HowTo: Install the very latest MPlayer under Jaunty Jackalope

[andrew.46]

Hi,

Compilation error corrected in 29019:

andrew@skamandros~/source/mplayer/mplayer$ svn -r 29019 log
------------------------------------------------------------------------
r29019 | diego | 2009-03-21 20:18:36 +1100 (Sat, 21 Mar 2009) | 2 lines

Add CONFIG_SWSCALE_ALPHA and HAVE_VIRTUALALLOC config.h #defines for FFmpeg.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Andrew

[psychok9]

moved sorry

[andrew.46]

Hi psychok9,

moved sorry

It is a great sign that there seem to be several actively maintained MPlayer threads at the moment, leading to some confusion . Still waiting however for someone to write and maintain a guide for using MPlayer with the experimental multithreaded FFmpeg-mt branch.

Edit: I am of course an idiot:

HOWTO: Compiling mplayer with multi-core decoding support
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1049449

Can't even blame night shift for forgetting that I have already seen and posted on this thread

Andrew

[Nullack]

Andrew, video decoding is far more suitable to GPU acceleration than multi core CPU decoding. While people are free to do whatever they want, the best path is for the community to focus on GPU acceleration in guides.

[andrew.46]

Hi Nullack,

Andrew, video decoding is far more suitable to GPU acceleration than multi core CPU decoding. While people are free to do whatever they want, the best path is for the community to focus on GPU acceleration in guides.

I would have to cordially disagree for several reasons. Firstly not everybody actually has a suitable video board that will benefit from the recent advances made by nvidia and MPlayer, I know that I fall into that category myself.

Secondly I think it is a great thing that advances in video decoding should happen on multiple fronts and if Ubuntu can be involved in this process, even if only as end-users, all the better. Plus this reinforces the Linux idea of choice and if such a choice can be found on these forums again all the better.


Mind you none of this will have any effect on this guide which I suspect will remain focused on producing a more 'middle of the road' version of MPlayer. Which I will have to admit fits in pretty much with my own usage of MPlayer.

Andrew

Edit: I am of course an idiot as I mentioned a couple of posts back:

HOWTO: Compiling mplayer with multi-core decoding support
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1049449

[Nullack]

Yes mate, I understand your reasons. Simply, it wont ever work as well as GPU acceleration and in some cases with more complex video codecs it wont work at all, but as you say, thats choice. The architecture of multi core cpu decoding for video is inherently flawed for the task until we get a massive number of cpu cores onto a cpu chip.

When it comes to cost - the cost of a single core cpu and a VDPAU compatible gpu card is comparable / in some cases cheaper than a dual or quad core more advanced cpu with one of the more crappy integrated video chips. I know which combination will decode 1920x1080 high profile AVC with spatial temporal deinterlacing with next to no cpu utilisation

[Nullack]

Folks a small bit of info on VDPAU gpu accelerated deinterlacing. These are the available deinterlacing options:

deint=<0−4>

Chooses the deinterlacer (default: 0). All modes > 0 respect −field−dominance.
NOTE: Values > 2 delay the video output by one frame.

0 - No deinterlacing.

1 - Show only first field, similar to −vf field.

2 - Bob deinterlacing, similar to −vf tfields=1.

3 - Motion adaptive temporal deinterlacing. May lead to A/V desync with slow video hardware and/or high resolution. This is the default if "D" is used to enable deinterlacing.

4 - Motion adaptive temporal deinterlacing with edge-guided spatial interpolation. Needs fast video hardware.

So an example of the syntax could be:

mplayer -vo vdpau:deint=4 -vc ffmpeg12vdpau MPEGIO3MBPS30sec.mpg

The list of VDPAU supported codecs is:

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffmpeg12vdpau

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffwmv3vdpau

mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffvc1vdpau

For in order:

mpeg1 and mpeg 2, AVC/H.264, wmv3, VC-1

[hype]

VDPAU works quite good.
I also particularly enjoy fonts in Mplayer latetly.
Looks really sharp.

[ktp]

If you don't want to build, then you can find builds on this PPA
https://launchpad.net/~rvm4000/+archive/ppa

[Nullack]

Keep in mind if you use someone elses binary you loose the cpu specific optimisations that come from march=native and mtune=native in the compile. Additionally, your configure options maybe different to the person who compiled it. e.g. Schrodinger encoding or vdpau vo.

What are people doing with their mplayer.conf file in the /etc/mplayer dir?

Heres mine as an example:

# mplayer config file version 0.1 23/03/09
#

# global setup

vo=vdpau
ao=pulse
nolirc=true
nojoystick=true

# DVD navigation

[protocol.dvdnav]
profile-desc="profile for dvdnav:// streams"
mouse-movements=yes
nocache=yes