2.5. Codec installation

2.5.1. Xvid

Xvid is a free software MPEG-4 ASP compliant video codec. Note that Xvid is not necessary to decode Xvid-encoded video. libavcodec is used by default as it offers better speed.

Installing Xvid

Like most open source software, it is available in two flavors: official releases and the CVS version. The CVS version is usually stable enough to use, as most of the time it features fixes for bugs that exist in releases. Here is what to do to make Xvid CVS work with MEncoder:

  1. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid login

  2. cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid co xvidcore

  3. cd xvidcore/build/generic

  4. ./bootstrap.sh && ./configure

    You may have to add some options (examine the output of ./configure --help).

  5. make && make install

  6. Recompile MPlayer.

2.5.2. x264

x264 is a library for creating H.264 video. MPlayer sources are updated whenever an x264 API change occurs, so it is always suggested to use MPlayer from Subversion.

If you have a GIT client installed, the latest x264 sources can be gotten with this command:

git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git

Then build and install in the standard way:

./configure && make && make install

Now rerun ./configure for MPlayer to pick up x264 support.

2.5.3. AMR

MPlayer can use the OpenCORE AMR libraries through FFmpeg. Download the libraries for AMR-NB and AMR-WB from the opencore-amr project and install them according to the instructions on that page.

2.5.4. XMMS

MPlayer can use XMMS input plugins to play many file formats. There are plugins for SNES game tunes, SID tunes (from Commodore 64), many Amiga formats, .xm, .it, VQF, Musepack, Bonk, shorten and many others. You can find them at the XMMS input plugin page.

For this feature you need to have XMMS and compile MPlayer with ./configure --enable-xmms.