annotate README @ 6813:cdfa9de87202

Reorganized the README. More general information up front, more concise steps. Added Step0 with downloading instructions instead of repeating this in several steps. Mention system wide as well as per user file locations. Rewordings everywhere, hopefully clearer.

Welcome to MPlayer, the Unix movie player. MPlayer can play most standard video
formats out of the box and almost all others with the help of external codecs.
MPlayer currently works best from the command line, but visual feedback for
many functions is available from its onscreen status display (OSD), which is
also used for displaying subtitles. A GUI with skin support is in the alpha
development stage, but not completely finished yet.

This document is for getting you started in a few minutes. It cannot answer all
of your questions. If you have problems, please read the documentation in
DOCS/documentation.html, which should help you solve most of your problems.
Also read the man page to learn how to use MPlayer.


Requirements:
- To compile MPlayer with X11 support, you need to have the XFree86 development
  packages installed.
- For the GUI you need the GTK 1.2 development packages.


Before you start...
Unless you know what are you doing, consult DOCS/video.html to see which driver
to use with your video card to get the best quality and performance. Most cards
require special drivers not included with XFree86 to drive their 2-D video
acceleration features like YUV and scaling.

A quick and incomplete list of recommendations:
- ATI cards: Get the GATOS drivers for X11/Xv or use VIDIX.
- Matrox G200/G4x0/G550: Compile and use mga_vid for Linux, on BSD use VIDIX.
- 3dfx Voodoo3/Banshee: Get XFree86 4.2.0+ for Xv or use the tdfxfb driver.
- nVidia cards: Get the X11 driver from www.nvidia.com for Xv support.
- NeoMagic cards: Get an Xv capable driver from our homepage as described in
  DOCS/video.html.

Without accelerated video even an 800MHz P3 may be too slow to play DVDs.


______________________
STEP0: Getting MPlayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Official releases, prereleases and CVS snapshots, as well as fonts for the
OSD, Win32 codecs and a number of different skins for the GUI are available
from the download section of our homepage at

  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

A set of fonts is necessary for the OSD and subtitles, the GUI needs at least
one skin and Win32 codecs add support for some more video and audio formats.
MPlayer does not come with any of these by default, you have to download and
install them separately.

MPlayer is also available via anonymous CVS. Issue the following commands to
get the latest sources:

  cvs -d:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/mplayer login
  cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/mplayer co main

When asked for a password, just hit enter. A directory named 'main' will be
created. You can later update your sources by saying

  cvs -z3 update -dPA

from within that directory.


___________________________________
STEP1: Installing FFmpeg libavcodec
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are using an official (pre)release, skip this step, since official
releases include libavcodec. CVS sources and CVS snapshots do not include
libavcodec. To verify if you do have libavcodec or not, check if the libavcodec
subdirectory in the MPlayer source tree is empty or not.

The FFmpeg project provides libavcodec, a very portable codec collection (among
the supported formats is MPEG4/DivX) with excellent quality and speed, that is
the preferred MPEG4/DivX codec of MPlayer. You have to get libavcodec directly
from the FFmpeg CVS server.

To get the FFmpeg sources, use the following commands in a suitable directory
outside the MPlayer source directory:

cvs -d:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/ffmpeg login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:[e-mail]:/cvsroot/ffmpeg co ffmpeg/libavcodec

When asked for a password, you can just hit enter.

Now, replace the empty libavcodec directory in the MPlayer source tree with the
FFmpeg libavcodec source by removing the libavcodec subdirectory in the MPlayer
source tree and then copying (symbolic linking does not suffice) the freshly
downloaded FFmpeg libavcodec directory back into the MPlayer source tree.


______________________________
STEP2: Installing Win32 Codecs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MPlayer and libavcodec have builtin support for the most common audio and video
formats, but some others are playable only with the Win32 DLLs or the XAnim
binary plugins. Examples include WMV video, DivX with WMA audio (not normal
DivX files) and Indeo. This step is not mandatory, but recommended for getting
MPlayer to play more different file types. Note that Win32 codecs only work on
Intel compatible PCs.

Unpack the codecs archive and put the contents in a directory where MPlayer
will find them. The default directory is /usr/lib/win32/ but you can change
that to something else by using the '--with-win32libdir=DIR' option when you
run './configure'.


__________________________
STEP3: Configuring MPlayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MPlayer has a lot of options that get selected in this phase. Run

  ./configure

to configure MPlayer with the default options. The codecs you installed above
should be autodetected. GUI support has to be enabled separately, run

  ./configure --enable-gui

if you want to use the GUI.

If something does not work as expected, try

  ./configure --help

to see the available options and select what you need.

The configure script prints a summary of enabled and disabled options. If you
have something installed that configure fails to detect, check the file
configure.log for errors and reasons for the failure. Repeat this step until
you are satisfied with the enabled feature set.


________________________
STEP4: Compiling MPlayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now you can start the compilation by typing

  make

You can install MPlayer with

  make install

provided that you have write permission in the installation directory.

If all went well, you can run MPlayer by typing 'mplayer'. A help screen with a
summary of the most common options and keyboard shortcuts should be displayed.

If you get 'unable to load shared library' or similar errors, run
'ldd ./mplayer' to check which libraries fail and go back to STEP 3 to fix it.
Sometimes running 'ldconfig' is enough to fix the problem.

NOTE: If you run Debian you can configure, compile and build a proper Debian
.deb package with only one command:

  fakeroot debian/rules binary


____________________________________________
STEP5: Installing the onscreen display fonts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unpack the archive and choose one of the available font sizes. Then copy the
font files of the corresponding size into /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/ or
~/.mplayer/font/ (or whatever you set with './configure --datadir=DIR').


____________________________
STEP6: Installing a GUI skin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unpack the archive and put the contents in /usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/ or
~/.mplayer/Skin/. MPlayer will use the skin in the default/ subdirectory of
/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/ or ~/.mplayer/Skin/ unless told otherwise via
the '-skin' switch. You should therefore rename your skin subdirectory or make
a suitable symbolic link.


__________________
STEP7: Let's play!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's it for the moment. To start playing movies, open a command line and try

  mplayer <moviefile>

or for the GUI

  mplayer -gui <moviefile>
  gmplayer <moviefile>

gmplayer is a symbolic link to mplayer created by 'make install'.
Without <moviefile>, MPlayer will come up and you will be able to use the GUI
filepicker.

To play a VCD track or a DVD title, try:

  mplayer -vcd 2 -cdrom-device /dev/hdc
  mplayer -dvd 1 -alang en -slang hu -dvd-device /dev/hdd

See 'mplayer -help' and 'man mplayer' for further options.

'mplayer -vo help' will show you the available video output drivers. Experiment
with the '-vo' switch to see which one gives you the best performance.
If you get jerky playback or no sound, experiment with the '-ao' switch (see
'-ao help') to choose between different audio drivers. Note that jerky playback
is caused by buggy audio drivers or a slow processor and video card. With a
good audio and video driver combination, one can play DVDs and 720x576 DivX
files smoothly on a Celeron 366. Slower systems may need the '-framedrop'
option.

Questions you may have are probably answered in the rest of the documentation.
The places to start reading are the man page, DOCS/documentation.html and
DOCS/faq.html.