Linux Video Playback
Recommended Media Players
MPlayer
Installation
Perform one of the following commands as root, depending on your distribution. If you do not find information pertaining to the distribution you use, refer to your distributions documentation.
Debian Based Distributions
mplayer is packaged for Debian. As root:
apt-get install mplayer
However, this is often not the newest release (especially if you are running Debian stable) and does not contain support for all codecs. In particular, those older builds may not have 10-bit support. Most users will want to install newer packages:
- Visit http://debian-multimedia.org/ and add it as a package repository using the instructions in the red boxes.
- As root,
apt-get update && apt-get install mplayer
For RealVideo support, also install the packages w32codecs (32-bit OS) or w64codecs (64-bit OS).
Ubuntu
The MPlayer version in the default Ubuntu repositories is usually outdated. The Medibuntu repository has the latest version of MPlayer as well as the extra codecs.
To add the Mediabuntu repository, paste the following into a terminal (from the Mediabuntu wiki)
sudo wget --output-document=/etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.list http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/$(lsb_release -cs).list && sudo apt-get --quiet update && sudo apt-get --yes --quiet --allow-unauthenticated install medibuntu-keyring && sudo apt-get --quiet update
After that install MPlayer and the codec pack:
(32-bit installations)
sudo apt-get install mplayer w32codecs
(64-bit installations)
sudo apt-get install mplayer w64codecs
Since mplayer is a command-line application, it might be useful to install a GUI front-end like gnome-mplayer like so:
sudo apt-get install gnome-mplayer
OpenSuse
zypper in mplayer
Red Hat Based Distributions (Including Fedora)
MPlayer is not in the official Fedora repositories. You will have to add and enable the RPM Fusion third-party repositories before being able to install MPlayer.
yum install mplayer
Arch Linux
pacman -S mplayer
Gentoo
emerge -ptva mplayer
MPlayer codecs
Not all distributions include the full set of MPlayer codecs in their repositories. To install the full set follow these easy steps.
- Download: http://www4.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2
- Extract with: tar xvf all-20071007.tar.bz2
- Copy the codecs (but not the directory) to the MPlayer codec directory. Default is /usr/lib/win32
NVIDIA VDPAU
If you use an NVIDIA GPU be sure to install their latest binary drivers as they offer a feature that enables offloading video decoding from the CPU to GPU which may provide smoother video playback, especially for h264 encoded videos while keeping CPU usage at low levels. Check your MPlayer configuration to use both the VDPAU video option (-vc) and video output (-vo). Type "mplayer -vo help" to list available outputs.
ATI
The open source video driver provides hardware accelerated video decoding for R600+ based GPUs.
MPlayer tweaks
This is a sample configuration file tailored for specific preferences. The MPlayer configuration file can be found at: ~/.mplayer/config. All of the options are documented in the manual.
# If no GPU-specific video output driver is available, xv is the best choice, # followed by x11 (which doesn't not do software zooming unless passed "-zoom" or "zoom=1") vo=xv ao=alsa # 4 audio channels for surround sound files channels=4 # Default audio and subtitle tracks. (Not all files use the correct tags, # so sometimes it will be necessary to switch streams manually with '#' and 'j' # or from the command line with "-aid x" and "-sid x") alang=jp,jpn, slang=en,eng, # Find ASS subs and use the fonts provided in the file if possible ass=1 embeddedfonts=1 fontconfig=1 # The highest level of subtitle anti-aliasing spuaa=4 # Less stdout text quiet=1
MPlayer Tricks
MPlayer has a large collection of video filters included. You may use them to achieve different results.
- Play interlaced video without combing:
mplayer -vf pullup myvideo.ext
- Increase saturation and contrast:
mplayer -vf eq2=0.8 myvideo.ext
- Remove "mosquito" noise:
mplayer -vf hqdn3d myvideo.ext
- Make crappy video look good:
mplayer -vf pp7 myvideo.ext
- Combine:
mplayer -ass -embeddedfonts -vf pullup,eq2=0.8,unsharp=l3x3:0.2,hqdn3d myvideo.ext
SMPlayer
SMPlayer provides a QT based front-end to MPlayer. It contains useful features such as saving the video position allowing you to continue watching the video from that point at a later date.
Installing SMPlayer
Debian Based Distributions (Including Ubuntu)
sudo apt-get install smplayer
You can also:
- Download the .deb file from the SMPlayer website or
- Add the SMPlayer repository to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
8.04 (hardy):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/ubuntu hardy main
8.10 (intrepid):
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/rvm/ubuntu intrepid main
Arch Linux
pacman -S smplayer
Gentoo
emerge -ptva smplayer
Red Hat Based Distributions (Including Fedora)
You will need to enable the RPM Fusion third-party repositories to be able to install SMplayer.
yum install smplayer
Building from Source (Compiling)
Grab the tarball from the SMPlayer download page. Decompress it, cd into the directory, and run
./configure make sudo make install
If you don't have sudo installed/configured, then the last step will be instead
su make install
SMPlayer tweaks
After installation you may want to configure SMPlayer. Start SMPlayer, open the options (Ctrl + P), go to the subtitles section, within the section go to the SSA/ASS library tab and check the check box for using SSA/ASS library.
If you see a black screen at playing, the colors don't seem to be right, or playback is too slow, you may need to change the video rendering mode. To do this go to the Options > general section > general tab > output drivers > Video, and set it to x11 - this will use software rendering. Alternatively you can use xv for XVideo rendering or either gl or gl2 for OpenGL rendering. In general you should try these options in the following order for best quality and performance: xv, gl2, gl and finally x11.
MPlayer2
A fork of the original MPlayer project. Although it was the first *nix player to add 10bit support, MPlayer added it later as well; for playback purposes, there is not currently a strong reason to use one over the other besides personal preference.
Installation
The following installation works for Debian 6 Squeeze stable. It should work for the other Debian releases. It might work for Ubuntu, but I have not tested this. It will not work for a distribution that does not use DEBs.
Debian
Add the following Debian-multimedia repositories to your sources. You can do this in Synaptic or by adding a line to your /etc/apt/sources.list.
deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org stable main non-free deb ftp://ftp.debian-multimedia.org testing main non-free
Update apt.
sudo apt-get update
Install MPlayer2.
sudo apt-get install mplayer2
After the installation you might need to upgrade your system for the updated codecs.