comparison DOCS/documentation.html @ 7814:988498df1996

<B>MPlayer</B> ---> MPlayer

7813:76940a39405a

<H1><A NAME="introduction">1. Introduction</A></H1>


<P><B>MPlayer</B> is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and
  <B>non-x86</B> CPUs, see the <A HREF="#ports">ports section</A>). It plays most
  MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg,
  FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, RealPlayer, and
  Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch <B>VideoCD</B>, <B>SVCD</B>, <B>DVD</B>,
  <B>3ivx</B>, <B>RealMedia</B>, and <B>DivX</B> movies too (and you don't need
  the avifile
  library at all!). Another big feature of <B>MPlayer</B> is the wide range of
  supported output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev,
  AAlib, DirectFB, but you can also use GGI and SDL (and this way all their
  drivers) and some lowlevel card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and Radeon,
  Mach64, Permedia3) too! Most
  of them supports software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in
  fullscreen. <B>MPlayer</B> supports displaying through some hardware MPEG
  decoder boards, such as the <B><A HREF="video.html#dvb">DVB</A></B> and
  <B><A HREF="video.html#dxr3">DXR3/Hollywood+</A></B>. And what about the nice big antialiased
  shaded subtitles (<B>10 supported types</B>) with European/ISO 8859-1,2
  (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic, Korean fonts, and the onscreen
  display (OSD)?</P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> is under GPL v2 license.</P>

<P>The 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 temporarily rebuild their indexes with the <CODE>-idx</CODE> option, or
  permanently with <B>MEncoder</B>, thus enabling seeking!
  As you see, stability and quality are the most important things,
  but the speed is also amazing.</P>


<H2><A NAME="history">1.1 History</A></H2>

<H2><A NAME="installation">1.2 Installation</A></H2>

<P>In this chapter I'll try to guide you through the compiling and
  configuring process of <B>MPlayer</B>. 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 DOES worth it.</P>

    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.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. For detailed information about gcc 2.96's bugs (that are
    still NOT fixed, they have been WORKED AROUND in <B>MPlayer</B>!), see the
    <A HREF="users_against_developers.html#gcc">gcc 2.96</A> section and the
    <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A>.</LI>
  <LI><B>XFree86</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest (4.2.1)</B>.
    Normally, everyone wants this, as starting with XFree86 4.0.2, it contains
    the <A HREF="video.html#xv">XVideo</A> extension (somewhere referred to

    usually isn't important.</LI>
  <LI><B>SDL</B> - 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).</LI>
  <LI><B>libjpeg</B> - optional JPEG decoder, used by -mf and some QT MOV files.
    Useful for both <B>MPlayer</B> and <B>MEncoder</B> if you plan to work with jpeg files.</LI>
  <LI><B>libpng</B> - recommended and default (M)PNG decoder. Required for GUI.
    Useful for both <B>MPlayer</B> and <B>MEncoder</B>.</LI>
  <LI><B>lame</B> - recommended, needed for encoding MP3 audio with MEncoder,
    suggested version is <B>always the newest</B> (at least 3.90).</LI>
  <LI><B>libogg</B> - optional, needed for playing OGG file format.</LI>
  <LI><B>libvorbis</B> - optional, needed for playing OGG Vorbis audio.</LI>
  <LI><B><A HREF="http://www.live.com/mplayer/">LIVE.COM Streaming Media</A></B>

      <LI>encoding with most of the mentioned codecs</LI>
      <LI>this codec is the <B>fastest codec available</B> for DivX/3/4/5 and
        other MPEG4 types. Recommended!</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><B>Win32 codecs</B>: If you plan to use <B>MPlayer</B> on x86
    architecture, you will possibly need them. Download and unzip w32codecs.zip
    to /usr/lib/win32 <B>BEFORE</B> compiling <B>MPlayer</B>, otherwise no Win32
    support will be compiled!<BR>
    <B>Note:</B> the avifile project has a similar codecs package, but it differs
    from ours. If you want to use all supported codecs, then install our package
    (do not worry, avifile works with it without problems). Features:<BR>
    <UL>

  </LI>
  <LI>The <A HREF="codecs.html#xanim">XAnim codecs</A> are the best (full
    screen, hardware YUV zoom) for decoding <B>3ivx</B> and Indeo 3/4/5 movies,
    and some old formats. And they are multiplatform, so this is the only way to
    play Indeo on non-x86 platforms (well, apart from using XAnim:). But for
    example Cinepak movies are best played with <B>MPlayer</B>'s own Cinepak
    decoder!</LI>
  <LI>For <B>Ogg Vorbis</B> audio decoding you need to install
    <CODE>libvorbis</CODE> properly. Use deb/rpm packages if available, or
    compile from
    <A HREF="http://ogg.org/ogg/vorbis/download/vorbis_nightly_cvs.tgz">source</A>
    (this is a nightly updated tarball of Vorbis CVS).</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer</B> can use the libraries of RealPlayer 8 or RealONE to play
    files with <B>RealVideo 2.0 - 4.0</B> video, and Sipro/Cook audio. See
    <A HREF="formats.html#real">RealMedia file format</A> section for
    installation instructions and more information.</LI>
</UL>

  <LI><B>Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards</B>: although a
    <A HREF="video.html#vidix">Vidix driver</A> is provided, it is recommended
    to use the mga_vid kernel module instead, for it works much better.
    Please see the <A HREF="video.html#mga_vid">mga_vid</A> section about its
    installation and usage. It is important to do these steps <I>before</I>
    compiling <B>MPlayer</B>, otherwise no mga_vid support will be built. Also
    check out the <A HREF="video.html#tv-out_matrox">Matrox TV-out</A> section.
    <U><B>If you don't use Linux</B></U>, your only possibility is the VIDIX
    driver: read the <A HREF="video.html#vidix">VIDIX</A> section.</LI>
  <LI><B>3Dfx Voodoo3/Banshee cards</B>: please see the
    <A HREF="video.html#tdfxfb">tdfxfb</A> section in order to gain big
    speedup. It is important to do these steps <B>before</B> compiling
    <B>MPlayer</B>, otherwise no 3Dfx support will be built. Also see the <A
    HREF="video.html#tv-out_voodoo">3dfx TV-out section</A>. If you use X, use
    <B>at least 4.2.0</B>, as the 3dfx Xv driver was broken in 4.1.0 and earlier
    releases.</LI>
  <LI><B>ATI cards</B>: <A HREF="video.html#vidix">Vidix driver</A> is
    provided for the following cards:

    <A HREF="codecs.html#software_ac3">Software AC3 decoding</A> section.
    For hardware AC3 passthrough you <B>must</B> use ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation!</LI>
  <LI><B>C-Media with SP/DIF out</B>: hardware AC3 passthrough is possible
    with these cards, see
    <A HREF="codecs.html#hardware_ac3">Hardware AC3 decoding</A> section.</LI>
  <LI>Features of <B>other cards</B> aren't supported by <B>MPlayer</B>.
    <U>It's very recommended to read the <A HREF="sound.html">sound card
    section</A>!</U></LI>
</UL>

<H4>Features:</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the <A HREF="#gui">GUI section</A>
    before compiling.</LI>
  <LI>If you want to install <B>MEncoder</B> (our great all-purpose encoder),
    see the <A HREF="encoding.html">MEncoder section</A>.</LI>
  <LI>If you have a V4L compatible <B>TV tuner</B> card, and wish to watch/grab
    and encode movies with <B>MPlayer</B>, read the <A HREF="#tv">TV input</A>
    section.</LI>
</UL>

<P>Then build <B>MPlayer</B>:</P>

<PRE>
    ./configure
    make
    make install
</PRE>

<P>At this point, <B>MPlayer</B> is ready to use. The directory
  <CODE>$PREFIX/share/mplayer</CODE> contains the <CODE>codecs.conf</CODE>
  file, which is used to tell the program all the codecs and their
  capabilities.  This file should always be kept up to date together with the
  main binary.<BR>
  Check if you have <CODE>codecs.conf</CODE> in your home directory
  (<CODE>~/.mplayer/codecs.conf</CODE>) left from old <B>MPlayer</B> versions, and remove it.</P>

<P><B>Debian users</B> can build a <CODE>.deb</CODE> package for themselves,
  it's very simple. Just exec <CODE>fakeroot debian/rules binary</CODE> in
  <B>MPlayer</B>'s root directory. See
  <A HREF="documentation.html#debian">Debian packaging</A> for detailed
  instructions.</P>

<P><B>Always browse the output of <CODE>./configure</CODE></B>, and the
  <CODE>configure.log</CODE> file, they contain information about what will be

  </UL>

<P>Currently you can't use the <CODE>-gui</CODE> option on the command line,
  due to technical reasons.</P>

<P>As <B>MPlayer</B> doesn't have a skin included, you have to download them if
  you want to use the GUI. See the
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html">download page</A>.
  They should be extracted to the usual system-wide directory
  (<CODE>$PREFIX/share/mplayer/Skin</CODE>), or to
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/Skin</CODE>. <B>MPlayer</B> by default looks in these
  directories for a directory named <I>default</I>, but you can use the
  <CODE>-skin newskin</CODE> option, or the <CODE>skin=newskin</CODE> config
  file directive to use the skin in <CODE>*/Skin/newskin</CODE> directory.</P>


<H2><A NAME="subtitles_osd">1.4 Subtitles and OSD</A></H2>

<P>
  <B>MPlayer</B> can display subtitles along with movie files. Currently the following 
  formats are supported:</P>
<UL>
  <LI>VobSub</LI>
  <LI>Microdvd</LI>
  <LI>SubRip</LI>

<P>If you experience a growing delay between the movie and the subtitles when
  using a MicroDVD subtitle file, most likely the frame rate of the movie and
  the subtitle file are different.<BR> Please note that the MicroDVD subtitle
  format uses absolute frame numbers for its timing, and therefore the
  <CODE>-subfps</CODE> option cannot be used with this format. As
  <B>MPlayer</B> has no way to guess the frame rate of the subtitle file, you
  have to manually convert the frame rate. There is a little perl script in the
  <CODE>contrib</CODE> directory of the MPlayer FTP site to do this conversion
  for you.</P>

<P>About DVD subtitles, read the <A HREF="cd-dvd.html#dvd">DVD section</A>.</P>


<H3><A NAME="mpsub">1.4.1 MPlayer's own subtitle format (MPsub)</A></H3>

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

  Display</B>.  OSD is used to display current time, volume bar, seek bar
  etc.</P>

<H3><A NAME="install_osd">1.4.2 Installing OSD and subtitles</A></H3>

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

<UL>
  <LI>download ready-to-use font packages from <B>MPlayer</B> site.
    Note: currently available fonts are limited for iso 8859-1/2 support,
    but there are some other (including Korean, Russian, 8859-8 etc) fonts
    at contrib/font section of FTP, made by users.<BR>
    <BR>
    Font should have appropriate font.desc file which maps unicode font

  in config file.</P>


<H2><A NAME="rtc">1.5 RTC</A></H2>

There are three timing methods in <B>MPlayer</B>.

<UL>
  <LI><B>To use the old method</B>, you don't have to do anything. It uses
    <CODE>usleep()</CODE> to tune A/V sync, with +/- 10ms accuracy. However
    sometimes the sync has to be tuned even finer.</LI>
  <LI><B>The new timer</B> code uses PC's RTC (Real Time Clock) for this task,
    because it has precise 1ms timers. It is automagically enabled when
    available, but requires root privileges, a <I>setuid root</I>
    <B>MPlayer</B> binary or a properly set up kernel.
    <BR>
    If you are running kernel 2.4.19pre8 or later you can adjust the maximum
    RTC frequency for normal users through the <CODE>/proc</CODE> filesystem.
    Use this command to enable RTC for normal users:
    <P>

<H1><A NAME="usage">3. Usage</A></H1>


<H2><A NAME="command_line">3.1 Command line</A></H2>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> utilizes a complex playtree. It consists of global options
  written as first (for example <CODE>mplayer -vfm 5</CODE>), and options
  written after filenames, that apply only to the given filename/URL/whatever
  (for example <CODE>mplayer -vfm 5 movie1.avi movie2.avi -vfm 4</CODE>).<BR>
  You can group filenames/URLs together using { and }. It's useful with
  option -loop: <CODE>mplayer { 1.avi -loop 2 2.avi } -loop 3</CODE>

</PRE>


<H2><A NAME="control">3.2 Control</A></H2>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> has a fully configurable, command driven, control layer which
  lets you control <B>MPlayer</B> with keyboard, mouse, joystick or remote
  control (using LIRC). See the man page for the complete list of keyboard
  controls.</P>


<H3><A NAME="controls_configuration">3.2.1 Controls configuration</A></H3>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> allows you bind any key/button to any <B>MPlayer</B> command
  using a simple config file.  The syntax consist of a key name followed by a
  command. The default config file location is
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/input.conf</CODE> but it can be overridden using the
  <CODE>-input</CODE> conf switch (relative path are relative to
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer</CODE>).

    Type 0 is a relative seek of +/- val seconds.<BR>
    Type 1 seek to val % in the movie.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>audio_delay</B> (float) val
    <P>Adjust the audio delay of val seconds</P></LI>
  <LI><B>quit</B>
    <P>Quit <B>MPlayer</B></P></LI>
  <LI><B>pause</B>
    <P>Pause/unpause the playback</P></LI>
  <LI><B>grap_frames</B>
    <P>Somebody know ?</P></LI>
  <LI><B>pt_step</B> (int) val [(int) force=0]

<P>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 <A HREF="http://www.lirc.org">www.lirc.org</A>.</P>

<P>If you have installed the lirc-package, configure will autodetect it. If
  everything went fine, <B>MPlayer</B> will print a message like "Setting up
  lirc support..." 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 :-)</P>

<P>The application name for <B>MPlayer</B> is - oh wonder - 'mplayer'.
  You can use any mplayer commands and even pass more than one command by
  separating them with \n. Don't forget to enable the repeat flag in .lircrc
  when it make sense (seek, volume, etc). Here's an excerpt from my
  .lircrc:</P>

  use the -lircconf &lt;filename&gt; switch to specify another file.</P>


<H3><A NAME="slave">3.2.3 Slave mode</A></H3>

<P>The slave mode allow you to build simple frontend to <B>MPlayer</B>. When
  enabled (with the <CODE>-slave</CODE> switch) <B>MPlayer</B> will read
  commands separated by new line (\n) from stdin.</P>


<H2><A NAME="streaming">3.3 Streaming from network or pipes</A></H2>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> can play files from network, using the HTTP, MMS or RTSP/RTP
  protocol.</P>

<P>Playing goes by simply using adding the URL to the command line.
  <B>MPlayer</B> also honors the http_proxy environment variable, and uses
  proxy if available. Proxy usage can also be forced:</P>

<P><CODE>mplayer http_proxy://proxy.micorsops.com:3128/http://micorsops.com:80/stream.asf</CODE></P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> can read from stdin (NOT named pipes). This can be for example
  used to play from FTP:</P>

<P><CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;wget ftp://micorsops.com/something.avi -O - | mplayer -</CODE></P>

<P>Note: it's also recommended to enable CACHE when playback from network:</P>

<H2><A NAME="freebsd">6.2 FreeBSD</A></H2>

<P>To build the package you will need GNU make (gmake, /usr/ports/devel/gmake),
  native BSD make will not work.</P>

<P>To run <B>MPlayer</B> 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).</P>

<P>If <B>MPlayer</B> complains about "CD-ROM Device '/dev/cdrom' not found!" make a
  symbolic link: <CODE>ln -s /dev/(your_cdrom_device) /dev/cdrom</CODE></P>

<P>There's no DVD support for FreeBSD yet.</P>

  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, <B>DivX/OpenDivX</B> movies should work, when using
  libavcodec.</P>

<P>On <B>UltraSPARC</B>s, <B>MPlayer</B> takes advantage of their <B>VIS</B>
  extensions (equivalent to MMX), currently only in <I>libmpeg2</I>,
  <I>libvo</I> and <I>libavcodec</I>, but not in mp3lib. You can watch a VOB
  file on a 400MHz CPU. You'll need
  <A HREF="http://www.sun.com/sparc/vis/mediaLib.html">mLib</A> installed.</P>

  decoding and for color space conversion in the video output drivers.</P>


<H2><A NAME="strongarm">6.4 StrongARM</A></H2>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> is reported to compile on StrongARM. Use the following command line:</P>

<PRE>
  ./configure --target=arm-linux --disable-css --with-x11libdir=/usr/arm/lib
	      --with-x11incdir=/usr/arm/lib --disable-gcc-checking
</PRE>

<H2><A NAME="qnx">6.6 QNX</A></H2>

<P>Works. You'll need to download SDL for QNX, and install it. Then run
  <B>MPlayer</B> with <CODE>-vo sdl:photon</CODE> and <CODE>-ao sdl:nto</CODE>
  options, and it should be fast.</P>

<P>The <CODE>-vo x11</CODE> output will be even slower than on Linux, since
  QNX has only X <I>emulation</I> which is VERY slow. Use SDL.</P>

<P>Due to limitations in different versions of gas (relocation vs mmx), you'll
  need to compile in two steps: First make sure that the non-native as is first
  in PATH and do a '<CODE>gmake -k</CODE>', then make sure that the native
  version is used and do '<CODE>gmake</CODE>'.</P>

<P>To use Win32 DLLs with <B>MPlayer</B> you will need to re-compile the
  kernel with "<CODE>option USER_LDT</CODE>".</P>

<P>If <B>MPlayer</B> complains about not finding '/dev/cdrom' or
  '/dev/dvd' make a symbolic link, e.g. <CODE>ln -s
  /dev/rcd0c /dev/dvd</CODE></P>

<P>The not so hardcore hackers amongst us might want to use the ports
  version (/usr/ports/x11/mplayer).</P>


<H2><A NAME="cygwin">6.8. Cygwin</A></H2>
 
<P>You will have to go to the <B>MPlayer</B> directory, and copy or symlink
  <CODE>etc/cygwin_inttypes.h</CODE> to <CODE>/usr/include/inttypes.h</CODE> to
  make <B>MPlayer</B> compile. Otherwise it will complain about missing
  <CODE>intypes.h</CODE>.</P>



<H1><A NAME="mailing_lists">Appendix A - Mailing lists</A></H1>

<P>There are some public mailing lists on <B>MPlayer</B>. Unless explicitly
  stated otherwise the language of these lists is <B>English</B>. Please do
  not send messages in other languages or HTML mail! Message size limit is 80k.
  If you have something bigger put it up for download somewhere. Click the
  links to subscribe. On the mailing lists, the same rules about writing
  and quoting apply as on usenet. Please follow them, it makes the life of

  Quoting HOWTO</A>.</P>

<UL>
  <LI>MPlayer developers list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng</A><BR>
    This list is about <B>MPlayer</B> development! Talking about interface/API
    changes, new libraries, code optimization, configure changes is ontopic
    here. Send patches but <B>not</B> bug reports, user questions, feature
    requests or flames here to keep the list traffic low.</LI>
  <LI>MPlayer users list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users</A>

    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb</A><BR>
    Things related to the hardware decoder card called DVB (<B>not</B> DXR3!).
  </LI>
  <LI>MPlayer CVS-log:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cvslog">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cvslog</A><BR>
    All changes in <B>MPlayer</B> code are automatically sent to this list. Only
    questions about these changes belong here (if you do not understand why a
    change is required or you have a better fix or you have noticed a possible
    bug/problem in the commit).</LI>
  <LI>MPlayer Cygwin-porting list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin</A><BR>
    List for discussion about <B>MPlayer</B>'s Cygwin port.</LI>
</UL>

<P><B>Note:</B> You can reach the searchable mailing list archives at
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch">http://www.mplayerhq.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch</A>.

7814:988498df1996

<H1><A NAME="introduction">1. Introduction</A></H1>


<P>MPlayer is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and
  <B>non-x86</B> CPUs, see the <A HREF="#ports">ports section</A>). It plays most
  MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg,
  FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, RealPlayer, and
  Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch <B>VideoCD</B>, <B>SVCD</B>, <B>DVD</B>,
  <B>3ivx</B>, <B>RealMedia</B>, and <B>DivX</B> movies too (and you don't need
  the avifile
  library at all!). 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 also use GGI and SDL (and this way all their
  drivers) and some lowlevel card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3Dfx and Radeon,
  Mach64, Permedia3) 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 <B><A HREF="video.html#dvb">DVB</A></B> and
  <B><A HREF="video.html#dxr3">DXR3/Hollywood+</A></B>. And what about the nice big antialiased
  shaded subtitles (<B>10 supported types</B>) with European/ISO 8859-1,2
  (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic, Korean fonts, and the onscreen
  display (OSD)?</P>

<P>MPlayer is under GPL v2 license.</P>

<P>The 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 temporarily rebuild their indexes with the <CODE>-idx</CODE> option, or
  permanently with MEncoder, thus enabling seeking!
  As you see, stability and quality are the most important things,
  but the speed is also amazing.</P>


<H2><A NAME="history">1.1 History</A></H2>

<H2><A NAME="installation">1.2 Installation</A></H2>

<P>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 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 DOES worth it.</P>

    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.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. For detailed information about gcc 2.96's bugs (that are
    still NOT fixed, they have been WORKED AROUND in MPlayer!), see the
    <A HREF="users_against_developers.html#gcc">gcc 2.96</A> section and the
    <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A>.</LI>
  <LI><B>XFree86</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest (4.2.1)</B>.
    Normally, everyone wants this, as starting with XFree86 4.0.2, it contains
    the <A HREF="video.html#xv">XVideo</A> extension (somewhere referred to

    usually isn't important.</LI>
  <LI><B>SDL</B> - 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).</LI>
  <LI><B>libjpeg</B> - optional JPEG decoder, used by -mf and some QT MOV files.
    Useful for both MPlayer and MEncoder if you plan to work with jpeg files.</LI>
  <LI><B>libpng</B> - recommended and default (M)PNG decoder. Required for GUI.
    Useful for both MPlayer and MEncoder.</LI>
  <LI><B>lame</B> - recommended, needed for encoding MP3 audio with MEncoder,
    suggested version is <B>always the newest</B> (at least 3.90).</LI>
  <LI><B>libogg</B> - optional, needed for playing OGG file format.</LI>
  <LI><B>libvorbis</B> - optional, needed for playing OGG Vorbis audio.</LI>
  <LI><B><A HREF="http://www.live.com/mplayer/">LIVE.COM Streaming Media</A></B>

      <LI>encoding with most of the mentioned codecs</LI>
      <LI>this codec is the <B>fastest codec available</B> for DivX/3/4/5 and
        other MPEG4 types. Recommended!</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><B>Win32 codecs</B>: If you plan to use MPlayer on x86
    architecture, you will possibly need them. Download and unzip w32codecs.zip
    to /usr/lib/win32 <B>BEFORE</B> compiling MPlayer, otherwise no Win32
    support will be compiled!<BR>
    <B>Note:</B> the avifile project has a similar codecs package, but it differs
    from ours. If you want to use all supported codecs, then install our package
    (do not worry, avifile works with it without problems). Features:<BR>
    <UL>

  </LI>
  <LI>The <A HREF="codecs.html#xanim">XAnim codecs</A> are the best (full
    screen, hardware YUV zoom) for decoding <B>3ivx</B> and Indeo 3/4/5 movies,
    and some old formats. And they are multiplatform, so this is the only way to
    play Indeo on non-x86 platforms (well, apart from using XAnim:). But for
    example Cinepak movies are best played with MPlayer's own Cinepak
    decoder!</LI>
  <LI>For <B>Ogg Vorbis</B> audio decoding you need to install
    <CODE>libvorbis</CODE> properly. Use deb/rpm packages if available, or
    compile from
    <A HREF="http://ogg.org/ogg/vorbis/download/vorbis_nightly_cvs.tgz">source</A>
    (this is a nightly updated tarball of Vorbis CVS).</LI>
  <LI>MPlayer can use the libraries of RealPlayer 8 or RealONE to play
    files with <B>RealVideo 2.0 - 4.0</B> video, and Sipro/Cook audio. See
    <A HREF="formats.html#real">RealMedia file format</A> section for
    installation instructions and more information.</LI>
</UL>

  <LI><B>Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards</B>: although a
    <A HREF="video.html#vidix">Vidix driver</A> is provided, it is recommended
    to use the mga_vid kernel module instead, for it works much better.
    Please see the <A HREF="video.html#mga_vid">mga_vid</A> section about its
    installation and usage. It is important to do these steps <I>before</I>
    compiling MPlayer, otherwise no mga_vid support will be built. Also
    check out the <A HREF="video.html#tv-out_matrox">Matrox TV-out</A> section.
    <U><B>If you don't use Linux</B></U>, your only possibility is the VIDIX
    driver: read the <A HREF="video.html#vidix">VIDIX</A> section.</LI>
  <LI><B>3Dfx Voodoo3/Banshee cards</B>: please see the
    <A HREF="video.html#tdfxfb">tdfxfb</A> section in order to gain big
    speedup. It is important to do these steps <B>before</B> compiling
    MPlayer, otherwise no 3Dfx support will be built. Also see the <A
    HREF="video.html#tv-out_voodoo">3dfx TV-out section</A>. If you use X, use
    <B>at least 4.2.0</B>, as the 3dfx Xv driver was broken in 4.1.0 and earlier
    releases.</LI>
  <LI><B>ATI cards</B>: <A HREF="video.html#vidix">Vidix driver</A> is
    provided for the following cards:

    <A HREF="codecs.html#software_ac3">Software AC3 decoding</A> section.
    For hardware AC3 passthrough you <B>must</B> use ALSA 0.9 with OSS emulation!</LI>
  <LI><B>C-Media with SP/DIF out</B>: hardware AC3 passthrough is possible
    with these cards, see
    <A HREF="codecs.html#hardware_ac3">Hardware AC3 decoding</A> section.</LI>
  <LI>Features of <B>other cards</B> aren't supported by MPlayer.
    <U>It's very recommended to read the <A HREF="sound.html">sound card
    section</A>!</U></LI>
</UL>

<H4>Features:</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the <A HREF="#gui">GUI section</A>
    before compiling.</LI>
  <LI>If you want to install MEncoder (our great all-purpose encoder),
    see the <A HREF="encoding.html">MEncoder section</A>.</LI>
  <LI>If you have a V4L compatible <B>TV tuner</B> card, and wish to watch/grab
    and encode movies with MPlayer, read the <A HREF="#tv">TV input</A>
    section.</LI>
</UL>

<P>Then build MPlayer:</P>

<PRE>
    ./configure
    make
    make install
</PRE>

<P>At this point, MPlayer is ready to use. The directory
  <CODE>$PREFIX/share/mplayer</CODE> contains the <CODE>codecs.conf</CODE>
  file, which is used to tell the program all the codecs and their
  capabilities.  This file should always be kept up to date together with the
  main binary.<BR>
  Check if you have <CODE>codecs.conf</CODE> in your home directory
  (<CODE>~/.mplayer/codecs.conf</CODE>) left from old MPlayer versions, and remove it.</P>

<P><B>Debian users</B> can build a <CODE>.deb</CODE> package for themselves,
  it's very simple. Just exec <CODE>fakeroot debian/rules binary</CODE> in
  MPlayer's root directory. See
  <A HREF="documentation.html#debian">Debian packaging</A> for detailed
  instructions.</P>

<P><B>Always browse the output of <CODE>./configure</CODE></B>, and the
  <CODE>configure.log</CODE> file, they contain information about what will be

  </UL>

<P>Currently you can't use the <CODE>-gui</CODE> option on the command line,
  due to technical reasons.</P>

<P>As MPlayer doesn't have a skin included, you have to download them if
  you want to use the GUI. See the
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html">download page</A>.
  They should be extracted to the usual system-wide directory
  (<CODE>$PREFIX/share/mplayer/Skin</CODE>), or to
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/Skin</CODE>. MPlayer by default looks in these
  directories for a directory named <I>default</I>, but you can use the
  <CODE>-skin newskin</CODE> option, or the <CODE>skin=newskin</CODE> config
  file directive to use the skin in <CODE>*/Skin/newskin</CODE> directory.</P>


<H2><A NAME="subtitles_osd">1.4 Subtitles and OSD</A></H2>

<P>
  MPlayer can display subtitles along with movie files. Currently the following 
  formats are supported:</P>
<UL>
  <LI>VobSub</LI>
  <LI>Microdvd</LI>
  <LI>SubRip</LI>

<P>If you experience a growing delay between the movie and the subtitles when
  using a MicroDVD subtitle file, most likely the frame rate of the movie and
  the subtitle file are different.<BR> Please note that the MicroDVD subtitle
  format uses absolute frame numbers for its timing, and therefore the
  <CODE>-subfps</CODE> option cannot be used with this format. As
  MPlayer has no way to guess the frame rate of the subtitle file, you
  have to manually convert the frame rate. There is a little perl script in the
  <CODE>contrib</CODE> directory of the MPlayer FTP site to do this conversion
  for you.</P>

<P>About DVD subtitles, read the <A HREF="cd-dvd.html#dvd">DVD section</A>.</P>


<H3><A NAME="mpsub">1.4.1 MPlayer's own subtitle format (MPsub)</A></H3>

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

  Display</B>.  OSD is used to display current time, volume bar, seek bar
  etc.</P>

<H3><A NAME="install_osd">1.4.2 Installing OSD and subtitles</A></H3>

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

<UL>
  <LI>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, 8859-8 etc) fonts
    at contrib/font section of FTP, made by users.<BR>
    <BR>
    Font should have appropriate font.desc file which maps unicode font

  in config file.</P>


<H2><A NAME="rtc">1.5 RTC</A></H2>

There are three timing methods in MPlayer.

<UL>
  <LI><B>To use the old method</B>, you don't have to do anything. It uses
    <CODE>usleep()</CODE> to tune A/V sync, with +/- 10ms accuracy. However
    sometimes the sync has to be tuned even finer.</LI>
  <LI><B>The new timer</B> code uses PC's RTC (Real Time Clock) for this task,
    because it has precise 1ms timers. It is automagically enabled when
    available, but requires root privileges, a <I>setuid root</I>
    MPlayer binary or a properly set up kernel.
    <BR>
    If you are running kernel 2.4.19pre8 or later you can adjust the maximum
    RTC frequency for normal users through the <CODE>/proc</CODE> filesystem.
    Use this command to enable RTC for normal users:
    <P>

<H1><A NAME="usage">3. Usage</A></H1>


<H2><A NAME="command_line">3.1 Command line</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer utilizes a complex playtree. It consists of global options
  written as first (for example <CODE>mplayer -vfm 5</CODE>), and options
  written after filenames, that apply only to the given filename/URL/whatever
  (for example <CODE>mplayer -vfm 5 movie1.avi movie2.avi -vfm 4</CODE>).<BR>
  You can group filenames/URLs together using { and }. It's useful with
  option -loop: <CODE>mplayer { 1.avi -loop 2 2.avi } -loop 3</CODE>

</PRE>


<H2><A NAME="control">3.2 Control</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer has a fully configurable, command driven, control layer which
  lets you control MPlayer with keyboard, mouse, joystick or remote
  control (using LIRC). See the man page for the complete list of keyboard
  controls.</P>


<H3><A NAME="controls_configuration">3.2.1 Controls configuration</A></H3>

<P>MPlayer allows you bind any key/button to any MPlayer command
  using a simple config file.  The syntax consist of a key name followed by a
  command. The default config file location is
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/input.conf</CODE> but it can be overridden using the
  <CODE>-input</CODE> conf switch (relative path are relative to
  <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer</CODE>).

    Type 0 is a relative seek of +/- val seconds.<BR>
    Type 1 seek to val % in the movie.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>audio_delay</B> (float) val
    <P>Adjust the audio delay of val seconds</P></LI>
  <LI><B>quit</B>
    <P>Quit MPlayer</P></LI>
  <LI><B>pause</B>
    <P>Pause/unpause the playback</P></LI>
  <LI><B>grap_frames</B>
    <P>Somebody know ?</P></LI>
  <LI><B>pt_step</B> (int) val [(int) force=0]

<P>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 <A HREF="http://www.lirc.org">www.lirc.org</A>.</P>

<P>If you have installed the lirc-package, configure will autodetect it. If
  everything went fine, MPlayer will print a message like "Setting up
  lirc support..." 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 :-)</P>

<P>The application name for MPlayer is - oh wonder - 'mplayer'.
  You can use any mplayer commands and even pass more than one command by
  separating them with \n. Don't forget to enable the repeat flag in .lircrc
  when it make sense (seek, volume, etc). Here's an excerpt from my
  .lircrc:</P>

  use the -lircconf &lt;filename&gt; switch to specify another file.</P>


<H3><A NAME="slave">3.2.3 Slave mode</A></H3>

<P>The slave mode allow you to build simple frontend to MPlayer. When
  enabled (with the <CODE>-slave</CODE> switch) MPlayer will read
  commands separated by new line (\n) from stdin.</P>


<H2><A NAME="streaming">3.3 Streaming from network or pipes</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer can play files from network, using the HTTP, MMS or RTSP/RTP
  protocol.</P>

<P>Playing goes by simply using adding the URL to the command line.
  MPlayer also honors the http_proxy environment variable, and uses
  proxy if available. Proxy usage can also be forced:</P>

<P><CODE>mplayer http_proxy://proxy.micorsops.com:3128/http://micorsops.com:80/stream.asf</CODE></P>

<P>MPlayer can read from stdin (NOT named pipes). This can be for example
  used to play from FTP:</P>

<P><CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;wget ftp://micorsops.com/something.avi -O - | mplayer -</CODE></P>

<P>Note: it's also recommended to enable CACHE when playback from network:</P>

<H2><A NAME="freebsd">6.2 FreeBSD</A></H2>

<P>To build the package you will need GNU make (gmake, /usr/ports/devel/gmake),
  native BSD make will not work.</P>

<P>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).</P>

<P>If MPlayer complains about "CD-ROM Device '/dev/cdrom' not found!" make a
  symbolic link: <CODE>ln -s /dev/(your_cdrom_device) /dev/cdrom</CODE></P>

<P>There's no DVD support for FreeBSD yet.</P>

  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, <B>DivX/OpenDivX</B> movies should work, when using
  libavcodec.</P>

<P>On <B>UltraSPARC</B>s, MPlayer takes advantage of their <B>VIS</B>
  extensions (equivalent to MMX), currently only in <I>libmpeg2</I>,
  <I>libvo</I> and <I>libavcodec</I>, but not in mp3lib. You can watch a VOB
  file on a 400MHz CPU. You'll need
  <A HREF="http://www.sun.com/sparc/vis/mediaLib.html">mLib</A> installed.</P>

  decoding and for color space conversion in the video output drivers.</P>


<H2><A NAME="strongarm">6.4 StrongARM</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer is reported to compile on StrongARM. Use the following command line:</P>

<PRE>
  ./configure --target=arm-linux --disable-css --with-x11libdir=/usr/arm/lib
	      --with-x11incdir=/usr/arm/lib --disable-gcc-checking
</PRE>

<H2><A NAME="qnx">6.6 QNX</A></H2>

<P>Works. You'll need to download SDL for QNX, and install it. Then run
  MPlayer with <CODE>-vo sdl:photon</CODE> and <CODE>-ao sdl:nto</CODE>
  options, and it should be fast.</P>

<P>The <CODE>-vo x11</CODE> output will be even slower than on Linux, since
  QNX has only X <I>emulation</I> which is VERY slow. Use SDL.</P>

<P>Due to limitations in different versions of gas (relocation vs mmx), you'll
  need to compile in two steps: First make sure that the non-native as is first
  in PATH and do a '<CODE>gmake -k</CODE>', then make sure that the native
  version is used and do '<CODE>gmake</CODE>'.</P>

<P>To use Win32 DLLs with MPlayer you will need to re-compile the
  kernel with "<CODE>option USER_LDT</CODE>".</P>

<P>If MPlayer complains about not finding '/dev/cdrom' or
  '/dev/dvd' make a symbolic link, e.g. <CODE>ln -s
  /dev/rcd0c /dev/dvd</CODE></P>

<P>The not so hardcore hackers amongst us might want to use the ports
  version (/usr/ports/x11/mplayer).</P>


<H2><A NAME="cygwin">6.8. Cygwin</A></H2>
 
<P>You will have to go to the MPlayer directory, and copy or symlink
  <CODE>etc/cygwin_inttypes.h</CODE> to <CODE>/usr/include/inttypes.h</CODE> to
  make MPlayer compile. Otherwise it will complain about missing
  <CODE>intypes.h</CODE>.</P>



<H1><A NAME="mailing_lists">Appendix A - Mailing lists</A></H1>

<P>There are some public mailing lists on MPlayer. Unless explicitly
  stated otherwise the language of these lists is <B>English</B>. Please do
  not send messages in other languages or HTML mail! Message size limit is 80k.
  If you have something bigger put it up for download somewhere. Click the
  links to subscribe. On the mailing lists, the same rules about writing
  and quoting apply as on usenet. Please follow them, it makes the life of

  Quoting HOWTO</A>.</P>

<UL>
  <LI>MPlayer developers list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dev-eng</A><BR>
    This list is about MPlayer development! Talking about interface/API
    changes, new libraries, code optimization, configure changes is ontopic
    here. Send patches but <B>not</B> bug reports, user questions, feature
    requests or flames here to keep the list traffic low.</LI>
  <LI>MPlayer users list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-users</A>

    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-dvb</A><BR>
    Things related to the hardware decoder card called DVB (<B>not</B> DXR3!).
  </LI>
  <LI>MPlayer CVS-log:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cvslog">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cvslog</A><BR>
    All changes in MPlayer code are automatically sent to this list. Only
    questions about these changes belong here (if you do not understand why a
    change is required or you have a better fix or you have noticed a possible
    bug/problem in the commit).</LI>
  <LI>MPlayer Cygwin-porting list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin</A><BR>
    List for discussion about MPlayer's Cygwin port.</LI>
</UL>

<P><B>Note:</B> You can reach the searchable mailing list archives at
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch">http://www.mplayerhq.hu/cgi-bin/htsearch</A>.