Ubuntu Wiki

Introduction

[http://www.mplayerhq.hu mplayer] and it's graphical cousin, gmplayer, are versatile media players available from the [http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/components multiverse] repository. They can play all types of FreeFormats media, and with the addition of some packages available from outside of Ubuntu, they can also play most non-free media formats. See RestrictedFormats for instructions for enabling non-free formats in mplayer and gmplayer.

Before you start

You must have administration privileges to install packages. RootSudo explains how Ubuntu provides the necessary privileges.

In order to install mplayer, you will need to enable the [http://www.ubuntulinux.org/ubuntu/components/document_view multiverse] repository. AddingRepositoriesHowto explains how to enable the multiverse repository.

Ubuntu 5.10 (Breezy Badger) and earlier

Choosing the right package

Mplayer comes in several flavors, some of which are optimized to take advantage of your CPU's capabilities. The following chart will help you choose the package that will best suit your computer. [:AddingRepositoriesHowto: Enable the multiverse repository] and install the correct package using your favorite package manager, or use the terminal command line that is provided in the chart.

Note that you should only install the mplayer-586 or mplayer-k6 if you have one of the CPU's listed for those packages in the chart. Newer CPU's like for example AMD Athlon or intel Pentium 4 will run much faster with the mplayer-386 package. The reason for this is that mplayer-386 is compiled with runtime CPU detection and takes advantage of modern features like MMX2, SSE, SSE2, 3DNow!, 3DNow2! on CPU's that supports it.

The packages mplayer-686 and mplayer-k7 are also available as dummy packages that only installs mplayer-586 and mplayer-k6. Never install those packages, even if you have a i686 or k7 class CPU. mplayer-386 will give significantly better performance (30-40% decrease in CPU usage).

Configuration

Configuring mplayer and gmplayer is not obvious to the casual observer. The configurations options given below are mostly taken from Ubuntu 6.04, and should work on most computers. To use this configuration, first open your mplayer configuration file:

gedit ~/.mplayer/config

Then cut and paste the following block into the file:

# Specify default video driver (see -vo help for a list).
vo=xv,sdl,x11

# Specify default audio driver (see -ao help for a list).
ao=alsa,oss,sdl,esd,arts

# Drop frames to preserve audio/video sync.
framedrop = yes

# get a default OSD font from fontconfig
fontconfig = yes
font = "Sans"
subfont-text-scale = 3

Save and close the file.

Streaming Video

mplayer and gmplayer provide excellent streaming video support for mozilla, firefox, epiphany and konqueror. To enable support for streaming media install the package mozilla-mplayer using your favorite package manager, or, type in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer

CategoryDocumentation