path: root/README

Welcome to MPlayer, the Unix movie player. MPlayer can play most standard video
formats out of the box and almost all others with the help of external codecs.
MPlayer currently works best from the command line, but there is a GUI with
skin support in the alpha development stage.

This document is for getting you started in a few minutes.  It cannot answer
all of your questions.  If you have problems, please read the documentation in
DOCS/documentation.html.  It is extensive and should answer most of your 
questions. Also read the manpage to learn how to use MPlayer.

To compile MPlayer with X11 support, you need to have the XFree86 development
packages installed, for the GUI you also need the GTK development packages.

Before you start...
Unless you know what are you doing, consult DOCS/video.html to see which driver
to use with your video card to get the best video quality and performance.
Most cards require special drivers not included with standard X11, to drive
the 2-D video acceleration features (YUV, scaling etc) of your card!

A quick and incomplete list of recommendations:
- ATI cards: get the GATOS drivers for X11/Xv or use vidix
- Matrox G200/G4x0/G550: compile and use mga_vid for Linux, use vidix for BSD
- 3dfx Voodoo3/Banshee: get XFree86 4.2.0+ for Xv or use the tdfxfb driver
- nVidia cards: get the X11 driver from www.nvidia.com for Xv support
Without having accelerated video, even a 800MHz P3 may be slow to play DVD!

___________________________________
STEP1: Installing FFmpeg libavcodec
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If you are using an official release, skip this step, since official releases
always include libavcodec. To verify this check if the libavcodec subdirectory
is empty or contains the sources!

The FFmpeg project provides libavcodec, a very portable MPEG4/DivX codec with
excellent speed and quality.  It is the preferred codec of MPlayer for playing
mpeg4 and divx video.  You have to get libavcodec directly from the FFmpeg CVS
server. Use the following commands in a suitable directory outside the MPlayer
source directory:

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ffmpeg.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ffmpeg login
cvs -z9 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.ffmpeg.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ffmpeg co ffmpeg/libavcodec

When asked for a password, you can just hit enter.

Now, replace the empty libavcodec directory with the FFmpeg libavcodec source
by removing the libavcodec subdirectory in the MPlayer source tree and then
copying (symbolic linking does not suffice!) the freshly downloaded FFmpeg
libavcodec directory back into the MPlayer source tree.


______________________________
STEP2: Installing Win32 Codecs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

While MPlayer and libavcodec has built-in support for the most common audio
and video formats, some others are playable only with the Win32 DLLs
or the XAnim binary plugins. Few examples: WMV video, Divx/WMA audio, Indeo.
This step is not mandatory, but recommended for getting MPlayer to play more
different file types!

Grab the win32 codecs package from the download page

  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

unpack it and put the contents in a directory where MPlayer will find them.
The default directory is /usr/lib/win32/ but you can change that to something
else by using the '--with-win32libdir=DIR' option when you run './configure' .

__________________________
STEP3: Configuring MPlayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MPlayer has a lot of options that get selected in this phase. Run

  ./configure

to configure MPlayer with the default options.  The options you installed above
should be autodetected, except GUI support, which has to be enabled separately,
run

  ./configure --enable-gui

if you want to use the GUI.

If something does not work as expected, try

  ./configure --help

to see the available options and select what you need.

The ./configure script prints a summary of enabled and disabled options.
If you have something installed that ./configure fails to detect, check
the file configure.log for errors and reasons for the failure. Repeat this
step until you are satisfied with the enabled feature set.

________________________
STEP4: Compiling MPlayer
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Now you can start the compilation by typing

  make

You can install MPlayer with

  make install

provided that you have write permission in the installation directory.

If all went well, you can run MPlayer by typing 'mplayer'
You should get a summary of the most common options and keys (help screen).

If you get 'unable to load shared library' or similar errors, then run
'ldd ./mplayer' to check which libraries fail and go back to STEP 3 to fix it.
Sometimes just running 'ldconfig' is enough.

NOTE: If you run Debian you can configure, compile and build a proper deb
package with only one command:

  fakeroot debian/rules binary

____________________________________________
STEP5: Installing the onscreen display fonts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To enable OSD (onscreen status display) and ASCII/TEXT subtitles you need some
fonts. Get them from our homepage:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

Unpack the archive and choose one of the available font sizes.  Then copy the
font files of the corresponding size into /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/
(or whatever you set with './configure --datadir=DIR').

____________________________
STEP6: Installing a GUI skin
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Please remember that the GUI is still in the alpha development stage and not
completely finished yet. Features like playlist, preferences and equalizer
do not work at all. Expect them for the 1.0 release
Basic stuff like file selection and seeking works, though.

If you want to use the GUI you need to download a skin, since MPlayer does not
come with a skin by default. Choose one from the download page

  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

unpack it in /usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/. MPlayer will use the skin in 
the default/ subdirectory (/usr/local/share/mplayer/Skin/default/*) unless
told otherwise via the '-skin' switch. You should therefore rename your
skin subdirectory, make a suitable symbolic link or set the skin name in
the file mplayer.conf by 'skin=skinname'.

__________________
STEP7: Let's play!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That's it for the moment.  To start playing movies, open a command line and try

  mplayer <moviefile>

or for the GUI:

  gmplayer <moviefile>
  (just 'gmplayer' is enough to use the GUI fileselector)

To play VCD track or DVD title, try:

  mplayer -vcd 2 -cdrom-device /dev/hdc
  mplayer -dvd 1 -alang en -slang hu -dvd-device /dev/hdd

See 'mplayer -help' and 'man mplayer' for further options.

'mplayer -vo help' will show you the available video output drivers. Experiment
with the '-vo' switch to see which one gives you the best performance!
If you get very jerky playback or no sound, experiment with -ao (see -ao help)
Note that jerky playback is caused by buggy audio drivers or too slow cpu/vga.
With a good audio and video driver combination, one can play DVDs and 720x576
DivX files smoothly on a Celeron 366. For slower systems, you need -framedrop.

Questions you may have are probably answered in the rest of the documentation.
The place to start reading is DOCS/faq.html and DOCS/documentation.html.