Linux video

MPlayer

External links

• http://www.linuxtutorialblog.com/post/tutorial-playing-around-with-mplayer

Playing video files

MPlayer plays video files. Many video formats are supported. To play a file:

mplayer <SOMEFILE>

Here a short summary of keyboard shortcuts that can be used during playback:

Key	Function
Left Right	Forward / backward 10 seconds
Down Up	Forward / backward 1 minutes
PgDn PgUp	Forward / backward 10 minutes

Some frequently-used options:

mplayer -xy 2 <SOMEFILE>       # Plays a file with a scale factor of 2

Playing DVD's

Here some handy examples. Mplayer can also be used to play dvd files directly from the harddisk. Check man mplayer for more examples.

mplayer dvd://1                                  # Quick start playing dvd from dvd-reader
mplayer dvd://5-7                                # Only plays titles 5 to 7
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /path/to/directory/  # Play DVD title 1 from a directory with VOB files
mplayer dvd://1 -alang fr -slang en              # Play in Japanese with French subtitles

bug: There is apparently a bug that prevents subtitles to be displayed even though the option -slang is given on the command-line. As a workaround press the key J while playback to cycle through the subtitles.