MPlayer - The Ultimate Movie Player for Linux
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Tons of bugfixes and new features ! 2001.04.21

This is a summary of some new stuff in MPlayer:

  • new stream selection code - many people had problems with (mostly ASF) files which contained more than 1-1 audio/video streams, and had to specify them manually. Especially files downloaded with asfrecorder were problematic. These problems are now fixed, MPlayer auto-detects streams.

  • pre-devel-alpha DVD code - now it's possible to play encrypted DVDs, thanx to LGB. MPlayer now uses libcss to decrypt those DVDs. See documentation for usage.

  • subtitle code 100% - it's ready, and mostly bugfree. Works in every possible bpp, driver. Now it has a perfected timing code!

  • new output drivers - they are SVGAlib, and FBdev. They've been tested, and proven very good!

  • faster memcpy() routine - displaying became faster, because the code got MMX/3DNow!/SSE optimized!

    The Time of Release is coming in a few days... This is gonna be a big shot for real!

  • New codecs 2001.04.03

    A lot of improvements have been made to the codec loader, and as a consequence many more codecs can be used with MPlayer than previously. A new w32codec.zip package is downloadable, and it is RECOMMENDED that you download it!

    Subtitles (and OSD) support ! 2001.03.30

    NOTE : this code is under heavy development, you will experience bugs!!!
    I'll lend you some useful info to make it work and hope for the best.
    First, download the font package.
    Next, unzip it to $HOME/.mplayer/font .
    Get latest CVS, compile it, use either Xv, MGA, X11 (only in 24bpp), or fbdev output, specify your sub file with the -sub option, and you're done!

    Thanks to Laaz for the SUB reader, A'rpi for the great OSD+SUB displayer and Chass for the font(s)!

    DirectShow support ! 2001.03.21

    A'rpi has finally added DirectShow support to MPlayer! Now it's possible to use postprocessing with DivX movies, of course you'll need a very strong CPU! You'll need the file divx_c32.ax from either Windows, avifile, or from here. Support for the other codecs is coming very soon!

    New timer code 2001.03.18

    A'rpi is experimenting with a much smoother timer code, called MPlayerHQ. It solved at least some problems with ALSA for me. Please try it and write if playing got smoother. Also try the new code snippets in the TOOLS dir, and post results to A'rpi.

    CVS mailinglist 2001.03.15

    There's a new list, which announces all changes in the CVS repository. Subscribe if you want to, but be warned! Its traffic is BIG!

    OpenDivX 4.0 alpha48 2001.03.11

    The new release of the OpenDivX codec is now supported. It introduces better quality, however the encoding speed is still slooow. Negative: the alpha47 codec isn't forward compatible, so you'll have to upgrade. (this code is in CVS)

    New Matrox mailing list 2001.03.08

    Since there are a lot of questions/bugs/discussions about the relationship between MPlayer and Matrox cards, A'rpi decided to make a new mailing list just for this topic. You can subscribe on it at http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/mplayer-matrox

    Mailing lists moved 2001.03.07

    The MPlayer-users and MPlayer-announce lists have been moved to Sourceforge. Subscription info is updated in the About section.

    DGA driver 2001.02.27

    Andreas Ackermann made a DGA driver for libvo. And he did a good work... It's about 60-80% faster than the X11 driver! Of course if you could do Xv output already, this isn't much of an improvement for you..
    Also note that this code is alpha, and - at the time of writing this - exists only in CVS.

    Moving to SourceForge! 2001.02.24

    Yeah, we'll move to SourceForge.
    I hope you'll like the CVS accessibility.

    Prerelease versions 2001.02.23

    No prerelease versions have came out since Feb 19. THAT'S really strange!
    A'rpi must be working all day all night on the 0.11 release and 0.12 series. :)

    A'rpi released information on upcoming 0.12 series 2001.02.20

    On the MPlayer mailing list, A'rpi announced the proposed changes in the 0.12 series.

    The biggest change will be the change from libvo to libxmm . libxmm aka XMMP is an abbrevation for "Linux MultiMedia Project", which is another multimedia layer for Linux.. However, in the light of its nasty features, no wonder A'rpi chose to use it! I suggest to download, install and get familiar with it now, since you'll soon have to do so anyway!

    Another great stuff is ffmpeg , so A'rpi thought why not include it in MPlayer?
    And so he did. ffmpeg is no less than a realtime video/audio encoder for Linux, so prepare your BTTV cards or any stuff you wanna record with, since now you'll be able to encode runtime to OpenDivX (or other formats).

    The GUI code (by Pontscho) will be imported too, so you can finally show your Windows pals who has the better player!!! Actually with an encoder! :)
    Anyways, we still need good skins! Graphicians, get a grip on yerself and write to Pontscho!

    Those of you who missed DivX ;-) quality setting option, be delighted! DirectShow support will be added too! Of course this also means VoxWare support (audio codec).
    I wonder who needs .mov support.. That'll be added very soon!

    The mailing lists are ready! 2001.02.17

    In order to lower the load on A'rpi :) the MPlayer-users mailing list was created. Thanks to Dariusz Pietrzak for the hosting!

    The subscribing process is simple. Click here.