[MPlayer-users] Getting started on apple

[Kichigai Mentat]

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On Aug 20, 2005, at 14.02, m at de-minimis.co.uk wrote:

>
> I think I hadn't downloaded the standard mac installation properly,  
> or something
> of the kind.  Not quite sure what.  Either way all is lovely and  
> rosy now and
> everything I've thrown at it has played.  Including one VCD that a  
> filmmaker
> sent me a couple of months back and that wouldn't play in Quicktime  
> or windows
> movie player.  Well done all of you!
>
> So what's the story about the codecs?  I take it that they are  
> translating
> machines, that the input language is mpeg or vcd or whatever, but  
> what's the
> output?  Do they run as a separate process?
Well, it would seem unlikely that we OS X users will see the codec  
package. The codecs are (as I understand it) binary codecs. I also  
*think* (don't quote me on this) that they are proprietary codecs,  
that is to say, codecs that were developed by the owners, not an open  
source project. Therefore, unlike projects like libavcodec and  
ffmpeg, we will not see them ported to other platforms and  
architectures (such as PowerPC).

Now, here's the story with how codecs work. They're just libraries.  
The application (in this case, MPlayer or MEncoder) uses the codec to  
decompress the video, much in the same way one would decipher a coded  
message. After that, the application does whatever it needs with the  
video frames. In the case of MPlayer, it displays it. "the output" as  
you put it is a number of video rendering methods. At this point,  
with a little coaxing, MPlayer will output video through either Core  
Video, Quartz, XVideo, X11, X11 Overlay, Open GL/2, SDL, MPEG-PES,  
YUV4MPEG, Targa, PNM and MD5SUM output renderers.

MPlayer works as a single process (or thread), doing all of those  
jobs itself without calling on outside processes. Mind you, though,  
this is a very simplified version, and leaves out a lot of exceptions  
and more complex things, but I hope it will at least give you a basic  
picture of what's going on.
>
> Regards, Max

"'What? Fly to the Moon? For Goodness Sakes!' My mother thought she  
had raised some kind of imbicle son, because I would say 'We're going  
to fly to the moon!'"
     --David Kyle (Author of A Pictoral History of Science Fiction on  
the Moon Landing)
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