MPlayer

Last updated
MPlayer
Developer(s) MPlayer team
Initial release2000;24 years ago (2000)
Stable release
1.5 [1] [2]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 27 February 2022
Repository
Written in C
Platform Cross-platform
Available inEnglish, Hungarian, Polish, Russian and Spanish
Type Media player
License GPL-2.0-or-later [3]
Website mplayerhq.hu OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A port for DOS using DJGPP is also available. [4] Versions for the Wii Homebrew Channel [5] and Amazon Kindle [6] have also been developed.

Contents

History

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. The first version was titled mpg12play v0.1 and was hacked together in half an hour using libmpeg3 from Cinelerra-HV. 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. [7] Gereöffy was soon joined by many other programmers, in the beginning mostly from Hungary, but later 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 was abandoned, and all the development effort was put on MPlayer 1.0. [8]

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.

Video acceleration

There are various SIP blocks that can accelerate video decoding computation in several formats, including PureVideo, UVD, QuickSync Video, TI Ducati and others. Two studies in 2007 and 2010 implemented hardware decoding for MPlayer, [9] including for specific mobile device architectures. [10]

Capabilities and classification

MPlayer can play a wide variety of media formats, [11] namely any format supported by FFmpeg libraries, and can also save all streamed content to a file locally.

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

A variety of command-line parameters allows changing the appearance of the player, including -speed [number], -af scaletempo for changing audio speed while maintaining the pitch, -ss (start at ___ seconds), -sb (start at ___ bytes), -endpos (stop playing at ___ seconds), -novideo for only playing the audio track of a video, and -loop [number] for looping. [12]

Media formats

MPlayer being run via command line in Microsoft Windows. MPlayer cmd win32.png
MPlayer being run via command line in Microsoft Windows.

MPlayer can play many formats, including: [13]

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 decode subtitles in ASS/SSA subtitle format, using libass.

Available plugins

Interface and graphical front-ends

Gnome-MPlayer v1.0.9 on GNOME Gnome-MPlayer v1.0.9 on Debian 8.png
Gnome-MPlayer v1.0.9 on GNOME

Like GStreamer, MPlayer has only command line interface and there are a couple of front-ends available, which use GUI widgets of GTK, Qt or some other widget library. When not using these front-ends, mplayer can still display video in a window (with no visible controls on it), and is controlled using a keyboard.

Forks

mplayer2 was a GPLv3-licensed fork of MPlayer, largely the work of Uoti Urpala, who was excluded from the MPlayer project in May 2010 due to "long standing differences" with the MPlayer Team. [17] The main changes from MPlayer were improved pause handling, Matroska support, seeking, and support for Nvidia VDPAU; enabling multithreading by default; and the removal of MEncoder, the GUI interface, and various video drivers and bundled libraries, such as ffmpeg, relying instead on shared libraries. [18] [19] The developers also indicated intentions to enable MPlayer2 to use Libav as an alternative to ffmpeg. [20] The first release, 2.0, was published in March 2011. There have been no subsequent stable releases.

mpv [21] is a GPLv2-licensed fork of mplayer2. Since June 2015, mpv has worked to relicense its code as LGPL v2.1 or above. [22]

MPlayer, MPlayer2 and mpv all use incompatible EDL formats. [23] [24] [25]

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. [26] 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. [26]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FFmpeg</span> Multimedia framework

FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing video and audio files. It is widely used for format transcoding, basic editing, video scaling, video post-production effects, and standards compliance.

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. It was designed to be the successor of the MP3 format and generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 at the same bit rate.

Matroska is a project to create a container format that can hold an unlimited number of video, audio, picture, or subtitle tracks in one file. The Matroska Multimedia Container is similar in concept to other containers like AVI, MP4, or Advanced Systems Format (ASF), but is an open standard.

An edit decision list or EDL is used in the post-production process of film editing and video editing. The list contains an ordered list of reel and timecode data representing where each video clip can be obtained in order to conform the final cut.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">VLC media player</span> Free and open-source media-player and streaming-media-server

VLC media player is a free and open-source, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media server developed by the VideoLAN project. VLC is available for desktop operating systems and mobile platforms, such as Android, iOS and iPadOS. VLC is also available on digital distribution platforms such as Apple's App Store, Google Play, and Microsoft Store.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Media Player Classic</span> Media player for Microsoft Windows

Media Player Classic (MPC), Media Player Classic - Home Cinema (MPC-HC), and Media Player Classic - Black Edition (MPC-BE) are a family of free and open-source, compact, lightweight, and customizable media players for 32-bit and 64-bit Microsoft Windows. The original MPC, along with the MPC-HC fork, mimic the simplistic look and feel of Windows Media Player 6.4, but provide most options and features available in modern media players. Variations of the original MPC and its forks are standard media players in the K-Lite Codec Pack and the Combined Community Codec Pack.

The following comparison of video players compares general and technical information for notable software media player programs.

ffdshow Open-source unmaintained codec library

ffdshow is an open-source unmaintained codec library that is mainly used for decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well. It is free software released under GNU General Public License 2.0, runs on Windows, and is implemented as a Video for Windows (VFW) codec and a DirectShow filter.

x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License.

FAAC is a software project which includes the AAC encoder FAAC and decoder FAAD2. It supports MPEG-2 AAC as well as MPEG-4 AAC. It supports several MPEG-4 Audio object types, file formats, multichannel and gapless encoding/decoding and MP4 metadata tags. The encoder and decoder is compatible with standard-compliant audio applications using one or more of these object types and facilities. It also supports Digital Radio Mondiale.

Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are two different Flash Video file formats: FLV and F4V. The audio and video data within FLV files are encoded in the same way as SWF files. The F4V file format is based on the ISO base media file format, starting with Flash Player 9 update 3. Both formats are supported in Adobe Flash Player and developed by Adobe Systems. FLV was originally developed by Macromedia. In the early 2000s, Flash Video was the de facto standard for web-based streaming video. Users include Hulu, VEVO, Yahoo! Video, metacafe, Reuters.com, and many other news providers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avidemux</span> Free and open-source transcoding and video editing software

Avidemux is a free and open-source software application for non-linear video editing and transcoding multimedia files. The developers intend it as "a simple tool for simple video processing tasks" and to allow users "to do elementary things in a very straightforward way". It is written in C++ and uses Qt for its graphical user interface, and FFmpeg for its multimedia functions. Starting with version 2.4, Avidemux also offers a command-line interface, and since version 2.6, the original GTK port has not been maintained and is now discontinued.

libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data.

Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit (GPU). It is implemented by the free and open-source library libva, combined with a hardware-specific driver, usually provided together with the GPU driver.

TooLAME is a free software MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio encoder written primarily by Mike Cheng. While there are many MP2 encoders, TooLAME is well-known and widely used for its particularly high audio quality. It has been unmaintained since 2003, but is directly succeeded by the TwoLAME code fork. The name TooLAME is a play on LAME and Layer II.

Kiss Technology was an entertainment technology company based in Denmark that existed from 1994 to 2005. It produced DVD players. In 2003, its DR-450 model were the first DVD players that could read the MPEG-4 format, and in 2004, its DP-500 model was able to read all existing DVD formats.

A demultiplexer for digital media files, or media demultiplexer, also called a file splitter by laymen or consumer software providers, is software that demultiplexes individual elementary streams of a media file, e.g., audio, video, or subtitles and sends them to their respective decoders for actual decoding. Media demultiplexers are not decoders themselves, but are format container handlers that separate media streams from a (container) file and supply them to their respective audio, video, or subtitles decoders.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SUPER (computer program)</span> Front-end for video players and encoders

Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Recorder (SUPER) is a closed-source front end for open-source software video players and encoders provided by the FFmpeg, MEncoder, MPlayer, x264, ffmpeg2theora, musepack, Monkey's Audio, True Audio, WavPack, libavcodec, and the Theora/Vorbis RealProducer plugIn projects. It was first released in 2005. SUPER provides a graphical user interface to these back-end programs, which use a command-line interface.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">XBMC4Xbox</span> Open source media player software

XBMC4Xbox is a free and open source media player software made solely for the first-generation Xbox video-game console. The software was forked from the XBMC project after XBMC removed support for the Xbox console. Other than the audio / video playback and media center functionality, XBMC4Xbox also has the ability to catalog and launch original Xbox games, and homebrew applications such as console emulators from the Xbox's built-in harddrive.

mpv (media player) Free and open-source media player software

mpv is free and open-source media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg. It runs on several operating systems, including Unix-like operating systems and Microsoft Windows, along with having an Android port called mpv-android. It is cross-platform, running on ARM, PowerPC, x86/IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS architecture.

References

  1. ↑ "MPlayer 1.5 released". 27 February 2022.
  2. ↑ "MPlayer - The Movie Player" . Retrieved 28 February 2022.
  3. ↑ "MPlayer - the Movie Player".
  4. ↑ "Index of /pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mplayer". Ibiblio.org. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  5. ↑ Erant. "libdi and the DVDX installer". Hackmii.com. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  6. ↑ "kindlebrew". Gitorious. Archived from the original on 2012-04-07. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  7. ↑ History
  8. ↑ "MPlayer - The Movie Player" . Retrieved 2012-06-24.
  9. ↑ Zhang H, et al. (2010). The design and implementation of an embedded high definition player. The 2nd International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering (ICCAE). Vol. 4.
  10. ↑ Chang, Hoseok; Lee, Youngjoon; Sung, Wonyong (October 2007). "Performance Optimization of a Multimedia Player on a Mobile CPU Platform". 2007 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems. IEEE. pp. 163–168. doi:10.1109/sips.2007.4387538. ISBN   978-1-4244-1221-1. S2CID   8023880.
  11. ↑ "Codec Status Table". Mplayerhq.hu. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  12. ↑ MPlayer documentation and user manual
  13. ↑ "MPlayer Features". Mplayerhq.hu. Retrieved 2012-01-01.
  14. ↑ "README" . Retrieved 2016-03-19.
  15. ↑ "What about the GUI?" . Retrieved 2016-03-19.
  16. ↑ "MPlayer OSX Extended". 2011-12-09. Retrieved 2015-01-23.
  17. ↑ "Is MPlayer2 a viable fork of MPlayer?". Phoronix. 2011-03-24. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  18. ↑ "mplayer2 differences from mplayer". 2011. Archived from the original on May 4, 2012. Retrieved May 4, 2015.
  19. ↑ "Did You Know there was a Fork of MPlayer?". ostatic.com. 2011-03-22. Retrieved 2011-11-29.
  20. ↑ "Libav going to be default provider for your codec experience (comment)". January 16, 2013.
  21. ↑ "mpv.io" . Retrieved 2015-01-28.
  22. ↑ "Possible LGPL relicensing". GitHub . Retrieved 2016-09-27.
  23. ↑ "3.7. Edit Decision Lists (EDL)". Archived from the original on 2015-07-17. Retrieved 21 Jul 2015.
  24. ↑ "EDL: add support for new EDL file format". MPlayer2. Archived from the original on 25 April 2011. Alt URL
  25. ↑ "EDL files". mpv. 25 Oct 2014. Retrieved 21 Jul 2015.
  26. 1 2 "MPlayer - The Movie Player". 2004-01-10. Retrieved 2012-06-24.
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