MPlayer

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This article is about the open source media player. For Microsoft's media player (mplayer2.exe), see Windows Media Player. For the online gaming community, see MPlayer.com.
MPlayer
MPlayer.svg
MPlayer.png
MPlayer on Linux using the gMplayer front-end
Developer(s) MPlayer team
Initial release 2000
Stable release 4.6 (March 15, 2013; 60 days ago (2013-03-15)) [±]
Preview release none (None) [±]
Written in C
Platform Cross-platform
Available in English, Hungarian, Polish, Russian and Spanish
Type Media player
License GNU General Public License
Website mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html

MPlayer is a free and open source media player. The program is available for all major operating systems, including Linux and other Unix-like systems, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. The Windows version also works, with some minor problems, in DOS using HX DOS Extender. A port for DOS using DJGPP is also available.[1] Versions for the Wii Homebrew Channel[2] and Amazon Kindle[3] have also emerged.

Contents

Capabilities and classification [edit]

MPlayer can play a wide variety of media formats[4] and can also save all streamed content to a file.

A companion program, MEncoder, can take an input stream or file and transcode it into several different output formats, optionally applying various transforms along the way.

History [edit]

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 This article's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (June 2012)

Development of MPlayer began in 2000. The original author, Hungarian Árpád Gereöffy, started the project because he was unable to find any satisfactory video players for Linux after XAnim stopped development in 1999.[5] The first version was titled mpg12play v0.1 and was hacked together in a half hour using libmpeg3 from http://www.heroinewarrior.com/. After mpg12play v0.95pre5, the code was merged with an AVI player based on avifile's Win32 DLL loader to form MPlayer v0.3 in November 2000.[6] Gereöffy was soon joined by many other programmers, in the beginning mostly from Hungary, but now located worldwide.

Alex Beregszászi has maintained MPlayer since 2003 when Gereöffy left MPlayer development to begin work on a second generation MPlayer. The MPlayer G2 project is currently abandoned, and all the development effort is put on MPlayer 1.0.[7]

MPlayer was previously called "MPlayer - The Movie Player for Linux" by its developers but this was later shortened to "MPlayer - The Movie Player" after it became commonly used on other operating systems.

Media formats [edit]

MPlayer being run via command line in Microsoft Windows.

MPlayer can play almost anything, including:[8]

MPlayer can also use a variety of output driver protocols to display video, including VDPAU, the X video extension, OpenGL, DirectX, Direct3D, Quartz Compositor, VESA, Framebuffer, SDL and rarer ones such as ASCII art (using AAlib and libcaca) and Blinkenlights. It can also be used to display TV from a TV card using the device tv://channel, or play and capture radio channels via radio://channel|frequency.

Since version 1.0RC1, Mplayer can reasonably understand subtites in ASS/SSA subtitle format, using libass.

Available plugins [edit]

Front-ends [edit]

MPlayer is a command line application which has different optional GUI front-ends for each of the operating systems on which it runs. Commonly used GUIs are gMplayer and Gnome MPlayer written for GTK+, KMPlayer written for Qt, MPlayer OS X Extended and MPlayerX for Mac OS X[9] and MPUI-hcb for Windows. Cross-platform GUIs are also available, like SMPlayer for Windows and Linux, and UMPlayer.[10]

Forks [edit]

There is a more complete list of forks on the MPlayer Related Projects page http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/projects.html.

  • MPlayer-WW is a fork of MPlayer by William Wang. It has the following features:
    • Multithreaded H264, MPEG-2 Decoder (ffmpeg-mt)
    • DirectShow Demuxer and Decoder
    • Fully compatible with CoreAVC Decoder
    • PMP Demuxer for PSP media files
    • Better compatibility with TS, TP, HDTV
    • Skin and Windows Native Theme
    • Can use Winamp's DSP plugins
    • Native Playlist and Video Equalizer Window
    • MEditor2 (MPlayer Preference) Graphic Setting Program
    • Direct3D and OpenGL Video Output
    • Auto Play Next file
  • mplayer2 is a fork of MPlayer, it contains a number of features not available in the original MPlayer.[11][12] However, some features were also removed, such as MEncoder. The first release, 2.0, was published in March 2011. As of January 2013, there have been no subsequent stable releases, but development, as seen the Git repository, is active.[13]
  • mpv is a fork of MPlayer2 which is in turn a fork of MPlayer. Notable changes from MPlayer2 include removal of lots of unneeded code to encourage developer activity (less obscure scary zombie code that kills any desire for hacking the codebase), removal of dust and dead bodies (code-wise) such as kernel drivers for decades old hardware, removal of support for dead platforms, better OSD rendering (using libass), support for playing URLs of popular streaming sites directly.
    mpv developers state the following as reasons for the fork.
    • mplayer-svn wants to maintain old code, even if it's very bad code. It seems mplayer2 was forked, because mplayer-svn developers refused to get rid of all the cruft. The mplayer2 and mplayer-svn codebases also deviated enough to make a reunification unlikely.
    • mplayer2 development is slow, and it's hard to get in changes.
    • mplayer-svn rarely merged from mplayer2, and mplayer2 practically stopped merging from mplayer-svn (not even code cleanups or new features are merged)
    • mpv intents to continuously merge from mplayer-svn and mplayer2, while speeding up development. There is willingness for significant changes, even if this means breaking compatibility.
    [14]
  • MPlayerXP is a fork of MPlayer with a threaded core. It was created because the original MPlayer developers did not believe that multiple threads were a viable option for most people (as multi-threaded CPUs were very expensive in 2001). As of January 2013, there have been no releases of MPlayerXP since February 2010.

Legal issues [edit]

 This section may contain original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research may be removed. (May 2010)

MPlayer interprets most video and audio formats natively through the libavcodec library of the FFmpeg project. For those formats where no open source decoder has been made yet MPlayer relies on binary codecs. It can use Windows DLLs directly with the help of a DLL loader forked from avifile (which itself forked its loader from the Wine project).

The combination of CSS decryption software and use of formats covered by software patents places a fully functional MPlayer in the legal bind shared by most open source multimedia players. In the past, MPlayer used to include OpenDivX, a GPL-incompatible decoder library. This has since been removed, making MPlayer use only GPL-like or BSD-like licenses. Usage of patented codecs in free software however is a still pending potential problem affecting FFmpeg, MPlayer and similar software when used in countries where software patents apply.

In January 2004 the MPlayer website was updated with an allegation that the Danish DVD player manufacturer, KISS Technology, were marketing DVD players with firmware that included parts of MPlayer's GPL-licensed code. The implication was that KISS was violating the GPL, since KISS did not release its firmware under the GPL license. The response from the managing director of KISS, Peter Wilmar Christensen, countered that the similarities between the two pieces of code indicate that the MPlayer team had in fact used code from KISS's firmware.[15] However, the KISS DVD player, released in 2003, used a subtitle file format that is specific to MPlayer, which was designed by an MPlayer developer in 2001.[15]

See also [edit]

Portal icon Free software portal

References [edit]

  1. ^ "Index of /pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mplayer". Ibiblio.org. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  2. ^ Erant. "libdi and the DVDX installer". Hackmii.com. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  3. ^ "kindlebrew". Gitorious. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  4. ^ "Codec Status Table". Mplayerhq.hu. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  5. ^ "The XAnim Home Page". Xanim.polter.net. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  6. ^ History
  7. ^ "MPlayer - The Movie Player". Retrieved 2012-06-24. 
  8. ^ "MPlayer Features". Mplayerhq.hu. Retrieved 2012-01-01. 
  9. ^ "MPlayer OSX Extended". 09-12-2011. Retrieved 09-12-2011. 
  10. ^ "UMPlayer: New Cross-Platform MPlayer GUI Based on SMPlayer". WebUpd8. 01-04-2011. Retrieved 16-08-2011. 
  11. ^ "Did You Know there was a Fork of MPlayer?". ostatic.com. 2011-03-22. Retrieved 29-11-2011. 
  12. ^ "Is MPlayer2 a viable fork of MPlayer?". Phoronix. 2011-03-24. Retrieved 29-11-2011. 
  13. ^ "mplayer2 git repo". Retrieved 15-05-2012. 
  14. ^ "CHANGES FROM OTHER VERSIONS OF MPLAYER". 
  15. ^ a b "MPlayer - The Movie Player". 2004-01-10. Retrieved 2012-06-24. 

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: MPlayer
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