Top 10 Tricks and Tips for the svn MPlayer

[andrew.46]

Hi JB,

You made one error in your guide. The greatest movie of all time is not The Matrix...It's Vanishing Point 1971

Which reminds me a little of the xkbd discussion of the other Matrix movies: http://xkcd.com/566/. And I am afraid that you are completely wrong, the Matrix is still the greatest .

Andrew

[andrew.46]

Hi,

I have added some brief details to this guide for turning video ouput into a Matrix simulation with -vo matrixview. Now if I could only decide on the red or the blue pill.....

Andrew

[m45t3r]

Nice tips, some I already knew (like the -ao matrixview) but some others I didn't and they are simple awesome.

After compiling a MPlayer from Uoti's git this player is now my favorite.

[andrew.46]

Hi m45t3r,

It is nice to burrow around in the man pages and dig out a few gems or this great media player .

Andrew

[m45t3r]

This is one of my favorites tricks:
Playing videos in TTY (yep, without X.org :O)

1. Switch to TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F1);
2. Now you can use either of tip 6 options (except the matrixview, because this one need X.org):

   mplayer -vo aa -monitorpixelaspect 0.5 myfile.mp4

   mplayer -vo caca myfile.mp4

3. Ok, funny. But I want to watch THE video and not lots of letter dacing in my screen. So I can try these:

   #mplayer -vo fbdev myfile.mp4

   #mplayer -vo fbdev2 myfile.mp4

   #mplayer -vo directfb myfile.mp4

4. And impress your friends playing TRUE videos in terminal.

Note: you need to use these options as superuser (using "sudo mplayer" or simply type "sudo su") because you need write access to /dev/yourgpu (simply talking, your GPU RAM).
Note 2: note that the framebuffer not always work. In my netbook with Intel GMA945 using X.org's drivers it's completely fine, even with subtitles. But on my desktop with NVIDIA's proprietary driver it didn't work and even crash my system (Update: got a working framebuffer with NVIDIA's proprietary drivers following these instructions: http://idyllictux.wordpress.com/2010...ricted-driver/).
Note 3: you can change the size of the video using "-zoom -x 1024 -y 576" options (where "1024" and "576" are the desired resolution).

Warning: because you are using direct access to your hardware this trick CAN CRASH YOUR SYSTEM. Just a reboot and everything will work again, but I recommend that you save all your job before playing with this.

[xzero1]

Is there an easy way to scale to a virtual size so that the monitor acts as a window centered on the virtual video? This can be done playing with the crop values, but it is hard to get the values to retain the proper aspect ratio. It can also be done with zooming with compiz. Can it be done easily with mplayer alone?

[andrew.46]

Hi xzero1,

I will admit I am not completely sure what you mean I'm afraid . Are you referring to the 'geometry' options of either MPlayer or your terminal?

Andrew

[andrew.46]

Hi m45t36,

#mplayer -vo fbdev myfile.mp4

You may be interested in embellishing this line a little. The framebuffer driver is not aware of screensize so you can not only tell it the size but subsequently you can manipulate where your video shows on the screen. For example on my laptop I run the framebuffer on a 640 x 480 screen and I like the video to play in the middle of the screen. This can be done as follows:

mplayer -vo fbdev -screenw 640 -screenh 480 -geometry 50%:50% myfile.mp4

Now how cool is that . Edit: Actually it is so cool I have added it to the guide...

Andrew

[xzero1]

Hi xzero1,

I will admit I am not completely sure what you mean I'm afraid . Are you referring to the 'geometry' options of either MPlayer or your terminal?

Andrew

Sorry, if I was unclear. I simply want to view the video with the the borders cropped out and with the movie's original aspect ratio.

I found an answer to my own question. Mplayer has an experimental -panscanrange option. If I set it to something around -.45 when viewing the video fullscreen, the "w" and "e" keys will zoom out and in respectively. The docs mention this number is a zoom factor??!? Can anyone explain exactly how this number relates to the video size? At least its easier than using crop. Note this is only supported with the gl driver although xv seems to work for me.

[andrew.46]

This guide has been transferred to the Ubuntu Wiki:

MPlayerTips
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MPlayerTips

but support is still available from this Forums thread.

Andrew
May 13th, 2012.