title: Mplayer link: https://onemoretech.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/mplayer/ author: lembobro description: post_id: 496 created: 2008/07/02 13:31:52 created_gmt: 2008/07/02 13:31:52 comment_status: open post_name: mplayer status: publish post_type: post

Mplayer

Many years ago I relied on myplayer as my primary media player. I later moved over to xine when problems developed in building and running mplayer on a machine and the mplayer project support lists proved … unhelpful. It was basically my intolerance for the worst kind of techie arrogance and megalomania on the part of the developers that pretty much drove me away from what was, and continues to be, a very good product.

And then there was the problem with the mplayerplug-in insinuating itself into my browser in a very Microsoftish way, making viewing C-SPAN content an exercise in frustration.

While in the process of archiving a bunch of old digital camera videos I found myself equally frustrated with xine’s inability to play them without the sort of choppiness that characterizes a codecs integration problem. These were .mov files, using an older implementation of Apple’s QuickTime codec that had been licensed to many digicam vendors, including Nikon, who had made my camera. Now, if Apple would just port it’s own QuickTime player to Linux, I wouldn’t even be here — but that’s another story. As Dan Abrams would say, “another reason why America hates…” … Apple.

After futzing around with xine for awhile, and finding no solution on any of the mail lists, I finally broke down and did a “yum install mplayer” to get Dag’s build onto my machine.

Of course it worked flawlessly on CentOS 5 x86_64, especially playing all those old .mov files preserving the early years of my kids, with none of the choppiness I’d seen under xine.

I’ve refrained from installing the mplayerplug-in and will run it (in the terminology used in the Netscape days) as a “helper application”. Later on I may try the .wmv and .mov plugins (Dag helpfully separates out the plugin .so files so you can be selective about the kinds of files that will play in-line).

While there are questions about whether certain codecs available for use with mplayer violate U.S. intellectual property (IP) law (think the over-reaching DCMA here), I think the basic client operates well within the safe harbor provisions of the law, even in the U.S. As a retired attorney who spent a little time litigating (mostly for defendants) civil rights cases, I may have a bias in favor of civil liberties that is not shared by some courts, so I may be wrong about this. Unfortunately when it comes to IP law, the cases are inconsistent enough to give rise to doubts about whether there actually is a predictable body of law there at all — which is one reason I support the EFF and the development of free media formats like ogg vorbis and theora. You should too.

Copyright 2004-2019 Phil Lembo