Table of Contents

• 1. Introduction
• 1.1 Overview
• 1.2 History
• 1.3 Installation
• 1.4 What about the GUI?
• 1.5 Subtitles and OSD
• 2. Features
• 2.1 Supported formats
• 2.1.1 Video
• 2.1.1.1 MPG, VOB, DAT files
• 2.1.1.2 AVI files
• 2.1.1.3 ASF/WMV files
• 2.1.1.4 QT/MOV files
• 2.1.1.5 VIV files
• 2.1.1.6 FLI files
• 2.1.1.7 RealMedia files
• 2.1.1.8 NuppelVideo files
• 2.1.1.9 yuv4mpeg files
• 2.1.2 Audio
• 2.2 Supported codecs
• 2.2.1 Video
• 2.2.1.1 DivX4
• 2.2.1.2 ffmpeg's DivX/libavcodec
• 2.2.1.3 XAnim codecs
• 2.2.1.4 VIVO video
• 2.2.1.5 MPEG1/2 video
• 2.2.1.6 MS Video1
• 2.2.1.7 Cinepak CVID
• 2.2.1.8 RealVideo
• 2.2.2 Audio
• 2.2.2.1 Software AC3 decoding
• 2.2.2.2 Hardware AC3 decoding
• 2.2.2.3 libmad support
• 2.2.2.4 VIVO audio
• 2.2.2.5 RealAudio
• 2.2.3 Win32 codec importing howto
• 2.2.3.1 VFW codecs
• 2.2.3.2 DirectShow codecs
• 2.3 Output devices
• 2.3.1 Video
• 2.3.1.1 Setting up MTRR
• 2.3.1.2 Xv
• 2.3.1.2.1 3dfx
• 2.3.1.2.2 S3
• 2.3.1.2.3 nVidia
• 2.3.1.2.4 ATI
• 2.3.1.2.5 NeoMagic
• 2.3.1.2.6 Trident cards
• 2.3.1.3 DGA
• 2.3.1.3.1 Summary
• 2.3.1.3.2 What is DGA
• 2.3.1.3.3 Installing DGA support for MPlayer
• 2.3.1.3.4 Resolution switching
• 2.3.1.3.5 DGA & MPlayer
• 2.3.1.3.6 Features of the DGA driver
• 2.3.1.3.7 Speed issues
• 2.3.1.3.8 Known bugs
• 2.3.1.3.9 Future work
• 2.3.1.3.A Some modelines
• 2.3.1.3.B Bug Reports
• 2.3.1.4 SDL
• 2.3.1.5 SVGAlib
• 2.3.1.6 Framebuffer output (FBdev)
• 2.3.1.7 Matrox framebuffer (mga_vid)
• 2.3.1.8 SiS 6326 framebuffer (sis_vid)
• 2.3.1.9 3dfx YUV support (tdfxfb)
• 2.3.1.10 OpenGL output
• 2.3.1.11 AAlib - text mode displaying
• 2.3.1.12 VESA - output to VESA BIOS
• 2.3.1.13 X11
• 2.3.1.14 Rage128 / Radeon video overlay
• 2.3.1.A TVout
• 2.3.1.A.1 Matrox
• 2.3.1.A.2 ATI
• 2.3.1.A.3 Voodoo 3/Banshee
• 2.3.2 Audio
• 2.3.2.1 Soundcard experiences, recommendations
• 2.3.2.2 Audio plugins
• 2.3.2.2.1 Up/Downsampling
• 2.4 MEncoder - An Encoder based on MPlayer
• 2.4.1 Overview
• 2.4.2 Compiling
• 2.4.3 Features
• 2.4.3 Summary
• 2.4.3.1 Encoding 2-pass DivX4
• 2.4.3.2 Rescaling movies
• 2.4.3.3 Streamcopy
• 2.4.3.4 Fixing AVIs with broken index
• 2.4.3.5 Encoding with the libavcodec codec family
• 2.4.4 Syntax
• 2.4.5 Available options
• 2.4.6 Examples
• 2.5 TV input
• 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
• 5.6 Encoding
• 6. Misc OS'es
• 6.1 Debian packaging
• 6.2 FreeBSD
• 6.3 Solaris
• 6.4 StrongARM
• 6.5 SGI/Irix
• 6.6 QNX
• A. Authors
• A/2. Maintainers
• B. Mailing lists
• C. How to report bugs
• C/2. How to send patches
• D. Known bugs
• X. How To Be A Famous SkinMaker in 5 mins!

1. Introduction

1.1. Overview

MPlayer is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and non-x86 CPUs, see section 6). It plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, and even DivX movies too (and you don't need the avifile library at all!). The another big feature of mplayer is the wide range of supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, DirectFB, but you can use GGI and SDL (and this way all their drivers) and some lowlevel card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and Radeon) too! Most of them supports software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen. MPlayer supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the DVB and DXR3/Hollywood+ ! And what about the nice big antialiased shaded subtitles (9 supported types!!!) with european/ISO 8859-1,2 (hungarian, english, czech, etc), cyrillic, korean fonts, and OSD?

MPlayer is basically GPL, but contains some non-GPL code which is not allowed to be distributed in binary form, and also contains the OpenDivX library which has special license. We are still developing towards GPL.

Distributing MPlayer in the form of binaries and/or binary packages is currently impossible, speaking about both technical and law areas. Detailed information can be found in the second part of this file, and it is recommended to read it.

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 !
• MPlayer 0.50 "The Faszom(C)ounter"
  Hmm. Release again. Tons of new features, beta GUI version, bugs fixed, new vo and ao drivers, ported to many systems, including opensource DivX codecs and much more. Try it!

1.3. Installation

In this chapter I'll try to guide you through the compiling and configuring process of MPlayer. It's not easy, but it won't neccessarily be hard. If you experience a different behaviour 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 DOES worth it.

You need a fairly recent system. On Linux, 2.4.x kernels are required, but with 2.4.10 and above you'll ocassionally experience problems (licensing, kernel bugs, etc) so they are discouraged.

SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS

• binutils - suggested version is 2.11.x . This program is responsible for generating MMX/3DNow!/etc instructions, thus very important.
• gcc - suggested version is from 2.95.2 to 2.95.4. NEVER use 2.96 or 3.x.x !!! They generate faulty code. If you decide to change gcc from 2.96, then don't decide in favor of 3.0 juts because it's newer! In some ways it's even worse than 2.96. So downgrade to 2.95.x (downgrade libstdc++ too!) or don't up/downgrade at all (but in this case, be prepared for runtime problems). Detailed information about gcc 2.96's bugs can be found here and in the FAQ !
• XFree86 - suggested version is always the newest (4.1.0). Normally everyone wants this, as starting from XFree86 4.0.2, it contains the XVideo extension (somewhere referred as Xv) which is needed to enable the hardware YUV acceleration (fast image display) on cards that support it. More information available.
  Make sure its development package is installed too otherwise it won't work.
  For some videocards 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, videocards that lag strangely with the xv driver). Always use the newest (beginning from 1.2.x).

CODECS

• libavcodec : If you want to use this DivX3/DivX4/etc codec, check the 2.2.1.2 section before compiling. Features :
  
  • you can gain DivX/DivX4 playing on non-x86 machines
  • this codec has the greatest decoding speed for DivX and DivX4 movies (even faster than the original DivX4 library itself) ! Recommended!
• Win32 codecs : If you plan to use MPlayer on x86 architecture, you will possibly need them. Download and unzip w32codecs.zip to /usr/lib/win32 . Note: the avifile project has similar codecs package, but it differs from ours, so if you want to use all supported codecs, then use our package! However, you can use our codecs package with avifile. Features :
  
  • you need this if you want to play or encode for example movies recorded with digital cameras (example: DV)
  • needed if you want to play WMV movies or older ASF's
• DivX4 : information about this codec is available in the 2.2.1.1 section. If you don't want to use MEncoder, you possibly don't want this codec as libavcodec (see above) is much faster than this.
  Features :
  • can play old DivX3 movies much faster than the Win32 DLL but slower than libavcodec !
  • it's closed-source, and only an x86 version is available.
  • You also need this codec for MEncoder, see below !
• If you want to play 3ivx movies, check the XAnim codecs section.
• The XAnim codecs are the best (full screen, hardware YUV zoom) for decoding old videos like Indeo 3/4/5, Cinepak, and some others. And they are multiplatform, so this is the only way to play Indeo on non-x86 platforms (well, apart from using XAnim:).

VIDEOCARDS

There are generally two kind of videocards. One kind (the newer cards) has hardware YUV acceleration support, the other cards don't.

YUV cards

They can display and scale (zoom) the picture to any size that fits in their memory, with small CPU usage (zooming doesn't increase it!), thus you get a nice and very fast fullscreen playing.

• Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards : please see the mga_vid 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. Also check out the Matrox TV-out section.
• 3Dfx Voodoo3/Banshee cards : please see the 2.3.1.9 section in order to gain big speedup. It is important to do these steps before compiling MPlayer, otherwise no 3Dfx support will be built. Also see the 3dfx TV out section.
• ATI cards : see the ATI cards section of the TV-out documentation, to know what features of your card is supported under Linux/MPlayer. If you have a Radeon or Rage128 card, we have a XXX_vid driver for you, with TV out ! Check this section !
• S3 cards : the Savage 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, non-Savage cards have no, or slow hardware support.
• Nvidia cards : very bad choice for video playing. Nvidia's cards are manufactured on the far-east, and have very cheap and bad quality chips. Moreover, the built-in Nvidia driver in XFree86 doesn't contain support for hardware YUV acceleration! You have to download Nvidia's closed-source drivers from nvidia.com . See details in Nvidia Xv driver section.
• 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, your card is one of the :

Non-YUV cards

Fullscreen playing can be achieved by either zooming (by software, this is slooow), or changing to a smaller videomode, for example to 352x288. If you don't have YUV accel, this latter method is the recommended one. Throughout MPlayer, this behaviour can be switched on by using the -vm option and with the following drivers :

• using XFree86 : see details in DGA driver and X11 driver sections. DGA is recommended!
• not using XFree86 : try the drivers in the following order : vesa, fbdev, svgalib, aalib.

SOUNDCARDS

• 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.
• other cards' features aren't supported by MPlayer. It's very recommended to read the soundcards section !

FEATURES

• For DVD support, you'll have to compile libdvdcss and libdvdread, and in this order! See section 4.2 for more information.
• Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the 1.4 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.
• There are two timer codes 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 PC's RTC (Real Time Clock) for this task, because it has precise 1ms timers. This requires root, or a setuid root MPlayer binary (or a little kernel hacking, but that's unadvised). You can see the new timer's efficiency in the status line. Note: NEVER install setuid MPlayer binary on a multiuser system! It's a clear way for everyone to gain root.

Then build MPlayer:

    ./configure
    make
    make install

At this point, MPlayer is ready to use. The directory /usr/local/share/mplayer contains the codecs.conf file, which is used to tell the program all the codecs and their capabilities. This file should always be kept uptodate together with the main binary !

Debian users can build a .deb package for themselves, it's very simple. Just exec fakeroot debian/rules binary in MPlayer's root dir. Detailed instructions can be found here.

ALWAYS browse the output of ./configure, and the configure.log file, they contain 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-arial-iso-8859-*.zip and/or optional (if exists) language updates. It's VERY RECOMMENDED to check section 1.5 for details.

    mkdir ~/.mplayer/font
    cd ~/.mplayer/font
    unzip mp-arial-iso-8859-1.zip

1.4. What about the GUI?

The GUI needs GTK (it isn't GTK, but the panels are). The skins are stored in PNG format, so gtk, libpng (and their devel stuff) has to be installed. You can build it by specifying --enable-gui during ./configure . Then, to turn on GUI mode, you either

• use the -gui option
• specify gui=yes in your config file
• ln -s /usr/local/bin/mplayer /usr/local/bin/gmplayer , and call gmplayer instead.

HINT: use the middle button (on 2 button mice press left and right simultaneously) for a popup GTK menu, with DVD playing option!

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 (/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin), or to $HOME/.mplayer/Skin . MPlayer by default looks in these directories for a default named directory, but you can use the -skin newskin option, or the skin=newskin config file directive to use the skin in */Skin/newskin directory.

1.5. Subtitles and OSD

Yes, MPlayer also supports many kinds of subtitles. Currently 8 kinds of subtitle can be used by the subreader code. To see what are these subtitle formats, see subreader.c, line ~30.

About DVD subtitles, read the DVD section.

MPlayer introduces a new subtitle format called MPsub. It was designed by me (Gabucino). Basically its main feature is being dynamically time-based (although it has frame-based mode too). Example (from DOCS/tech/mpsub.sub) :

# first number : wait this much after previous subtitle disappeared
# second number : display the current subtitle for this many seconds

15 3
A long, long time ago...

0 3
in a galaxy far away...

0 3
Naboo was under an attack.


So you see, the main goal was to make subtitle editing/timing/joining/cutting easy. And, if you - say - get an SSA subtitle but it's badly timed/delayed to your version of the movie, you simply do a mplayer dummy.avi -sub source.ssa -dumpmpsub . A dump.mpsub file will be created in the current directory, which will contain the source subtitle's text, but in MPsub format. Then you can freely add/substract seconds to/from the subtitle.

Subtitles are displayed with a technique called 'OSD', On Screen Display. OSD is used to display current time, volume bar, seek bar etc.

INSTALLING OSD and SUB

You need an MPlayer font package to be able to use OSD/SUB feature. There are many ways to get it:

• download ready-to-use font packages from MPlayer site. Note: currently available fonts are limited for iso 8859-1/2 support, and there are a few special versions for korean, russian etc codepages. 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 utf8 encoding and use -utf8 option or just name the subtitles file .utf and have it in the same dir as the video file. Recoding from different codepages to utf8 could be done by using konwert (debian) or iconv (RedHat) programs.
  Some URLs:
  • ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/ - ISO fonts
  • ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/contrib/fonts/ - various fonts by users
  • http://realtime.ssu.ac.kr/~lethean/mplayer - korean fonts & RAW plugin
• use the font generator tool at TOOLS/subfont-c It's a complete tool to convert from TTF/Type1/etc font to mplayer font pkg. (read TOOLS/subfont-c/README for details)
• use the font generator GIMP plugin at TOOLS/subfont-GIMP (note: you must have HSI RAW plugin too, see URL below)

After that, UNZIP the files to ~/.mplayer/font/ . Now you have to see a timer at the upper left corner of the movie (switch it off with 'o') .

OSD has 3 states: (switch with 'o')

• timer + volume bar + seek bar + subtitles (default)
• volume bar + seek bar + subtitles
• subtitles only

You can change default behaviour by setting osdlevel= variable in config file.

2. Features

2.1. Supported formats

2.2. Supported codecs

2.3. Video & Audio output devices

2.4. MEncoder - An All-Purpose Encoder

2.5. TV input

3. Usage

	file		mplayer [options] [path/]filename
	VCD		mplayer [options] -vcd trackno /dev/cdrom
	DVD		mplayer [options] -dvd titleno [/dev/dvd]
	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 1 /dev/dvd
  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
	< or >		seek backward/forward in playlist
	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 or DivX4 codec with -vc divx4)
	1 or 2		adjust contrast
	3 or 4		adjust brightness
	5 or 6		adjust hue
	7 or 8		adjust saturation
(the following keys are valid only with TV input support
	h or l		select previous/next channel
	n		change norm
	b		change channel list

GUI keyboard control

	, and .		previous / next file
	gray - or +		decrease / increase volume
	enter		start playing
	space		pause
	s		stop
	a		about
	l		load file
	b		skin browser
	e		toggle equalizer
	p		toggle playlist
	f		toggle fullscreen
	m		toggle mute

TV input control

	h or l		select previous/next channel
	n		change norm
	b		change channel list

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 doesn'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 volume 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 files from network, using the HTTP protocol. Configuring it is simple, just recompile MPlayer with

    ./configure --enable-streaming

MPlayer can NOT read ASF files from network by the MMS protocol, only by plain HTTP.

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.

6.3. Solaris

MPlayer should work on Solaris 2.6 or newer.

AVI file playback works best on Solaris x86, because you have the option to use the win32 codecs on the x86 platform, or can use MMX/MMX2/3DNow/etc instructions for MP3/DivX/DVD/whatever. 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.

On UltraSPARCs, MPlayer takes advantage of their VIS extensions (equivalent to MMX), currently only in libmpeg2, libvo and libavcodec, but not in mp3lib. You can watch a VOB file on a 400Mhz CPU. You'll need mLib installed.

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)

On Solaris with an UltraSPARC CPU, you can get some extra speed by using the CPU's VIS instructions for certain time consuming operations. VIS acceleration can be used in MPlayer by calling functions in Sun's mediaLib.

VIS accelerated operations from mediaLib are used for mpeg2 video decoding and for color space conversion in the video output drivers.

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

6.5. Silicon Graphics Indigo / IRIX

Reported working. You'll probably have to use the sgi ao driver. Anyone has closer info?

6.6. QNX

Works. Only has -vo x11 output which is even much slower than on Linux, since QNX has only X emulation which is VERY slow. No closer info yet.

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)
  • 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)
  • New DVD-Support using libdvdread
  • DVB support
  • MPEG PES output
  • anything that isn't mentioned elsewhere
• Zoltán Ponekker (Pontscho/Fresh!)
  • configure script and Makefiles for easy compile
  • GUI system
  • 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)
  • ./configure script improvements
  • Makefile improvements
  • prelimenary DVD support
  • various X11 cleanups and fixes
  • HTMLization of documentation
• Gábor Bérczi (Gabucino)
  • documentation writer & maintainer
  • hungarian translation of documentation, homepage, and help output
  • second homepage design&gfx
  • homepage maintainer
  • testing, codecs quality & speed comparsions
  • IRC channels operator (#MPlayer is user channel)
  • experimental MINIX port :) (what's funny about it?)
  • MPsub subtitle format design
• Szabolcs Berecz (Szabi)
  • 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)
  • SUB reader
  • screensaver+DPMS disable for libvo
• Gyula László (Chass, Tégla)
  • first fonts (mp_font1.zip)
  • third (current) homepage design&gfx
• Zoltán Márk Vicián (Se7en)
  • SVGAlib support in libvo
• Alex Beregszaszi (Al3x)
  • ALSA output driver in libao2
  • vo_ggi output driver in libvo (www.ggi-project.org)
  • xanim codecs support (incomplete yet!)
  • VIVO files support
  • TV grabbing support
  • Quicktime hackings
  • libavcodec support in MEncoder
  • RM fileformat demuxer
  • mencoder framecopy
  • yuv4mpeg support
  • subconfig
  • various stuff
• Andreas Ackermann (Acki)
  • LIRC support (see documentation)
  • DGA support in libvo
• Felix Bünemann (Atmos)
  • 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
  • OggVorbis audio support
  • Various aspect code
  • Win32 port
  • priority support in codecs.conf
• TeLeNiEkO
  • spanish translation of documentation
• Michael Graffam
  • XF86VidMode support to vo_x11 and vo_dga
  • Video mode switching code to vo_dga
• Jens Hoffmann
  • Additional YUV formats support
  • found the big BITMAPINFOHEADER problem -> solved ASV2 pixelization
• Nick Kurshev
  • 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
  • radeon_vid, rage128_vid, radeonfb
  • libvo driver: vo_vesa
• German Gomez Garcia
  • SPDIF AC3 output for SBLive!
• Dariush Pietrzak (Eyck)
  • debian packaging support (see debian/* and this documentation)
  • support for vplayer subtitle format
  • prelimenary support for .RT subtitle format
• Marcus Comstedt
  • initial solaris8-x86 support
  • configure fixes
• Jürgen Keil
  • patched MPlayer to work on Solaris 8 x86
  • various fixes (win32, configure, etc)
  • SUN audio driver in libao2
  • mediaLib support in libavcodec
• Vladimir Kushnir
  • patched MPlayer to work on FreeBSD x86
• Bertrand BAUDET
  • network streaming support
• Artur Zaprzala
  • Complete font generator prog + OSD font (TOOLS/subfont-c)
• lanzz@lanzz.org
  • GIMP font generator plugin (TOOLS/subfont-gimp)
• Adam Tla/lka
  • osd/sub review, fixes, optimization, utf8 support
  • various fixes
• Folke Ashberg
  • native AAlib driver (-vo aa)
• Kamil Toman
  • czech fonts
• Ivan Kalvatchev
  • interlaced MPEG2 support (libmpeg2)
  • libvo2 draft
• pl
  • new ./configure script
  • general code maintaining, fixes, patch commiting
• Michael Niedermayer
  • new postprocessing code (with deinterlacing etc...)
  • software scaling C/MMX/MMX2/3DNow support (swscale.c)
  • various rgb/yuv bpp converters
  • new, better IDCT code for libavcodec
  • runtime cpu detection
  • SSE optimization of liba52
• Sven Goethel
  • libvo driver: vo_gl2
• joy_ping
  • ao_alsa9 fixes
• Eric Anholt
  • CPU detection code
• Jiri Svoboda
  • AQT type subtitles support
  • CRTC2 YUV support in mga_vid
  • DirectFB video output driver
• Oliver Schoenbrunner
  • SGI audio driver
  • MIPS support
• Jeroen Dobbelaere
  • libmad support
• David Holm
  • DXR3 support
  • libmp1e import
• Panagiotis Issaris
  • -playlist option
  • NuppelVideo support
• Mike Melanson
  • MS Video1 codec open-source implementation
  • FLI demuxer, decoder
  • Generic ADPCM decoder (supports stereo IMA4 too)
• Tobias Diedrich
  • NAS audio output driver
• Kilian A. Foth
  • -slave mode
• Tim Ferguson
  • Opensource Cinepak decoder
• Sam Lin
  • -wid (plugger) patch
• Johannes Feigl
  • german docs translation
  • some improvements in configure, small patches
  • found somebody (Thilo Wunderlich) how send a DVB card
• Kim Minh Kaplan
  • DVD subtitles display support
• Brian Kuschak
  • RTP streaming support (reading)

Main testers:

• Tibor Balázs (Tibcu)
• Péter Sasi (SaPe)
• Christoph H. Lampert
• Attila Kinali
• Dirk Vornheder
• Bohdan Horst (Nexus)

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 A/2 - MPlayer code and documentation maintainers

Homepage

• Design: Chass
• Contents: Gabucino

English documentation

• tech-hun.txt: A'rpi
• all the others: Gabucino
• HTMLization: LGB

Documentation translations

• Hungarian: Gabucino
• German: Johannes Feigl
• French: Stephane Marteau (outdated)
• Spanish: TeLeNiEkO (outdated)
• Russian: Nick Kurshev (outdated)
• Polish: Dariush Pietrzak, then Justyna Biala (outdated)

Platforms/ports

• DEBIAN packaging: Dariush Pietrzak
• FreeBSD support: Vladimir Kushnir
• Solaris 8 support: Jürgen Keil
• MIPS support: Oliver Schoenbrunner

MPlayer code:

• fileformat detection, demuxers: A'rpi
• DVD support: (alpha version was: LGB) now: A'rpi
• network streaming: Bertrand BAUDET
• A-V sync code: A'rpi
• subtitles file parser/reader: Lez (most of them)
• config files & commandline parser: Szabi
• fastmemcpy: Nick Kurshev
• LIRC support: Acki
• SUB/OSD renderer: Adam Tla/lka

libvo drivers:

• vo_3dfx.c - OBSOLETED, use xv or tdfxfb
• vo_tdfxfb.c - Zeljko Stevanovic
• vo_aa.c - Folke Ashberg
• vo_dga.c - Acki
• vo_fbdev.c - Szabi
• vo_fsdga.c - OBSOLETED, use dga
• vo_ggi.c - al3x
• vo_gl.c - A'rpi
• vo_gl2.c - Sven Goethel
• vo_md5.c - A'rpi
• vo_mga.c - A'rpi
• vo_mpegpes.c - A'rpi
• vo_null.c - A'rpi
• vo_odivx.c - A'rpi
• vo_pgm.c - A'rpi
• vo_png.c - Atmos
• vo_sdl.c - Atmos
• vo_svga.c - se7en
• vo_syncfb.c - OBSOLETED, use mga
• vo_vesa.c - Nick Kurshev
• vo_x11.c - Pontscho
• vo_xmga.c - Pontscho
• vo_xv.c - Pontscho

libao2 drivers:

• ao_alsa5.c - al3x
• ao_alsa9.c - al3x (fixed by joy_ping)
• ao_dxr3.c - David Holm
• ao_null.c - A'rpi
• ao_oss.c - A'rpi
• ao_pcm.c - Atmos
• ao_sdl.c - Atmos
• ao_sgi.c - Oliver Schoenbrunner
• ao_sun.c - Jürgen Keil

TOOLS:

• subfont-c - Artur Zaprzala:
• subfont-GIMP - lanzz@lanzz.org
• *.pl - Atmos
• x2mpsub - Gabucino
• others - A'rpi

Misc:

• vbelib.* - Nick Kurshev
• lrmi.* - copied by Nick Kurshev (originally by Josh Vanderhoof)

Appendix B - Mailing lists

There are some public mailing lists on MPlayer. Subscribing can be achieved on the following addresses:

• MPlayer developers list:
  http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/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://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users
  • send bugreports here (after reading DOCS/BUGS, Appendix C)
  • send feature requests here (after reading bugreports.html)
  • send user questions here (after reading all this documentation)

• MPlayer hungarian users list:
  http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-felhasznalok
  • hungarian language list
  • topic? We'll see about it...

• MPlayer & Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 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.

• MPlayer & DVB card users:
  http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb

  Things related to the hardware decoder card called DVB.

  • MPlayer CVS-log:
    http://mplayerhq.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!

  NOTE: you can reach the searchable mailing list archives here.

  Appendix C - How to report bugs

  Appendix D - Known bugs

  Special system/cpu-specific bugs/problems:

  • SIGILL (signal 4) in draw_frame, on P3 (mostly with 2.2.x kernels):
    Problem: movups is crashing in libvo/fastmemcpy.h
    Workaround: ./configure --disable-fastmemcpy
    SOLVED: disabled SSE code in fastmemcpy.h ;(
  • No image (black image) in RGB 15/16bpp (x11,dga,fbdev,svga) playing MPEG or OpenDivX files:
    Problem: gcc 2.96 bug, read this
    Workaround: ./configure --disable-mmx, or use gcc 2.95.x
    SOLVED: code fixed
  • SIGILL (signal 4) or other fault at loading l3codeca.acm:
    Problem: shared libs are loaded to 0x00xxxxxx instead of 0x40xxxxxx
    Workaround: mplayer -afm 1 ...
    SOLVED: you are using some security kernel patch, like OpenWall etc.
  • SIGILL (signal 4) on P3 using 2.2.x kernels:
    Problem: kernel 2.2.x doesn't have proper (working) SSE support
    Solution: upgrade kernel to 2.4.x
    Workaround: ./configure --disable-sse
  • General SIGILL (signal 4):
    Problem: you compiled and run mplayer in different machines (for example compiled on P3 and running on celeron)
    Solution: compile MPlayer on the same machine where you will use it!
    Workaround: ./configure --disable-sse etc. options
  • "Internal buffer inconsistency" during MEncoder run:
    Problem: known gcc 2.96 bug, no fix yet. If you have gcc 2.95, you have a libmp3lame library that was compiled with gcc 2.96 (installed from a deb/rpm package?). Check which lib does MEncoder found : ldd mencoder.

  Various A-V sync and other audio problems:

  General audio delay or jerky sound (exists with all or many files):
  
  • audio buffer problems (buffer size badly detected)
    Workaround: mplayer -abs option
  • slow machine (cpu or vga)
    try with -vo null, if it plays well, then you have slow VGA card/driver
    Workaround: buy a faster card or read this documentation about how to speed up
    SOLVED: try -framedrop
  
  Audio delay/de-sync specific to one or a few files:
  
  • bad file (please upload the file, so we can check & fix)
    Workaround:
    • -ni or -nobps option (for non-interleaved or bad files)
    and/or
    • -mc 0 (required for files with badly interleaved VBR audio)
    and/or
    • -delay option or +/- keys at runtime to adjust delay
  • your soundcard doesn't support 48Khz playback
    Workaround: buy a better soundcard... or try to decrease fps by 10% (use -fps 27 for a 30fps movie)
  • slow machine
    (if A-V is not around 0, and the last number in the status line increasing)
    Workaround: -framedrop
  
  No sound at all:
  
  • your file uses an unsupported codec
    Workaround: read the documentation and help us adding support for it

  Video-out problems:

  First note: options -fs -vm and -zoom are just recommendations, not (yet) supported by all drivers. So it isn't a bug if it doesn't work. Only a few driver supports scaling/zooming, don't expect this from x11 or dga.

  OSD/sub flickering:
  - x11 driver: sorry, it can't be fixed now
  - xv driver: use -double option