[MPlayer-users] [updated draft] MPlayer quickstart guide

[Diego Biurrun]

On Mon, May 27, 2002 at 01:00:21AM +0200, Arpi wrote:
> 
> > This revised version has a few more details and three new sections
> > that explain how to get the Win32 codecs and libavcodec in case this
> > should be necessary as well as first steps.
> 
> libavcodec and win32 codecs must be in their place _BEFORE_ you type
> ./configure !!!

Of course.  I have updated the README to make this more clear.

> if you recomemnd gui stfuf, then configure must be told to use gui, so
> --enable-gui there

The README mentions that already, but I will try to make this clearer also.

> anywya, could you please tell em why dont you just copy and html->txt the
> quickinstall section of the html docs (so this can be removed from teh html)
> instead of re-inventing that?

My idea was to provide a very quick introduction to MPlayer.  Something
between the current README ("Go read the docs.") and the current docs ("Go
spend an hour or more reading docs.").  I believe that we are currently not
quite striking the right balance between the two extremes.  This README is
designed to bridge that gap.

You want the README to supplant the installation part of the HTML docs.
This is possible, of course, but would require the README to become much
more detailed and mention all the different codecs, supported formats,
different video cards etc ...

I guess you do not want to have the information duplicated across two
manuals.  This would partially be true for the moment, but
documentation.html will get reworked eventually, don't worry.  We should
probably revisit the issue then and come to a final decision.

Diego
-------------- next part --------------
Welcome to MPlayer, the Unix movie player.  MPlayer can play most standard video
formats out of the box and almost all others with the help of external codecs.

This document is for getting you started in a few minutes.  It cannot answer all
your questions.  If you have problems, please read the documentation.  It is
extensive and should answer most of your questions.  Start by reading the manpage
and DOCS/documentation.html.


To compile MPlayer you need to have the XFree86 development packages installed.
Otherwise this is straightforward.  Unpack the sources and then run

  ./configure
  make
  make install

For the last step you need to have root privileges as usual.  Configure has a
lot of options, run './configure --help' to see them.

If you want to have a GUI in addition to the command line, install the GTK
development packages and enable the GUI with './configure --enable-gui' before
typing make.  In addition you will need a skin.  Download one from the download
page

  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

unpack it and put the contents in ~/.mplayer/Skin/default/.

If you run Debian you can build a proper deb package with one command:

  fakeroot debian/rules binary



You should now have a working MPlayer that can play some movie files already.
There are a few steps that you may wish to take before compiling to be able to
play some more movie types like DivX and WMA and take advantage of the onscreen
display.


____________________________________________
STEP1: Installing the onscreen display fonts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To enable onscreen status display and DVD subtitles you need some fonts.  Get
them from our homepage:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

Unpack the archive and choose one of the available font sizes.  Then create the
directory ~/.mplayer/font/ and copy the font files into that directory.


___________________________________
STEP2: Installing FFmpeg libavcodec
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The FFmpeg project provides libavcodec, a very portable MPEG4/DivX codec with
excellent speed and quality.  It is the preferred codec of MPlayer and used to
be included in the MPlayer CVS tree.  This is no longer the case and you have to
get libavcodec directly from the FFmpeg CVS server.  If you are using an official
release tarball, skip this step, it includes libavcodec.

Remove the libavcodec subdirectory of the MPlayer sources and employ the following
commands in a separate directory to get the FFmpeg sources

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.ffmpeg.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ffmpeg login
cvs -d:pserver:anonymous at cvs.ffmpeg.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ffmpeg co ffmpeg/libavcodec

Then move (symlinking does not suffice) the freshly downloaded libavcodec
directory back into the MPlayer source tree.  The libac3, liba52 and mpglib
subdirectories are not required, you may delete them if you wish.  Keep the
FFmpeg CVS subdirectories to be able to update from their CVS server.


______________________________
STEP3: Installing Win32 Codecs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is only necessary if you want to play ASF and WMA movies.  The builtin
codecs are much faster when playing divx and mpeg files.

Grab the codecs archive from the download page

  http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/dload.html

unpack it and put the contents in /usr/lib/win32/.




That's it for the moment.  To start playing movies, open a command line and try

  mplayer <moviefile>

or for a GUI

  mplayer -gui <moviefile>
  gmplayer <moviefile>

See 'mplayer --help' and 'man mplayer' for further options.  'mplayer -vo help'
will show you the available video output drivers.  Experiment with the '-vo'
switch to see which one gives you the best performance.  Questions you may have
are probably answered in the rest of the documentation.  The place to start
reading is DOCS/documentation.html.