MPlayer

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MPlayer (the Movie Player) is an application best suited for playing video. It's the most popular application for video on Linux. At this time, you probably need to install MPlayer yourself, although in the future it may be included in some distributions. Check your system to see whether MPlayer is installed before installing it.

MPlayer is installed using the procedures described in Chapter 10. It's best installed from source. However, you need to include additional files with MPlayer when you download and install it. The following is a brief summary of the installation procedure.

Download MPlayer from www.mplayerhq.hu. When you click the Download link, the download page offers several different files. The first table provides the MPlayer software itself. The remaining three tables provide software that is needed by MPlayer, so you need to download additional files. Download and save to disk (e.g., /usr/src):

  • The MPlayer source.

  • A font package, such as Arial-Western.

  • A skin. A skin is required for the GUI version of MPlayer. A skin refers to software files that provide the look and feel of an application. Many Linux applications allow you to change the appearance of an application using skins. For MPlayer, many skins are provided. You can pick one to download or you can download several and change them.

After downloading, unpack the bz files, using the following command on each download:

 bunzip2 -c filename | tar -xf - 

To install:

1.

Compile and install the source. Change to the directory where you unpacked the source. When installing, use a configuration option that creates a GUI version. The simple install commands, accepting the defaults, are:

 ./configure --enable-gui make make install 

Remember that the first two steps can take a while to complete. More information on installing software is provided in Chapter 10.

2.

Select one of the subdirectories in the font directory you unpacked and copy it into /usr/local/share/mplayer/font.

3.

Copy an entire skin directory that you unpacked into /usr/local/share/mplayer/ Skin/default. In other words, if you unpacked a skin and it created a directory called Blue, copy the entire Blue directory, with subdirectories, into /usr/local/ share/mplayer/Skin and rename it to default. There must be at least one default skin. You can also copy other skin directories into Skin, but at least one must be named default.

After MPlayer is installed, to start the GUI version, open the main menu, select Run, and type gmplayer. Two windows open: one that is the video window where the video plays and one that is a control window, where you load, start, stop, change skins, etc. What the windows look like depends on the skin you use. The control window shown above is using a simple skin called Carnelian. Other skins can look very different.

Whatever skin you use, you can right-click MPlayer to see the features provided, as shown on the right.

You can open a file on your hard disk or a URL. Or, you can play from a VCD (Video CD) or DVD.

The usual play options are available from the menu and also shown on the MPlayer window.

You can change the size of the window playing the video to double the opening size or to full screen.

MPlayer offers an equalizer, accessed from the menu selection or the EQ button in the MPlayer window above.

You can select Skin browser in the menu or the S button to change skins on-the-fly. The Skin directory will open, showing the subdirectories you have stored there. You can select any directory (e.g., Blue), and the look and feel will change immediately.

You can create a play list from video files on your hard disk.

If you play an unusual format, you may get an error message about the format, possibly referring to a missing codec. If so, download the needed codecs from the Web site, unpack them, and copy them to /usr/local/lib/codecs.

You can also use MPlayer from the command line, without the GUI. See the man pages or the MPlayer manual to see how.

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    Spring Into Linux
    Spring Into Linux
    ISBN: 0131853546
    EAN: 2147483647
    Year: 2005
    Pages: 362
    Authors: Janet Valade

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