Mplayer installation guide and problem fixes

If you are using Fedora, first install Mplayer like this :

su, enter, then enter your password.

rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-6.rpm (or changed it to 7,8, whatever Fedora version you have)

yum -y install mplayer mplayer-fonts mplayerplug-in mplayer-doc mplayer-gui

yum -y install libdvdcss libdvdplay libdvdnav

yum install gstreamer*


If you are using Ubuntu, install with add/remove.


Then for both:

Download codecs from here:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/.

Get the windows-all codecs if you want to play rmvb files.

Most guides recommend essentials but you can have many weird problems.

If you are really sure essentials suffice, then go ahead.

gtar xjvf essential-20061022(whatever the name of your codec is).tar.bz2

mkdir /usr/lib/codecs

mv essential-20061022(or your codec pack name)/* /usr/local/lib/codecs

chmod 644 /usr//lib/codecs/*

similarly, you can get the windows codecs and put them in /usr/lib/win32

Then you can access mplayer from applications or command line.

If you have problems with video (which is what happens with most of us), right click mplayer window and go to preferences.
Try to change the video driver and there should be one for you.

The above installation solved my problem with full screen mode. Another thing you can try is to run this command:

echo "zoom=1" >> ~/.mplayer/config

It definitely worked for me under ubuntu.

If you get this error playing some files:
cannot find codec for video format 0x56444152
Then in preferences, under video tag, choose enable frame dropping.

If you want to play files in a directory, I would die to recommend you this:

ls > playlist.txt

mplayer -playlist playlist.txt

That's how you should use linux.

Technorati : Fedora, Installation Guide, Mplayer
Del.icio.us : Fedora, Installation Guide, Mplayer