HowTo: Install the very latest MPlayer under Jaunty Jackalope

[andrew.46]

======================
Introduction
=====================

This guide demonstrates how to successfully compile the subversion MPlayer under Jaunty Jackalope. It is intended for use by advanced users only. If this advanced guide is really not what you are after perhaps you could try the very popular: Comprehensive Multimedia & Video Howto where Nathan will look after you.

========================
Some Preparation
========================

A degree of preparation is involved before actually compiling MPlayer. Steps involved are:

1. Compiling the latest x264 libraries
2. Compiling the latest live555 libraries
3. Compiling the latest libopencore-amr libraries
4. Download and install the required dev files

First step is to download and compile the latest x264 libraries:

-----------------
x264
-----------------

Note that x264 is required so MEncoder can encode/transcode to the h264 format, MPlayer playback does not actually require these files. The x264 package included with Jaunty is a little newer than previous offerings, in fact a snapshot from December 30th, 2008, but it is still a good idea to download and compile your own. I would also strongly advise that all older versions of x264 are removed from your system before installing the newer version. Some software tools are required first:

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential checkinstall gpac libgpac-dev git-core yasm

On a fresh system, which is how I test this guide, this is a download of about 23 megs. The next few steps download the x264 libraries from git and then compile, package and install them:

$ cd $HOME
$ git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git
$ cd x264
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-shared
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" \
--maintainer "$USER" --pkgname=x264 --pkgversion "1:0.svn`date +%Y%m%d`-0.0ubuntu1" \
--backup=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --gzman --default
$ make distclean

Return here from time to time to update x264 by using the command 'git up' from the source directory. Next to install the Live555 libraries:

------------------
Live555
------------------

Jaunty ships with quite an old version of the Live555 libraries which are required for some streaming broadcasts. The Ubuntu version in fact dates from July 25th, 2008, so we will install a much newer version:

$ cd $HOME
$ wget http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/public/live555-latest.tar.gz
$ tar xvf live555-latest.tar.gz
$ cd live
$ ./genMakefiles linux
$ make
$ sudo cp -r $HOME/live /usr/lib

Live555 is updated quite frequently so it may pay to return here from time to time to update. Simply repeat the process after removing the previous libraries at /usr/lib/live. Next to compile the latest libopencore-amr libraries:

------------------
libopencore-amr
------------------

The svn MPlayer has switched to Open Source amr libraries and I note that for Jaunty there is no Medibuntu package. No problems we will roll our own:

$ cd $HOME
$ wget http://transact.dl.sourceforge.net/project/opencore-amr/opencore-amr/0.1.2/opencore-amr-0.1.2.tar.gz
$ tar xvf opencore-amr-0.1.2.tar.gz
$  cd opencore-amr-0.1.2/
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall --fstrans=no --install=yes --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" \
--maintainer "$USER" --pkgname="libopencore-amr" --pkgversion="0.1.2"  \
--backup=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --gzman --default
$ make distclean

Next to install the required dev files:

------------------
The dev files
------------------

Ubuntu is not a particularly rich compiling environment so to give MPlayer extra functionality we need to install a truckload of dev files and in fact you will be downloading about 30 megs of files on a fresh system. Load these into a terminal and then make yourself a cup of tea while they are downloading and installing:

$ sudo apt-get install debhelper em8300-headers gawk gettext html2text \
intltool-debian ladspa-sdk libaa1-dev libasound2-dev libatk1.0-dev libaudio-dev \
libaudio2 libaudiofile-dev libavahi-client-dev libavahi-common-dev libcaca-dev \
libcairo2-dev libcdparanoia-dev libcelt0 libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev libdirectfb-dev \
libdirectfb-extra libdts-dev libdv4-dev libenca-dev libenca0 libesd0-dev libexpat1-dev \
libfaac-dev libfaac0 libffado0 libfontconfig1-dev libfreebob0 libfreetype6-dev \
libfribidi-dev libggi-target-x libggi2 libggi2-dev libggimisc2 libggimisc2-dev \
libgif-dev libgii1 libgii1-dev libgii1-target-x libgl1-mesa-dev libglib2.0-dev \
libglu1-mesa-dev libgtk2.0-dev libice-dev libjack-dev libjack0 libjpeg62-dev \
liblzo-dev liblzo1 liblzo2-2 liblzo2-dev libmad0-dev libmail-sendmail-perl \
libmp3lame-dev libmp3lame0 libmpcdec-dev libmpcdec3 libncurses5-dev libogg-dev \
libopenal-dev libopenal1 libpango1.0-dev libpixman-1-dev libpng12-dev libpopt-dev \
libpthread-stubs0 libpthread-stubs0-dev libpulse-dev libpulse-mainloop-glib0 \
libsdl1.2-dev libslang2-dev libsm-dev libsmbclient-dev libspeex-dev libsvga1 \
libsvga1-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl libsysfs-dev libtheora-dev libtwolame-dev \
libtwolame0 libvorbis-dev libx11-dev libxau-dev libschroedinger-dev libstdc++5  \
libxcb-render-util0-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb1-dev libxcomposite-dev \
libxcursor-dev libxdamage-dev libxdmcp-dev libxext-dev libxfixes-dev libxft-dev \
libxi-dev libxinerama-dev libxml++2.6-2 libxrandr-dev libxrender-dev libxt-dev \
libxv-dev libxvidcore4-dev libxvmc-dev libxxf86dga-dev libxxf86vm-dev mesa-common-dev \
po-debconf sharutils x11proto-composite-dev x11proto-core-dev x11proto-damage-dev \
x11proto-fixes-dev x11proto-input-dev x11proto-kb-dev x11proto-randr-dev \
x11proto-render-dev x11proto-video-dev x11proto-xext-dev x11proto-xf86dga-dev \
x11proto-xf86vidmode-dev x11proto-xinerama-dev xtrans-dev zlib1g-dev \
liboil0.3-dev libcddb2-dev

This concludes the preparatory work, now to start installing MPlayer itself:

======================
Installing MPlayer
======================

Again the actual installation of MPlayer requires a couple of steps:

1. Install the codecs
2. Source a font
3. Download and compile the svn MPLayer

First for the codecs:

-------------------------
Install the codecs
-------------------------

The following commands downloads a codec pack of about 13 megs suitable for 32bit systems, decompresses it and places it in the appropriate location:

$ cd $HOME
$ wget http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/all-20071007.tar.bz2
$ sudo mkdir -pv /usr/lib/codecs
$ tar xjvf all-20071007.tar.bz2
$ sudo cp -v $HOME/all-20071007/* /usr/lib/codecs

I am not qualified to comment too much on 64bit systems but I believe that these systems require a different quite minimal set of codecs. Unfortunately I know next to nothing about 64bit systems and their requirements but there are some 64bit users following this thread that may be able to help out.

But now to source a font for MPlayer:

--------------------
Source a Font
--------------------

Mplayer needs to know the location of a TrueType Font to show movie subtitles. This can be selected from the commandline but more traditionally a symlink is created to the font of your choice:

$ mkdir -v $HOME/.mplayer
$ ln -sv /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-bitstream-vera/Vera.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf

Feel free to choose your own font but this will certainly do to start with. Now to download and compile the svn MPlayer:

----------------------------------------
Download and compile the svn mplayer
----------------------------------------

Finally after all of the preparation it is time to download Mplayer from the subversion repository, compile it and use checkinstall to create a package and install it:

$ sudo apt-get install subversion
$ cd $HOME
$ svn checkout svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/trunk mplayer
$ cd $HOME/mplayer
$ ./configure --confdir=/etc/mplayer
$ make
$ sudo checkinstall -D --install=yes --fstrans=no --pakdir "$HOME/Desktop" \
--pkgname mplayer --backup=no --deldoc=yes --deldesc=yes --delspec=yes --default \
--pkgversion "3:1.0~svn-`grep "#define VERSION" version.h | cut -d"-" -f2`"
$ make distclean

If you wish this installation to register both MPlayer and MEncoder with the Ubuntu package management system consider adding --provides "mplayer,mencoder" to the checkinstall line. Or perhaps you have no interest in MEncoder at all, in which case add --disable-mencoder to your ./configure options. Lots of choices!

And there you have the cutting edge MPlayer. Return here from time to time to update your copy by using the command 'svn update' and then compiling as before. But this is of course the commandline version only, next to download the best graphical front-end for MPlayer available today:

===========================
Downloading SMPlayer
===========================

The default gui for MPlayer is known as gmplayer and it has been out of development for some time. Although something of a commandline guy I use SMPLayer in place of gmplayer and I would advise that you do the same. To download from the Ubuntu Repositories simply:

$ sudo apt-get install smplayer

This will be a download of about 13 megs on a fresh system as there are some QT requirements. The developer of SMPlayer also maintains a Personal Package Archive (PPA) with a newer version of the SMPlayer, details of how to access this can be seen here.

=============================
And in conclusion.....
=============================

And so you have successfully installed the svn MPlayer! You can check the options available for you with the following commands:

1. mplayer -vo help : Video output available to mplayer
2. mplayer -ao help : Audio output available to mplayer
3. mplayer -vc help : Available video codecs
4. mplayer -ac help : Available audio codecs
5. mencoder -ovc help : Available video codecs
6. mencoder-oac help : Available audio codecs

The commandline player is started with the command 'mplayer' in a Terminal window, the encoder with the command 'mencoder' while the gui SMPlayer should appear on your menu. And remember: "Have fun!".

Andrew Strong
September 15th, 2009.

[taavikko]

Thanks for the quick-guide..

however, one thing, i would use

sudo apt-get build-deb mplayer mencoder

to satisfy the dependencies...

[Jeroen Vernooij]

Further, x264 is an encoder. If you don't plan to encode/transcode movies (only playback) it is not necessary to compile x264 at all.

Edit: Thanks, Nullack

[Nullack]

Thanks for the quick-guide..

however, one thing, i would use

sudo apt-get build-deb mplayer mencoder

to satisfy the dependencies...

I use

sudo apt-get build-dep mplayer-nogui mencoder

Plus, if you want VDPAU and you have installed the NVIDIA driver via Ubuntu's repo, you will need the NVIDIA VDPAU Dev package installed which currently isnt a build dep. If you have manually installed the driver you wont need the VPAU Dev package.

@Andrew - top stuff mate The codecs section doesnt mention those processes are for 32bit platforms only - the AMD64 build of Ubuntu Jaunty requires the AMD64 bit essential codecs from mplayers website. Its so great to have a powerful set of tools with mencoder and x264, all up to date with SVN. Thanks.

[meborc]

thanks, a very good howto

[Nullack]

You didnt use checkinstall like the guide instructs Jeroen

[andrew.46]

Hi Jeroen,

When I earlier compiled MPlayer from SVN, apt didn't knew it was installed: it didn't show up in Synaptic. Therefore, if you try to install SMPlayer via apt, it will install the MPlayer from the ubuntu repository, regardless if you want it or not since it is a dependency.

True but I suspect you did not notice that I have altered the package version number of MPlayer specifically for this reason. The version number I give there means that the repository version will not overwrite the compiled version.

Further, x264 is an encoder. If you don't plan to encode/transcode movies (only playback) it is not necessary to compile x264 at all.

There is a special problem with x264 in that the svn MPlayer will not compile with a build number less than 59. Although the repository now hosts build 60 I have 3 good reasons for compiling x264:

1. This future proofs the guide in case the MPlayer devs ever raise the required build number again.
2. If people wish to also compile FFmpeg as per the FakeOutdoorsman's guide on these forums there will be no duplication or redundancy.
3. Some will wish to encode x264/h264 with Mencoder

All the best,

Andrew

[andrew.46]

Hi meborc,

thanks, a very good howto

My pleasure . It is destined to actually go in the 'Tutorials' section when Jaunty is released. The forum guys decided it was better here in the meantime.

Andrew

[andrew.46]

Hi taavikko,

Thanks for the quick-guide..

however, one thing, i would use

sudo apt-get build-deb mplayer mencoder

to satisfy the dependencies...

I have used 'build-dep' as a starter for the dev files. I have added some in and subtracted more than a few. The svn is different to the rc2 hosted by Ubuntu in many subtle ways so usually the files need a little pruning. You will note the addition of the amr libraries, the omission of all the libdvdnav/libdvdread files, the omission of the repository Live555 libraries, omission of the libx264-65 library, addition of libschroeder-dev etc etc.

All the best,

Andrew

[andrew.46]

Hi Nullack,

The codecs section doesnt mention those processes are for 32bit platforms only - the AMD64 build of Ubuntu Jaunty requires the AMD64 bit essential codecs from mplayers website. Its so great to have a powerful set of tools with mencoder and x264, all up to date with SVN. Thanks.

Bugger, I forgot the 64bit codecs. I will add a reference to those after this spell of night work.

Andrew