Mercurial > mplayer.hg
view DOCS/tech/codecs.conf.txt @ 6547:1c282256162a
it's bug not vbug...
author | jonas |
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date | Mon, 24 Jun 2002 11:03:04 +0000 |
parents | e604be87613d |
children | e8c9bfb533ad |
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Understanding MPlayer's etc/codecs.conf File Introduction ------------ MPlayer features a very flexible codec architecture which allows it to use its own open source codecs, as well as open source libraries, Win32 codec DLLs, and XAnim binary codec modules. To the MPlayer user, the most visible piece of this architecture is the etc/codecs.conf file. This is a text-based configuration file that controls which MPlayer components are in charge of handling particular compressed data formats. The codecs.conf file is stored either in a shared directory for all system users to access, or in the .mplayer directory in a user's home directory. When MPlayer starts, it first looks for a codecs.conf file in a user's home directory. Failing that, it searches for the shared file. If it can't find a codecs.conf file, MPlayer will refuse to run. The codecs.conf file is really quite simple. It is simply a collection of codec definition blocks that define how different media types should be handled. There are a number of keywords that can occur in a block. Not all of them are required and there is no particular order enforced. Editing codecs.conf ------------------- You can edit codecs.conf using your favorite text editor. Anything that comes after a semicolon (;) on a line is regarded as a comment. For example: ; this is a comment format 0x34616d69 ; "ima4" (MOV files) The codec blocks can be in any order; the file parser doesn't care. However, they are organized in a particular order for the benefit of human readers. For example, all of the open source decoders that MPlayer implements natively are grouped in one section. Release Number -------------- Your codecs.conf now requires a release number to avoid codec release incompatibilities. The format is simple: (YYYYMMDD) release 20020520 Whenever changes are made to the codecs that *require* an updated codecs.conf, then MPlayer will no longer accept outdated versions. It is not recommended to change this line unless you know exactly what you are doing. Video Codecs ------------ Let's jump right in with an example. Here is an example video codec block: videocodec indeo5ds info "Intel Indeo 5" status working fourcc IV50,iv50 driver dshow dll "ir50_32.dll" guid 0x30355649, 0x0000, 0x0010, 0x80, 0x00, 0x00, 0xaa, 0x00, 0x38, 0x9b, 0x71 out YV12 out YUY2 out BGR32,BGR24,BGR16,BGR15 This is a particularly full-featured video codec. The "videocodec" keyword identifies the fact that this is the start of a new video codec. "indeo5ds" is MPlayer's unique name for the codec. The next line has the keyword "info" which specifies a human-readable comment accompanies this codec. The "status" keyword carries information about the codec's functional status. MPlayer currently recognizes 4 status levels: working, buggy, crashing, and untested. The next line lists 4-character codes (FOURCCs) that are associated with this codec. There can be more than one FOURCC specified on a fourcc line as long as they're separated with a comma. There can also be multiple fourcc lines in the codec. The "driver" keyword associates this codec with an internal MPlayer decoder module. MPlayer has a module named "dshow" that handles data encoded by the codec. The "dll" keyword specifies which Win32 or XAnim binary module needs to be loaded in order to handle the specific media type. This keyword is usually only used in conjunction with the dshow, vfw, acm, and xanim drivers since they all manage communication with binary-only modules. The "guid" keyword identifies a 16-byte Microsoft GUID that some media files use to identify codecs. The "out" keyword identifies which output format that the decoder is known to output. Just like the fourcc line, there can be multiple out lines or multiple comma-separated output formats on the same line. The output formats should be listed in order of preference. Audio Codecs ------------ Here is an example a rather full-featured audio codec block: audiocodec mp3 info "MPEG layer-2, layer-3" status working comment "Optimized to MMX/SSE/3Dnow!" format 0x50 format 0x55 format 0x33706d2e ; ".mp3" CBR/VBR MP3 (MOV files) format 0x5500736d ; "ms\0\x55" older mp3 fcc (MOV files) driver mp3lib dll "mp3lib (mpglib)" flags seekable Many of the keywords are the same as a video codec block. However, we see a few that we haven't seen before. The "comment" keyword identifies another human-readable note for this codec. The "format" keyword performs a similar job as the fourcc line. However, since certain media file formats (notably AVI) identify audio formats with 16-bit numbers rather than 32-bit FOURCCs, it's necessary to use this convention to accomodate them. However, as shown in this example, FOURCCs can also be specified with the format keyword as long as they're converted to their hex representation. It's important to note that this can be useful for video codecs as well if a FOURCC contains a space (such as Apple's "rle " codec). The "flags" keywords identifies any additional abilities of this codec. Currently, seekable is the only flag supported. EOF