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  <TITLE>Documentation - MPlayer - The Movie Player for Linux</TITLE>
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<H1 ALIGN="center">MPlayer - The Movie Player for LINUX</H1>

<H2 ALIGN="center">&copy; 2000-2002 Arpad Gereoffy (A'rpi/ESP-team)<BR>
  <A HREF="http://www.mplayerhq.hu">http://www.mplayerhq.hu</A></H2>

<P ALIGN="center">[ English ]
  <A HREF="Hungarian/documentation.html">[ Hungarian ]</A>
  <A HREF="German/documentation.html">[ German ]</A>
  <A HREF="French/documentation.html">[ French ]</A>
  <A HREF="Polish/documentation.html">[ Polish ]</A>
  <A HREF="Italian/documentation.html">[ Italian ]</A>
  <A HREF="Chinese/documentation.html">[ Chinese ]</A></P>

<HR>

<H2>Table of Contents</H2>

<HR>

<UL>
  <LI><A HREF="#reading">0. How to read this documentation</A></LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#introduction">1. Introduction</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="#history">1.1 History</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#installation">1.2 Installation</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#gui">1.3 What about the GUI?</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#subtitles_osd">1.4 Subtitles and OSD</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#mpsub">1.4.1 MPlayer's own subtitle format (MPsub)</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#install_osd">1.4.2 Installing OSD and subtitles</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#menu">1.4.3 OSD Menu</A></LI>
	</UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#rtc">1.5 RTC</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#features">2. Features</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="formats.html">2.1 Supported formats</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="formats.html#video_formats">2.1.1 Video formats</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#mpeg">2.1.1.1 MPEG files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#avi">2.1.1.2 AVI files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#asf">2.1.1.3 ASF/WMV files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#mov">2.1.1.4 QuickTime/MOV files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#vivo">2.1.1.5 VIVO files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#fli">2.1.1.6 FLI files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#real">2.1.1.7 RealMedia (RM) files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#nuppelvideo">2.1.1.8 NuppelVideo files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#yuv4mpeg">2.1.1.9 yuv4mpeg files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#film">2.1.1.10 FILM files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#roq">2.1.1.11 RoQ files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#ogg">2.1.1.12 OGG/OGM files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#sdp">2.1.1.13 SDP files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#pva">2.1.1.14 PVA files</A></LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
          <LI><A HREF="formats.html#audio_formats">2.1.2 Audio formats</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#mp3">2.1.2.1 MP3 files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#wav">2.1.2.2 WAV files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#ogg_vorbis">2.1.2.3 OGG/OGM files (Vorbis)</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#wma">2.1.2.4 WMA/ASF files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#mp4">2.1.2.5 MP4 files</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="formats.html#cdda">2.1.2.6 CD audio</A></LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="codecs.html">2.2 Supported codecs</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#video_codecs">2.2.1 Video codecs</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#divx">2.2.1.1 DivX4/DivX5</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#libavcodec">2.2.1.2 FFmpeg DivX/libavcodec</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#xanim">2.2.1.3 XAnim codecs</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#vivo_video">2.2.1.4 VIVO video</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#mpeg">2.2.1.5 MPEG 1/2 video</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#ms_video1">2.2.1.6 MS Video1</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#cinepak">2.2.1.7 Cinepak CVID</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#realvideo">2.2.1.8 RealVideo</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#xvid">2.2.1.9 XViD</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#sorenson">2.2.1.10 Sorenson</A></LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
          <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#audio_codecs">2.2.2 Audio codecs</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#software_ac3">2.2.2.1 Software AC3 decoding</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#hardware_ac3">2.2.2.2 Hardware AC3 decoding</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#libmad">2.2.2.3 libmad support</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#vivo_audio">2.2.2.4 VIVO audio</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#realaudio">2.2.2.5 RealAudio</A></LI>
             </UL>
          </LI>
          <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#importing">2.2.3 Win32 codec importing HOWTO</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#importing_vfw">2.2.3.1 VFW codecs</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="codecs.html#importing_directshow">2.2.3.2 DirectShow codecs</A></LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#output">2.3 Output devices</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="video.html">2.3.1 Video output devices</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="video.html#mtrr">2.3.1.1 Setting up MTRR</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="video.html#normal">2.3.1.2 Video outputs for traditional video cards</A>
                <UL>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv">2.3.1.2.1 Xv</A>
                    <UL>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_3dfx">2.3.1.2.1.1 3dfx cards</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_s3">2.3.1.2.1.2 S3 cards</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_nvidia">2.3.1.2.1.3 nVidia cards</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_ati">2.3.1.2.1.4 ATI cards</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_neomagic">2.3.1.2.1.5 NeoMagic cards</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#xv_trident">2.3.1.2.1.6 Trident cards</A></LI>
                    </UL>
                  </LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga">2.3.1.2.2 DGA</A>
                    <UL>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_summary">2.3.1.2.2.1 Summary</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_whatis">2.3.1.2.2.2 What is DGA</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_installation">2.3.1.2.2.3 Installing DGA support for MPlayer</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_resolution">2.3.1.2.2.4 Resolution switching</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_mplayer">2.3.1.2.2.5 DGA &amp; MPlayer</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_features">2.3.1.2.2.6 Features of the DGA driver</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_speed">2.3.1.2.2.7 Speed issues</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_bugs">2.3.1.2.2.8 Known bugs</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_future">2.3.1.2.2.9 Future work</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_modelines">2.3.1.2.2.A Some modelines</A></LI>
                      <LI><A HREF="video.html#dga_bug_reports">2.3.1.2.2.B Bug Reports</A></LI>
                    </UL>
                  </LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#sdl">2.3.1.2.3 SDL</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#svgalib">2.3.1.2.4 SVGAlib</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#fbdev">2.3.1.2.5 Framebuffer output (FBdev)</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#mga_vid">2.3.1.2.6 Matrox framebuffer (mga_vid)</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tdfxfb">2.3.1.2.7 3dfx YUV support (tdfxfb)</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#opengl">2.3.1.2.8 OpenGL output</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#aalib">2.3.1.2.9 AAlib - text mode displaying</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#vesa">2.3.1.2.10 VESA - output to VESA BIOS</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#x11">2.3.1.2.11 X11</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#vidix">2.3.1.2.12 VIDIX</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#directfb">2.3.1.2.13 DirectFB</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#dfbmga">2.3.1.2.14 DirectFB/Matrox (dfbmga)</A></LI>
                </UL>
              </LI>
              <LI><A HREF="video.html#mpegdec">2.3.1.3 MPEG decoders</A>
                <UL>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#dvb">2.3.1.3.1 DVB</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#dxr2">2.3.1.3.2 DXR2</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#dxr3">2.3.1.3.3 DXR3/Hollywood+</A></LI>
                </UL>
              </LI>
              <LI><A HREF="video.html#other">2.3.1.4 Other visualization hardware</A>
                <UL>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#zr">2.3.1.4.1 Zoran JPEG decoders</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#blinken">2.3.1.4.2 Blinkenlights</A></LI>
                </UL>
              </LI>
              <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out">2.3.1.5 TV-out support</A>
                <UL>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out_matrox">2.3.1.5.1 Matrox G400 cards</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out_matrox_g450">2.3.1.5.2 Matrox G450/G550 cards</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out_ati">2.3.1.5.3 ATI cards</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out_voodoo">2.3.1.5.4 Voodoo 3</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="video.html#tv-out_nvidia">2.3.1.5.5 nVidia</A></LI>
                </UL>
              </LI>
            </UL>
          <LI><A HREF="sound.html">2.3.2 Audio output devices</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="sound.html#sync">2.3.2.1 Description of MPlayer's A/V sync method</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="sound.html#experiences">2.3.2.2 Sound card experiences, recommendations</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="sound.html#plugins">2.3.2.3 Audio plugins</A>
                <UL>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#resample">2.3.2.3.1 Up/Downsampling</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#surround_decoding">2.3.2.3.2 Surround Sound decoding</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#format">2.3.2.3.3 Sample format converter</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#delay">2.3.2.3.4 Delay</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#volume">2.3.2.3.5 Software volume control</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#extrastereo">2.3.2.3.6 Extrastereo</A></LI>
                  <LI><A HREF="sound.html#normalizer">2.3.2.3.7 Volume Normalizer</A></LI>
                </UL>
              </LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="encoding.html">2.4 Encoding with MEncoder</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#2pass">2.4.1 Encoding 2 or 3-pass DivX4</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#rescaling">2.4.2 Rescaling movies</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#copying">2.4.3 Stream copying</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#fixing">2.4.4 Fixing AVIs with broken index</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#libavcodec">2.4.5 Encoding with the libavcodec codec family</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#image_files">2.4.6 Encoding from multiple input image files (JPEGs or PNGs)</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#vobsub">2.4.7 Extracting DVD subtitles to a Vobsub file</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="encoding.html#aspect">2.4.8 Preserving aspect ratio</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#tv">2.5 TV input</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_tips">2.5.2 Usage tips</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#tv_examples">2.5.3 Examples</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#usage">3. Usage</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="#command_line">3.1 Command line</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#control">3.2 Control</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#controls_configuration">3.2.1 Controls configuration</A>
            <UL>
              <LI><A HREF="#key_names">3.2.1.1 Key names</A></LI>
              <LI><A HREF="#commands">3.2.1.2 Commands</A></LI>
            </UL>
          </LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#lirc">3.2.2 Control from LIRC</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#slave">3.2.3 Slave mode</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#streaming">3.3 Streaming from network or pipes</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="cd-dvd.html">4. CD/DVD section</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="cd-dvd.html#drives">4.1 CD/DVD drives</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="cd-dvd.html#dvd">4.2 DVD playback</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="cd-dvd.html#vcd">4.3 VCD playback</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="faq.html">5. FAQ section</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#compilation">5.1 Compilation</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#general">5.2 General questions</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#playback">5.3 playback problems</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#driver">5.4 Video/audio driver problems (vo/ao)</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#dvd">5.5 DVD playback</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#features">5.6 Feature requests</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="faq.html#encoding">5.7 Encoding</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#ports">6. Ports</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="#debian">6.1 Debian packaging</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#bsd">6.2 *BSD</A>
        <UL>
          <LI><A HREF="#freebsd">6.2.1 FreeBSD</A></LI>
          <LI><A HREF="#openbsd">6.2.2 OpenBSD</A></LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#solaris">6.3 Solaris</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#strongarm">6.4 StrongARM</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#sgi">6.5 Silicon Graphics / Irix</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#qnx">6.6 QNX</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="#cygwin">6.7 Cygwin</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#mailing_lists">Appendix A - Mailing lists</A></LI>
  <LI><A HREF="bugreports.html">Appendix B - How to report bugs</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="tech/patches.txt">Appendix B2 - How to send patches</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><A HREF="#known_bugs">Appendix C - Known bugs</A></LI>
  <LI><A HREF="skin-en.html">Appendix D - MPlayer skin format</A></LI>
  <LI><A HREF="users_against_developers.html">Appendix E - Developer Cries</A>
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="users_against_developers.html#gcc">GCC 2.96</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="users_against_developers.html#binary">Binary distribution</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="users_against_developers.html#nvidia">nVidia</A></LI>
      <LI><A HREF="users_against_developers.html#barr">Joe Barr</A></LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
</UL>

<HR>



<H1><A NAME="reading">0. How to read this documentation</A></H1>

<P>If you are a first-time installer: be sure to read everything from here to
  the end of the Installation section, and follow the links you will find. If
  you have any other questions, return to the Table of Contents and
  search for the topic, read the <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ</A>, or try grepping
  through the files.</P>

<P>The main rule of this documentation: if it's not documented, it
  <U>does not exist</U>. If I don't say you encode audio from TV tuner, you
  can't. A healthy quantity of combining ability is welcomed, though.
  Good luck. You'll need it :) And for another good advice, let me quote
  Chris Phillips from the
  <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/">mplayer-users</A>
  mailing list:</P>

<BLOCKQUOTE>
  I said a while ago that there is such a difference between a newbie and
  a dumbass. No matter what you actually know about a system (linux, cars,
  girls :D) you should ALWAYS be able to take a step back and be objective,
  otherwise, you're just dumb IMHO. A girl i live with assumed the vacuum
  cleaner was broken because it didn't suck things up. never thought to change
  the bag, becasue she'd never done it before... now that's just stupid, not a
  case of simply not knowing what to do... Simply not being that familiar with
  your surroundings is no excuse for a) laziness and b) ignorance. So many
  people seem to see the word "error" and then stop...  few seem to actually
  read the words on the OTHER side of the colon.
</BLOCKQUOTE>



<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/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, 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>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>

<P>MEncoder (MPlayer's Movie Encoder) is a simple movie encoder,
  designed to encode MPlayer-playable movies
  (<B>AVI/ASF/OGG/DVD/VCD/VOB/MPG/MOV/VIV/FLI/RM/NUV/NET/PVA</B>) to other
  MPlayer-playable formats (see below). It can encode with various codecs, like
  <B>DivX4</B> (1 or 2 passes), libavcodec,
  <B>PCM</B>/<B>MP3</B>/<B>VBR MP3</B> audio. Also has powerful plugin system
  for video manipulation.</P>

<H4>MEncoder features</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>encoding from the wide range of fileformats and decoders of MPlayer</LI>
  <LI>encoding to all the codecs of ffmpeg's
    <A HREF="codecs.html#libavcodec">libavcodec</A></LI>
  <LI>video encoding from <B>V4L compatible TV tuners</B></LI>
  <LI>encoding/multiplexing to interleaved AVI files with proper index</LI>
  <LI>creating files from external audio stream</LI>
  <LI>1, 2 or 3 pass encoding</LI>
  <LI><B>VBR</B> MP3 audio - <B>IMPORTANT NOTE:</B> VBR MP3 audio doesn't
    always play nicely on Windows players! On the other hand, currently
    MEncoder's CBR encoding is totally broken on Win32 players :)</LI>
  <LI>PCM audio</LI>
  <LI>stream copying</LI>
  <LI>input A/V synchronizing (PTS-based, can be disabled with -mc 0 option)</LI>
  <LI>FPS correction with <CODE>-ofps</CODE> option (useful when encoding
    29.97fps VOB to 24fps AVI)</LI>
  <LI>using our very powerful plugin system (crop, expand, flip, postprocess,
    rotate, scale, rgb/yuv conversion)</LI>
  <LI>can encode DVD/VOBsub <B>AND</B> text subtitles into the output file</LI>
  <LI>can rip DVD subtitles to Vobsub format</LI>
</UL>

<H4>Planned features</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>even wider variety of available en/decoding formats/codecs
    (creating VOB files with DivX4/Indeo5/VIVO streams :)</LI>
  <LI>audio encoding from v4l (DONE for FreeBSD ?)</LI>
</UL>

<P>MPlayer and MEncoder can be distributed under the terms of the GNU General
  Public License Version 2.</P>


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

<P>This began a year ago...
  I (A'rpi) have 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...</P>

<UL>
  <LI><B>mpg12play v0.1-v0.3:</B> Sep 22-25, 2000<BR>
    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.</LI>
  <LI><B>mpg12play v0.5-v0.87:</B> Sep 28-Oct 20, 2000<BR>
    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++!!!)</LI>
  <LI><B>mpg12play v0.9-v0.95pre5:</B> Oct 21-Nov 2, 2000<BR>
    Mpeg codec was libmpeg2 (mpeg2dec) by Aaron Holtzman &amp; Michel Lespinasse.
    It's great, optimized very fast C code with perfect image quality and
    100% MPEG standard conformance.</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer v0.01:</B> Nov 11, 2000<BR>
    TODO: A'rpi, would you say some words here? :)</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer v0.3-v0.9:</B> Nov 18-Dec 4, 2000<BR>
    It was a pack of two programs: mpg12play v0.95pre6 and my new simple AVI
    player 'avip' based on avifile's Win32 DLL loader.</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer v0.10:</B> Jan 1, 2001<BR>
    The MPEG and AVI player in a single binary!</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer v0.11pre series:</B><BR>
    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.</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer v0.17a "The IdegCounter"</B> Apr 27, 2001<BR>
    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.</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer 0.18 "The BugCounter"</B> Jul 9, 2001<BR>
    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!</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer 0.50 "The Faszom(C)ounter"</B> Oct 8, 2001<BR>
    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!</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer 0.60 "The RTFMCounter"</B> Jan 3, 2002<BR>
    MOV/VIVO/RM/FLI/NUV fileformats support, native CRAM, Cinepak, ADPCM codecs,
    and support for XAnim's binary codecs; DVD subtitles support, first
    release of MEncoder, TV grabbing, cache, liba52, countless fixes.</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer 0.90pre10 "The BirthdayCounter"</B> Nov 11, 2002<BR>
    Although this is not a release, I am going to mention it because it
    came out 2 years after MPlayer v0.01. Happy birthday, MPlayer!</LI>
  <LI><B>MPlayer 0.90 "?"</B> Date yet unknown</LI>
</UL>


<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>

<P>You need a fairly recent system. On Linux, 2.4.x kernels are recommended.</P>

<H4>Software requirements:</H4>

<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 versions are: <B>2.95.3</B>, <B>2.95.4</B> and <B>3.1</B>.
    <B>NEVER</B> use 2.96 or 3.0.x! They generate faulty code for MPlayer.
    If you decide to change gcc from 2.96, then don't decide in favor of 3.0.x
    just because it's newer! Early releases of 3.0.x were even more buggy than
    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
    as <B>Xv</B>) which is needed to enable the hardware YUV acceleration (fast
    image display) on cards that support it.<BR>
    Make sure its <B>development package</B> is installed, too, otherwise
    it won't work.<BR>
    For some video cards 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 (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>
    - optional, needed for playing RTSP/RTP streams.</LI>
  <LI><B>directfb</B> - optional, from
    <A HREF="http://www.directfb.org">http://www.directfb.org</A></LI>
  <LI><B>cdparanoia</B> - optional, for CDDA support</LI>
  <LI><B>libfreetype</B> - optional, for TTF fonts support. At least 2.0.9 is
    required.</LI>
</UL>

<H4>Codecs:</H4>

<UL>
  <LI><B>libavcodec</B>: This codec package is capable of decoding
    H263/MJPEG/RV10/DivX3/DivX4/DivX5/MP41/MP42/WMV1 encoded video streams and
    WMA (Windows Media Audio) v1/v2 audio streams, on
    multiple platforms. It is also known to be the fastest for this task.
    See the <A HREF="codecs.html#libavcodec">libavcodec</A> section for details.
    Features:<BR>
    <UL>
      <LI>gain decoding of videos mentioned above, on non-x86 machines</LI>
      <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>you need this if you want to play or encode for example movies recorded
        with various hardware compressors, like tuner cards, digital cameras
        (example: DV, ATI VCR, MJPEG)</LI>
      <LI>needed if you want to play <B>WMV8 movies</B>. Not needed for old
        ASF's with MP41 or MP42 video (though VoxWare audio is frequent for these
        files - it's done by the Win32 codec), or WMV7. Also not needed
        for WMA (Windows Media Audio), libavcodec has opensource decoder
        for that.</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><B>DivX4/DivX5</B>: information about this codec is available in the
    <A HREF="codecs.html#divx">DivX4/DivX5</A> section. You possibly don't want
    this codec as <B>libavcodec</B> (see above) is much faster and has better
    quality than this, for both decoding and encoding.<BR>
    Features:
    <UL>
      <LI>1 pass or 2 pass encoding with
        <A HREF="encoding.html">MEncoder</A></LI>
      <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>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI><B>XviD</B>: Open source encoding alternative to Divx4Linux<BR>
    Features:
    <UL>
      <LI>1 pass or 2 pass encoding with
        <A HREF="encoding.html">MEncoder</A></LI>
      <LI>it's open-source, so it's multiplatform.</LI>
      <LI>it's about 2 times faster than DivX4 when encoding - about the same
        quality</LI>
    </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>

<H4>Video Cards</H4>

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

<H4>YUV cards</H4>

<P>They can display and scale (zoom) the picture to any size that fits in
  their memory, with <B>small CPU usage</B> (even when zooming), thus
  fullscreen playing is nice and very fast.</P>

<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:
    <B>Radeon</B>, <B>Rage128</B>, <B>Mach64</B> (Rage XL/Mobility, Xpert98).
    Also see the <A HREF="video.html#tv-out_ati">ATI cards
    section</A> of the TV-out documentation, to know if you card's TV-out is
    supported under Linux/MPlayer.</LI>
  <LI><B>S3 cards</B>: the Savage and Virge/DX 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#xv_s3">S3 Xv
    section</A> for details. Older, Trio cards have no, or slow hardware
    support.</LI>
  <LI><B>nVidia cards</B>: may or may not be good choice for video playing.
    If you do not have a GeForce2 (or newer) card, it's not likely to work
    without bugs.
    <B>The built-in nVidia driver in XFree86 does not support hardware YUV
    acceleration on all nVidia cards.</B> You have to download nVidia's
    closed-source drivers from nVidia.com. See the
    <A HREF="video.html#xv_nvidia">nVidia Xv driver</A> section for
    details. Please also check the <A HREF="video.html#tv-out_nvidia">nVidia
    TV-out section</A> if you wish to use a TV.</LI>
  <LI><B>3DLabs GLINT R3 and Permedia3</B>: a VIDIX driver is provided
    (pm3_vid). Please see the <A HREF="video.html#vidix">VIDIX</A> section for
    details.</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#xv">Xv section</A> for
        details.</LI>
      <LI>If it doesn't, then your card's video features aren't supported under
        your operating system :(<BR>
        If hardware scaling works under Windows, it doesn't mean it will work
        under Linux or other operating systems: it depends on the drivers. Most
        manufacturers neither make Linux drivers nor release specifications
        for their chips, so you are unlucky using their cards.
        See 'Non-YUV cards'.</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
</UL>

<H4>Non-YUV cards</H4>

<P>Fullscreen playing can be achieved by either enabling <B>software scaling</B>
  (use the <CODE>-zoom</CODE> or <CODE>-vop scale</CODE>
  option, but I warn you: this is slow), or switching to a small resolution
  video mode, for example 352x288. If you don't have YUV acceleration, the
  latter method is recommended. Video mode switching can be enabled by
  using the <CODE>-vm</CODE> option and it works with the following drivers:</P>

<UL>
  <LI><B>using</B> XFree86: see the
    <A HREF="video.html#dga">DGA driver</A> and
    <A HREF="video.html#x11">X11 driver</A> sections for details. DGA is
    recommended! Also try DGA via SDL, sometimes it's better.</LI>
  <LI><B>not using</B> XFree86: try the drivers in the following order:
    <A HREF="video.html#vesa">vesa</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#fbdev">fbdev</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#svgalib">svgalib</A>,
    <A HREF="video.html#aalib">aalib</A>.</LI>
</UL>

<H4>Some cards:</H4>

<UL>
  <LI><B>Cirrus Logic cards</B>:
    <UL>
      <LI>GD 7548: present on-board and tested in Compaq Armada 41xx notebook
        series.
        <UL>
          <LI>XFree86 3: works in 8/16bpp modes. However, the driver is
            dramatically slow and buggy in 800x600@16bpp.
            <B>Recommended: 640x480@16bpp</B></LI>
          <LI>XFree86 4: the Xserver freezes soon after start unless
            acceleration is disabled, but then the whole thing gets
            slower than XFree86 3. No XVideo.</LI>
          <LI>FBdev: framebuffer can be turned on with the <CODE>clgenfb</CODE>
            driver in the kernel, though for me it worked only in 8bpp, thus
            unusable. The clgenfb source had to be extended with the 7548 ID
            before compilation.</LI>
          <LI>VESA: the card is only VBE 1.2 capable, so VESA output can't be
            used. Can't be workarounded with UniVBE.</LI>
          <LI>SVGAlib: detects an older Cirrus chip. Usable but slow with
            <CODE>-bpp 8</CODE>.</LI>
        </UL>
      </LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
</UL>


<H4>Sound cards:</H4>

<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#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>
  <LI>There is a neat <B>OSD Menu</B> support ready to be used. Check the
    <A HREF="#menu">OSD Menu</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
  built, and what will not. You may also want to view <CODE>config.h</CODE> and
  <CODE>config.mak</CODE> files.<BR>
  If you have some libraries installed, but not detected by
  <CODE>./configure</CODE>, then check if you also have the proper header files
  (usually the -dev packages) and their version matches. The
  <CODE>configure.log</CODE> file usually tells you what is missing.</P>

<P>Though not mandatory, the fonts should be installed in order to gain OSD,
  and subtitle functionality. Download <CODE>mp-arial-iso-8859-*.zip</CODE>
  and/or optional (if exists) language updates. See the
  <A HREF="#subtitles_osd">Subtitles and OSD</A> section for details.</P>

<PRE>
    mkdir ~/.mplayer
    cd ~/.mplayer
    unzip mp-arial-iso-8859-1.zip
    ln -s ~/.mplayer/iso-8859-1/arial-24 font
</PRE>


<H2><A NAME="gui">1.3 What about the GUI?</A></H2>

<P>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 <CODE>--enable-gui</CODE> during
  <CODE>./configure</CODE>. Then, to turn on GUI mode, you either</P>
  <UL>
    <LI>specify <CODE>gui=yes</CODE> in your config file</LI>
    <LI><CODE>ln -s $PREFIX/bin/mplayer $PREFIX/bin/gmplayer</CODE> ,
      and call <CODE>gmplayer</CODE> instead.</LI>
  </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>
  <LI>SubViewer</LI>
  <LI>Sami</LI>
  <LI>VPlayer</LI>
  <LI>RT</LI>
  <LI>SSA</LI>
  <LI>MPsub</LI>
  <LI>AQTitle</LI>
</UL>

<P>MPlayer can dump the previously listed subtitle formats into the following
  destination formats, with the given options:</P>

<UL>
  <LI>MPsub: <CODE>-dumpmpsub</CODE></LI>
  <LI>SubRip: <CODE>-dumpsrtsub</CODE></LI>
  <LI>Microdvd: <CODE>-dumpmicrodvdsub</CODE></LI>
</UL>

<P>The command line options differ slightly for the different formats:</P>

<H4>VobSub subtitles</H4>

<P>VobSub subtitles consist of a big (some megabytes) .SUB file, and optional
  .IDX and/or .IFO files.<BR>
  Usage: if you have files like <CODE>sample.sub</CODE>,
  <CODE>sample.ifo</CODE>, <CODE>sample.idx</CODE> - you have to pass the
  <CODE>-vobsub sample -vobsubid
  &lt;id&gt;</CODE> options (optionally with pathname, of course). The
  <CODE>-vobsubid</CODE> option is like <CODE>-sid</CODE> for DVDs, you can
  choose between subtitle tracks (languages) with it.</P>

<H4>Other subtitles</H4>

<P>The other formats consist of a single text file containing timing,
  placement and text information.<BR>
  Usage: if you have a file like <CODE>sample.txt</CODE>, you have to pass the
  option <CODE>-sub sample.txt</CODE> (optionally with pathname, of course).</P>

<H4>Adjusting subtitle timing and placement:</H4>

<DL>
  <DT><CODE>-subdelay &lt;sec&gt;</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Delays subtitles by &lt;sec&gt; seconds. Can be negative.</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-subfps &lt;rate&gt;</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Specify frame/sec rate of subtitle file (float number)</DD>

  <DT><CODE>-subpos &lt;0 - 100&gt;</CODE></DT>
  <DD>Specify the position of subtitles.</DD>
</DL>

<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>

<P><CODE><I># first number  : wait this much after previous subtitle disappeared<BR>
  # second number : display the current subtitle for this many seconds<BR>
  <BR>
  15 3<BR>
  A long long, time ago...<BR>
  <BR>
  0 3<BR>
  in a galaxy far away...<BR>
  <BR>
  0 3<BR>
  Naboo was under an attack.<BR></I></CODE></P>

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

<P>Subtitles are displayed with a technique called <B>'OSD', On Screen
  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
    positions to the actual code page of the subtitles text. Other solution is
    to have subtitles encoded in utf8 encoding and use <CODE>-utf8</CODE>
    option or just name the subtitles file &lt;video_name&gt;.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 (Red Hat)
    programs.<BR>
    Some URLs:
    <UL>
      <LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/">ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/</A> - ISO fonts</LI>
      <LI><A HREF="ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/contrib/fonts/">ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/contrib/fonts/</A> - various fonts by users</LI>
      <LI><A HREF="http://realtime.ssu.ac.kr/~lethean/mplayer/">http://realtime.ssu.ac.kr/~lethean/mplayer/</A> - Korean fonts &amp; RAW plugin</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI>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)</LI>
  <LI>use the font generator GIMP plugin at TOOLS/subfont-GIMP
    (note: you must have HSI RAW plugin too, see URL below)</LI>
  <LI>using a TrueType (TTF) font, by the means of the <B>freetype</B>
    library. Version 2.0.9 or greater is mandatory! TODO: complete this</LI>
</UL>

<P>After that, UNZIP the file you downloaded to <CODE>~/.mplayer</CODE> or
  <CODE>$PREFIX/share/mplayer</CODE>. Then rename or symlink one of them to
  <CODE>font</CODE> (like: <CODE>ln -s ~/.mplayer/arial-24
  ~/.mplayer/font</CODE>). Now you have to see a timer at the upper left corner
  of the movie (switch it off with the "o" key).</P>

<P>OSD has 3 states: (switch with 'o')</P>

<UL>
  <LI>timer + volume bar + seek bar + subtitles</LI>
  <LI>volume bar + seek bar + subtitles (default)</LI>
  <LI>subtitles only</LI>
</UL>

<P>You can change default behaviour by setting <CODE>osdlevel=</CODE> variable
  in config file.</P>


<H3><A NAME="menu">1.4.3 OSD menu</A></H3>

<P>MPlayer has a completely user definiable OSD Menu interface.</P>

<H4>Installation</H4>

<OL>
  <LI>compile MPlayer by passing the <CODE>--enable-new-conf
    --enable-menu</CODE> parameters to <CODE>./configure</CODE></LI>
  <LI>make sure you have an OSD font installed</LI>
  <LI>copy <CODE>etc/menu.conf</CODE> to your <CODE>.mplayer</CODE>
    directory</LI>
  <LI>copy <CODE>etc/input.conf</CODE> to your <CODE>.mplayer</CODE>
    directory, or to the system-wide MPlayer config dir (default:
    <CODE>/usr/local/etc/mplayer</CODE>)</LI>
  <LI>check and edit <CODE>input.conf</CODE> to enable menu movement
    keys (it is described there).</LI>
  <LI>start MPlayer by the following example:<BR>
    <CODE>$ mplayer -menu file.avi</CODE></LI>
  <LI>push any menu key you defined</LI>
</OL>

<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>
      <CODE>echo 1024 &gt; /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq</CODE>
    </P>
    If you do not have such a new kernel, you can also change one line in
    <CODE>drivers/char/rtc.c</CODE> and recompile your kernel. Find the
    section that reads
    <PRE>
       * We don't really want Joe User enabling more
       * than 64Hz of interrupts on a multi-user machine.
       */
      if ((rtc_freq &gt; 64) &amp;&amp; (!capable(CAP_SYS_RESOURCE)))
    </PRE>
    and change the 64 to 1024. You should really know what you are doing, though.
    <BR>
    You can see the new timer's efficiency in the status line.
    <BR>
    The power management functions of some notebook BIOSes with speedstep CPUs
    interact badly with RTC. Audio and video may get out of sync. Plugging the
    external power connector in before you power up your notebook seems to help.
    You can always turn off RTC support with the <CODE>-nortc</CODE> switch.
    In some hardware combinations (confirmed during usage of non-DMA DVD
    drive on an ALi1541 board) usage of the RTC timer causes skippy playback.
    It's recommended to use the third method in these cases.</LI>
  <LI><B>The third timer code</B> is turned on with the <CODE>-softsleep</CODE>
    option. It has the efficiency of the RTC, but it doesn't use RTC. On the other
    hand, it requires more CPU.</LI>
</UL>

<B>Note:</B> <B>NEVER install a setuid root MPlayer binary on a multiuser system!</B>
It's a clear way for everyone to become root.



<H1><A NAME="features">2. Features</A></H1>


<H2><A NAME="formats">2.1</A> <A HREF="formats.html">Supported formats</A></H2>


<H2><A NAME="codecs">2.2</A> <A HREF="codecs.html">Supported codecs</A></H2>


<H2><A NAME="output">2.3</A> <A HREF="video.html">Video</A> &amp; <A HREF="sound.html">Audio</A> output devices</H2>


<H2><A NAME="encoding">2.4</A> <A HREF="encoding.html">MEncoder - An All-Purpose Encoder</A></H2>


<H2><A NAME="tv"><B>2.5 TV input</B></A></H2>

<P>This section is about how to enable <B>watching/grabbing from V4L compatible
TV tuner</B>. See the man page for a description of TV options and keyboard
controls.</P>

<H3><A NAME="tv_compilation">2.5.1 Compilation</A></H3>

<OL>
  <LI>First, you have to recompile. <CODE>./configure</CODE> will autodetect
    kernel headers of v4l stuff and the existence of <CODE>/dev/video*</CODE>
    entries. If they exist, TV support will be built (see the output of
    <CODE>./configure</CODE>).</LI>
  <LI>Make sure your tuner works with another TV software in Linux, for example
    xawtv.</LI>
</OL>

<H3><A NAME="tv_tips">2.5.2 Usage tips</A></H3>

The full listing of the options is available on the manual page. Here
are just a few tips:

<UL>
  <LI>Choose some sane image dimensions. The dimensions of the resulting image
    should be divisible by 16.</LI>
  <LI>If you capture the video with the vertical resolution higher than half of
    the full resolution (i.e. 288 for PAL or 240 for NTSC), make sure you
    turned deinterlacing on. Otherwise you'll get a movie which is distorted
    during fast-motion scenes and the bitrate controller will be probably even
    unable to retain the specified bitrate as the interlacing artifacts produce
    high amount of detail and thus consume lot of bandwidth. You can enable
    deinterlacing with <CODE>-vop pp=DEINT_TYPE</CODE>. Usually
    <CODE>pp=lb</CODE> does a good job, but it can be matter of personal
    preference. See other deinterlacing algorithms in the manual and give it a
    try.</LI>
  <LI>Crop out the dead space. When you capture the video, the areas at the
    edges are usually black or contain some noise. These again consume lots of
    unnecessary bandwidth. More precisely it's not the black areas themselves
    but the sharp transitions between the black and the brighter video image
    which do but that's not important for now. Before you start capturing,
    adjust the arguments of the <CODE>crop</CODE> option so that all the crap
    at the margins is cropped out. Again, don't forget to keep the resulting
    dimensions sane.</LI>
  <LI>Watch out for CPU load. It shouldn't cross the 90% boundary for most of
    the time. If you have a large capture buffer, MEncoder can survive an
    overload for few seconds but nothing more. It's better to turn off the 3D
    OpenGL screensavers and similar stuff.</LI>
  <LI>Don't mess with the system clock. MEncoder uses the system clock for
     doing A/V sync. If you adjust the system clock (especially backwards in
     time), MEncoder gets confused and you will lose frames. This is an
     important issue if you are hooked to a network and run some time
     synchronization software like NTP. You have to turn NTP off during the
     capture process if you want to capture reliably.</LI>
  <LI>Don't change the <CODE>outfmt</CODE> unless you know what you are doing
     or your card/driver really doesn't support the default (YV12 colorspace).
     In the older versions of MPlayer/MEncoder it was necessary to specify the
     output format. This issue should be fixed in the current releases and
     <CODE>outfmt</CODE> isn't required anymore, and the default suits the most
     purposes. For example, if you are capturing into DivX using libavcodec and
     specify <CODE>outfmt=RGB24</CODE> in order to increase the quality of the
     captured images, the captured image will be actually later converted back
     into YV12 so the only thing you achieve is a massive waste of CPU power.
     </LI>
  <LI>To specify the I420 colorspace (<CODE>outfmt=i420</CODE>), you have to
     add an option <CODE>-vc rawi420</CODE> due to a fourcc conflict with an
     Intel Indeo video codec.</LI>
  <LI>There are several ways of capturing audio. You can grab the sound either
     using your soundcard via an external cable connection between video card
     and line-in, or using the built-in ADC in the bt878 chip. In the latter
     case, you have to load the <b>btaudio</b> driver. Read the
     <CODE>linux/Documentation/sound/btaudio</CODE> file (in the kernel tree,
     not MPlayer's) for some instructions on using this driver.</LI>
  <LI>If MEncoder cannot open the audio device, make sure that it is really
     available. There can be some trouble with the sound servers like arts
     (KDE) or esd (GNOME). If you have a full duplex soundcard (almost any
     decent card supports it today), and you are using KDE, try to check the
     "full duplex" option in the sound server preference menu.</LI>
</UL>

<H3><A NAME="tv_examples">2.5.3 Examples</A></H3>

<P>Dummy output, to AAlib :)<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv on:driver=dummy:width=640:height=480 -vo aa</CODE><BR>
  <BR>
  Input from standard V4L<BR>
  <CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mplayer -tv
on:driver=v4l:width=640:height=480 -vo xv</CODE><BR>
  <BR>

  A more sophisticated example. This makes MEncoder capture the full
  PAL image, crop the margins, and deinterlace the picture using
  a linear blend algorithm. Audio is compressed with a constant
  bitrate of 64kbps, using LAME codec. This setup is suitable for
  capturing movies.<BR> <CODE> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mencoder -tv
  on:driver=v4l:width=768:height=576 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-ovc lavc -lavcopts
  vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=900 \<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-oac
  mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=64 \<BR> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-vop
  pp=lb,crop=720:540:24:18 -o output.avi </CODE><BR>

  <BR>
  This will additionally rescale the image to 384x288 and compresses
  the video with the bitrate of 350kbps in high quality mode. The
  vqmax option looses the quantizer and allows the video compressor to
  actualy reach so low bitrate even at the expense of the
  quality. This can be used for capturing long TV series, where the
  video quality isn't so important.<BR>
  <CODE>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=768:height=576 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=350:vhq:vqmax=31:keyint=300 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=48 \<BR>
  &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;-vop scale=384:288,pp=tn/lb,crop=720:540:24:18 -sws 1 -o output.avi
  </CODE><BR>

  It's also possible to specify smaller image dimensions in the
  <CODE>-tv</CODE> option and omit the software scaling but this
  approach uses the maximum available information and is a little more
  resistant to noise. The bt8x8 chips can do the pixel averaging only
  in the horizontal direction due to a hardware limitation.</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>
  will play files in this order: 1 1 2 1 1 2 1 1 2<BR>
  </P>

<TABLE BORDER=0>
  <TR><TD>&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD><TD>file</TD><TD>&nbsp;&nbsp;</TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [options] [path/]filename</CODE></TD></TR>
  <TR><TD></TD><TD>files</TD><TD></TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [default options] [path/]filename1 [options for filename1] filename2 [options for filename2] ...</CODE></TD></TR>
  <TR><TD></TD><TD>VCD</TD><TD></TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [options] -vcd trackno [-cdrom-device /dev/cdrom]</CODE></TD></TR>
  <TR><TD></TD><TD>DVD</TD><TD></TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [options] -dvd titleno [-dvd-device /dev/dvd]</CODE></TD></TR>
  <TR><TD></TD><TD>WWW</TD><TD></TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [options] http://site.com/file.asf (playlists can be used, too)</CODE></TD></TR>
  <TR><TD></TD><TD>RTSP</TD><TD></TD><TD><CODE>mplayer [options] rtsp://server.example.com/streamName</CODE></TD></TR>
</TABLE>

<P>
  Latest versions of MPlayer also accept VCD and DVD tracks in URL style, just like
  xine does: <CODE>mplayer dvd://1</CODE> or <CODE>mplayer vcd://1</CODE></P>

<PRE>
  mplayer -vo x11 /mnt/Films/Contact/contact2.mpg
  mplayer -vcd 2
  mplayer -afm 3 /mnt/DVDtrailers/alien4.vob
  mplayer -dvd 1 -dvd-device /dev/hdc
  mplayer -abs 65536 -delay -0.4 -nobps ~/movies/test.avi
</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>).

<P>Example:</P>

<PRE>
##
## MPlayer input control file
##

RIGHT seek +10
LEFT seek -10
- audio_delay 0.100
+ audio_delay -0.100
q quit
&gt; pt_step 1
&lt; pt_step -1
ENTER pt_step 1 1
</PRE>


<H4><A NAME="key_names">3.2.1.1 Key names</A></H4>

<P>You can have a full list by running <CODE>mplayer -input keylist</CODE></P>

<H4>Keyboard:</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>Any printable character</LI>
  <LI>SPACE</LI>
  <LI>ENTER</LI>
  <LI>TAB</LI>
  <LI>CTRL</LI>
  <LI>BS</LI>
  <LI>DEL</LI>
  <LI>INS</LI>
  <LI>HOME</LI>
  <LI>END</LI>
  <LI>PGUP</LI>
  <LI>PGDWN</LI>
  <LI>ESC</LI>
  <LI>RIGHT</LI>
  <LI>LEFT</LI>
  <LI>UP</LI>
  <LI>DOWN</LI>
</UL>

<H4>Mouse (only supported under X):</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN0 (Left button)</LI>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN1 (Right button)</LI>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN2 (Middle button)</LI>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN3 (Wheel)</LI>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN4 (Wheel)</LI>
  <LI>...</LI>
  <LI>MOUSE_BTN9</LI>
</UL>

<H4>Joystick (support must be enabled at compile time):</H4>

<UL>
  <LI>JOY_RIGHT or JOY_AXIS0_PLUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_LEFT or JOY_AXIS0_MINUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_UP or JOY_AXIS1_MINUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_DOWN or JOY_AXIS1_PLUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_AXIS2_PLUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_AXIS2_MINUS</LI>
  <LI>...</LI>
  <LI>JOY_AXIS9_PLUS</LI>
  <LI>JOY_AXIS9_MINUS</LI>
</UL>


<H4><A NAME="commands">3.2.1.2 Commands</A></H4>

<P>You can have a full list of known commands by running "mplayer -input cmdlist"</P>

<UL>
  <LI><B>seek</B> (int) val [(int) type=0]
    <P>Seek to some place in the movie.<BR>
    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>Go to next/previous entry in playtree. Val sign tell the direction.<BR>
    If no other entry is available in the given direction it won't do anything
    unless force is non 0.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>pt_up_step</B> (int) val [(int) force=0]
    <P>Like pt_step but it jump to next/previous in the parent list. It's useful
    to break inner loop in the playtree.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>alt_src_step</B> (int) val
    <P>When more than one source is available it select the next/previous one
    (only supported by asx playlist).</P></LI>
  <LI><B>sub_delay</B> (float) val [(int) abs=0]
    <P>Adjust the subtitles delay of +/- val seconds or set it to val seconds
    when abs is non zero.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>osd</B> [(int) level=-1]
    <P>Toggle osd mode or set it to level when level &gt; 0.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>volume</B> (int) dir
    <P>Increase/decrease volume</P></LI>
  <LI><B>contrast</B> (int) val [(int) abs=0]</LI>
  <LI><B>brightness</B> (int) val [(int) abs=0]</LI>
  <LI><B>hue</B> (int) val [(int) abs=0]</LI>
  <LI><B>saturation</B> (int) val [(int) abs=0]
    <P>Set/Adjust video parameters. Val range from -100 to 100.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>frame_drop</B> [(int) type=-1]
    <P>Toggle/Set frame dropping mode.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>sub_visibility</B>
    <P>Toggle subtitle visibility.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>sub_pos</B> (int) val
    <P>Adjust subtitles position.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>vo_fullscreen</B>
    <P>Switch fullscreen mode.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>tv_step_channel</B> (int) dir
    <P>Select next/previous tv channel.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>tv_step_norm</B>
    <P>Change TV norm.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>tv_step_chanlist</B>
    <P>Change channel list.</P></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_loadfile</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_loadsubtitle</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_about</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_play</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_stop</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_playlist</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_preferences</B></LI>
  <LI><B>gui_skinbrowser</B>
    <P>GUI actions</P></LI>
</UL>


<H3><A NAME="lirc">3.2.2 Control from LIRC</A></H3>

<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 - <CODE>mplayer</CODE>.
  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>

<PRE>
begin
     button = VOLUME_PLUS
     prog = mplayer
     config = volume 1
     repeat = 1
end

begin
    button = VOLUME_MINUS
    prog = mplayer
    config = volume -1
    repeat = 1
end

begin
    button = CD_PLAY
    prog = mplayer
    config = pause
end

begin
    button = CD_STOP
    prog = mplayer
    config = seek 0 1\npause
end
</PRE>

<P>If you don't like the standard location for the lirc-config file (~/.lircrc)
  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>

<P><CODE>&nbsp;&nbsp;wget ftp://micorsops.com/something.avi -O - | mplayer -cache 8192 -</CODE></P>



<H1><A NAME="faq">4.</A> <A HREF="faq.html">FAQ section</A></H1>



<H1><A NAME="cd/dvd">5.</A> <A HREF="cd-dvd.html">CD/DVD section</A></H1>



<H1><A NAME="ports">6. Ports</A></H1>


<H2><A NAME="debian">6.1 Debian packaging</A></H2>

<P>To build the package, get the cvs version, or .tgz and uncompress it,
  and cd into programs directory:</P>

<PRE>
    cd main
    fakeroot debian/rules binary
</PRE>

<P>(... mplayer detects hardware/software, builds itself and.. )
  dpkg-deb: building package `mplayer' in `../mplayer_0.90-1_i386.deb'.</P>

<P>And now just become root, and:</P>

<PRE>
    dpkg -i ../mplayer_0.90-1_i386.deb as root.
</PRE>

<P>Here's how it looks like:</P>

<PRE>
	eyck@incubus:/src/main$ sudo dpkg -i ../mplayer_0.90-1_i386.deb
	Password:
	(Reading database ... 26946 files and directories currently installed.)
	Preparing to replace mplayer 0.50-1 (using ../mplayer_0.90-1_i386.deb)
	Unpacking replacement mplayer ...
	Setting up mplayer (0.90-1) ...
</PRE>


<H2><A NAME="bsd">6.2 *BSD</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer runs on FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, BSD/OS and Darwin.  There are
  ports/pkgsrc/fink/etc versions of MPlayer available that are probably easier
  to use than our raw sources.</P>

<P>To build MPlayer you will need GNU make (gmake - native BSD make will not
  work) and a recent version of binutils.</P>

<P>If MPlayer complains about not finding <CODE>/dev/cdrom</CODE> or
  <CODE>/dev/dvd</CODE>, create an appropiate symbolic link:<BR>
  <CODE>ln -s /dev/(your_cdrom_device) /dev/cdrom</CODE>.</P>

<P>To use Win32 DLLs with MPlayer you will need to re-compile the kernel with
  "<CODE>option USER_LDT</CODE>" (unless you run FreeBSD -CURRENT, where this
  is the default).</P>

<H3><A NAME="freebsd">6.2.1 FreeBSD</A></H3>

<P>If your CPU has SSE, recompile your kernel with "options CPU_ENABLE_SSE" to
  use it (FreeBSD-STABLE or kernel patches required).</P>

<H3><A NAME="openbsd">6.2.2 OpenBSD</A></H3>

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


<H2><A NAME="solaris">6.3 Solaris</A></H2>

<P>MPlayer should work on Solaris 2.6 or newer.</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>

<P>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:</P>

<PRE>
   % /usr/ccs/bin/make
   make: Fatal error in reader: Makefile, line 25: Unexpected end of line seen
</PRE>

<P>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.</P>

<P>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 <CODE>/usr/ccs/bin/as</CODE>.</P>

<P>The configure script tries to find out, which assembler program is used by
  your "gcc" command (in case the autodetection fails, use the
  <CODE>--as=/whereever/you/have/installed/gnu-as</CODE> option to tell the
  configure script where it can find GNU "as" on your system).</P>

<P>Error message from configure on a Solaris x86 system using GCC
  without GNU assembler:</P>

<PRE>
   % configure
   ...
   Checking assembler (/usr/ccs/bin/as) ... , failed
   Please upgrade(downgrade) binutils to 2.10.1...
</PRE>

<P>(Solution: Install and use a gcc configured with "--with-as=gas")</P>

<P>Typical error you get when building with a GNU C compiler that does
  not use GNU as:</P>

<PRE>
   % 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 ...
</PRE>

<P>For DVD support you must have the patched libcss installed. Patch:
  <A HREF="http://www.tools.de/solaris/mplayer/">http://www.tools.de/solaris/mplayer/</A>.</P>

<P>Due to two bugs in Solaris 8 x86, you cannot reliably play DVD discs larger
  than 4 GB:</P>

<UL>
  <LI>The sd(7D) driver on Solaris 8 x86 driver has bug when accessing a disk
    block &gt;4GB on a device using a logical blocksize != DEV_BSIZE (i.e.  CD-ROM
    and DVD media).  Due to a 32Bit int overflow, a disk address modulo 4GB is
    accessed.
    (<A HREF="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22516">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22516</A>)
  </LI>
  <LI>A similar bug is present in the hsfs(7FS) filesystem code (aka
    ISO9660), hsfs currently does not support partitions/disks larger than 4GB, all data
    is accessed modulo 4GB.
    (<A HREF="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22592">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/solarisonintel/message/22592</A>)
  </LI>
</UL>

<P>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
  <A HREF="http://www.sun.com/sparc/vis/mediaLib.html">mediaLib</A>.</P>

<P>VIS accelerated operations from mediaLib are used for mpeg2 video
  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="sgi">6.5 Silicon Graphics / IRIX</A></H2>

<P>Reported working. You'll probably have to use the <I>SGI</I> ao driver.
  Anyone has closer info?</P>


<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>


<H2><A NAME="cygwin">6.7 Cygwin</A></H2>

<P>The Cygwin port is still in its infancy and could use some love,
  <A HREF="tech/patches.txt">patches</A> are always welcome. You should also
  check out the
  <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-cygwin/">mplayer-cygwin</A>
  mailing list for help and latest information.</P>

<P>To get native DirectX video (<CODE>-vo directx</CODE>), install
  <A HREF="http://www.videolan.org/vlc/dx7headers.tgz">DirectX 7 header files</A>
  and recompile. This, together with <CODE>-ao win32</CODE> should give you best
  results.</P>

<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>

<P>Since there is no support for Win32 DLLs under Cygwin and OpenGL and mpdvdkit
  do not work/compile, you should disable them in configure with
  <CODE>./configure --disable-win32 --disable-gl --disable-mpdvdkit</CODE>.</P>

<P>Instructions and files for making SDL run under Cygwin can be found on the
  <A HREF="http://www.libsdl.org/extras/win32/cygwin/">libsdl site</A>.</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
  those who read your mails a lot easier. If you do not know them please
  read <A HREF="http://learn.to/edit_messages">HOWTO edit messages</A> or
  (if you are in a hurry)
  <A HREF="http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanb/documents/quotingguide.html">
  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>
    <UL>
      <LI>Send bug reports here after reading the <A HREF="#known_bugs">Known Bugs</A>
        and <A HREF="bugreports.html">bug reporting section</A>).</LI>
      <LI>Send feature requests here (after reading the <B>whole</B>
        documentation).</LI>
      <LI>Send user questions here (after reading the <B>whole</B>
        documentation).</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI>MPlayer Hungarian users list:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-felhasznalok">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-felhasznalok</A>
    <UL>
      <LI>Hungarian language list</LI>
      <LI>Topic? We'll see about it... mostly flame and RTFM questions up to now :(</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI>MPlayer &amp; Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 users:
    <A HREF="http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-matrox">http://mplayerhq.hu/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-matrox</A><BR>
    Matrox related questions like
    <UL>
      <LI>things about mga_vid</LI>
      <LI>Matrox's official beta drivers (for X 4.x.x)</LI>
      <LI>matroxfb-TVout stuff</LI>
    </UL>
  </LI>
  <LI>MPlayer &amp; DVB card users:
    <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>.



<H1><A NAME="bug_reports">Appendix B</A> - <A HREF="bugreports.html">How to report bugs</A></H1>



<H1><A NAME="known_bugs">Appendix C - Known bugs</A></H1>

<P>Special system/CPU-specific bugs/problems:</P>
<UL>

<LI>SIGILL (signal 4) on P3 using 2.2.x kernels:<BR>
  Problem: kernel 2.2.x doesn't have proper (working) SSE support<BR>
  Solution: upgrade kernel to 2.4.x<BR>
  Workaround: <CODE>./configure --disable-sse</CODE></LI>

<LI>General SIGILL (signal 4):<BR>
  Problem: you compiled and run mplayer in different machines
  (for example compiled on P3 and running on Celeron)<BR>
  Solution: compile MPlayer on the same machine where you will use it!<BR>
  Workaround: <CODE>./configure --disable-sse</CODE> etc. options</LI>

<LI>"Internal buffer inconsistency" during MEncoder run:<BR>
  Problem: known problem when lame &lt; 3.90 was compiled with gcc 2.96 or 3.x.<BR>
  Solution: use lame &gt;=3.90.<BR>
  Workaround: compile lame with gcc 2.95.x and remove any already installed
  lame packages, they may have been compiled with gcc 2.96.</LI>

<LI>Messed up MP2/MP3 sound on PPC:<BR>
  Problem: known GCC miscompilation bug on PPC platforms, no fix yet.<BR>
  Workaround: use FFmpeg's (slow) MP1/MP2/MP3 decoder (<CODE>-ac ffmpeg</CODE>)</LI>

<LI>sig11 in libmpeg2, when scaling+encoding:<BR>
  Problem: known GCC 2.95.2 MMX bug, upgrade to 2.95.3.</LI>
</UL>

<P>Various A-V sync and other audio problems:</P>

General audio delay or jerky sound (exists with all or many files):
<UL>
  <LI>most common: buggy audio driver! - try to use different drivers, try
    ALSA 0.9 OSS emulation with -ao oss, also try -ao sdl, sometimes it helps.
    If your file plays fine with -nosound, then you can be sure it's sound card
    (driver) problem.</LI>
  <LI>audio buffer problems (buffer size badly detected)<BR>
    Workaround:  mplayer -abs option</LI>
  <LI>samplerate problems - maybe your card doesn't support the samplerate
    used in your files - try the resampling plugin (-aop)</LI>
  <LI>slow machine (CPU or VGA)<BR>
    try with -vo null, if it plays well, then you have slow VGA card/driver<BR>
    Workaround: buy a faster card or read this documentation about how to speed up<BR>
    Also try -framedrop</LI>
</UL>

Audio delay/de-sync specific to one or a few files:
<UL>
  <LI>bad file<BR>
    Workaround:
    <UL>
      <LI>-ni or -nobps option   (for non-interleaved or bad files)<BR>
        and/or</LI>
      <LI>-mc 0   (required for files with badly interleaved VBR audio)<BR>
        and/or</LI>
      <LI>-delay option or +/- keys at runtime to adjust delay</LI>
    </UL>
    If none of these help, please upload the file, we'll check (and fix).
  </LI>
  <LI>your sound card doesn't support 48kHz playback<BR>
    Workaround: buy a better sound card...  or try to decrease fps by 10% (use
    -fps 27 for a 30fps movie) or use the resampler plugin</LI>
  <LI>slow machine<BR>
    (if A-V is not around 0, and the last number in the status line increasing)<BR>
    Workaround: -framedrop</LI>
</UL>

No sound at all:
<UL>
  <LI>your file uses an unsupported audio codec<BR>
    Workaround: read the documentation and help us adding support for it</LI>
</UL>

No picture at all (just plain grey/green window):
<UL>
  <LI>your file uses an unsupported video codec<BR>
    Workaround: read the documentation and help us adding support for it</LI>
  <LI>auto-selected codec can't decode the file, try to select another using -vc
    or -vfm options</LI>
  <LI>you try to play DivX 3.x file with OpenDivX decoder or XviD (-vc odivx)
    - install Divx4Linux and recompile player</LI>
</UL>

<P>Video-out problems:</P>

<P>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.</P>

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

<P>Green image using mga_vid (-vo mga / -vo xmga):<BR>
  - mga_vid misdetected your card's RAM amount, reload it using mga_ram_size option</P>



<H1><A NAME="skin">Appendix D</A> - <A HREF="skin-en.html">MPlayer skin format</A></H1>



<H1><A NAME="flame_wars">Appendix E</A> - <A HREF="users_against_developers.html">Developer Cries</A></H1>


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