My Tech Notes

I now have a new desktop computer (DELL Precision Workstation 390n, RH Enterprise 4) and already spent a few days setting it up in various ways. Most of the time, it has been straightforward, but setting up MPlayer was much less than trivial.

Here is an overview of the main steps required to install it (MPlayer 1.0rc1-4.1.1 © 2000-2006)

1. 64-bit vs. 32-bit problems

(This section will not apply to you if your OS is 32-bit)

MPlayer must be compiled in 32-bit mode since it invokes proprietary Windows codecs and therefore some basic 32-bit environment must be available.

• Make sure gcc -m32 can be used to compile 32-bit programs (you might also want to setup gcc4, see below; note that you will not need C++ support, plain gcc will suffice);
• Create special new directory for 32-bit stuff, e.g. /usr/local32, set your $PATH and $LD_LIBRARY_PATH accordingly;
• Install 32-bit version of libpng library, by setting export CFLAGS="-m32 -O2" and executing ./configure --prefix="/usr/local32";
• Now you need 32-bit version of gtk-2 libraries. You can compile them from scratch, but in my case I only had to setup symbolic links (in /usr/local32/lib): libatk-1.0.so -> /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0 libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0 libgdk-x11-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 libglib-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 libgmodule-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 libgobject-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 libgtk-x11-2.0.so -> /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0 libpango-1.0.so -> /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0 libpangox-1.0.so -> /usr/lib/libpangox-1.0.so.0 libpangoxft-1.0.so -> /usr/lib/libpangoxft-1.0.so.0

2. Setting up MPlayer problems

• Download appropriate "Binary Codec Packages", e.g. "essential" and "win32codecs" from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/ , and install them under /usr/local32/lib/codecs;
• Download "Skins" (at least one) from main download page http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html, and install under /usr/local32/share/mplayer/skins, and make symbolic link "default" to default skin, e.g. default -> Blue
• Download one bitmap font from here and install per documentation, which is to say, unpack it under /usr/local32/share/mplayer and make symbolic link "font": /usr/local32/share/mplayer/font -> font-arial-14-iso-8859-1
• Install a true type font in directory ~/.mplayer and make a symbolic link subfont.ttf, e.g: ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf -> tahoma.ttf

3. Mysterious problems Following a successful compilation, mplayer was able to start and to display movie files, however, any attempt to change playback speed was causing a crash in function vo_update_osd, file libvo/sub.c. Here is what I did to solve the problem:

• unset CFLAGS (or open a new shell); otherwise, you will disregard special compilation flags used by mplayer;
• configure with the command: ./configure --enable-gui --cc='gcc4 -m32' --target=i386-linux --with-extraincdir=/usr/local32/include --with-extralibdir=/usr/local32/lib --prefix="/usr/local32" (using gcc4 is nor relevant to the crash, but was helpful with some other problems which appeared with gcc3. Versions used: gcc3 = 3.4.6, gcc4 = 4.1.1)
• in a separate directory, configure as above but with additional option --enable-debug. and compile only one object: libvo/sub.o (you can run make to compile everything, there is no harm)
• Copy libvo/sub.o from 2-nd directory to the 1-st and re-build MPlayer in the 1-st directory;
• Now execute "make install" in the 1-st directory (with appropriate permissions) and enjoy!

4. Bonus track

• Standard mplayer help suggests to use Command Line Option -slang to select subtitles, e.g. -slang en. In fact, for some reason this is not very reliable. It is in fact much more convenient to use option -sid . This way, trying sequentially -sid 0, -sid 1, -sid 2, ... you will find what you need. E.g., most often this is what you'd use to play DVD: gmplayer -sid 0 -fs dvd://1
• Perhaps it is worth looking at new project Democracy (to be renamed to Miro), which is a multi-platform universal media player, implemented in Python and using Pyrex, xine and some other packages.

Labels: 64-bit, mplayer, redhat