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 a half-hour using ''libmpeg3'' from . After ''mpg12play v0.95pre5'', the code was merged with anVideo acceleration
There are various SIP blocks that can accelerate video decoding computation in several formats, includingCapabilities and classification
MPlayer can play a wide variety of media formats, namely any format supported by-speed umber
Umber is a natural brown earth pigment that contains iron oxide and manganese oxide. In its natural form, it is called raw umber. When Calcination, calcined, the color becomes warmer and it becomes known as burnt umber.
Its name derives from '' ...
/code>, -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 umber
Umber is a natural brown earth pigment that contains iron oxide and manganese oxide. In its natural form, it is called raw umber. When Calcination, calcined, the color becomes warmer and it becomes known as burnt umber.
Its name derives from '' ...
/code> for looping.
Media formats
MPlayer can play many formats, including:
* Physical media: CDs
The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...
, DVD
The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...
s, Video CD
Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical discs. The format was widely adopted in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the ...
s, Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
discs
* Container format
A container format (informally, sometimes called a wrapper) or metafile is a file format that allows multiple data streams to be embedded into a single file, usually along with metadata for identifying and further detailing those streams. Notab ...
s: 3GP
3GP (3GPP file format) is a multimedia container format defined by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) for 3G UMTS multimedia services. It is used on 3G mobile phones but can also be played on some 2G and 4G phones.
3G2 (3GPP2 ...
, AVI
Avi is a given name, usually masculine, often a diminutive of Avram, Avraham, etc. It is sometimes feminine and a diminutive of the Hebrew spelling of Abigail.
People with the given name include:
* Avi (born 1937), Newbery award-winning Americ ...
, ASF
ASF may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* Alabama Shakespeare Festival, a drama festival
* ''Asimov's Science Fiction'', a U.S.-based English-language science fiction magazine containing SF stories
Science and technology
Biological
* A ...
, FLV
Flash Video is a container file format used to deliver digital video content (e.g., TV shows, movies, etc.) over the Internet using Adobe Flash Player version 6 and newer. Flash Video content may also be embedded within SWF files. There are ...
, Matroska
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 Adva ...
, MOV (QuickTime), MP4, NUT, Ogg
Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality d ...
, OGM
Ogg is a free file format, free, open format, open container format (digital), container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide fo ...
, RealMedia
RealMedia is a proprietary multimedia container format created by RealNetworks with the filename extension . RealMedia is generally used in conjunction with RealVideo and RealAudio, while also being used for streaming content over the Internet. T ...
, Bink Bink may refer to:
* Bink Video, a video format popular in many video games
* Bink (The Magicians of Xanth), a character of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony
* Bink (producer)
Roosevelt Harrell III (born February 20, 1972) professionally know ...
* Video formats
Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) syste ...
: Cinepak
Cinepak is a lossy video codec developed by Peter Barrett at SuperMac Technologies, and released in 1991 with the Video Spigot, and then in 1992 as part of Apple Computer's QuickTime video suite. One of the first video compression tools to achiev ...
, DV, H.263
H.263 is a video compression standard originally designed as a low-bit-rate compressed format for videotelephony. It was standardized by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) in a project ending in 1995/1996. It is a member of the H.26x fam ...
, H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, HuffYUV, Indeo
Indeo Video (commonly known now simply as "Indeo") is a family of audio and video formats and codecs first released in 1992, and designed for real-time video playback on desktop CPUs. While its original version was related to Intel's DVI video st ...
, MJPEG
Motion JPEG (M-JPEG or MJPEG) is a video compression format in which each video frame or interlaced field of a digital video sequence is compressed separately as a JPEG image.
Originally developed for multimedia PC applications, Motion JPEG e ...
, MPEG-1
MPEG-1 is a standard for lossy compression of video and audio. It is designed to compress VHS-quality raw digital video and CD audio down to about 1.5 Mbit/s (26:1 and 6:1 compression ratios respectively) without excessive quality loss, making ...
, MPEG-2
MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic video coding format, coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of Lossy compression, lossy video compression and ...
, MPEG-4 Part 2
MPEG-4 Part 2, MPEG-4 Visual (formally ISO/IEC 14496-2) is a video compression format developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). It belongs to the MPEG-4 ISO/IEC standards. It uses block-wise motion compensation and a discrete cosine tr ...
, RealVideo
RealVideo, or also spelled as Real Video, is a suite of proprietary video compression formats developed by RealNetworks – the specific format changes with the version. It was first released in 1997 and was at version 10. RealVideo is supported ...
, Sorenson, Theora
Theora is a free file format, free Lossy compression, lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis ...
, WMV
Windows Media Video (WMV) is a series of video codecs and their corresponding video coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is part of the Windows Media framework. WMV consists of three distinct codecs: The original video compression technology ...
, Bink Bink may refer to:
* Bink Video, a video format popular in many video games
* Bink (The Magicians of Xanth), a character of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony
* Bink (producer)
Roosevelt Harrell III (born February 20, 1972) professionally know ...
* Audio formats: AAC
AAC may refer to:
Aviation
* Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California
* Alaskan Air Command, a radar network
* American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New York
* American Aviation, a company from Cleveland, ...
, AC3, ALAC, AMR, DTS, FLAC
FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...
, Intel Music Coder, Monkey's Audio
Monkey's Audio is an algorithm and file format for lossless audio data compression. Lossless data compression does not discard data during the process of encoding, unlike lossy compression methods such as Advanced Audio Coding, MP3, Vorbis, an ...
, MP3
MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
, Musepack
Musepack or MPC is an open source lossy audio codec, specifically optimized for transparent compression of stereo audio at bitrates of 160–180 (manual set allows bitrates up to 320) kbit/s. It was formerly known as MPEGplus, MPEG+ or MP+.
...
, RealAudio
RealAudio, or also spelled as Real Audio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks and first released in April 1995. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fid ...
, Shorten, Speex
Speex is an audio compression codec specifically tuned for the reproduction of human speech and also a free software speech codec that may be used on VoIP applications and podcasts. It is based on the CELP speech coding algorithm.Xiph.OrIntrodu ...
, Vorbis
Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
, WMA, Bink Bink may refer to:
* Bink Video, a video format popular in many video games
* Bink (The Magicians of Xanth), a character of the Xanth series by Piers Anthony
* Bink (producer)
Roosevelt Harrell III (born February 20, 1972) professionally know ...
* Subtitle formats: AQTitle, ASS/SSA, CC, JACOsub, MicroDVD
MicroDVD is a subtitle file format for digital video. Its name is derived from the MicroDVD Player, a media player application designed to play DVD videos along with subtitles, originally developed by Tiamat Software. The application was first r ...
, MPsub, OGM, PJS, RT, Sami
Acronyms
* SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft
* Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company
* South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise net ...
, SRT, SubViewer, VOBsub
DirectVobSub (formerly known as VSFilter) is a software add-on for Microsoft Windows (a DirectShow filter) that is able to read external subtitle files and superimposes them on a playing video file.
DirectVobSub/VSFilter were formerly part of a ...
, VPlayer
* Image formats: BMP, JPEG
JPEG ( ) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degree of compression can be adjusted, allowing a selectable tradeoff between storage size and imag ...
, MNG
Multiple-image Network Graphics (MNG) is a graphics file format, published in 2001, for animated images. Its specification is publicly documented and there are free software
Free software or libre software is computer software distribute ...
, PCX
PCX, standing for ''PiCture eXchange'', was an image file format developed by the now-defunct ZSoft Corporation of Marietta, Georgia, United States. It was the native file format for PC Paintbrush and became one of the first widely accepted DOS i ...
, PTX, TGA, TIFF
Tag Image File Format, abbreviated TIFF or TIF, is an image file format for storing raster graphics images, popular among graphic artists, the publishing industry, and photographers. TIFF is widely supported by scanning, faxing, word processin ...
, SGI SGI may refer to:
Companies
*Saskatchewan Government Insurance
*Scientific Games International, a gambling company
*Silicon Graphics, Inc., a former manufacturer of high-performance computing products
*Silicon Graphics International, formerly Rac ...
, Sun Raster
* Protocols: RTP, RTSP
The Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) is an application-level network protocol designed for multiplexing and packetizing multimedia transport streams (such as interactive media, video and audio) over a suitable transport protocol. RTSP is us ...
, HTTP
The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...
, FTP
The File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a standard communication protocol used for the transfer of computer files from a server to a client on a computer network. FTP is built on a client–server model architecture using separate control and data ...
, MMS MMS may refer to:
Science and technology Network communication protocols
* Multimedia Messaging Service for mobile phones
* Microsoft Media Server, a content-streaming protocol (mms://)
* Manufacturing Message Specification for real time proces ...
, Netstream (), SMB, (Uses FFmpeg
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 of vid ...
's protocol implementations)
MPlayer can also use a variety of output driver protocols to display video, including VDPAU
Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) is a royalty-free application programming interface (API) as well as its implementation as free and open-source library () distributed under the MIT License. VDPAU is also supported by Nvidia.
Th ...
, the X video extension
The X video extension, often abbreviated as XVideo or Xv, is a video output mechanism for the X Window System. The protocol was designed by David Carver; the specification for version 2 of the protocol was written in July 1991. It is mainly use ...
, OpenGL
OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardwa ...
, DirectX
Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...
, Direct3D
Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware a ...
, Quartz Compositor
Quartz Compositor is the display server (and at the same time the compositing window manager) in macOS. It is responsible for presenting and maintaining rasterized, rendered graphics from the rest of the Core Graphics framework and other render ...
, VESA
VESA (), formally known as Video Electronics Standards Association, is an American technical standards organization for computer display standards. The organization was incorporated in California in July 1989To retrieve the information, searc ...
, Framebuffer
A framebuffer (frame buffer, or sometimes framestore) is a portion of random-access memory (RAM) containing a bitmap that drives a video display. It is a memory buffer containing data representing all the pixels in a complete video frame. Modern ...
, SDL and rarer ones such as ASCII art
ASCII art is a graphic design technique that uses computers for presentation and consists of pictures pieced together from the 95 printable (from a total of 128) characters defined by the ASCII Standard from 1963 and ASCII compliant chara ...
(using AAlib
AAlib is a software library which allows applications to automatically convert still and moving images into ASCII art. It was released by Jan Hubicka as part of the BBdemo project in 1997.
AAlib has been used in a wide variety of programs, incl ...
and libcaca
libcaca is a software library that converts images into colored ASCII art. It includes the library itself, and several programs including cacaview, an image viewer that works inside a terminal emulator, and img2txt, which can convert an image t ...
) and Blinkenlights
Blinkenlights is a neologism for Blinkenlights#Actual blinkenlights, diagnostic lights usually on the front panels on old mainframe computers, minicomputers, many early microcomputers, and modern network hardware. It has been seen as a ske ...
. It can also be used to display TV from a TV card using the device , or play and capture radio channels via .
Since version 1.0RC1, Mplayer can decode subtitles in ASS/SSA subtitle format, using libass
SubStation Alpha (or Sub Station Alpha), abbreviated SSA, is a subtitle file format created by CS Low (also known as Kotus) that allows for more advanced subtitles than the conventional SRT and similar formats. It is also the name of the popul ...
.
Available plugins
* XMMS
X Multimedia System (XMMS) is an audio player (software), audio player for Unix-like systems released under a free software license.
History
XMMS was originally written as ''X11Amp'' by Peter and Mikael Alm in November 1997. The player was made t ...
plugins
* Avisynth
AviSynth is a frameserver program for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS initially developed by Ben Rudiak-Gould, Edwin van Eggelen, Klaus Post, Richard Berg and Ian Brabham in May 2000 and later picked up and maintained by the open source communi ...
Interface and graphical front-ends
Like GStreamer
GStreamer is a pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one format, processes them, ...
, MPlayer has only command line interface
A command-line interpreter or command-line processor uses a command-line interface (CLI) to receive commands from a user in the form of lines of text. This provides a means of setting parameters for the environment, invoking executables and pro ...
and there are a couple of front-ends available, which use GUI widget
A graphical widget (also graphical control element or control) in a graphical user interface is an element of interaction, such as a button or a scroll bar. Controls are software components that a computer user interacts with through direct ...
s of GTK
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...
, 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
GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free and open-source cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both free and propriet ...
-based are gmplayer (official) and Gnome-MPlayer
* Qt-based are SMPlayer
SMPlayer is a cross-platform graphical front-end for MPlayer and mpv and forks of Mplayer using GUI widgets offered by Qt. SMPlayer is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or later. SMpla ...
and KMPlayer, among others.
* Cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
-based are MPlayer OS X Extended and MPlayerX
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. 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. The developers also indicated intentions to enable MPlayer2 to use libav
Libav is an abandoned free software project, forked from FFmpeg in 2011, that contains libraries and programs for handling multimedia data.
History
Fork from FFmpeg
The Libav project was a fork of the FFmpeg project. It was announced on ...
as an alternative to ffmpeg. The first release, 2.0, was published in March 2011. There have been no subsequent stable releases.
mpv is a GPLv2-licensed fork of mplayer2. Since June 2015, mpv has worked to relicense its code as LGPL
The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...
v2.1 or above.
MPlayer, MPlayer2 and mpv all use incompatible EDL formats.
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
In computing, firmware is a specific class of computer software that provides the low-level control for a device's specific hardware. Firmware, such as the BIOS of a personal computer, may contain basic functions of a device, and may provide h ...
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. 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.
See also
* FFmpeg
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 of vid ...
* MEncoder
MEncoder is a free command line transcoding tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a sibling of MPlayer, and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using differ ...
* VLC media player
VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client and commonly known as simply VLC) 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 desk ...
References
External links
*
{{Media player (application software), free
2000 software
Amiga media players
Cross-platform free software
Free media players
Free music software
Free software programmed in C
Free video software
Linux DVD players
Linux media players
MacOS media players
Portable software
Software derived from or incorporating Wine
Software that uses FFmpeg
SVGAlib programs
Video software that uses GTK
Windows media players