Herong's Tutorial Notes on CD/DVD
Dr. Herong Yang, Version 2.14

Downloading and Installing MPlayer

This section provides a tutorial on how to download and install MPlayer to play movies and other audio and video files.

MPlayer is a movie player which runs on many systems (see the documentation). MPlayer plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, RealMedia, Matroska, NUT, NuppelVideo, FLI, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies with MPlayer.

Here is how to download and install MPlayer:

1. Go to http://www.mplayerhq.hu/.

2. Click the "download" menu link.

3. Click and HTTP site in the "MPlayer 1.0rc1 Windows" download line. You can select the next line for the GUI version.

4. Save the downloaded file to C:\temp\MPlayer-mingw32-1.0rc1.zip

5. Unzip the downloaded file and move the output directory to C:\local\mplayer.

6. Run MPlayer command without any arguments to see the help information:

C:\>\local\mplayer\mplayer
MPlayer 1.0rc1-3.4.2 (C) 2000-2006 MPlayer Team
CPU: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 
   T7200  @ 2.00GHz (Family: 6, Model: 15, Stepping: 6)
CPUflags:  MMX: 1 MMX2: 1 3DNow: 0 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled with runtime CPU detection.
Usage:   MPlayer [options] [url|path/]filename

Basic options: (complete list in the man page)
 -vo <drv>        select video output driver ('-vo help' for a list)
 -ao <drv>        select audio output driver ('-ao help' for a list)
 dvd://<titleno>  play DVD title from device instead of plain file
 -alang           select audio language (by 2-char country code)
 -slang           select subtitle language (by 2-char country code)
 -ss <position>   seek to given (seconds or hh:mm:ss) position
 -nosound         do not play sound
 -fs              fullscreen playback
 -x <x> -y <y>    set display resolution (for use with -vm or -zoom)
 -sub <file>      specify subtitle file to use
 -playlist <file> specify playlist file
 -vid x -aid y    select video (x) and audio (y) stream to play
 -fps x -srate y  change video (x fps) and audio (y Hz) rate
 -pp <quality>    enable postprocessing filter
 -framedrop       enable frame dropping (for slow machines)
...

Sections in This Chapter

Downloading and Installing MPlayer

Playing DVD VOB Files with MPlayer

Playing VCD DAT Files with MPlayer

Playing MPEG Video Files with MPlayer

Playing MP3 Music Files with MPlayer

Playing WAV Music Files with MPlayer

Playing WMA Music Files with MPlayer

Dr. Herong Yang, updated in 2007
Downloading and Installing MPlayer