MPlayer

{{about|the open source media player|Microsoft's media player (mplayer2.exe)|Windows Media Player|the online gaming community|MPlayer.com}}

{{multiple issues|{{Update|inaccurate=yes|date=June 2012}}

{{more citations needed|date=February 2023}}}}

{{Infobox software

| name = MPlayer

| logo = MPlayer.svg

| screenshot = MPlayer.png

| caption = MPlayer on Linux using the gMplayer front-end

| developer = MPlayer team

| released = {{start date and age|2000}}

| latest release version = {{wikidata|property|preferred|references|edit|Q131344|P348|P548=Q2804309}}

| latest release date = {{wikidata|qualifier|preferred|single|Q131344|P348|P548=Q2804309|P577}}

| latest preview version = {{wikidata|property|preferred|references|edit|Q131344|P348|P548=Q51930650}}

| latest preview date = {{wikidata|qualifier|preferred|single|Q131344|P348|P548=Q51930650|P577}}

| programming language = C

| platform = Cross-platform

| language = English, Hungarian, Polish, Russian and Spanish

| genre = Media player

| license = GPL-2.0-or-later{{Cite web|url=http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html|title = MPlayer - the Movie Player}}

| website = {{official URL}}

}}

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.{{cite web |url=http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mplayer/ |title=Index of /pub/micro/pc-stuff/freedos/files/util/user/mplayer |publisher=Ibiblio.org |access-date=2012-01-01}} Versions for the Wii Homebrew Channel{{cite web |author=Erant |url=http://hackmii.com/2008/08/libdi-and-the-dvdx-installer/ |title=libdi and the DVDX installer |publisher=Hackmii.com |access-date=2012-01-01}} and Amazon Kindle{{cite web |url=http://gitorious.org/kindlebrew |title=kindlebrew |publisher=Gitorious |access-date=2012-01-01 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120407063924/http://gitorious.org/kindlebrew |archive-date=2012-04-07 }} have also been developed.

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.[http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/history.html History]

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.{{cite web |title=MPlayer - The Movie Player |url=http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html |access-date=2012-06-24}}

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,{{Cite conference |date=2010 |title=The design and implementation of an embedded high definition player |conference=The 2nd International Conference on Computer and Automation Engineering (ICCAE) |volume=4 |vauthors=Zhang H etal}} including for specific mobile device architectures.{{Cite book |last1=Chang |first1=Hoseok |last2=Lee |first2=Youngjoon |last3=Sung |first3=Wonyong |chapter=Performance Optimization of a Multimedia Player on a Mobile CPU Platform |date=October 2007 |title=2007 IEEE Workshop on Signal Processing Systems |chapter-url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/sips.2007.4387538 |pages=163–168 |publisher=IEEE |doi=10.1109/sips.2007.4387538|isbn=978-1-4244-1221-1 |s2cid=8023880 }}

Capabilities and classification

MPlayer can play a wide variety of media formats,{{cite web |url=http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html |title=Codec Status Table |publisher=Mplayerhq.hu |access-date=2012-01-01}} 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.MPlayer documentation and user manual

Media formats

File:MPlayer cmd win32.png

MPlayer can play many formats, including:{{cite web |url=http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html |title=MPlayer Features |publisher=Mplayerhq.hu |access-date=2012-01-01}}

Physical media: CDs, DVDs, Video CDs, Blu-ray discs
Container formats: 3GP, AVI, ASF, FLV, Matroska, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg, OGM, RealMedia, Bink
Video formats: Cinepak, DV, H.263, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo, MJPEG, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 Part 2, RealVideo, Sorenson, Theora, WMV, Bink
Audio formats: AAC, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, FLAC, Intel Music Coder, Monkey's Audio, MP3, Musepack, RealAudio, Shorten, Speex, Vorbis, WMA, Bink
Subtitle formats: AQTitle, ASS/SSA, CC, JACOsub, MicroDVD, MPsub, OGM, PJS, RT, Sami, SRT, SubViewer, VOBsub, VPlayer
Image formats: BMP, JPEG, MNG, PCX, PTX, TGA, TIFF, SGI, Sun Raster
Protocols: RTP, RTSP, HTTP, FTP, MMS, Netstream ({{mono|mpst://}}), SMB, {{mono|ffmpeg://}} (Uses FFmpeg's protocol implementations)

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 {{mono|{{not a typo|tv}}://channel}}, or play and capture radio channels via {{mono|radio://channel{{!}}frequency}}.

Since version 1.0RC1, Mplayer can decode subtitles in ASS/SSA subtitle format, using libass.

=Available plugins=

XMMS plugins
Avisynth

{{Anchor|GNOME MPlayer|gMplayer|}}Interface and graphical front-ends

File:Gnome-MPlayer v1.0.9 on Debian 8.png]]

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.

GTK-based are gmplayer (official){{cite web|url=http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/README|title=README|access-date=2016-03-19}}{{cite web|url=http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/gui.html|title=What about the GUI?|access-date=2016-03-19}} and Gnome-MPlayer
Qt-based are SMPlayer and KMPlayer, among others.
Cocoa-based are MPlayer OS X Extended and MPlayerX{{cite web |url=http://www.mplayerosx.ch/ |title=MPlayer OSX Extended |date= 2011-12-09 |access-date= 2015-01-23 }}

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.{{cite web |url=https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTI0Ng |title=Is MPlayer2 a viable fork of MPlayer? |publisher=Phoronix |date=2011-03-24 |access-date=2014-04-18}} 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.{{cite web|url=http://www.mplayer2.org/comparison.html |title=mplayer2 differences from mplayer |date=2011 |access-date=May 4, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120504055423/http://www.mplayer2.org/comparison.html |archive-date=May 4, 2012 }}{{cite web |url=http://ostatic.com/blog/did-you-know-there-was-a-fork-of-mplayer |title=Did You Know there was a Fork of MPlayer? |publisher=ostatic.com |date=2011-03-22 |access-date=2011-11-29 |archive-date=2012-01-11 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120111135451/http://ostatic.com/blog/did-you-know-there-was-a-fork-of-mplayer |url-status=dead }} The developers also indicated intentions to enable MPlayer2 to use Libav as an alternative to ffmpeg.{{cite web|url=https://blogs.gentoo.org/scarabeus/2013/01/15/libav-going-to-be-default-provider-for-your-codec-experience/#comment-2705|title=Libav going to be default provider for your codec experience (comment)|date=January 16, 2013}} The first release, 2.0, was published in March 2011. There have been no subsequent stable releases.

mpv{{cite web|url=http://mpv.io|title=mpv.io|access-date=2015-01-28}} is a GPLv2-licensed fork of mplayer2. Since June 2015, mpv has worked to relicense its code as LGPL v2.1 or above.{{cite web|url=https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033|title=Possible LGPL relicensing|website=GitHub|access-date=2016-09-27}}

MPlayer, MPlayer2 and mpv all use incompatible EDL formats.{{cite web|url=https://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html|title=3.7. Edit Decision Lists (EDL)|access-date=21 Jul 2015|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150717212428/http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html|archive-date=2015-07-17}}{{cite web|url=http://devel.mplayer2.org/changeset/968154ba77f8e8974d6dd36d1109a473b3ff5b6c/|title=EDL: add support for new EDL file format|work=MPlayer2|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110425211510/http://devel.mplayer2.org/changeset/968154ba77f8e8974d6dd36d1109a473b3ff5b6c|archive-date=25 April 2011}} [http://pastebin.com/ZYPSqjSW Alt URL]{{cite web|url=https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/edl-mpv.rst|title=EDL files|work=mpv|date=25 Oct 2014|access-date=21 Jul 2015}}

Legal controversy

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.{{cite web |title=MPlayer - The Movie Player |date=2004-01-10 |url=http://mplayerhq.hu/design7/news-archive.html#kiss05 |access-date=2012-06-24}} 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.