HOWTO: Compile MPlayer with a GTK2 GUI

[seethru]

I've always hated the MPlayer GUI, but could never bring myself to change players because I like having the controls and the movie seperated. After a little bit of googling, I managed to find a patch for the newest version. This is a very simple HOWTO, and I've also included how to compile the mplayer plugin with GTK2, which requires no patching.

Lets start off with the essentials, the source, and the build tools (for those who have never compiled before)

You can grab the source from here ftp://ftp.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/relea...e7try2.tar.bz2.

Once that has downloaded, extract it by either opening nautilus and browsing to it's location and opening it with archive manager, or run this command.

tar xjfv MPlayer-1.0pre7try2.tar.bz2

Once thats extracted we'll get all the dependencies and build tools, although if you're reading this it's possible you've used MPlayer before and hate the GTK1 GUI as much as I did.

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install gcc-3.4
sudo apt-get install libx11-dev
sudo apt-get install libxv-dev
sudo apt-get install libpng12-0
sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev
sudo apt-get install checkinstall
sudo apt-get install libavcodec-dev

and any other codecs you need

Now, one more thing to download, the patch from here http://seethrubuntu.ath.cx/MPlayer-1...gtk2.patch.bz2

Make sure to download that to the same directory that you downloaded MPlayer-1.0pre7.tar.bz2 to.

Once the download is done, do the following.

cd /location/to/MPlayer-1.0pre7try2
bzcat ../MPlayer-1.0pre7-gtk2.patch.bz2 |patch -p1

This will patch two files, and after this it's time to start building.
In the MPlayer-1.0pre7try2 directory run the configure command.

./configure --enable-gui --enable-gtk2

It'll go through the usual configure bit, and you might see it check your GTK version .

Once configure is done, just run

make && sudo checkinstall

This will make MPlayer, build a deb, and install the deb for you.
KNOWN ISSUES: Right click on the movie window does not work every time, I've found however if you double click it fast, it does work. I'll be looking into this tonight as there is a patch for a previous version of mplayer that fixes this.


Now, once thats installed, onto MPlayer plugin.
You can grab the source from here http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/m...ar.gz?download and you'll also need the mozilla gecko-sdk which can be found here http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o...t-1.8b1.tar.gz

Once that is downloaded, extract it, just like we did MPlayer, then browse to the directory it made and run configure again, this time with the following options.

./configure --with-gecko-sdk=/path/to/gecko-sdk --enable-gtk2

Once configure is done, just run

make && sudo checkinstall

and again, it will compile, build a deb file, and install the deb file for you.

[LaSSarD]

Other packages you need:
libpng
libpng-dev

I think libavcodec-dev would be the right package when you mean libavcodec. Another mistake here:
bzcat ../MPlayer-1.0pre7-gtk2.patch.bz2 |patch -p1
It should be:
bzcat MPlayer-1.0pre7-gtk2.patch.bz2 |patch -p1

When executing:
./configure --with-gecko-sdk=/path/to/gecko-sdk --enable-gtk2
I've got an error:
Checking for gcc-3.4 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.3 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.2 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.1 version ... not found
Checking for gcc3 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.0 version ... not found
Checking for cc version ... 4.0.2, bad

I think the problem is the new breezy gcc version... Then I did:
./configure --enable-gui --enable-gtk2 --disable-gcc-checking

OK, but...

Error: X11 support required for GUI compilation

[seethru]

I think libavcodec-dev would be the right package. Another mistake here:
bzcat ../MPlayer-1.0pre7-gtk2.patch.bz2 |patch -p1
It should be:
bzcat MPlayer-1.0pre7-gtk2.patch.bz2 |patch -p1

When executing:
./configure --with-gecko-sdk=/path/to/gecko-sdk --enable-gtk2
I've got an error:
Checking for gcc-3.4 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.3 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.2 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.1 version ... not found
Checking for gcc3 version ... not found
Checking for gcc-3.0 version ... not found
Checking for cc version ... 4.0.2, bad

I think the problem is the new breezy gcc version...
Thanks for the tut anyway

sudo apt-get gcc-3.4
you also need to change /path/to/hecko-sdk to whatever /path/to is.

I'll be sure to add that into the HOWTO.

[scourge]

Okay, once I installed gcc-3.4 it compiled with quite a few warnings. It worked somewhat well, except that the right-click menu stopped working and I had only two video drivers to choose from. The difference in appearance was stunning though.

[seethru]

Okay, once I installed gcc-3.4 it compiled with quite a few warnings. It worked somewhat well, except that the right-click menu stopped working and I had only two video drivers to choose from. The difference in appearance was stunning though.

Yeah, the right click issue is annoying, there's a patch for pre5 which includes a fix for that so I'm going to comb through it tonight and see if I can't add that to the patch.

[seethru]

Error: X11 support required for GUI compilation

sudo apt-get install libx11-dev

Can't believe I've missed these, thats what I get for assuming...lol

[vaskark]

Thank god! Great work, seethru. Any chance of doing the same thing for Xine?

[Azrael]

This is a nice howto and compiling and installing went without problems, but:

This method doesn't seem to compile with xv support!

mplayer -vo help | grep xv

...verifies this, because a line similar to this should appear: xv X11/Xv But it doesn't (for me at least).

I definitely need xv for my S3 Savage video card. Anyone know what's going wrong?

[NeoChaosX]

You want to install libxv-dev to get xv support compiled.

[Azrael]

You want to install libxv-dev to get xv support compiled.

Oh, I guess I missed that one. Thank you!