CodecsVideo codecs
The codec status table is a
complete list of all supported codecs, regenerated daily.
Some binary codecs for use with MPlayer are available in the
download section
of our homepage.
The most important ones above all:
MPEG-1 (VCD) and
MPEG-2 (DVD) video
native decoders for all DivX variants,
3ivX, M$ MPEG-4 v1, v2 and other MPEG-4 variants
native decoder for Windows Media Video 7/8
(WMV1/WMV2), and Win32 DLL decoder
for Windows Media Video 9
(WMV3), both used in .wmv
files
native Sorenson 1 (SVQ1) decoder
native Sorenson 3 (SVQ3) decoder
3ivx v1, v2 decoder
Cinepak and Intel Indeo codecs (3.1,3.2,4.1,5.0)
MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware
formats
VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other H.263(+) variants
FLI/FLC
RealVideo 1.0 & 2.0 from
libavcodec, and
RealVideo 3.0 & 4.0 codecs using RealPlayer
libraries
native decoder for HuffYUV
Various old simple RLE-like formats
If you have a Win32 codec not listed here which is not supported yet,
please read the codec importing HOWTO
and help us add support for it.
FFmpeg/libavcodecFFmpeg contains
libavcodec, the leading
open source video and audio codec library. It is capable
of decoding most multimedia formats, usually at higher speeds
than the alternatives, and aims to add support for
the rest of them eventually. It is the default decoder for
the majority of codecs that MPlayer
supports. Encoding is also possible for some formats and
supported in MEncoder.
For a complete list of supported
video
and audio
codecs please visit the FFmpeg homepage.
MPlayer contains
libavcodec.
Just run ./configure and compile.
XvidXvid is a free software MPEG-4 ASP
compliant video codec, which features two pass encoding and full MPEG-4 ASP
support, making it a lot more efficient than the well-known DivX codec.
It yields very good video quality and good performance due to CPU
optimizations for most modern processors.
It began as a forked development of the OpenDivX codec.
This happened when ProjectMayo changed OpenDivX to closed source
DivX4, and the non-ProjectMayo people working on OpenDivX got angry,
then started Xvid. So both projects have the same origin.
Note that Xvid is not necessary to decode Xvid-encoded video.
libavcodec is used by
default as it offers better speed.
Installing Xvid
Like most open source software, it is available in two flavors:
official releases
and the CVS version.
The CVS version is usually stable enough to use, as most of the time it
features fixes for bugs that exist in releases.
Here is what to do to make Xvid
CVS work with MEncoder (you need at least
autoconf 2.50,
automake and libtool):
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid logincvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid co xvidcorecd xvidcore/build/generic./bootstrap.sh./configure
You may have to add some options (examine the output of
./configure --help).
make && make install
If you specified ,
copy ../../src/divx4.h to
/usr/local/include/.
Recompile MPlayer with
.
x264What is x264?x264
is a library for
creating H.264 video streams.
It is not 100% complete, but currently it has at least some kind
of support for most of the H.264 features which impact quality.
There are also many advanced features in the H.264 specification
which have nothing to do with video quality per se; many of these
are not yet implemented in
x264.
Encoder featuresCAVLC/CABACMulti-referencesIntra: all macroblock types (16x16, 8x8, and 4x4 with
all predictions)Inter P: all partitions (from 16x16 down to
4x4)Inter B: partitions from 16x16 down to 8x8
(including SKIP/DIRECT)Ratecontrol: constant quantizer, constant bitrate,
single or multipass ABR, optional VBVScene cut detectionAdaptive B-frame placementB-frames as references / arbitrary frame
order8x8 and 4x4 adaptive spatial transformLossless modeCustom quantization matricesParallel encoding of multiple slicesWhat is H.264?
H.264 is one name for a new digital video codec jointly developed
by the ITU and MPEG.
It can also be correctly referred to by the cumbersome names of
"ISO/IEC 14496-10" or "MPEG-4 Part 10".
More frequently, it is referred to as "MPEG-4 AVC" or just "AVC".
Whatever you call it, H.264 may be worth trying because it can
typically match the quality of MPEG-4 ASP with 5%-30% less
bitrate.
Actual results will depend on both the source material and the
encoder.
The gains from using H.264 do not come for free: Decoding H.264
streams seems to have steep CPU and memory requirements.
For instance, on a 1733 MHz Athlon, a DVD-resolution 1500kbps H.264
video requires around 35% CPU to decode.
By comparison, decoding a DVD-resolution 1500kbps MPEG-4 ASP stream
requires around 10% CPU.
This means that decoding high-definition streams is almost out of
the question for most users.
It also means that even a decent DVD rip may sometimes stutter on
processors slower than 2.0 GHz or so.
At least with x264,
encoding requirements are not much worse than what you are used to
with MPEG-4 ASP.
For instance, on a 1733 MHz Athlon a typical DVD encode would run
at 5-15fps.
This document is not intended to explain the details of H.264,
but if you are interested in a brief overview, you may want to read
The H.264/AVC Advanced Video Coding Standard: Overview and Introduction to the Fidelity Range Extensions.
How can I play H.264 videos with MPlayer?MPlayer uses
libavcodec's H.264
decoder.
libavcodec has had at
least minimally usable H.264 decoding since around July 2004,
however major changes and improvements have been implemented since
that time, both in terms of more functionalities supported and in
terms of improved CPU usage.
Just to be certain, it is always a good idea to use a recent Subversion
checkout.
If you want a quick and easy way to know whether there have been
recent changes to libavcodec's
H.264 decoding, you might keep an eye on
FFmpeg Subversion repository's web interface.
How can I encode videos using MEncoder and x264?
If you have the subversion client installed, the latest x264
sources can be gotten with this command:
svn co svn://svn.videolan.org/x264/trunk x264MPlayer sources are updated whenever
an x264 API change
occurs, so it is always suggested to use
MPlayer from Subversion as well.
Perhaps this situation will change when and if an
x264 "release" occurs.
Meanwhile, x264 should
be considered very unstable, in the sense that its programming
interface is subject to change.
x264 is built and
installed in the standard way:
./configure && make && sudo make install
This installs libx264.a in /usr/local/lib and x264.h is placed in
/usr/local/include.
With the x264 library
and header placed in the standard locations, building
MPlayer with
x264 support is easy.
Just run the standard:
./configure && make && sudo make install
The ./configure script will autodetect that you have satisfied the
requirements for x264.
Audio codecsThe most important audio codecs above all:
MPEG layer 1/2/3 (MP1/2/3) audio (native
code, with MMX/SSE/3DNow! optimization)
Windows Media Audio 7 and 8 (AKA WMAv1 and WMAv2) (native code, with
libavcodec)
Windows Media Audio 9 (WMAv3) (using DMO DLL)
AC3 Dolby audio (native code, with
MMX/SSE/3DNow! optimization)
AC3 passing through sound card hardware
AAC
Ogg Vorbis audio codec (native library)
RealAudio: DNET (low bitrate AC3), Cook, Sipro and ATRAC3
QuickTime: Qualcomm and QDesign audio codecs
VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren)
Voxware audio (using DirectShow DLL)
alaw and ulaw, various gsm, adpcm and pcm formats and other simple old
audio codecs
Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) speech codecs
Software AC3 decoding
This is the default decoder used for files with AC3 audio.
The AC3 decoder can create audio output mixes for 2, 4, or 6 speakers.
When configured for 6 speakers, this decoder provides separate output of
all the AC3 channels to the sound driver, allowing for full "surround
sound" experience without the external AC3 decoder required to use the
hwac3 codec.
Use the option to select the number of output
channels. Use for a stereo downmix. For a 4
channel downmix (Left Front, Right Front, Left Surround and Right Surround
outputs), use . In this case, any center
channel will be mixed equally to the front channels. will output all the AC3 channels as they are encoded - in the
order Left, Right, Left Surround, Right Surround, Center and LFE.
The default number of output channels is 2.
To use more than 2 output channels, you will need to use OSS, and have a
sound card that supports the appropriate number of output channels via the
SNDCTL_DSP_CHANNELS ioctl. An example of a suitable driver is emu10k1
(used by Soundblaster Live! cards) from August 2001 or newer (ALSA CVS is
also supposed to work).
Hardware AC3 decoding
You need an AC3 capable sound card, with digital out (S/PDIF). The card's
driver must properly support the AFMT_AC3 format (C-Media does). Connect
your AC3 decoder to the S/PDIF output, and use the option. It is experimental but known to work with C-Media
cards and Soundblaster Live! + ALSA (but not OSS) drivers and DXR3/Hollywood+
MPEG decoder cards.
libmad supportlibmad
is a multiplatform, integer (internally 24bit PCM) only
MPEG audio decoding library. It does not handle broken files well, and it
sometimes has problems with seeking, but it may perform better on FPU-less
(such as ARM) platform than mp3lib.
If you have a proper installation of libmad,
./configure
will notice and support for MPEG audio decoding via
libmad will be built automatically.
Hardware MPEG audio codec
This codec (selected by ) passes through MPEG audio packets
to hardware decoders, such as the ones found in full-featured DVB cards
and DXR2 adapters.
Don't use it in combination with any other audio output device
(such as OSS and ALSA) that isn't able to decode it (you will hear
only white noise).
AAC codec
AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) is an audio codec sometimes found in MOV and MP4
files. An open source decoder called FAAD is available from
.
MPlayer includes a CVS snapshot of libfaad 2.1
beta, so you do not need to get it separately.
If you use gcc 3.2 which fails to compile our internal FAAD or want to use
the external library for some other reason, download the library from the
download page
and pass to ./configure.
You do not need all of faad2 to decode AAC files, libfaad is enough. Build
it like this:
cd faad2/
sh bootstrap
./configure
cd libfaad
make
make install
Binaries are not available from audiocoding.com, but you can (apt-)get Debian
packages from Christian Marillat's homepage,
Mandrake/Mandriva RPMs from the P.L.F and RedHat RPMs
from Grey Sector.
AMR codecs
Adaptive Multi-Rate speech codec is used in third generation (3G) mobile
phones.
Reference implementation is available from
The 3rd Generation Partnership Project
(free for private use).
To enable support, download the sources for
AMR-NB
and
AMR-WB
codecs, put them in the directory where you unpacked the
MPlayer source and run the following commands:
unzip 26104-610.zip
unzip 26104-610_ANSI_C_source_code.zip
mv c-code libavcodec/amr_float
unzip 26204-600.zip
unzip 26204-600_ANSI-C_source_code.zip
mv c-code libavcodec/amrwb_float
After that, follow the usual MPlayer
build procedure.
Win32 codecs importing HOWTOVFW codecs
VFW (Video for Windows) is the old Video API for Windows. Its codecs have
the .DLL or (rarely) .DRV
extension. If MPlayer fails at playing your AVI
with this kind of message:
UNKNOWN video codec: HFYU (0x55594648)
It means your AVI is encoded with a codec which has the HFYU fourcc (HFYU =
HuffYUV codec, DIV3 = DivX Low Motion, etc.). Now that you know this, you
have to find out which DLL Windows loads in order to play this file. In our
case, the system.ini contains this information in a
line that reads:
VIDC.HFYU=huffyuv.dll
So you need the huffyuv.dll file. Note that the audio
codecs are specified by the MSACM prefix:
msacm.l3acm=L3codeca.acm
This is the MP3 codec. Now that you have all the necessary information
(fourcc, codec file, sample AVI), submit your codec support request by
mail, and upload these files to the FTP site:
ftp://upload.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/<codecname>/
On Windows NT/2000/XP search for this info in the registry,
e.g. search for "VIDC.HFYU". To find out how to do this, look at
the old DirectShow method below.
DirectShow codecs
DirectShow is the newer Video API, which is even worse than its predecessor.
Things are harder with DirectShow, since
system.ini does not contain the needed information,
instead it is stored in the registry and
we need the GUID of the codec.
New Method:
Using Microsoft GraphEdit (fast)
Get GraphEdit from either DirectX SDK or
doom9.
Start graphedit.exe.
From the menu select Graph -> Insert Filters.
Expand item DirectShow Filters.
Select the right codec name and expand item.
In the entry DisplayName look at the text in
winged brackets after the backslash and write it down (five dash-delimited
blocks, the GUID).
The codec binary is the file specified in the Filename
entry.
If there is no Filename and
DisplayName contains something like
device:dmo, then it is a DMO-Codec.
Old Method:
Take a deep breath and start searching the registry...
Start regedit.
Press Ctrl+F, disable the first two
checkboxes, and enable the third. Type in the fourcc of the codec (e.g.
TM20).
You should see a field which contains the path and the filename (e.g.
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\TM20DEC.AX).
Now that you have the file, we need the GUID. Try searching again, but
now search for the codec's name, not the fourcc. Its name can be acquired
when Media Player is playing the file, by checking
File -> Properties ->
Advanced.
If not, you are out of luck. Try guessing (e.g. search for TrueMotion).
If the GUID is found you should see a FriendlyName
and a CLSID field. Write down the 16 byte CLSID,
this is the GUID we need.
If searching fails, try enabling all the checkboxes. You may have
false hits, but you may get lucky...
Now that you have all the necessary information (fourcc, GUID, codec file,
sample AVI), submit your codec support request by mail, and upload these files
to the FTP site:
ftp://upload.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/incoming/<codecname>/
If you want to add a codec yourself, read
DOCS/tech/codecs.conf.txt.