Guide to Compiling And Installing MPlayer on Linux and Mac OS X

[TheFluff]

If you are on Linux, install the ALSA dev packages. If you are on MacOS X, I dunno what.

[gunbladex]

hey guys kinda new here, um i jus downloaded code geass from gg fansubs and they recommend using this mplayer thingy.
question: how do i install it?
im using windows xp so the linux and Mac OS X thing doesnt apply to me right?
i've downloaded MPlayer 1.0rc1 Windows, a skin and the cccp thingy as well. but after i extracted the files i cant run Mplayer.
i think im gona delete everything and start from scratch can someone point me in the right directions please?

[Nicholi]

CCCP, as in the Combined Community Codec Pack, is a DirectShow codec pack. Which has no effect whatsoever on mplayer (or VLC) because it uses internal codecs. If you want to use the CCCP, you do not need mplayer. You should be able to use any DirectShow player, such as WMP, however we recommend using Media Player Classic (MPC, unrelated to Microsoft products) or ZoomPlayer which come with the pack itself.

If however you do want to use a mplayer build for windows, we have our own found here. mplayer is a command-line player, so you don't run it like normal players. You can make a shortcut and drag videos to the shortcut, which I believe works. Also there are a few nice frontends for it in win32, which would make it act more normally, such as MPUI.

[gunbladex]

thanx alot dude! media player classic is great! i see the subs now

[Epyon9283]

Originally Posted by Ergzay

Could you please run 'freetype-config --ftversion' and 'ls /usr/X11**/*fontconfig*' and tell me the veresion of Mac OS X you have. I need this information to complete the ---TO BE COMPLETED--- section in my guide.

10.4.8 (intel):
iMac:~ tom$ freetype-config --ftversion
2.1.10
iMac:~ tom$ ls /usr/X11R6/lib/*fontconfig*
/usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.1.0.dylib /usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.a
/usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.1.dylib /usr/X11R6/lib/libfontconfig.dylib

[Niji]

Could someone tell me please how I switch audio tracks on mplayer on OSX? I pressed all available keys to no avail (j does subtitles, that works fine)

[TheFluff]

Originally Posted by Niji

Could someone tell me please how I switch audio tracks on mplayer on OSX? I pressed all available keys to no avail (j does subtitles, that works fine)

Use -alang jpn (or eng) or -aid 0 (or 1, or 2, or whatever) on the commandline. You can't switch audio tracks while playing.

[blueorange]

Originally Posted by Niji

Could someone tell me please how I switch audio tracks on mplayer on OSX? I pressed all available keys to no avail (j does subtitles, that works fine)

Press # (which is alt-3)

This works for me on MPlayer on the Mac. It only works on .mkv files though.

If you want to change the audio on .ogm files you will need to what TheFluff says.

[TheFluff]

Oh, right, they fixed that.

[Starks]

I compiled my own MPlayer from an SVN build, but I have a problem...

The video won't play in its proper aspect ratio and changing the options has no effect. All videos are stretched to 16:9.

Edit: None of the X11 drivers selectable work properly, one gives me the proper AR but no fullscreen, the other gives give me the wrong AR and fullscreen, the third simply doesn't work.

[TheFluff]

Try (in order, not all at the same time):

-monitoraspect <your monitor aspect ratio>
-monitorpixelaspect 1 (or 0, read the manpage)
-nokeepaspect
-screenh <monitor resolution height in pixels> -screenw <monitor resolution width in pixels>
-fstype (read the manpage for details)
-vo gl2 (if you have it compiled in)
-vo fbdev (if you have it compiled in and supported in the kernel)

[Starks]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

Try (in order, not all at the same time):

-monitoraspect <your monitor aspect ratio>
-monitorpixelaspect 1 (or 0, read the manpage)
-nokeepaspect
-screenh <monitor resolution height in pixels> -screenw <monitor resolution width in pixels>
-fstype (read the manpage for details)
-vo gl2 (if you have it compiled in)
-vo fbdev (if you have it compiled in and supported in the kernel)

BINGO! That solved the fullscreen and aspect ratio problems.

Thanks. I'll put that in my config.

[fyleow]

I'm using Ubuntu Feisty and I'm having issues with Mplayer. The video is not as smooth as it is using CCCP under Windows. For example in Hayate no Gotoku episode 2 by Eclipse it's a little jerky when the numbers are scrolling by at around 11 seconds into the video. At around 28 seconds when it shows Nagi the video is not smooth either.

CPU utilization doesn't seem to be the issue here (C2D 3.0 ghz), and my HDDs are running DMA.

If I use VLC the video is smooth, almost as good as MPC in Windows but VLC support for soft subs is just terrible.

Any ideas?

[TheFluff]

Which video output driver are you using?

[fyleow]

x11 X11 (XImage/Shm).

I do have Beryl but I have an Nvidia card so I'm not running on XGL or AIXGL

[SeijiSensei]

After considerable massaging, I've been able to configure our new Dell 640m laptop to play some, but not all, HD fansubs. In particular, the Arienai encodes of Hataraki Man play cleanly, but the Lunar encodes of Bartender do not. I've tried using both mplayer and xine to play the Bartender episodes, and both players crash about nine seconds after the file opens during the voice-over describing the theme of that week's episode.

I'm running a fully-updated version of Fedora Core 6. The laptop has an Intel 945GM video adapter, and I'm using a current release of the i810 driver from x.org which supports all the recent Intel adapters. I've added the following options to xorg.conf

Options     "VideoRam" "131072"
Options     "CacheLines" "1980"

which eliminated some earlier problems where X was unable to determine the correct amount of available video memory. I'm also using the 915resolution hack to set the screen mode to 1280x800 and have added "ModeLines" to the Monitor section for the 1280x800 mode. I also have "monitoraspect=16:10" in mplayer.conf to eliminate stretching when playing a 4:3 video; xine doesn't seem to require this.

Running midentify against both files produces the following output:

Spoiler for Hataraki Man:

ID_VIDEO_ID=0
ID_AUDIO_ID=1
ID_FILENAME=\[Arienai\]_Hataraki_Man_-_01\[1280x720\]\[8e378651\].mp4
ID_DEMUXER=mov
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=720
ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.976
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=0.0000
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=mp4a
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=127968
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=1354.64
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=127968
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=faad

Spoiler for Bartender:

ID_VIDEO_ID=0
ID_VID_0_NAME=Subbed\ by\ LunarAnime\ #lunaranime@irc.rizon.net\ http://www.lunaranime.org
ID_AUDIO_ID=0
ID_AID_0_LANG=jpn
ID_FILENAME=\[Lunar\]\ Bartender\ -\ 03\ \[x264\]\[1280x720\]\[35FBD27A\].mkv
ID_DEMUXER=mkv
ID_VIDEO_FORMAT=avc1
ID_VIDEO_BITRATE=0
ID_VIDEO_WIDTH=1280
ID_VIDEO_HEIGHT=720
ID_VIDEO_FPS=23.975
ID_VIDEO_ASPECT=1.7778
ID_AUDIO_FORMAT=85
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=0
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_LENGTH=1384.85
ID_VIDEO_CODEC=ffh264
ID_AUDIO_BITRATE=128000
ID_AUDIO_RATE=48000
ID_AUDIO_NCH=2
ID_AUDIO_CODEC=mp3

They both have "video format" of avc1 and a video codec of ffh264. They differ in some respects -- the "demuxer" is "mov" (i.e., Quicktime) for Hataraki Man and "mkv" (Matroska) for Bartender. The audio formats are also different -- mp4a for Hataraki Man and mp3 for Bartender. While my knowledge of the ins-and-outs of encoding is somewhat limited, these minor differences don't seem to explain why one file plays correctly while the other causes both players to crash.

I've spent a considerable amount of time searching the Internet to find the right tweaks to use the i945 card to its fullest. I'm pretty sure I've incorporated all the correct settings for both xorg.conf and the players themselves. The Hataraki Man episodes look terrific in this format, clearly superior to the Xvid re-encodes I made earlier using mencoder at the same 720p resolution. I just can't seem to figure out what it is about the Bartender encodes that crashes my players. My similarly re-encoded Xvid versions of the Bartender files do not cause this problem. They even play on my Cowon A2 media player that has DivX/Xvid support. It just seems to be the H.264 originals that don't work correctly.

Any ideas?

[TheFluff]

I wish all people with questions about playback problems could include this much info... but you forgot one thing: MPlayer and Xine versions?
Also, can you include the error message when running MPlayer -v?

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by TheFluff

I wish all people with questions about playback problems could include this much info

After dealing with "questions" like "oh, my email isn't working" a few dozen times, I tend to make sure I include a lot of information in my requests for help

... but you forgot one thing: MPlayer and Xine versions?
Also, can you include the error message when running MPlayer -v?

Of course, I can always forget the basics! I use the Livna builds of these players:

mplayer-1.0-0.72.20070325svn.lvn6
xine-0.99.4-10.lvn6
xine-lib-1.1.5-1.fc6
xine-lib-extras-1.1.5-1.fc6
xine-lib-extras-nonfree-1.1.5-1.lvn6

I install and update using "yum" so it manages all the dependencies for me. The dependency list for mplayer alone totals some 75 libraries.

I've posted the complete verbose output from mplayer on a web server I maintain. For Bartender, the output is here. The corresponding output for Hataraki Man is here.

I think the error in question is probably related to these:
ds_fill_buffer: EOF reached (stream: audio)
ds_fill_buffer: EOF reached (stream: video)

I did some searching for these errors at Google, but it only turned up copies of the mplayer source code. I didn't really find anything all that helpful as an end-user.

Thanks in advance, Fluff, for any help you can offer.

[TheFluff]

What I immediately think when I see those errors is "corrupted file". I'm assuming you did CRC-check the files?
If it's not that, there's not really anything that comes to mind immediately. Try doing a disk check, or see if your Matroska libraries are outdated and/or incorrectly installed.