yahoo.fr]
- ffmpeg/libavcodec author,maintainer (opensource mpeg, mjpeg, divx en/decoder)
Project Mayo: [http://www.projectmayo.com]
- the OpenDivX codec authors
Michael Hipp:
- mpglib author [isn't used directly but some parts in mp3lib]
Mark Podlipec:
- xa_gsm.c author [MS-GSM audio codec]
[from a GSM library by Jutta Degener and Carsten Bormann]
Their code is not used in current player version, but I've got some ideas or
other technical help from:
John F. McGowan http://www.jmcgowan.com/
- AVI FAQ author/collector. [site with many useful docs on codecs and avi fmt]
Dirk Farin: [farin@ti.uni-mannheim.de]
- dvdview author [MPEG1/MPEG2 video decoder, used in v0.5-v0.8]
Adam Williams: [broadcast@earthling.net]
- libmpeg3 (and xmovie) author [MPEG1/MPEG2 video decoder, used in v0.1-v0.4]
Appendix B - Mailing lists
There are some public mailing lists on MPlayer. Subscribing can be
achieved on the following addresses:
- MPlayer core/hungarian developers list:
http://mp.dev.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-devel
I dunno, it is the FLAME list in hungarian language :)
Also some talking about mplayer core team internals, like mplayer
party, sponsors etc can be here.
- MPlayer developers list:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng
This list is about mplayer development! Talking about interface/API changes,
new libraryes, code optimization, ./configure changes, and send patches here.
Do NOT send bugreports, user questions, feature requests here!
This list should be kept low-traffic.
- MPlayer users list:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mplayer-users
- send bugreports here (after reading DOCS/BUGS, Appendix C)
- send feature requests here (after reading DOCS/TODO)
- send user questions here (after reading all this documentation)
- MPlayer & Matrox G200/G400/G450 users:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mplayer-matrox
Send matrox-related questions here,
- things about mga_vid,
- matrox's official beta drivers (for X 4.x.x)
- and about matroxfb-TVout stuff.
- mpg12play-portable developers:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mplayer-mpg12play
This list is for talking about mplayer ports to non-x86 platforms
(IRIX, Solaris-SPARC, Alpha, Commodore64, Sharp Calculator,
Teapot etc...)
- MPlayer announce:
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mplayer-announce
Very low traffic list :)
And it's read-only. I'll post something shit there if a new release
is done.
- MPlayer CVS-log:
http://mp.dev.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cvslog
Send only questions about CVS changes here.
(if you don't understand why a change is required or you've better fix)
Be sure in that your target developer reads this list!
NOTE: language of above lists are ENGLISH, unless explicitly stated
otherwise. Please do not send messages using other language!
Appendix C - How to report bugs