F9 Mplayer, Mplayerplug-in, & .xpi

mplayer is *the* movie player for Linux. It is the holy grail for multimedia applications, as it can be used for DVDs, Quicktime movies, Windows Media Files, MPEG files, etc., etc., etc. It simply works, and it is the only application that you really need to watch and encode streaming media. mplayer is available in several repositories, and has matured significantly over the past couple of years that I feel confident in using livna to install it, as outlined very nicely by Mauriat Miranda. Mauriat's notes are much more complete than those presented here, so if you have a problem, I suggest surfing over to his website.

Please note that you need to have the Livna repository enabled to install mplayer. We will be installing the command line interface, the GUI, an encoding tool called mencoder, and a web plugin in addition to the necessary codecs.

1. Install Proper Codecs

Install Mplayer through yum:

~> sudo yum install mplayer mplayer-gui gecko-mediaplayer mencoder libdvdcss lsdvd

Please note that mencoder is optional, but provides many encoding functions, gecko-mediaplayer is a replacement for mplayerplug-in, libdvdcss allows the playing of encrypted DVDs, and lsdvd is a program to list the contents of a DVD. For additional notes, see Mauriat Miranda's website.

If you try to run mplayer, you will see the following bug:

The flip-hebrew option can't be used in a config file.
Error parsing option flip-hebrew=no at line 133

To fix it, comment out Line 133 in /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf:

~> sudo sed -i 's/flip-hebrew/#flip-hebrew/' /etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf

2. Install Win32 Codecs

There are some additional codecs available on mplayer's website that are used to read formats that do not have an open source decoder. These include Win32 codecs for Windows Media, Quicktime, Real, etc. Go to:

http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/

Click on the all-20071007.tar.bz2 link, which is the latest version of the codecs (at the time of this writing). Next, create a directory to install the Win32 codecs under /usr/lib/codecs:

~> sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/codecs

Then untar the codecs into the directory:

~> sudo tar vfjx ~/Download/all-20071007.tar.bz2 --strip-components 1 -C /usr/lib/codecs/

The Win32 codecs are now installed on your system.

3. mplayer Skins

In install some skins for the GUI, go to:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html

Scroll down, and you will eventually come to the mplayer skin section. The skins are required if you want to have a GUI for mplayer. You will need at least one skin. I typically download the BlueHeart, proton, and PowerPlayer skins, with the PowerPlayer being my preferred choice. At the time of this writing, the latest versions are BlueHeart-1.5.tar.bz2, proton-1.2.tar.bz2, and PowerPlayer-1.1.tar.bz2.

The On Screen Display (OSD) and Subtitles need to have fonts properly installed. To do this, setup a symlink from one of your msttcorefonts fonts, assuming you have installed them (if not, see the MSFonts page):

~> ln -s /usr/share/fonts/msttcore/arial.ttf ~/.mplayer/subfont.tff

To install the skins, copy the source tarballs you downloaded into the appropriate directory:

~> sudo cp ~/Download/BlueHeart-1.5.tar.bz2 /usr/share/mplayer/skins/.
~> sudo cp ~/Download/PowerPlayer-1.1.tar.bz2 /usr/share/mplayer/skins/.
~> sudo cp ~/Download/proton-1.2.tar.bz2 /usr/share/mplayer/skins/.

Change into the skins directory:

~> cd /usr/share/mplayer/skins

and decompress the source files (again using the 'j' option):

~> sudo tar vfjx BlueHeart-1.5.tar.bz2
~> sudo tar vfjx PowerPlayer-1.1.tar.bz2
~> sudo tar vfjx proton-1.2.tar.bz2

Once the package has been decompressed, delete the source files:

~> sudo rm *.bz2

And finally, choose one of the skins to be your default. This can be done by creating a softlink from the directories to "default":

~> sudo rm default
~> sudo ln -s PowerPlayer default

With that, mplayer is finally ready for use. To launch the graphical version, type the following in a terminal window:

~> gmplayer

To test the plugin for Firefox, restart the application.

4. Remove the totem-mozplugin

The crudy player (totem) that comes with Fedora 9 will still take precedence over the mplayer plugin in Firefox. To undo this, type:

~> sudo yum remove totem-mozplugin

That's it. If you want to try it out, surf over to Apple's site, and take a look at their movie trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers/). Click on a trailer, and you should be able to watch it embedded directly within the web page (assuming that it is not a QuickTime 7 file)! The more you use it, the more you will realize just how powerful mplayer really is.

F9 Multimedia-Based Applications & Setup — Mplayer, etc.