MPlayer-1.0pre6a

Patches

CODECs

Skins

Fonts

If you downloaded any proprietary CODECs (which can provide support for additional audio and video formats such as Real, Indeo and QuickTime), extract them to /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs using the following commands as the root user (substitute and/or add different CODEC filenames, if necessary):

install -d -m755 /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs &&
tar -jxf ../essential-20050115.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs --strip-path=1 &&
chown -R root:root /usr/lib/mplayer/codecs

If you installed any CODECs, ensure you add --with-codecsdir=/usr/lib/mplayer/codecs to the configure script.

To enable building the GUI version of MPlayer (requires GTK+-1.2.10), add --enable-gui to the configure script. You'll also need to extract at least one skin. Extract the desired skin and create the default location (as the root user):

install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/mplayer/Skin &&
tar -jxf ../Blue-1.4.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/share/mplayer/Skin &&
chown -v -R root:root /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/Blue &&
chmod -v 0755 /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/Blue{,/icons} &&
ln -sfv Blue /usr/share/mplayer/Skin/default

To enable OSD (On Screen Display) and subtitles support, add --enable-menu to the configure script. You'll also need to set up at least one font (see font installation instructions a little later).

Install MPlayer by running the following commands:

patch -Np1 -i ../MPlayer-1.0pre6a-kernel_2.6-1.patch &&
./configure --prefix=/usr --confdir=/etc/mplayer \
    --enable-largefiles &&
make

Now, as the root user:

make install &&
install -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/mplayer &&
cp -R DOCS/* /usr/share/doc/mplayer

MPlayer can build a shared post-processing library which other packages can link to. Doing this means that MPlayer must also link dynamically to this library instead of the default statically linked method. If you desire to build the shared library, add --enable-shared-pp to the configure script, then execute the following command after the commands above:

make -C libavcodec/libpostproc install

You will need codecs.conf only if you want to change its properties, as the main binary contains an internal copy of it. Ensure any changes you make to codecs.conf achieve the desired results, as incorrect entries in this file have been known to cause errors and render the player unusable. If necessary, create the file using the following command.

install -m644 etc/codecs.conf /etc/mplayer

You may also want to copy all the default configuration files to /etc/mplayer for future reference or more customization ability.

install -m644 etc/*.conf /etc/mplayer

The recommended method to set up a font for MPlayer is to link a TTF file to your ~/.mplayer directory. A link should be created in each user's home directory who may use MPlayer. For example:

mkdir ~/.mplayer &&
ln -sf /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/luxisri.ttf \
    ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

There are several other ways to set up a font package. To use a prerendered MPlayer font package, extract and link one of the font tarballs using the following commands:

tar -jxf ../font-arial-iso-8859-1.tar.bz2 \
    -C /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
chown -R root:root /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
cd /usr/share/mplayer/font &&
ln -sf font-arial-iso-8859-1/font-arial-[font size]-iso-8859-1/* .

Available font sizes are 14, 18, 24 or 28.

Additional information as well as additional methods to set up an MPlayer font package can be found at http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/subosd.html#mpsub-install.

If you want DVD playback with MPlayer, you need to ensure a link exists from your DVD drive to /dev/dvd. If necessary, create the link using the following commands:

cat >> /etc/udev/rules.d/24-dvd.rules << "EOF"
# Create a /dev/dvd symlink 
 
KERNEL="[dvd drive]", SYMLINK="dvd"
 
EOF
udevstart

Replace [dvd drive] with whatever device is appropriate, for example hdc. If you don't know which device to choose, type:

dmesg | grep DVD

It should result in an output like:

hdc: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-114 0110,
ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive

/etc/mplayer/*, ~/.mplayer/*

Typically, there's no configuration required for the system-wide files in /etc/mplayer (in fact, this directory is empty unless you copied the default files as mentioned above). Configuration can be accomplished by choosing the configuration button located on the MPlayer GUI. Any configuration changes made here will be copied to the user's ~/.mplayer directory.