Chapter 8. Frequently Asked Questions

A:

We made a short document describing all the necessary details. Please follow the instructions.

A:

Read the translation HOWTO, it should explain everything. You can get further help on the MPlayer-translations mailing list.

A:

We are more than happy to accept your hardware and software donations. They help us in continuously improving MPlayer.

A:

We always welcome coders and documenters. Read the technical documentation to get a first grasp. Then you should subscribe to the MPlayer-dev-eng mailing list and start coding. If you want to help out with the documentation, join the MPlayer-docs mailing list.

A:

We have a modular, handwritten build system. It does a reasonably good job, so why change? Besides, we dislike the auto* tools, just like other people.

A:

You have stumbled over a bug in gcc. Please report it to the gcc team but not to us. For some reason MPlayer seems to trigger compiler bugs frequently. Nevertheless we cannot fix them and do not add workarounds for compiler bugs to our sources. To avoid this problem, either stick with a compiler version that is known to be reliable and stable, or upgrade frequently.

A:

See the Debian and RPM section for details.

A:

Try the following configure options:

./configure --target=i386-linux --cc="gcc -m32" --as="as --32" --with-extralibdir=/usr/lib

A:

Your gcc isn't installed correctly, check the config.log file for details.

A:

Read the mga_vid section.

A:

... but you don't have the X11 development package installed. Or not correctly. It's called XFree86-devel* under Red Hat, xlibs-dev under Debian Woody and libx11-dev under Debian Sarge. Also check if the /usr/X11 and /usr/include/X11 symlinks exist.

A:

Yes. Look at the mailing lists section of our homepage.

A:

Please read the bug reporting guidelines and follow the instructions.

A:

Don't panic. Make sure you know where your towel is.

Seriously, notice the smiley and start looking for files that end in .dump.

A:

You need a specially set up kernel to use the RTC timing code. For details see the RTC section of the documentation.

A:

You have to use a video output driver that does not employ an overlay to be able to take a screenshot. Under X11, -vo x11 will do, under Windows -vo directx:noaccel works.

Alternatively you can run MPlayer with the screenshot video filter (-vf screenshot), and press the s key to grab a screenshot.

A:

Example:

A: 2.1 V: 2.2 A-V: -0.167 ct: 0.042 57/57 41% 0% 2.6% 0 4 49% 1.00x

Most of them are for debug purposes, use the -quiet option to make them disappear. You might notice that video_out CPU usage is zero (0%) for some files. This is because it is called directly from the codec and thus cannot be measured separately. If you wish to know the video_out speed, compare the difference when playing the file with -vo null and your usual video output driver.

A:

Download and install the binary codecs from our download page.

A:

Create a file named movie.avi.conf with the file-specific options in it and put it in ~/.mplayer or in the same directory as the file.

A:

After running ./configure, edit config.h and replace #undef FAST_OSD with #define FAST_OSD. Then recompile.

A:

Use:

mplayer options filename < /dev/null &

A:

Do you have a stray codecs.conf file in ~/.mplayer/, /etc/, /usr/local/etc/ or a similar location? Remove it, an outdated codecs.conf file can cause obscure problems and is intended for use only by developers working on codec support. It overrides MPlayer's internal codec settings, which will wreak havoc if incompatible changes are made in newer program versions. Unless used by experts it is a recipe for disaster in the form of seemingly random and very hard to localize crashes and playback problems. If you still have it somewhere on your system, you should remove it now.

A:

Use the expand video filter to increase the area onto which the movie is rendered vertically and place the movie at the top border, for example:

mplayer -vf expand=0:-100:0:0 -slang de dvd://1

A:

You have to use -aid (audio ID) or -alang (audio language), -sid(subtitle ID) or -slang (subtitle language), for example:

mplayer -alang eng -slang eng example.mkv
mplayer -aid 1 -sid 1 example.mkv

To see which ones are available:

mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v filename | grep sid
mplayer -vo null -ao null -frames 0 -v filename | grep aid

A:

Try playing the stream with the -playlist option.

A:

Your file is most probably broken or a fake file. If you got it from a friend, and he says it works, try comparing md5sum hashes.

A:

Make sure you have installed fonts properly. Run through the steps in the Fonts and OSD part of the installation section again. If you are using TrueType fonts, verify that you have the FreeType library installed. Other things include checking your subtitles in a text editor or with other players. Also try converting them to another format.

A:

There is a bad interaction on Fedora between exec-shield, prelink, and any applications which use Windows DLLs (such as MPlayer).

The problem is that exec-shield randomizes the load addresses of all the system libraries. This randomization happens at prelink time (once every two weeks).

When MPlayer tries to load a Windows DLL it wants to put it at a specific address (0x400000). If an important system library happens to be there already, MPlayer will crash. (A typical symptom would be a segmentation fault when trying to play Windows Media 9 files.)

If you run into this problem you have two options:

A:

Don't use MPlayer on a CPU different from the one it was compiled on or recompile with runtime CPU detection (./configure --enable-runtime-cpudetection).

A:

Your card probably reports some colorspaces as supported when in fact it does not support them. Try with YUY2 instead of the default YV12 (see the TV section).

A:

It's an effect of the power management / power saving system of your notebook (BIOS, not kernel). Plug the external power connector in before you power on your notebook. You can also try whether cpufreq (a SpeedStep interface for Linux) helps you.

A:

This is again a power management effect (see above). Plug the external power connector in before you power on your notebook or make sure you do not use the -rtc option.

A:

Badly interleaved files and -cache don't work well together. Try -nocache.

A:

Your video output driver does not support scaling in hardware and since scaling in software can be incredibly slow MPlayer does not automatically enable it. Most likely you are using the x11 instead of the xv video output driver. Try adding -vo xv to the command line or read the video section to find out about alternative video output drivers. The -zoom option explicitly enables software scaling.

A:

Just change your video output device. Issue the following command to get a list of available video output drivers:

mplayer -vo help

After you've chosen the correct video output driver, add it to your configuration file. Add

vo = selected_vo

to ~/.mplayer/config and/or

vo_driver = selected_vo

to ~/.mplayer/gui.conf.

A:

Read the bug reporting guidelines and send us a proper bug report. Also try experimenting with the -fstype option.

A:

Try the -bps or -nobps option. If it does not improve, read the bug reporting guidelines and upload the file to FTP.

A:

After setting up your asoundrc you have to use -ao alsa:device=dmix.

A:

Are you running KDE or GNOME with the aRts or ESD sound daemon? Try disabling the sound daemon or use the -ao arts or -ao esd option to make MPlayer use aRts or ESD. You might also be running ALSA without OSS emulation, try loading the ALSA OSS kernel modules or add -ao alsa to your command line to directly use the ALSA audio output driver.

A:

The KDE aRts sound daemon is blocking the sound device. Either wait until the video starts or disable the aRts daemon in control center. If you want to use aRts sound, specify audio output via our native aRts audio driver (-ao arts). If it fails or isn't compiled in, try SDL (-ao sdl) and make sure your SDL can handle aRts sound. Yet another option is to start MPlayer with artsdsp.

A:

You have a buggy sound card/driver. Most likely it's fixed at 44100Hz, and you try to play a file which has 22050Hz audio. Try the resample audio filter.

A:

This can have multiple reasons.

A:

-mc 0.1 can help.

A:

MPlayer should support DVD menus nowadays. Your mileage may vary.

A:

Yes. See the DVD chapter.

A:

Use the regionset tool.

A:

CSS decryption code does not work with some DVD drives unless you set the region code appropriately. See the answer to the previous question.

A:

No. However you must have the proper rights on the DVD device entry (in /dev/).

A:

Yes, try the -chapter option.

A:

Use the -cache option (described in the man page) and try enabling DMA for the DVD drive with the hdparm tool.

A:

Use the -dvd-device option to refer to the directory that contains the files:

mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /path/to/directory

A:

This is very tricky to implement without losing A/V synchronization. All attempts have failed so far, but patches are welcome.

A:

You can step forward one frame by pressing .. If the movie was not paused it will be paused afterwards (see the man page for details). Stepping backwards is unlikely to be implemented anytime soon.

A:

Read the MEncoder section.

A:

Once you have selected your title, and made sure it plays fine with MPlayer, use the option -dumpstream. For example:

mplayer dvd://5 -dumpstream -dumpfile dvd_dump.vob

will dump the 5th title of the DVD into the file dvd_dump.vob

A:

Try the mencvcd.sh script from the TOOLS subdirectory. With it you can encode DVDs or other movies to VCD or SVCD format and even burn them directly to CD.

A:

Newer versions of MEncoder can directly generate MPEG-2 files that can be used as a base to create a VCD or SVCD and are likely to be playable out of the box on all platforms (for example, to share a video from a digital camcorder with your computer-illiterate friends). Please read Using MEncoder to create VCD/SVCD/DVD-compliant files for more details.

A:

MPEG files can be concatenated into a single file with luck. For AVI files, you can use MEncoder's multiple file support like this:

mencoder -ovc copy -oac copy -o out.avi file1.avi file2.avi

This will only work if the files are of the same resolution and use the same codec. You can also try avidemux and avimerge (part of the transcode tool set).

A:

To avoid having to use -idx to be able to seek in AVI files with a broken index or -ni to play AVI files with bad interleaving, use the command

mencoder input.avi -idx -ovc copy -oac copy -o output.avi

to copy the video and audio streams into a new AVI file while regenerating the index and correctly interleaving the data. Of course this cannot fix possible bugs in the video and/or audio streams.

A:

You can do such a thing thanks to MEncoder's -force-avi-aspect option, which overrides the aspect stored in the AVI OpenDML vprp header option. For example:

mencoder input.avi -ovc copy -oac copy -o output.avi -force-avi-aspect 4/3

A:

The main problem when you want to encode a VOB file which is corrupted ^[3] is that it will be hard to get an encode with perfect A/V sync. One workaround is to just shave off the corrupted part and encode just the clean part. First you need to find where the clean part starts:

mplayer input.vob -sb nb_of_bytes_to_skip

Then you can create a new file which contains just the clean part:

dd if=input.vob of=output_cut.vob skip=1 ibs=nb_of_bytes_to_skip

A:

You have to properly specify the -sid option.

A:

Use the -chapter option correctly, like: -chapter 5-7.

A:

No, VFAT doesn't support 2GB+ files.

A:

Example:

Pos: 264.5s   6612f ( 2%)  7.12fps Trem: 576min 2856mb  A-V:0.065 [2126:192]

A:

Because the bitrate you encoded the audio with is too large to fit the movie on any CD. Check if you have libmp3lame installed properly.

A:

Since ASF uses variable framerate but AVI uses a fixed one, you have to set it by hand with the -ofps option.

A:

Just pass the -sub <filename> (or -sid, respectively) option to MEncoder.

A:

It's not possible directly, but you can try this (note the & at the end of mplayer command):

mkfifo encode
mplayer -ao pcm -aofile encode dvd://1 &
lame your_opts encode music.mp3
rm encode

This allows you to use any encoder, not only LAME, just replace lame with your favorite audio encoder in the above command.

A:

libavcodec, the native MPEG-4 encoding library usually shipped with MEncoder, used to set the FourCC to 'DIVX' when encoding MPEG-4 videos (the FourCC is an AVI tag to identify the software used to encode and the intended software to use for decoding the video). This led many people to think that libavcodec was a DivX encoding library, when in fact it is a completely different MPEG-4 encoding library which implements the MPEG-4 standard much better than DivX does. Therefore, the new default FourCC used by libavcodec is 'FMP4', but you may override this behavior using MEncoder's -ffourcc option. You may also change the FourCC of existing files in the same way:

mencoder input.avi -o output.avi -ffourcc XVID

Note that this will set the FourCC to XVID rather than DIVX. This is recommended as DIVX FourCC means DivX4, which is a very basic MPEG-4 codec, whereas DX50 and XVID both mean full MPEG-4 (ASP). Therefore, if you change the FourCC to DIVX, some bad software or hardware players may choke on some advanced features that libavcodec supports, but DivX doesn't; on the other hand Xvid is closer to libavcodec in terms of functionality, and is supported by all decent players.

A:

Use aconvert.sh from the TOOLS subdirectory in the MPlayer source tree.

A:

Use avisubdump.c from the TOOLS subdirectory or read this document about extracting/demultiplexing subtitles embedded in OpenDML AVI files.

A:

Have a look at the TOOLS subdirectory for a collection of random scripts and hacks. TOOLS/README contains documentation.