News

2022-02-27, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.5 released
posted by the release team

MPlayer 1.5 "Hope" is out.

We are happy to share this release with the world.

MPlayer 1.5 is compatible with the latest FFmpeg release (5.0) and current FFmpeg development version (FFmpeg master). The tarball already includes an FFmpeg snapshot, so you don't need to fetch it separately.

If you want to follow the latest improvements in MPlayer and FFmpeg, you are strongly encouraged to use the development version (latest Subversion trunk) and benefit from the latest features and bug fixes.

You can find a short summary of the user visible changes in the included Changelog file.

The tarballs are compressed with xz, for compatibility they are available with gzip compression too. Please get the xz variant if you can, to save bandwidth.

MPlayer 1.5 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 15 MB), HTTP (gzip, 22 MB)

xz SHA256SUM: 650cd55bb3cb44c9b39ce36dac488428559799c5f18d16d98edb2b7256cbbf85
gz SHA256SUM: 3244bb8af3f3a1189ebba161ac3a495491ca637171e07875d9b50442ff72cefd

2021-05-28, Friday :: MPlayer IRC at Libera.
posted by Compn

Due to some reorganizations, the MPlayer IRC channel has moved.

Join us on IRC! Connect to irc.libera.chat and join the #mplayer channel.

2021-04-03, Saturday :: MPlayer Debian Packages
posted by ib

We are proud to announce that we offer some ready-to-use Debian packages now.

Namely these are

and

2019-04-18, Thursday :: MPlayer 1.4 released
posted by the release team

MPlayer 1.4 "SubCounter" is out.

Unfortunately we missed a few opportunities to make a new release, but finally here it comes :)

MPlayer 1.4 is compatible with the latest FFmpeg release (4.1) and current FFmpeg development version (FFmpeg master). The tarball already includes an FFmpeg snapshot, so you don't need to fetch it separately.

If you want to follow the latest improvements in MPlayer and FFmpeg, you are strongly encouraged to use the development version (latest Subversion trunk) and benefit from the latest features and bug fixes.

You can find a short summary of the user visible changes in the included Changelog file.

The tarballs are compressed with xz, for compatibility they are available with gzip compression too. Please get the xz variant if you can, to save bandwidth.

MPlayer 1.4 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 15 MB), FTP (xz, 15 MB), HTTP (gzip, 21 MB) or FTP (gzip, 21 MB)

xz SHA1SUM: 0954a7141de7c945d90db234e39a78c27cf73f78
xz SHA256SUM: 82596ed558478d28248c7bc3828eb09e6948c099bbd76bb7ee745a0e3275b548
gz SHA1SUM: 621bd04bc167869d51b48e0024df07cc8a52da08
gz SHA256SUM: aece51715b0ee5a338d33e3175491a12ba2c6f60a668f23d9259ab38d4a93369

2019-01-12, Saturday :: MPlayer is not dead yet!
posted by compn

There are still a few developers who keep MPlayer compiling with ffmpeg changes. As long as MPlayer compiles, I will continue to add codecs and maintain the codec lists.

If you have a sample video or audio codec file that is not supported by MPlayer, please let us know (or email me). I try to keep the video fourcc list and audio twocc list up to date. As well as syncing codec support between VLC, ffmpeg and MPlayer.

Have a happy 2019 everyone!

2017-02-12, Sunday :: MPV relicense
posted by compn

MPV player, a fork of MPlayer, wants to relicense the code it uses from MPlayer as LGPL. If you are an MPlayer developer and have not yet given permission, please visit MPV's bug https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/issues/2033. Or please contact me and I can get you in contact directly with wm4.

If anyone knows how to contact Nick Kurshev (author of mplayerxp) please contact me.

NOTE MPlayer itself is not changing its license. This is just our project trying to help MPV project get some attention.

2016-11-08, Tuesday :: MPlayerx malware
posted by compn

MPlayerX (a fork of MPlayer for OSX) was found to have malware bundled with its installer.

More information can be found at malware bytes blog.

If you know of any updated MPlayer builds or GUI forks for Mac OSX, please let me know. MPlayer OSX and MPlayer OSX Extended both seem to be abandoned. I recommend Mac OSX users to use command line MPlayer, VLC or mpv for osx

2016-02-16, Tuesday :: MPlayer 1.3.0 released
posted by the release team

MPlayer 1.3.0 "worksforme" is out.

Less than a month after 1.2.1, we're at it again.

MPlayer 1.3.0 is compatible with the FFmpeg 3.0.x releases and (at the time of writing) with FFmpeg git. The tarball already includes a copy of FFmpeg 3.0, so you don't need to fetch it separately.

This release brings you some new codecs and formats, a lot of fixes, and many cleanups. It also includes all the enhancements and speed-ups from FFmpeg; check their changelog if you are curious about the details.

In addition to these, there were a lot of updates to accommodate the API changes made in FFmpeg. Some were simple renames, but others were quite invasive. None of them should have a user-visible effect, except maybe for some corner-cases in the channel order for multichannel files.
If you see any regression from the previous releases, please report it on the mplayer-users mailing list or use our bug tracker.

So, which version should you use? Try this simple test.

Starting from this release, MPlayer depends also on libswresample (part of FFmpeg); the library is autodetected, and compilation will fail without it.

MPlayer 1.3.0 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 13 MB), FTP (xz, 13 MB), HTTP (gzip, 20 MB) or FTP (gzip, 20 MB).
Please get the xz variant if you can, to save bandwidth.

xz MD5SUM: e8a4d77ad4f509e81dd5e13b51636c1d
xz SHA1SUM: 11db20434a4e1aabb9c52f7712241dae1b3730e3
gz MD5SUM: 8786e3c61f7ab64d27c2fb965d68d883
gz SHA1SUM: b002e28b9973f2c930d120149e903964f8849a5d

2016-01-24, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.2.1 released
posted by the release team

Hey! A new release!

MPlayer 1.2.1 is a bugfix release from the 1.2 branch. If you're using MPlayer 1.2 you are encouraged to upgrade.

MPlayer 1.2.1 fixes many crashes with fuzzed files, squashes many bugs and includes some compatibility enhancements. A lot of bugs are fixed also in FFmpeg, you can check their changelog for details.
It's also easier to build this release with a system-wide version of FFmpeg, since you don't need to copy internal FFmpeg headers anymore.

Mplayer 1.2.1 is compatible with the FFmpeg 2.8.x releases. The tarball includes a copy of FFmpeg 2.8.5 (the latest at this date), so you don't need to fetch it separately.
Just like 1.2, this version will not work with current FFmpeg master branch, nor with the upcoming FFmpeg 2.9 (or 3.0, or whatever name will be chosen).
If you need to work with the latest FFmpeg, please use svn version.

If you're following the development from svn HEAD you can ignore this; all the bug fixes are also included in the development version.

MPlayer 1.2.1 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 13 MB), FTP (xz, 13 MB), HTTP (gzip, 19 MB) or FTP (gzip, 19 MB)

xz MD5SUM: 7fe68d1961427d0b4e306074e2cac246
xz SHA1SUM: cf988d8c7fe7bcf15a48970f0cf9e46837d78e1b
gz MD5SUM: 6fdf47c76986d91a405b59e265eaf5bc
gz SHA1SUM: 0ca56c8176a55fb6a51dffeb607d0e1e31521346

2015-10-03, Saturday :: MPlayer 1.2 released
posted by the release team

FrameCounter

Our latest release was getting stale, so it's time to make a new one.

Mplayer 1.2 is compatible with the recent FFmpeg 2.8 release. The tarball already includes a copy of FFmpeg, so you don't need to fetch it separately.
Due to some big API changes coming to FFmpeg, this release will not work with new FFmpeg master branch, nor with future FFmpeg releases.

If you want to follow the latest improvements in MPlayer and FFmpeg, you are strongly encouraged to use Subversion HEAD and benefit from the latest features and bug fixes.
You know how to do it. Because you aren't using a 3 years old release, hopefully. If you are, read on and find out what you missed!

VDPAU hardware accelerated decoding now works for HEVC (if your card and driver supports it). Hardware accelerated decoding is now supported also on Os X via VDA. VAAPI is still unsupported, but you can use it via VDPAU wrapper at least for H.264.

A lot of new codecs, thanks to FFmpeg. The list includes HEVC, VP9 and Prores; Opus, improved AAC and DTS decoders; WebP and JPEG2000; and many, many others.
Also rtsp streaming now uses FFmpeg by default, so you don't need any additional library to use it.
For the full list of improvements and bugfixes check the FFmpeg Changelog (note: not all features are available through MPlayer at the moment, especially filters).

Many GUI improvements, both in functionality (eg. TV and DVB support) and appearance. If you use the GUI, be sure to grab also the latest version of your favorite skin, or try a new one. You can get them here.
The GUI now officially needs version 2 of GTK+ and GLib (compilation with older version was already broken for quite some time).

Starting from this release, MPlayer no longer ships with an internal copy of libdvdnav and libdvdcss. You can use the libraries provided with your distribution, or compile and install them yourself. They will be autodetect at configuration time.
If your distribution does not include libdvdcss you can usually grab it from non-official repositories, or you can dowload the latest source code form its homepage.

The tarballs are compressed with xz, for compatibility with odd systems they are available also with gzip compression. Please get the xz variant if you can to save bandwidth.

MPlayer 1.2 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 13 MB), FTP (xz, 13 MB), HTTP (gzip, 19 MB) or FTP (gzip, 19 MB)

xz MD5SUM: 58409fccb8ef33013fb780405405491f
xz SHA1SUM: 64fad840dfae466ab5ef3be2b6c74058892cd981
gz MD5SUM: 55323dffe79c31a8d5e90fac5a5d0428
gz SHA1SUM: bcc882a838619c85f57f9888551a72a746303cd6

2015-08-01, Saturday :: New host found.
posted by Compn

We found a new host, details coming soon. Thanks a LOT to all who offered to host us!

2015-01-31, Saturday :: Fixing broken mp4
posted by Compn

Have an incomplete MP4 file that you cannot play? Try using this to fix it. http://vcg.isti.cnr.it/~ponchio/untrunc.php

Maybe we can use this to make a more automated tool, one that automatically tests various standard resolutions to see if decoding passes or fails.

2015-01-31, Saturday :: Its a cold day...
posted by Compn

Its a strange time in the open source world. Code contributions to the ffmpeg project include patches from Intel, MIPS Inc, AMD, Nvidia and very recently, MICROSOFT.

Has hell frozen over? Competing cpu, gpu and proprietary operating system companies working together on one open source project!

2014-06-01, Tuesday :: Playing Two Subtitles at Once!
posted by Compn

A long awaited feature in MPlayer has arrived! Well, its still not possible in MPlayer to play two subtitles at once. Maybe when -vf lavfi gets fixed up, then it might be possible to chain filters. However there is now an open source project to merge two subtitle files together.

More information and the srt subtitle merging program for Linux, Windows and Mac can be found at DualSub.

Screenshot of espanol and english subtitles displayed in MPlayer.

Or you can use a subtitle merging script that puts subtitles on top and bottom with -ass. "Playing Multiple Subtitles Simultaneously with MPlayer".

Screenshot of chinese and english subtitles displayed in MPlayer.

2014-04-20, Sunday :: openssl heartbleed
posted by compn

MPlayer server has updated openssl due to the heartbleed security issue, see this mail for details.

2014-02-09, Sunday :: trac.ffmpeg.org / trac.mplayerhq.hu Security Breach
posted by beastd

The server on which FFmpeg and MPlayer Trac issue trackers were installed was compromised. The affected server was taken offline and has been replaced and all software reinstalled.

MPlayer SVN, releases, web and mailinglists are on other servers and were not affected. We believe that the original compromise happened to a server, unrelated to FFmpeg and MPlayer, several months ago. That server was used as a source to clone the VM that we recently moved Trac to. It is not known if anyone used the backdoor that was found.

We recommend all users to change their passwords. Especially users who use a password on Trac that they also use elsewhere, should change that password at least elsewhere.

2013-12-22, Sunday :: Bug Tracker moved
posted by beastd

The MPlayer bug tracker was moved to the project server. The tracker software was migrated from BugZilla to Trac. Big thanks to Moritz Bunkus for running the tracker for nearly a decade!

User accounts were preserved but you may need to reset your password if you cannot log in anymore.

If you still encounter any problems please send an email to webmaster@mplayerhq.hu .

2013-10-05, Saturday :: Doom9 compromised
posted by Compn

It looks like Doom9 forums were compromised.
Running a packet sniffer while accessing the site brings up urls:
http://online-multiplayer.com/doom9/l.js
http://online-multiplayer.com/doom9/data.php
Make sure you change your password if you've logged in recently.

2013-05-05, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.1.1 update
posted by the release team

For those of you sticking to the release version, we recommend to update to 1.1.1 to avoid security issues. The tar file in the download section also contains the latest version of the FFmpeg 0.11 release with many fixes of its own.

If you need a diff of only the fix itself, for example for old versions you still want or need to maintain please use

svn di -c36242 svn://svn.mplayerhq.hu/mplayer/branches/1.1

2012-11-23, Friday :: MPlayer VAAPI
posted by Compn

We would like to get MPlayer-VAAPI merged and need some developers to review and fix up the codebase. Advanced help would be appreciated, please coordinate on mplayer-dev-eng mailing list for more information.

2012-09-18, Tuesday :: SMPlayer adware
posted by Compn

An MPlayer user notified me about the SMPlayer link that we had on our download page. The SMPlayer installer was trying to install adware and toolbars.

The MPlayer project does not condone adware/spyware at all. If you have installed SMPlayer via the web installer, we urge you to uninstall all of the spyware that may have been installed.

When I linked the SMPlayer installer , it was 8mb and contained nothing but MPlayer and SMPlayer gui. The link had been changed and I failed to notice. Any users affected have my sincere apologies.

2012-06-10, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.1 released
posted by the release team

We gave up on 1.0

After a long pause, we decided that it might be a good idea to make a new release. While we had our fun with the naming scheme with lots of "pre" and "rc" it seemed time to move on and with everyone incrementing major versions between weekly and monthly we hope to be forgiven for jumping ahead to 1.1.

This release is intended to be compatible with the recent FFmpeg 0.11 release. We hope it will be useful to distros and other users relying on FFmpeg 0.11. Everyone else is encouraged to follow Subversion HEAD to always get the latest features and bug fixes. You might still want to read the release announcement to get a short summary of any bigger changes and improvements.

Among the bigger news is that we found a maintainer for the X11 gmplayer GUI, so those holding out on it against our earlier recommendations will get a lot of bug fixes.

There is also support for more subtitle types (Bluray, DVB, DVB closed-caption for example), many improvements to -vo gl including output of 10 bit video, very basic but usable OpenGL ES support and much better SDL support which makes it a usable choice on OSX (particularly on older PowerPC variants much faster than corevideo or quartz). MPlayer will now also try much harder to handle intermittent network failures, for example trying to reconnect.

As part of the code cleanup efforts, the internal libfaad2 copy has been removed since the FFmpeg decoder is working well. Also the internal mp3lib copy is no longer used by default since the many alternatives (FFmpeg, libmpg123, libmad) avoid its recurring issues like incorrect decoding with newer compilers. However it can still be forced at runtime for easier tracking of regressions. Please do not rely on this since it will be removed in the future. If you do not actually need it consider disabling it at compile time with --disable-mp3lib.

As a first for this release, the tarballs are available in two variants: compressed with xz and compressed with gzip. Please get the xz variant if you can to save bandwidth, the gzip version is for everyone that cannot use it. Should you never have encountered xz compressed files, newer versions of tar can uncompress it via "tar xJf MPlayer-1.1.tar.xz".

MPlayer 1.1 can be downloaded by HTTP (xz, 11 MB), FTP (xz, 11 MB), HTTP (gzip, 17 MB) or FTP (gzip, 17 MB)

xz MD5SUM: ac7bf1cfedc1c5c24bfc83107eefb1d9
xz SHA1SUM: 913a4bbeab7cbb515c2f43ad39bc83071b2efd75
gz MD5SUM: 4bf35ef2a802f23b9ad57ba7ef488587
gz SHA1SUM: e46e3294bc96daabe604e4e195721e4f2d1e5b48

2012-02-17, Friday :: Playing back BluRay discs
posted by Compn

Correction

MPlayer does support encrypted BluRay playback, though not all steps are handled by MPlayer itself. The two alternative methods use the URL schemes bd:// (always supports decryption, but you need the key for each and every disk in ~/.dvdcss/KEYDB.cfg and only works well with very simple BluRays, similar to dvd:// vs. dvdnav://) and br:// (uses libbluray and should support the same as VideoLAN in the link below but that is untested).

End correction

MPlayer needs some documentation on how to play encrypted discs. Patches are welcome. VideoLAN users can follow the instructions here | Mirror

I have not tested, but it looks like it works on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. Thanks to whoever created this and hopefully no one will have to rip the discs to a hard drive before playing now.

2011-12-15, Thursday :: The Internet Needs Your Help!
posted by Compn

Today, a bill that would create America's first Internet censorship system is going to a full committee for a vote, and is likely to pass. Please call or email or write your congresscritter now!

If you are not in the USA, you still need to talk to your friends who are in the USA and get them to call. You can also petition the state department.

2011-04-25, Monday :: MPlayer Project back online.
posted by Compn

MPlayer's services are operational again. We were unable to move the physical server at this time, but the data has arrived at our new host safely.

Status:

The mailing lists have been reindexed, so old urls will point at incorrect mails again. The website /DOCS/ arent updating, so please use the SVN documentation for now.

If you find any problems with the website, please report them on our Bug Trac.

2011-04-15, Friday :: MPlayer server is moving.
posted by Compn

Due to some reorganizations, the MPlayer project server will be moving soon. There will be some downtime for the mailing lists and svn server while things are in transit.

Join us on IRC while we wait for the server and DNS to propagate! Connect to irc.libera.chat and join the #mplayer channel.

2011-03-26, Saturday :: MPlayer is now Multi Threaded
posted by Compn

Thanks to FFmpeg and its project in the Google Summer of Code program, we now have multi threaded support for playing back H.264 and other codecs.
To enable threading run mplayer -lavdopts threads=N file.mkv where N is the number of threads you want to use.

You will need to have the latest SVN MPlayer for this. Please report any bugs you find to our Bug Trac.

2011-01-30, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.0rc4 released
posted by the release team

Yes, we can!

MPlayer 1.0rc4 continues the tradition of long overdue, but better late than never releases. It has been tested thoroughly to work with the FFmpeg 0.6 branch. It will be useful to distros and other users relying on FFmpeg 0.6. To get the latest and greatest in features and bug fixes, Subversion HEAD should be a better fit.

1.0rc4 once again adds a slew of new binary codecs and leverages all the stuff added to FFmpeg. Notable additions are VP8 decoding, H.264 bug fixes and speedups, unencrypted Blu-ray support. Network streams can now be played through FFmpeg, there has been quite a bit of subtitle work and Ogg and Matroska demuxer defaults were switched to libavformat. The window position is now decided by the window manager.

Our constant efforts to clean up the codebase continue as usual. A ton of compiler warnings disappeared and there have been refactorings all around. External library copies have been synchronized with upstream. The internal liba52 copy is gone and it is now possible to build against external libmpeg2 and libmpg123.

MPlayer 1.0rc4 can be downloaded by HTTP or FTP.

MD5SUM: 1699c94de39da9c4c5d34e8f58e418f0
SHA1SUM: 36dfaeda726896b6831d66b0fe179623e0385fbe

MPlayer 1.0rc4: "Yes we can"

GUI: Changes towards removing the GUI

Decoders:

Demuxers:

Filters:

Streaming:

Drivers:

Other:

MEncoder:

2011-01-23, Sunday :: Donations through flattr
posted by Diego

It is now possible to donate to MPlayer through flattr. Thank you for your support.

Flattr this

2010-01-23, Sunday :: Daily packages for Ubuntu Users!
posted by siretart

As a special service for Ubuntu users, the mplayer project now provides packages for various versions of Ubuntu. The packages are built twice a week from SVN trunk and run independently of your system libraries.

For instructions how to enable the PPA, please look here

2010-11-11, Thursday :: Happy Birthday MPlayer!
posted by Compn

A message from the creator of MPlayer, Arpi:

Hi,

It was exactly 10 years ago, that I've released first MPlayer version, v0.01: http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/old_stuff/releases/MPlayer-0.01.tar.gz Yes, f*cking 10 years!!!! Nov 11, 2000... Time goes on so fast...

I want to thank you all for the contributions, patches, bugs, docs, testing etc. Especially Michael Niedermayer, Fabrice Bellard and Nick Kurshev, who made it to be the best & fastest open-source player!

And sorry Nick, I made a big mistake rejecting your multi-threaded patches. Unfortunatelly your idea came too early, nobody (at least me) thought that desktop PCs will ever have multiple CPUs... and now that even cheap notebooks and netbooks have multi-core CPUs, it would be very useful for HD playback...

Also special thanks to Gabucino, Pontscho and LGB, for your support in the early days, when everybody thought i'm mad, working on video player for linux...

A'rpi

ps: Albeu, i'll never forgive your playtree patches :)

2010-07-11, Sunday :: Call for Samples
posted by Compn

Some work is being done to the MPEG subtitle code, but we need more samples of DVB and VBI-coded teletext as well as other MPEG-TS/PS subtitles which currently do not work in SVN or which work with -demuxer lavf but not with MPlayer's demuxer.

2010-06-06, Sunday :: Updates and workarounds
posted by Compn

Just some random notes and changes. In SVN the lavf demuxer is now default for Matroska files. We are trying to fix the problems in it, so please report some bugs if you run into them.

If you just want to undo this change, add the following to the end of your config file:

[extension.mkv]
demuxer=mkv

MPlayer now has the ability to use FFmpeg's network code to access streams. Use mplayer ffmpeg://rtsp://example.invalid/stream.mov syntax to try it.

In general most users should be using SVN MPlayer, as rc3 is over a year old.

2010-05-30, Sunday :: MPlayer 1.0rc3 released
posted by the release team

Godot has arrived.

1.0rc3 was intended to be rolled out over a year ago, but got delayed again and again. Since it is designed to be compatible with the FFmpeg 0.5 branch, it will be useful to distros and other users still tracking said branch. Thus we are now publishing it even though it is outdated even before the day of its release. For general usage current Subversion snapshots should be a better fit, as many bug fixes and new features are available.

This release adds support for a ton of new binary codecs and leverages all the stuff added to FFmpeg. Hardware-accelerated video output over VDPAU is now possible, as is audio output through PulseAudio. MPlayer now runs natively on 64bit OS X, the Wii and on OS/2.

We have switched to the libavformat MOV/MP4 demuxer to avoid maintaining the duplicate MOV/MP4 code. This breaks binary audio/video codecs with MOV/MP4 files. Please use '-demuxer mov' if you still require the binary decoders.

Our constant efforts to clean up the codebase continue as usual. A ton of compiler warnings disappeared and there have been refactorings all around. External library copies have been synchronized with upstream.

There is no need to download binary codec packages if you already have an older version. The codec packs have not been updated.

Note that this code is ancient, e.g. it still contains this long-fixed bug. Unless you are at least deadly allergic to it, use latest SVN instead.

MPlayer 1.0rc3 can be downloaded by HTTP or FTP.

MD5SUM: e1221be5fcad74a2a4185f67ba6c9ae0
SHA1SUM: f533ea1eb2c540402bace0f0fe2317721361510d

MPlayer 1.0rc3: "BikeshedCounter AKA Godot"

Decoders:

Demuxers:

Filters:

Streaming:

FFmpeg/libavcodec:

libmpeg2:

Drivers:

MEncoder:

Others:

libass

Ports:

SWScaler:

2010-02-04, Tuesday :: ATI and Intel Users Rejoice!
posted by Compn

Newer ATI cards and Intel ATOM owners on Linux can utilize the VA-API hardware accelerated H.264, WMV3/VC1, MPEG2 and MPEG4 playback using MPlayer.

Instructions can be found at http://www.splitted-desktop.com/~gbeauchesne/mplayer-vaapi/

2010-01-01, Friday :: DVDs
posted by Compn

Happy new year! Just a quick note, if you got some DVD's as a gift, mplayer -nocache dvdnav:// should play your new movies better than dvd://.

2009-11-01, Sunday :: Updates
posted by Compn

MPlayer now supports most of the Blu-ray and HD-DVD codecs. You can rip Blu-ray movies on Linux using this guide. There is also an untested patch for playing Blu-ray discs in this thread at doom9.org.

MPlayer is also hosting the rtmpdump project. rtmpdump is a program to download rtmp:// streams. It was previously hosted on SourceForge.

2009-02-20, Friday :: Video Acceleration and You
posted by Compn

There are several ways to speed up the playback of 1080 H.264 files in MPlayer.

First is to use the newly added VDPAU output. It allows the newer Nvidia video cards to decode the video without using much CPU. It is in SVN MPlayer (Nvidia binary driver 180.37 or newer required), you can find known bugs and report bugs HERE. (Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD only)
How to get the SVN version is described on the download page and snapshot tarballs are available as well.

Second is to use MPlayer with the experimental multithreaded FFmpeg-mt branch, which allows you to use multiple cores/CPU. (all OS and CPU supported)
To enable threading run mplayer -lavdopts threads=N file.mkv where N is the number of threads you want to use.
NOTE: FFmpeg-mt has problems with packed b-frames.

A Windows build of MPlayer using FFmpeg-mt can be found at http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer-win32.php.

Third is to use the multithreaded CoreAVC codec with the CoreAVC-for-linux project. The CoreAVC decoder costs $15 USD. (Linux ONLY)(Windows users only need this PATCH)

Fourth, FFmpeg has added some optimizations from the x264 project. To fully utilize these you will need to make sure a recent version of YASM is installed and detected by the latest SVN MPlayer when compiling.

Fifth, using -lavdopts skiploopfilter=all:fast=1 may cause artifacts, but will allow you to play larger files in realtime. (all OS and CPU supported) (use -lavdopts skipframe=nonref:skiploopfilter=all:fast=1 for even more speedup, skipframe also works with VDPAU.)

There is also a rejected PATCH which adds support for the new multithreaded binary VC-1/WMV3 codec.