MPlayer

Related articles
mpv
MPlayer
is a popular movie player for GNU/Linux. It has support for most video and audio formats and is thus highly versatile, even if it is mostly used for viewing videos.
Installation
Install
the
mplayer
package.
Some video players
can use MPlayer as a backend.
Configuration
System-wide configuration files are located in the
/etc/mplayer/
, whereas the user-local settings are stored in
~/.mplayer/
directory.
The default files in the
/etc/mplayer/
are:
codecs.conf
- Contains configuration of codecs.
example.conf
- Is an example of mplayer.conf, which is not automatically created after installation.
input.conf
- Contains configuration of hotkeys.
A file
config
is created in the
~/.mplayer/
directory by default.
See also:
Example MPlayer configuration file
,
mplayer(1)
.
Key bindings
System key bindings are configured via
/etc/mplayer/input.conf
. Personal key bindings are stored in
~/.mplayer/input.conf
. For a complete list of keyboard shortcuts look at
mplayer(1)
.
See also:
LQWiki:XF86 keyboard symbols
Tips and tricks
Hardware video acceleration
See
Hardware video acceleration
.
Enabling VDPAU
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,ffhevcvdpau
Note
The trailing commas are important! They tell MPlayer to fall back on other drivers and codecs should the specified ones not be found.
-vo
option selects VDPAU video output driver,
-vc
option selects VDPAU video codecs.
The
ffodivxvdpau
codec is only supported by the most recent series of NVIDIA hardware. Consider omitting it based on your specific hardware. See
Hardware video acceleration#NVIDIA
for more information.
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
You can use
xvinfo
to check which video modes your graphics card supports.
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.
DVB-T Streaming
See
DVB-T
for more info.
DVD playing
To play a DVD with MPlayer:
$ mplayer dvd://
N
where
N
is the desired title number. Start at 1 and work up if unsure. To start at a specific chapter use the '-chapter' flag. For example, adding '-chapter 5' to the command starts the dvd playing at chapter five of the title.
Mplayer checks
/dev/dvd
by default. Tell it to use
/dev/sr0
with the
dvd-device
option at the command line, or the
dvd-device
variable in
~/.mplayer/config
.
To play a DVD image file:
$ mplayer -dvd-device movie.iso dvd://
N
To enable the DVD menu use:
$ mplayer dvdnav://
Note
You use arrow keys to navigate and the
Enter
key to choose.
To enable mouse support in DVD menus use:
$ mplayer -mouse-movements dvdnav://
To find the audio language, start MPlayer with the
-v
switch to output audio IDs. An audio track is selected with
-aid
audio_id
. Set a default audio language by editing
~/.mplayer/config
and adding the line
alang=en
for English.
With MPlayer, the DVD could be set to a low volume. To increase the maximum volume to 400%, use
softvol=yes
and
softvol-max=400
. The startup volume defaults to 100% of software volume and the global mixer levels will remain untouched. Using the
9
and
0
keys, volume can be adjusted between 0 and 400 percent.
alang=en
softvol=yes
softvol-max=400
JACK support
To have MPlayer audio output directed to
JACK
:
$ mplayer -ao jack
path/to/file
Advanced Subtitles
In order to get Advanced SubStation Alpha (ass) or SubStation Alpha (ssa) formatted subtitles to display properly:
$ mplayer -ass
path/to/subtitledVideo.mkv
One possible indication of needing to enable this flag is if you get numbers appearing with your subtitles. This is caused by the positioning information being interpreted as something to be displayed. Mplayer will also complain about subtitles being either too long or having too many lines.
Enabling
ass
also enables any embedded fonts. As per the note in the mplayer's man adding
embeddedfonts=true
is unneeded if
fontconfig
is version 2.4.2 or newer. Fontconfig will also be used to select which font to use when there are no embedded fonts. This may result in a different font being used than the OSD subtitle renderer.
Internet radio
This article or section is out of date.
Reason:
The script needs shell checking. (Discuss in
Talk:MPlayer#Internet Radio Script Mess
)
Here is an example of a script for an easy start/stop of playing a predefined radio station.
[1]
#!/bin/bash
XX="X"$1;
PLAYIT='mplayer  -loop 0 -playlist http://*.*.*.*:8000/listen.pls';

if [ "$XX" == "Xstop" ]; then
  killall mplayer;
else
  if [ 'EX' == 'EX'"$(pidof mplayer)" ]; then
    if [ "$UID" -ne 0 ]; then
      nohup $PLAYIT &> /dev/null & disown;
    else
      echo The "root" user is not allowed to run this script.
    fi
  else
    echo mplayer is already running by user: $(ps -eo user,comm | grep -i "mplayer"$ | sed 's/ mplayer/,/m') | sed "s/ ,$/./m";
  fi
fi
For more details on a running mplayer instance:
$ ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,comm | grep -i "mplayer"$ | sed  "s/ mplayer$//m"
Additional binary codecs
If you need to play media encoded with the cook, drvc or sipr codecs, you can install the "essentials" binary codec pack with the
codecs64
AUR
package. See
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
for more information.
Allow Screensaver/DPMS while playback is paused
MPlayer by default blocks the screensaver what might be undesirable if you forget a paused video. The following configs will keep the screensaver and DPMS enabled but use
xdotool
to press an inert key every 60 seconds:
nostop-xscreensaver=1
heartbeat-interval=60
heartbeat-cmd="xdotool key VoidSymbol"
Troubleshooting
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"
.
MPlayer has black or strange colored font for OSD and Subtitles
There appears to be an issue with OSD and Subtitle colors when using vdpau output, which mplayer may be using by default. You can get around this issue by using xv instead of vdpau:
$ mplayer -vo xv
See the original
forums thread
for details.
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 use MOV as the demuxer:
~/.mplayer/config
[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
.
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/local/bin/smplayer.helper
export XLIB_SKIP_ARGB_VISUALS=1
exec smplayer.real "$@"
Make it
executable
and link it as shown below:
# ln -sf /usr/local/bin/smplayer.helper /usr/local/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
.
Mplayer shows question marks for some characters on subtitle
If the codepage of the subtitles is utf8, try using:
-subcp utf8
You can find the codepage of the subtitles with:
$ file subtitles.srt
See
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/mplayer-shows-question-marks-for-some-characters-on-subtitle-works-fine-on-xine-906077/
.
Choppy audio CD playback
CDDA playback may be interrupted every few seconds as the CDROM spins down the CD. To get around this you need to cache or buffer in advance using the
-cache
option:
$ mplayer cdda://:1 -cache 1024
The
:1
is to lower the CDROM speed for a constant spin and less noise.
See also
MPlayer FAQ
MPlayer tips
How to configure MPlayer
playerctl
: A command-line utility and library for controlling media players