MPlayer

zh-CN:MPlayer MPlayer is a popular movie player for GNU/Linux. It has support for pretty much every video and audio format out there and is hence very versatile, even though most people use it for viewing videos.

Installation

MPlayer can be installed by three different packages from the official repositories:

• mplayer: the standard package.
• mplayer-vaapi: a VAAPI-enabled version of MPlayer.
• mplayer2: a fork of MPlayer with several new features.

Development versions are also available in the AUR:

• mplayer-svn^AUR: development version of MPlayer.
• mplayer2-git^AUR: development version of MPlayer2.

For differences between the two see MPlayer2 vs MPlayer.

Additional installation tips

Frontends/GUIs

There are several GUIs for MPlayer.

• GNOME MPlayer — Simple GTK+-based GUI for MPlayer.

http://kdekorte.googlepages.com/gnomemplayer || gnome-mplayer

• KMPlayer — Video player plugin for Konqueror and basic MPlayer/Xine/ffmpeg/ffserver/VDR frontend for KDE.

http://kmplayer.kde.org/ || kmplayer^AUR

• Pymp — PyGTK frontend for MPlayer.

http://jdolan.dyndns.org/trac/wiki/Pymp || pymp^AUR

• SMPlayer — Middleweight Qt front-end for MPlayer with additional patches.

http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/ || smplayer

• UMPlayer — SMPlayer fork with extra features (CSS themes, YouTube integration, ShoutCast support, etc.).

http://www.umplayer.com/ || umplayer^AUR

• Xt7-Player — Graphical user interface for MPlayer written in Gambas, with a huge list of features.

http://xt7-player.sourceforge.net/xt7forum/ || xt7-player^AUR

Browser integration

If you want to let MPlayer control video viewing in your favorite web browser, install one of the following plugins for your browser.

Firefox

A browser plugin is available in the official repositories with the gecko-mediaplayer package.

Note: Depends on gnome-mplayer, which provides a complete frontend to MPlayer.

Konqueror

A plugin for Konqueror can be found in the AUR with the kmplayer^AUR package.

Note: kmplayer^AUR also provides a complete frontend to MPlayer.

Chromium

The gecko-mediaplayer plugin for Firefox also works in Chromium.

Usage

Configuration

System-wide configuration is located in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf, whereas the user-local settings are stored in ~/.mplayer/config. The file /etc/mplayer/example.conf is a good starting point.

An example configuration:

/etc/mplayer/example.conf

# default configuration that applies to every file
[default]

# use X11 for video output
vo=xv

# use alsa for audio output, choose oss4 as fallback 
ao=alsa,oss

# multithreaded decoding of H264/MPEG-1/2 (valid: 1-8)
lavdopts=threads=2

# prefer using six channels audio
channels = 6

# scale the subtitles to the 3% of the screen size
subfont-text-scale = 3

# never use font config
nofontconfig = 1

# add black borders so the movies have the same aspect ratio of the monitor
# for wide screen monitors
vf-add=expand=::::1:16/9:16

# for non wide screen traditional monitors
#vf-add=expand=::::1:4/3:16

# disable screensaver
heartbeat-cmd="xscreensaver-command -deactivate &" # stop xscreensaver
stop-xscreensaver="yes" # stop gnome-screensaver

# correct pitch when speed is faster or slower than 1.0
af=scaletempo

# allow to seek in a file which is still downloading whilst watching it
idx=yes

# allow to increase the maximal volume 
#softvol=1
#softvol-max=600

# skip  displaying  some  frames  to  maintain  A/V sync on slow systems
framedrop=yes

# more intense frame dropping (breaks decoding)
#hardframedrop=yes

# profile for up-mixing two channels audio to six channels
# use -profile 2chto6ch to activate
[2chto6ch]
af-add=pan=6:1:0:.4:0:.6:2:0:1:0:.4:.6:2
 
# profile to down-mixing six channels audio to two channels
# use -profile 6chto2ch to activate
[6chto2ch]
af-add=pan=2:0.7:0:0:0.7:0.5:0:0:0.5:0.6:0.6:0:0

Key bindings

System key bindings are configured via /etc/mplayer/input.conf. Personal key bindings are stored in ~/.mplayer/input.conf. This is a list of some basic default MPlayer keys. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts look at man mplayer.

Key	Description
Template:Keypress	Toggle pause/play.
Template:Keypress	Toggle pause/play.
Template:Keypress	Return to menu when using dvdnav.
Template:Keypress	Seek backward ten seconds.
Template:Keypress	Seek forward ten seconds.
Template:Keypress	Seek backward one minute.
Template:Keypress	Seek forward one minute.
Template:Keypress	Go back in the playlist.
Template:Keypress	Go forward in the playlist.
Template:Keypress	Mute the sound.
Template:Keypress	Volume up.
Template:Keypress	Volume down.
Template:Keypress	Toggle fullscreen mode.
Template:Keypress	Toggle OSD state.
Template:Keypress	Toggle subtitle visibility.
Template:Keypress	Show filename.
Template:Keypress, Template:Keypress	Adjust contrast.
Template:Keypress, Template:Keypress	Adjust brightness.
Template:Keypress	Cycle through the available subtitles.
Template:Keypress	Cycle through the available audio tracks.

Tips and tricks

Automatic resuming from where you left off

To get this behavior, you can install the mplayer-resumer^AUR package from the AUR. The package contains a Perl wrapper script for MPlayer which will allow you to autoresume playback from the point it was last stopped.

To use it, simply call the wrapper script in place of MPlayer:

$ mplayer-resumer [options] [path/to/file]

If this script is restarted within a short amount of time after closing MPayer (default 5 seconds) then it will delete the file used to keep track of the videos resume position, effectively starting the video from the beginning.

If the video file to be played is on a read-only filesystem, or otherwise lives in a location that cannot be written to, resume will fail. This is because the current implementation uses a file parallel to the video file to store the timecode.

Enabling VDPAU (for modern NVIDIA cards only)

For a complete list of VDPAU capable hardware, see this table. Ensure the nvidia driver is installed and consider one of the following two methods to automatically enable VDPAU for playback.

Using a configuration file

Append the following to either the system-wide (/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf) or user-specific (~/.mplayer/config) configuration files:

vo=vdpau,
vc=ffh264vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffodivxvdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,

Note: The trailing commas are important! They tell MPlayer to fall back on other drivers and codecs should the specified ones not be found.

Warning: The ffodivxvdpau codec is only supported by the most recent series of NVIDIA hardware. Consider omitting it based on your specific hardware. See the NVIDIA page for more information.

Using a wrapper script

The AUR contains a trivial Bash script called mplayer-vdpau-auto^AUR that detects which video codec to use and when to use VDPAU as the video output.

Another simple wrapper is mplayer-vdpau-shell-git^AUR, which can recover from a VDPAU FATAL error. This wrapper uses the "-include" option to include a VDPAU configuration, so it will ignore any VDPAU specific settings in your ~/.mplayer/config file.

Translucent video with Radeon cards and Composite enabled

To get translucent video output in X you have to enable textured video in MPlayer:

$ mplayer -vo xv:adaptor=1 <file>

Or add the following line to ~/.mplayer/config:

vo=xv:adaptor=1

You can use xvinfo to check which video modes your graphic card supports.

SMPlayer: No video issue

SMPlayer may have trouble opening some MP4 (and probably FLV) videos. If it plays only audio without any video, a possible fix is to add the following lines to your ~/.mplayer/config file:

 [extension.mp4]
 demuxer=mov

If problem persists after doing so, it is because SMPlayer is keeping settings for that specific file. Deleting the settings for all the files that SMPlayer is keeping will solve this problem:

 $ rm -rf ~/.config/smplayer/file_settings

SMPlayer: fail to resume playback after pause

SMPlayer might stop playing a video after pausing it if your audio output driver is incorrectly set. You can fix this by specifically setting your audio driver. For example, if you use PulseAudio, this can be done by starting MPlayer with the -ao pulse argument or by adding the following to your ~/.mplayer/config file:

 ao=pulse

You can also change this from SMPlayer by going to Options > Preferences > General > Audio and setting the Output Driver option to pulse.

SMPlayer: no video when using transparency in GNOME

This problem may arise under GNOME when using Compiz to provide transparency: SMPlayer starts with a transparent screen with audio playing, but no video. To fix this, create (as root) a file with the contents:

/usr/bin/smplayer.helper

export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
exec smplayer.real "$@"

Then do the following:

# chmod 755 /usr/bin/smplayer.helper
# mv /usr/bin/smplayer{,.real}
# ln -sf smplayer.helper /usr/bin/smplayer

SMPlayer: OSD font too big / subtitle text too small

Since SMPlayer 0.8.2.1 (with MPlayer2 20121128-1}}, the ratio of the subtitle font to the OSD font is very strange. This can result in the OSD text filling the whole screen while the subtitles are very small and unreadable. This problem can be solved by adding:

-subfont-osd-scale 2

or to the extra options passed to MPlayer from SMPlayer. These options are found in Options > Preferences > Advanced > Options for MPlayer. This can also be achieved by adding the following line to ~/.mplayer/config:

subfont-osd-scale=2

Watching streamed video

If you want to play a video stream (e.g an ASX link) use:

$ mplayer -playlist link-to-stream.asx

The -playlist option is necessary because these streams are actually playlists and cannot be played without it.

MPlayer with DVDNav support

If you want to use MPlayer with DVDNav (to enable the menus on DVDs), start it with the following options:

$ mplayer -nocache dvdnav://

MPlayer with JACK support

To have MPlayer audio output directed to JACK as its default behavior, edit ~/.mplayer/config and add:

ao=jack

If you don't have JACK running all the time, you can have MPlayer output to JACK on an as-needed basis by invoking MPlayer from the command line as such:

$ mplayer -ao jack [path/to/file]

MPlayer fails to open files with spaces

MPlayer can fail to open a file with spaces (e.g. 'The Movie') by saying that it could not open the file file:///The%20Movie (where all spaces are converted to %20). This can be fixed by editing /usr/share/applications/mplayer.desktop to changing the following line from:

Exec=mplayer %U

To:

Exec=mplayer "%F"

If you use a frontend/GUI for MPlayer, enter its name in Exec=gui_name "%F".

See also

• Official MPlayer website
• MPlayer FAQ
• MPlayer notes
• MPlayer tips
• How to configure MPlayer