Arch Linux

Roberth

Member

From: The Pale Blue Dot

Registered: 2007-01-12

Posts: 894

Mplayer and w32codecs?

Why does Mplayer depend on w32codecs? it should rather depend on ffmpeg.

---

Use the Source, Luke!

T-u-N-i-X

Member

From: İstanbul

Registered: 2006-03-14

Posts: 435

Website

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

I think pacman should give the opportunity of selecting the codec package to the user. So everyone can select the codec package they want.. We can still have w32codecs as the default (ex: for the newbies), but when the user selects ffmpeg, he/she can install ffmpeg instead of w32codecs..

What do you guys say ?

---

Quis custodiet ipsos custodiet?

Roberth

Member

From: The Pale Blue Dot

Registered: 2007-01-12

Posts: 894

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

Well good idea to let the user choose, but ffmpeg should be default, nothing tells me that a newbie should choose w32codecs.

---

Use the Source, Luke!

mcover

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-01-25

Posts: 134

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

I think it is only possible to have either 'codecs' OR 'ffmpeg'. I always thought you have to compile mplayer against one of those libraries. I looked at the PKGBUILD of mplayer and it said right there to use the w32-lib dir.

But what I would also like to know if ffmpeg is a 100% replacement of the native-codecs. If some media-file become unplayable that wouldn't be so nice. I for example listen to a lot of radio-streams (using amarok though) - unfortunately most radio streams are only available in win-media format, which is kind of bad anyways. Could in this case, ffmpeg be able to completely replace native-codecs?

junglepeanut

Member

From: California

Registered: 2007-01-24

Posts: 145

Website

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

Hmm, you can have both...

Stalwart

Member

From: Latvia, Riga

Registered: 2005-10-18

Posts: 445

Website

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

On Arch64 mplayer doesn't depend on codecs and it plays all movies i tried

---

IRC: Stalwart @ FreeNode
Skype ID: thestalwart
WeeChat-devel nightly packages for i686

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

Post a feature request. Discussing it here is OK, but there's no guarantee that it will be seen by the right dev.

Last edited by tomk (2007-04-05 12:17:36)

lucke

Member

From: Poland

Registered: 2004-11-30

Posts: 4,018

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

MPlayer has builtin support for the most common audio and video formats. For a
few formats no native decoder exists and external binary codecs are required
to handle them, for example newer RealVideo variants and a variety of uncommon
formats. This step is not mandatory, but recommended for getting MPlayer to
play a broader range of formats.

Above regards codecs (called w32codecs here) package. As far as I know, ffmpeg is already a part of mplayer distribution.

Last edited by lucke (2007-04-05 12:42:44)

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: Mplayer and w32codecs?

Why does Mplayer depend on w32codecs? it should rather depend on ffmpeg.

mplayer uses ffmpeg (though it has its own, modified version builtin iirc), some other libraries and the win32 codecs. This way mplayer provides several methods for decoding audio and video. It usually prefers the builtin method over the external one. If there is no builtin codec, then it tries to use binary codecs (Linux .so, Windows .dll or Apple libraries for RealMedia, Quicktime, Windows Media and maybe some other are provided), which are loaded by a special loader (the .dll loader uses parts of wine code).

If mplayer has several methods for decoding a video, you can even use the -vc and -ac commadline options to choose which method it should use, although that is unnecessary most of the time. Making mplayer not depend on w32codecs would cripple mplayer, as it would be impossible to play newer versions of Windows Media or RealMedia.