[MPlayer-users] A question on codecs

[Mark Blain]

Ingo Brückl <ib at wupperonline.de> wrote in
news:4dc920fb.09cc35ba.bm000 at wupperonline.de: 

> I have a captured wmv live stream that makes MPlayer/Linux
> printing 
> 
>   Win32 LoadLibrary failed to load:
>   /usr/share/mplayer/codecs/wmv9dmod.dll 
> 
> and suggesting the download of the binary codecs package.
> 
> But playback is just fine without it, and after getting the codec
> I cannot spot any difference.
> 
> So, what would the codec be good for?
> 
> Ingo

There are many cases where multiple codecs are able to process the 
same audio or video.  Libavcodec can decode WMV video, as documented 
here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libavcodec#Implemented_video_codecs

In your case Mplayer is trying its preferred codec first per 
codecs.conf, and uses libavcodec when it's not found.

One way to suppress the warning is to force a particular video codec 
or codec family with the -vc or -vfm options, as shown in the man 
page.
ftp://ftp2.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html#DECODING/F
ILTERING OPTIONS