A quick installation guide can be found in the README file. Please read it first and then come back here for the rest of the gory details. In this section I'll try to guide you through the compiling and configuring process of MPlayer. It's not easy, but it won't necessarily be hard. If you experience a different behavior than what I explain, please search through this documentation and you'll find your answers. If you see links, please follow them and read carefully what they contain. It will take some time, but it IS worth it. You need a fairly recent system. On Linux, 2.4.x kernels are recommended. binutils - suggested version is 2.11.x. This program is responsible for generating MMX/ 3DNow!/etc instructions, thus very important. gcc - suggested versions are: 2.95.3 (maybe 2.95.4) and 3.2+. Never use 2.96 or 3.0.x! They generate faulty code for MPlayer. If you decide to change gcc from 2.96, then don't decide in favor of 3.x just because it's newer! Early releases of 3.x were even more buggy than 2.96. So downgrade to 2.95.x (downgrade libstdc++ too, other programs may need it) or don't up/downgrade at all (but in this case, be prepared for runtime problems). If you vote for 3.x, try to use the latest version, early releases had various bugs, so be sure you use at least 3.1, it's tested and working. XFree86 - suggested version is always the newest (4.3). Normally, everyone wants this, as starting with XFree86 4.0.2, it contains the XVideo extension (somewhere referred to as Xv) which is needed to enable the hardware YUV acceleration (fast image display) on cards that support it. Make sure its development package is installed, too, otherwise it won't work. For some video cards you don't need XFree86. See list below. make - suggested version is always the newest (at least 3.79.x). This usually isn't important. SDL - it's not mandatory, but can help in some cases (bad audio, video cards that lag strangely with the xv driver). Always use the newest (beginning from 1.2.x). libjpeg - optional JPEG decoder, used by the -mf option and some QT MOV files. Useful for both MPlayer and MEncoder if you plan to work with jpeg files. libpng - recommended and default (M)PNG decoder. Required for GUI. Useful for both MPlayer and MEncoder. lame - recommended, needed for encoding MP3 audio with MEncoder, suggested version is always the newest (at least 3.90). zlib - recommended, necessary for compressed MOV header and PNG support. libogg - optional, needed for playing OGG file format. libvorbis - optional, needed for playing OGG Vorbis audio. LIVE555 Streaming Media - optional, needed for playing RTSP/RTP streams. directfb - optional, from . At least 0.9.13 is required. cdparanoia - optional, for CDDA support libfreetype - optional, for TTF fonts support. At least 2.0.9 is required. libxmms - optional, for XMMS input plugin support. At least 1.2.7 is required. libsmb - optional, for Samba support. ALSA - optional, for ALSA audio output support. At least 0.9.0rc4 is required. bio2jack - optional, for JACK audio output support, needed only in compile time. You can obtain it from http://bio2jack.sf.net. Since it doesn't have install option you have to manually put the file libbio2jack.a somewhere in your library path (e.g. /usr/local/lib) or use the --with-bio2jack=DIR switch to tell ./configure where that file is. There are generally two kind of video cards. One kind (the newer cards) has hardware scaling and YUV acceleration support, the other cards don't. They can display and scale (zoom) the picture to any size that fits in their memory, with small CPU usage (even when zooming), thus fullscreen is nice and very fast. Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards: although a Vidix driver is provided, it is recommended to use the mga_vid module instead, for it works much better. Please see the mga_vid section about its installation and usage. It is important to do these steps before compiling MPlayer, otherwise no mga_vid support will be built. Also check out the Matrox TV-out section. If you don't use Linux, your only possibility is the VIDIX driver: read the VIDIX section. 3Dfx Voodoo3/Banshee cards: please see tdfxfb section in order to gain big speedup. It is important to do these steps before compiling MPlayer, otherwise no 3Dfx support will be built. If you use X, use at least 4.2.0, as 3dfx Xv driver was broken in 4.1.0, and earlier releases. ATI cards: VIDIX driver is provided for the following cards: Radeon, Rage128, Mach64 (Rage XL/Mobility, Xpert98). Also see the ATI cards section of the TV-out documentation, to know if you card's TV-out is supported under Linux/MPlayer. S3 cards: the Savage and Virge/DX chips have hardware acceleration. Use as new XFree86 version as possible, older drivers are buggy. Savage chips have problems with YV12 display, see S3 Xv section for details. Older, Trio cards have no, or slow hardware support. nVidia cards: may or may not be good choice for video playing. If you do not have a GeForce2 (or newer) card, it's not likely to work without bugs. the built-in nVidia driver in XFree86 does not support hardware YUV acceleration on all nVidia cards. You have to download nVidia's closed-source drivers from nVidia.com. See the nVidia Xv driver section for details. Please also check the nVidia TV-out section if you wish to use a TV. 3DLabs GLINT R3 and Permedia3: a VIDIX driver is provided (pm3_vid). Please see the VIDIX section for details. Other cards: none of the above? Try if the XFree86 driver (and your card) supports hardware acceleration. See the Xv section for details. If it doesn't, then your card's video features aren't supported under your operating system :( If hardware scaling works under Windows, it doesn't mean it will work under Linux or other operating system, it depends on the drivers. Most manufacturers neither make Linux drivers nor release specifications of their chips - so you are unlucky if using their cards. See . Fullscreen playing can be achieved by either enabling software scaling (use the -zoom or -vf option, but I warn you: this is slow), or switching to a smaller video mode, for example 352x288. If you don't have YUV acceleration, this latter method is recommended. Video mode switching can be enabled by using the -vm option and it works with the following drivers: using XFree86: see details in DGA driver and X11 driver sections. DGA is recommended! Also try DGA via SDL, sometimes it's better. not using XFree86: try the drivers in the following order: vesa, fbdev, svgalib, aalib. GD 7548: present on-board and tested in Compaq Armada 41xx notebook series. XFree86 3: works in 8/16bpp modes. However, the driver is dramatically slow and buggy in 800x600@16bpp. Recommended: 640x480@16bpp XFree86 4: the Xserver freezes soon after start unless acceleration is disabled, but then the whole thing gets slower than XFree86 3. No XVideo. FBdev: framebuffer can be turned on with the clgenfb driver in the kernel, though for me it worked only in 8bpp, thus unusable. The clgenfb source had to be extended with the 7548 ID before compilation. VESA: the card is only VBE 1.2 capable, so VESA output can't be used. Can't be workarounded with UniVBE. SVGAlib: detects an older Cirrus chip. Usable but slow with -bpp 8. Soundblaster Live!: with this card you can use 4 or 6 (5.1) channels AC3 decoding instead of 2. Read the Software AC3 decoding section. For hardware AC3 passthrough you must use ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation! C-Media with S/PDIF out: hardware AC3 passthrough is possible with these cards, see Hardware AC3 decoding section. Features of other cards aren't supported by MPlayer. It's very recommended to read the sound card section! Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the GUI section before compiling. If you want to install MEncoder (our great all-purpose encoder), see the MEncoder section. If you have a V4L compatible TV tuner card, and wish to watch/grab and encode movies with MPlayer, read the TV input section. If you have a V4L compatible radio tuner card, and wish to listen and capture sound with MPlayer, read the radio section. There is a neat OSD Menu support ready to be used. Check the OSD menu section. Then build MPlayer: ./configure make make install At this point, MPlayer is ready to use. The directory $PREFIX/share/mplayer contains the codecs.conf file, which is used to tell the program all the codecs and their capabilities. This file is needed only when you want to change its properties, as the main binary contains an internal copy of it. Check if you have codecs.conf in your home directory (~/.mplayer/codecs.conf) left from old MPlayer versions, and remove it. Note that if you have a codecs.conf in ~/.mplayer/, the builtin and system codecs.conf will be ignored completely. Do not do this unless you want to fiddle with MPlayer internals as this can can cause many problems. If you want to change the codecs search order, use the -vc, -ac, -vfm, or -afm options either on the command line or in your config file (see the manual page). Debian users can build a .deb package for themselves, it's very simple. Just exec fakeroot debian/rules binary in MPlayer's root directory. See Debian packaging for detailed instructions. Always browse the output of ./configure, and the configure.log file, they contain information about what will be built, and what will not. You may also want to view config.h and config.mak files. If you have some libraries installed, but not detected by ./configure, then check if you also have the proper header files (usually the -dev packages) and their version matches. The configure.log file usually tells you what is missing. Though not mandatory, the fonts should be installed in order to gain OSD, and subtitle functionality. The recommended method is installing a TTF font file and telling MPlayer to use it. See the Subtitles and OSD section for details. The GUI needs GTK 1.2.x or GTK 2.0 (it isn't fully GTK, but the panels are). The skins are stored in PNG format, so GTK, libpng (and their devel stuff, usually called gtk-dev and libpng-dev) has to be installed. You can build it by specifying --enable-gui during ./configure. Then, to turn on GUI mode, you have to execute the gmplayer binary. Currently you can't use the -gui option on the command line, due to technical reasons. As MPlayer doesn't have a skin included, you have to download them if you want to use the GUI. See the download page. They should be extracted to the usual system-wide directory ($PREFIX/share/mplayer/skins), or to $HOME/.mplayer/skins. MPlayer by default looks in these directories for a directory named default, but you can use the -skin newskin option, or the skin=newskin config file directive to use the skin in */skins/newskin directory. MPlayer can display subtitles along with movie files. Currently the following formats are supported: VOBsub OGM CC (closed caption) MicroDVD SubRip SubViewer Sami VPlayer RT SSA PJS (Phoenix Japanimation Society) MPsub AQTitle JACOsub MPlayer can dump the previously listed subtitle formats (except the three first) into the following destination formats, with the given options: MPsub: -dumpmpsub SubRip: -dumpsrtsub MicroDVD: -dumpmicrodvdsub JACOsub: -dumpjacosub Sami: -dumpsami MEncoder can dump DVD subtitles into VOBsub format. The command line options differ slightly for the different formats: VOBsub subtitles consist of a big (some megabytes) .SUB file, and optional .IDX and/or .IFO files. If you have files like sample.sub, sample.ifo (optional), sample.idx - you have to pass MPlayer the -vobsub sample [-vobsubid id] options (full path optional). The -vobsubid option is like -sid for DVDs, you can choose between subtitle tracks (languages) with it. In case that -vobsubid is omitted, MPLayer will try to use the languages given by the -slang option and fall back to the langidx in the .IDX file to set the subtitle language. If it fails, there will be no subtitles. The other formats consist of a single text file containing timing, placement and text information. Usage: If you have a file like sample.txt, you have to pass the option -sub sample.txt (full path optional). -subdelay sec Delays subtitles by sec seconds. Can be negative. The value is added to movie's time position counter. -subfps RATE Specify frame/sec rate of subtitle file (float number). -subpos 0-100 Specify the position of subtitles. If you experience a growing delay between the movie and the subtitles when using a MicroDVD subtitle file, most likely the framerate of the movie and the subtitle file are different. Please note that the MicroDVD subtitle format uses absolute frame numbers for its timing, but there is no fps information in it, and therefore the -subfps option should be used with this format. If you like to solve this problem permanently, you have to manually convert the subtitle file framerate. MPlayer can do this conversion for you: mplayer -dumpmicrodvdsub -fps subtitles_fps -subfps avi_fps -sub subtitle_filename dummy.avi About DVD subtitles, read the DVD section. You need an MPlayer font package to be able to use OSD/SUB feature. There are many ways to get it: using a TrueType (TTF) font, by the means of the freetype library. Version 2.0.9 or greater is mandatory! Then you have two methods: use the -font /path/to/sample_font.ttf option to specify a TrueType font file on every occasion create a symlink: ln -s /path/to/sample_font.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf If MPlayer was compiled with fontconfig support, the above methods won't work, instead the -font expects a fontconfig font name and defaults to the sans-serif font. To get a list of fonts known to fontconfig, use fc-list. Example: -font 'Bitstream Vera Sans' Download ready-to-use font packages from MPlayer site. Note: currently available fonts are limited for ISO 8859-1/2 support, but there are some other (including Korean, Russian, ISO 8859-8 etc) fonts at contrib/font section of FTP, made by users. Font should have appropriate font.desc file which maps unicode font positions to the actual code page of the subtitles text. Other solution is to have subtitles encoded in UTF-8 encoding and use -utf8 option or just name the subtitles file <video_name>.utf and have it in the same dir as the video file. Recoding from different codepages to UTF-8 could be done by using konwert or iconv programs. URLComment ISO fonts various fonts by users If you chose non-TTF fonts, UNZIP the file you downloaded to ~/.mplayer or $PREFIX/share/mplayer. Then rename or symlink one of the extracted directories to font, for example: ln -s ~/.mplayer/arial-24 ~/.mplayer/font Now you have to see a timer at the upper left corner of the movie (switch it off with the o key). (subtitles are always enabled, for disabling them please read the man page) OSD has 4 states (switch with o): volume bar + seek bar (default) volume bar + seek bar + timer + file position percentage on seeking volume bar + seek bar + timer + total duration of the media subtitles only You can change default behaviour by setting osdlevel variable in config file, or the -osdlevel command line option. MPlayer has a completely user definiable OSD Menu interface. the Preferences menu is currently UNIMPLEMENTED! compile MPlayer by passing the --enable-menu to ./configure make sure you have an OSD font installed copy etc/menu.conf to your .mplayer directory copy etc/input.conf to your .mplayer directory, or to the system-wide MPlayer config dir (default: /usr/local/etc/mplayer) check and edit input.conf to enable menu movement keys (it is described there). start MPlayer by the following example: $ mplayer -menu file.avi push any menu key you defined There are three timing methods in MPlayer. To use the old method, you don't have to do anything. It uses usleep() to tune A/V sync, with +/- 10ms accuracy. However sometimes the sync has to be tuned even finer. The new timer code uses the RTC (RealTime Clock) for this task, because it has precise 1ms timers. The -rtc option enables it, but a properly set up kernel is required. If you are running kernel 2.4.19pre8 or later you can adjust the maximum RTC frequency for normal users through the /proc filesystem. Use this command to enable RTC for normal users: echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq You can see the new timer's efficiency in the status line. The power management functions of some notebook BIOSes with speedstep CPUs interact badly with RTC. Audio and video may get out of sync. Plugging the external power connector in before you power up your notebook seems to help. In some hardware combinations (confirmed during usage of non-DMA DVD drive on an ALi1541 board) usage of the RTC timer causes skippy playback. It's recommended to use the third method in these cases. The third timer code is turned on with the -softsleep option. It has the efficiency of the RTC, but it doesn't use RTC. On the other hand, it requires more CPU.