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enhanced Installation section

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<P><B><A NAME=1.1>1.1. Overview</A></B></P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and
<B>non-x86</B> CPUs, see <A HREF="#6">section 6</A>). It plays most MPEG, VOB,
AVI, VIVO, ASF/WMV, QT/MOV files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32
DLL codecs. You can watch <B>VideoCD</B>, <B>SVCD</B>, <B>DVD</B>, <B>3ivx</B>,
and even <B>DivX</B> 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, but you can
use SDL (and this way all drivers of SDL) 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. <B>MPlayer</B>
supports displaying through some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the
<B><A HREF="DVB">DVB</A></B> and <B> <A HREF="DXR3">DXR3/Hollywood+</A></B> !
And what about the nice big antialiased shaded subtitles (<B>9 supported
types!!!</B>) with european/ISO 8859-1,2 (hungarian, english, czech, etc),
cyrillic, korean fonts, and OSD?</P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> 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.</P>

</UL></P>

<P><B><A NAME=1.3>1.3. Installation</A></B></P>

<P><B><I>REQUIREMENTS</I></B><BR>

<UL>
  <LI><B>binutils</B> - suggested version is <B>2.11.x</B> . This program is
  responsible for generating MMX/3DNow!/etc instructions, thus very important.</LI>
  <LI><B>gcc</B> - suggested version is from <B>2.95.2</B> to <B>2.95.4</B>.
  <B>NEVER</B> use 2.96 or 3.x.x !!! They generate faulty code.</LI>
  <LI><B>XFree86</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest (4.1.0)</B>. Normally
  everyone wants this. If you don't know why, you <B>do</B> need it. Make
  sure its <B>development package</B> is installed too !</LI>
  <LI><B>make</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest</B> (at least 3.79.x). This
  usually isn't important.</LI>
  <LI><B>SDL</B> - it's not mandatory, but can help in some cases. Always
  use the newest (beginning from 1.2.x).</LI>
</UL>
</P>

<P>Read the following before trying to compile <B>MPlayer</B>:</P>

<UL>
<LI>If you have <B>gcc 2.96</B> on your system, <A HREF="users_against_developers.html"><B><I>READ
THIS</A> and the <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A> !</I></B></LI>
</UL>

<P><B><I>CODECS</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI><B>libavcodec</B> : If you want to use this DivX3/DivX4/etc codec, check the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.1.2">2.2.1.2</A> section before compiling. Features :<BR>
<UL>
  <LI>you can <B>gain <I>DivX/DivX4</I> playing on non-x86 machines</B></LI>
  <LI>this codec has the <B>greatest decoding speed</B> for DivX and DivX4
movies (even faster than the original DivX4 library itself) !</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

<LI><B>DivX4</B> : information about this codec is available in the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.1.1">2.2.1.1</A> section. If you don't want to use
<B>MEncoder</B>, you possibly don't want this codec as <B>libavcodec</B> (see
above) is much faster than this.<BR>
Features :<UL>
  <LI>can play old <B>DivX3</B> movies much faster than the Win32 DLL</LI>
  <LI>it's closed-source, and only an x86 version is available.</LI>
  <LI><I>You also need this codec for <B>MEncoder</B>, see below !</I></LI>
</UL>
</LI>

<LI>If you want to play <B>3ivx</B> movies, check the <A HREF=codecs.html#2.2.1.3>
XAnim codecs section</A>.</LI>
</UL>

<P><B><I>VIDEOCARDS</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI><B>Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards</B> : please see the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.7">mga_vid</A>
section in order to gain big speedup. It is important to do these steps
<I>before</I> compiling <B>MPlayer</B>, otherwise no Matrox-specific support will be
built. Also check out the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.A.1">Matrox TV-out</A>

<LI><B>ATI cards</B> : see the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.A.2">ATI cards
section</A> of the TV-out documentation, to know what features of your card is
supported under Linux/MPlayer. If you have a <B>Radeon</B> or <B>Rage128</B> card, we have a
<B>XXX_vid</B> driver for you, with TV out ! Check <A
HREF="video.html#2.3.1.14">this</A> section !</LI>
</UL>

<P><B><I>SOUNDCARDS</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI><B>Soundblaster Live!</B> : with this card you can use 4 or 6 (<B>5.1</B>)
channels AC3 decoding instead of 2. Read the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.2.1">Software AC3 decoding</A> section.</LI>
</UL>

<P><B><I>FEATURES</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI>For DVD support, you'll have to compile libdvdread and libdvdcss.
See <A HREF="cd-dvd.html#4.2">section 4.2</A> for more information.</LI>

<LI>Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the <A HREF=#1.4>1.4 section</A>
before compiling.</LI>

  <LI>specify <CODE>gui=yes</CODE> in your config file</LI>
  <LI><CODE>ln -s /usr/local/bin/mplayer /usr/local/bin/gmplayer</CODE> ,
  and call <CODE>gmplayer</CODE> instead.
</UL>
</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>/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin</CODE>),
or to <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/Skin</CODE> . <B>MPlayer</B> by default looks in

3288:c21cea0a12aa

<P><B><A NAME=1.1>1.1. Overview</A></B></P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> is a movie player for LINUX (runs on many other Unices, and
<B>non-x86</B> CPUs, see <A HREF="#6">section 6</A>). 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 <B>VideoCD</B>, <B>SVCD</B>, <B>DVD</B>,
<B>3ivx</B>, and even <B>DivX</B> 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. <B>MPlayer</B> supports displaying through some hardware MPEG
decoder boards, such as the <B><A HREF="DVB">DVB</A></B> and <B> <A
HREF="DXR3">DXR3/Hollywood+</A></B> ! And what about the nice big antialiased
shaded subtitles (<B>9 supported types!!!</B>) with european/ISO 8859-1,2
(hungarian, english, czech, etc), cyrillic, korean fonts, and OSD?</P>

<P><B>MPlayer</B> 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.</P>

</UL></P>

<P><B><A NAME=1.3>1.3. Installation</A></B></P>

<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 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.</P>

<P>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.</P>

<P><B><I>SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS</I></B><BR>

<UL>
  <LI><B>binutils</B> - suggested version is <B>2.11.x</B> . This program is
    responsible for generating MMX/3DNow!/etc instructions, thus very important.</LI>
  <LI><B>gcc</B> - suggested version is from <B>2.95.2</B> to <B>2.95.4</B>.
    <B>NEVER</B> 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
    <A HREF="users_against_developers.html"><B><I>here</I></B></A> and in the
    <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A> !</I></B></LI>
  <LI><B>XFree86</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest (4.1.0)</B>.
    Normally everyone wants this, as starting from XFree86 4.0.2, it contains
    the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.2">XVideo</A> extension (somewhere referred
    as <B>Xv</B>) which is needed to enable the hardware YUV acceleration (fast
    image display) on cards that support it. <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.2">More
    information available.</A><BR>
    Make sure its <B>development package</B> is installed too otherwise
    it won't work.<BR>
    For some videocards you don't need XFree86. See list below.</LI>
  <LI><B>make</B> - suggested version is <B>always the newest</B> (at least 3.79.x). This
    usually isn't important.</LI>
  <LI><B>SDL</B> - it's not mandatory, but can help in some cases. Always
    use the newest (beginning from 1.2.x).</LI>
</UL>

<P><B><I>CODECS</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI><B>libavcodec</B> : If you want to use this DivX3/DivX4/etc codec, check the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.1.2">2.2.1.2</A> section before compiling. Features :<BR>
<UL>
  <LI>you can <B>gain <I>DivX/DivX4</I> playing on non-x86 machines</B></LI>
  <LI>this codec has the <B>greatest decoding speed</B> for DivX and DivX4
movies (even faster than the original DivX4 library itself) ! 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

<LI><B>DivX4</B> : information about this codec is available in the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.1.1">2.2.1.1</A> section. If you don't want to use
<B>MEncoder</B>, you possibly don't want this codec as <B>libavcodec</B> (see
above) is much faster than this.<BR>
Features :<UL>
  <LI>can play old <B>DivX3</B> movies much faster than the Win32 DLL but
    slower than <B>libavcodec</B> !</LI>
  <LI>it's closed-source, and only an x86 version is available.</LI>
  <LI><I>You also need this codec for <B>MEncoder</B>, see below !</I></LI>
</UL>
</LI>

<LI>If you want to play <B>3ivx</B> movies, check the <A HREF=codecs.html#2.2.1.3>
XAnim codecs section</A>.</LI>

<LI>The <A HREF=codecs.html#2.2.1.3>XAnim codecs</A> 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:).</LI>

</UL>

<P><B><I>VIDEOCARDS</I></B></P>

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

<P>
<B><I>YUV cards</I></B></P>

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

<P>
<UL>
<LI><B>Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 cards</B> : please see the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.7">mga_vid</A>
section in order to gain big speedup. It is important to do these steps
<I>before</I> compiling <B>MPlayer</B>, otherwise no Matrox-specific support will be
built. Also check out the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.A.1">Matrox TV-out</A>

<LI><B>ATI cards</B> : see the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.A.2">ATI cards
section</A> of the TV-out documentation, to know what features of your card is
supported under Linux/MPlayer. If you have a <B>Radeon</B> or <B>Rage128</B> card, we have a
<B>XXX_vid</B> driver for you, with TV out ! Check <A
HREF="video.html#2.3.1.14">this</A> section !</LI>

<LI><B>S3 cards</B> : 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 <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.2.2">S3 Xv
section</A> for details. Older, non-Savage cards have no, or slow hardware
support.</LI>

<LI><B>Nvidia cards</B> : very bad choice for video playing. Nvidia's
cards are manufactured on the far-east, and have very cheap and bad
quality chips. Moreover, <U>the built-in Nvidia driver in XFree86 doesn't
contain support for hardware YUV acceleration!</U> You have to download
Nvidia's closed-source drivers from nvidia.com . See details in <A
HREF="video.html#2.3.1.2.3">Nvidia Xv driver</A> section.</LI>

<LI><B>other cards</B> : none of the above?
  <UL>
    <LI>Try if the XFree86 driver (and your card) supports hardware
      acceleration. See the <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.2">Xv section</A> for
      details.</LI>
    <LI>If it doesn't, your card is one of the :</LI>
  </UL>
</LI>

</UL>
</P>

<P>
<B><I>Non-YUV cards</I></B></P>

<P>
Fullscreen playing can be achieved by either zooming
(<B>by software</B>, 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 <B>MPlayer</B>, <U>this behaviour can
be switched on by using the <CODE>-vm</CODE> option</U> and with
the following drivers :
<UL>
  <LI><B>using</B> XFree86 : see details in
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.3">DGA driver</A> and
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.13">X11 driver</A> sections. DGA is
    recommended!</LI>
  <LI><B>not using</B> XFree86 : try the drivers in the following order :
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.12">vesa</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.6">fbdev</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.5">svgalib</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#2.3.1.11">aalib</A>.</LI>
</UL>
</P>

<P><B><I>SOUNDCARDS</I></B></P>

<UL>

<LI><B>Soundblaster Live!</B> : with this card you can use 4 or 6 (<B>5.1</B>)
channels AC3 decoding instead of 2. Read the
<A HREF="codecs.html#2.2.2.1">Software AC3 decoding</A> section.</LI>

<LI><B>other cards'</B> features aren't supported by <B>MPlayer</B>.
  <U>It's very recommended to read the <A HREF="sound.html#2.3.2">soundcards
  section</A> !</U>
</UL>

<P><B><I>FEATURES</I></B></P>

<UL>
<LI>For DVD support, you'll have to compile libdvdcss and libdvdread, and
in this order!
See <A HREF="cd-dvd.html#4.2">section 4.2</A> for more information.</LI>

<LI>Decide if you need GUI. If you do, see the <A HREF=#1.4>1.4 section</A>
before compiling.</LI>

  <LI>specify <CODE>gui=yes</CODE> in your config file</LI>
  <LI><CODE>ln -s /usr/local/bin/mplayer /usr/local/bin/gmplayer</CODE> ,
  and call <CODE>gmplayer</CODE> instead.
</UL>
</P>

<P>Since GTK doesn't run from a <B>setuid root</B> binary, you can't use
the GUI and the <B>new timer code</B> (mentioned above) together (unless
you run <B>MPlayer</B> as root, of course).</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>/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin</CODE>),
or to <CODE>$HOME/.mplayer/Skin</CODE> . <B>MPlayer</B> by default looks in