MPlayer - Odtwarzacz filmów dla LINUKSA

Under XFree86 4.0.2 or newer, you can use your card's hardware YUV routines using the XVideo extension. This is what the option '-vo xv' uses. Also, this driver supports adjusting brightness/contrast/hue/etc (unless you use the old, slow DirectShow DivX codec, which supports it everywhere), see the man page.

In order to make this work, be sure to check the following:

Section "Device"
    [...]
    Driver "neomagic"
    Option "OverlayMem" "829440"
    [...]
EndSection

PREAMBLE.  This document tries to explain in some words what DGA is in general and what the DGA video output driver for MPlayer can do (and what it can't).

WHAT IS DGA.  DGA is short for Direct Graphics Access and is a means for a program to bypass the X server and directly modifying the framebuffer memory. Technically spoken this happens by mapping the framebuffer memory into the memory range of your process. This is allowed by the kernel only if you have superuser privileges. You can get these either by logging in as root or by setting the SUID bit on the MPlayer executable (not recommended).

There are two versions of DGA: DGA1 is used by XFree 3.x.x and DGA2 was introduced with XFree 4.0.1.

DGA1 provides only direct framebuffer access as described above. For switching the resolution of the video signal you have to rely on the XVidMode extension.

DGA2 incorporates the features of XVidMode extension and also allows switching the depth of the display. So you may, although basically running a 32 bit depth X server, switch to a depth of 15 bits and vice versa.

However DGA has some drawbacks. It seems it is somewhat dependent on the graphics chip you use and on the implementation of the X server's video driver that controls this chip. So it does not work on every system...

INSTALLING DGA SUPPORT FOR MPLAYER.  First make sure X loads the DGA extension, see in /var/log/XFree86.0.log:

(II) Loading extension XFree86-DGA

If the driver couldn't switch to a smaller resolution, experiment with options -vm (only with X 3.3.x), -fs, -bpp, -zoom to find a video mode that the movie fits in. There is no converter right now :(

Become root. DGA needs root access to be able to write directly video memory. If you want to run it as user, then install MPlayer SUID root:

chown root /usr/local/bin/mplayer
chmod 750 /usr/local/bin/mplayer
chmod +s /usr/local/bin/mplayer

Now use -vo dga option, and there you go! (hope so:) You should also try if the -vo sdl:dga option works for you! It's much faster!

RESOLUTION SWITCHING.  The DGA driver allows for switching the resolution of the output signal. This avoids the need for doing (slow) software scaling and at the same time provides a fullscreen image. Ideally it would switch to the exact resolution (except for honoring aspect ratio) of the video data, but the X server only allows switching to resolutions predefined in /etc/X11/XF86Config (/etc/X11/XF86Config-4 for XFree 4.X.X respectively). Those are defined by so-called modelines and depend on the capabilities of your video hardware. The X server scans this config file on startup and disables the modelines not suitable for your hardware. You can find out which modes survive with the X11 log file. It can be found at: /var/log/XFree86.0.log.

These entries are known to work fine with a Riva128 chip, using the nv.o X server driver module.

Section "Modes"
  Identifier "Modes[0]"
  Modeline "800x600"  40     800 840 968 1056  600 601 605 628
  Modeline "712x600"  35.0   712 740 850 900   400 410 412 425
  Modeline "640x480"  25.175 640 664 760 800   480 491 493 525
  Modeline "400x300"  20     400 416 480 528   300 301 303 314 Doublescan
  Modeline "352x288"  25.10  352 368 416 432   288 296 290 310
  Modeline "352x240"  15.750 352 368 416 432   240 244 246 262 Doublescan
  Modeline "320x240"  12.588 320 336 384 400   240 245 246 262 Doublescan
EndSection

DGA & MPLAYER.  DGA is used in two places with MPlayer: The SDL driver can be made to make use of it (-vo sdl:dga) and within the DGA driver (-vo dga). The above said is true for both; in the following sections I'll explain how the DGA driver for MPlayer works.

FEATURES.  The DGA driver is invoked by specifying -vo dga at the command line. The default behavior is to switch to a resolution matching the original resolution of the video as close as possible. It deliberately ignores the -vm and -fs options (enabling of video mode switching and fullscreen) - it always tries to cover as much area of your screen as possible by switching the video mode, thus refraining to use a single additional cycle of your CPU to scale the image. If you don't like the mode it chooses you may force it to choose the mode matching closest the resolution you specify by -x and -y. By providing the -v option, the DGA driver will print, among a lot of other things, a list of all resolutions supported by your current XF86Config file. Having DGA2 you may also force it to use a certain depth by using the -bpp option. Valid depths are 15, 16, 24 and 32. It depends on your hardware whether these depths are natively supported or if a (possibly slow) conversion has to be done.

If you should be lucky enough to have enough offscreen memory left to put a whole image there, the DGA driver will use doublebuffering, which results in much smoother movie replaying. It will tell you whether double-buffering is enabled or not.

Doublebuffering means that the next frame of your video is being drawn in some offscreen memory while the current frame is being displayed. When the next frame is ready, the graphics chip is just told the location in memory of the new frame and simply fetches the data to be displayed from there. In the meantime the other buffer in memory will be filled again with new video data.

Doublebuffering may be switched on by using the option -double and may be disabled with -nodouble. Current default option is to disable doublebuffering. When using the DGA driver, onscreen display (OSD) only works with doublebuffering enabled. However, enabling doublebuffering may result in a big speed penalty (on my K6-II+ 525 it used an additional 20% of CPU time!) depending on the implementation of DGA for your hardware.

SPEED ISSUES.  Generally spoken, DGA framebuffer access should be at least as fast as using the X11 driver with the additional benefit of getting a fullscreen image. The percentage speed values printed by MPlayer have to be interpreted with some care, as for example, with the X11 driver they do not include the time used by the X server needed for the actual drawing. Hook a terminal to a serial line of your box and start top to see what is really going on in your box.

Generally spoken, the speedup done by using DGA against 'normal' use of X11 highly depends on your graphics card and how well the X server module for it is optimized.

If you have a slow system, better use 15 or 16 bit depth since they require only half the memory bandwidth of a 32 bit display.

Using a depth of 24 bit is even a good idea if your card natively just supports 32 bit depth since it transfers 25% less data compared to the 32/32 mode.

I've seen some AVI files already be replayed on a Pentium MMX 266. AMD K6-2 CPUs might work at 400 MHZ and above.

KNOWN BUGS.  Well, according to some developers of XFree, DGA is quite a beast. They tell you better not to use it. Its implementation is not always flawless with every chipset driver for XFree out there.

SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) is basically a unified video/audio interface. Programs that use it know only about SDL, and not about what video or audio driver does SDL actually use. For example a Doom port using SDL can run on svgalib, aalib, X, fbdev, and others, you only have to specify the (for example) video driver to use with the SDL_VIDEODRIVER environment variable. Well, in theory.

With MPlayer, we used its X11 driver's software scaler ability for cards/drivers that doesn't support XVideo, until we made our own (faster, nicer) software scaler. Also we used its aalib output, but now we have ours which is more comfortable. Its DGA mode was better than ours, until recently. Get it now? :)

It also helps with some buggy drivers/cards if the video is jerky (not slow system problem), or audio is lagging.

SDL video output supports displaying subtitles under the movie, on the (if present) black bar.

INSTALLATION.  You'll have to install svgalib and its development package in order for MPlayer build its SVGAlib driver (autodetected, but can be forced), and don't forget to edit /etc/vga/libvga.config to suit your card and monitor.

EGA (4BPP) SUPPORT.  SVGAlib incorporates EGAlib, and MPlayer has the possibility to display any movie in 16 colors, thus usable in the following sets:

The bpp (bits per pixel) value must be set to 4 by hand: -bpp 4

The movie probably must be scaled down to fit in EGA mode:

-vf scale=640:350

-vf scale=320:200

For that we need fast but bad quality scaling routine:

-sws 4

Maybe automatic aspect correction has to be shut off:

-noaspect

You can turn on OSD and subtitles only with the expand filter, see the man page for exact parameters.

Whether to build the FBdev target is autodetected during ./configure. Read the framebuffer documentation in the kernel sources (Documentation/fb/*) for more information.

If your card doesn't support VBE 2.0 standard (older ISA/PCI cards, such as S3 Trio64), only VBE 1.2 (or older?): Well, VESAfb is still available, but you'll have to load SciTech Display Doctor (formerly UniVBE) before booting Linux. Use a DOS boot disk or whatever. And don't forget to register your UniVBE ;))

The FBdev output takes some additional parameters above the others:

If you want to change to a specific mode, then use

mplayer -vm -fbmode name_of_mode filename

This section is about the Matrox G200/G400/G450/G550 BES (Back-End Scaler) support, the mga_vid kernel driver. It's actively developed by A'rpi, and it has hardware VSYNC support with triple buffering. It works on both framebuffer console and under X.

The mga_vid driver cooperates with Xv.

The /dev/mga_vid device file can be read for some info, for example by

cat /dev/mga_vid

echo "brightness=120" > /dev/mga_vid

This driver uses the kernel's tdfx framebuffer driver to play movies with YUV acceleration. You'll need a kernel with tdfxfb support, and recompile with

./configure --enable-tdfxfb

MPlayer supports displaying movies using OpenGL, but if your platform/driver supports xv as should be the case on a PC with Linux, use xv instead, OpenGL performance is considerably worse. If you have an X11 implementation without xv support, OpenGL is a viable alternative.

Unfortunately not all drivers support this feature. The Utah-GLX drivers (for XFree86 3.3.6) support it for all cards. See http://utah-glx.sourceforge.net for details about how to install it.

XFree86(DRI) 4.0.3 or later supports OpenGL with Matrox and Radeon cards, 4.2.0 or later supports Rage128. See http://dri.sourceforge.net for download and installation instructions.

A hint from one of our users: the GL video output can be used to get vsynced TV output. You'll have to set an environment variable (at least on nVidia):

export $__GL_SYNC_TO_VBLANK=1

AAlib is a library for displaying graphics in text mode, using powerful ASCII renderer. There are lots of programs already supporting it, like Doom, Quake, etc. MPlayer contains a very usable driver for it. If ./configure detects aalib installed, the aalib libvo driver will be built.

You can use some keys in the AA Window to change rendering options:

Use the -framedrop option if your computer isn't fast enough to render all frames!

Playing on terminal you'll get better speed and quality using the Linux driver, not curses (-aadriver linux). But therefore you need write access on /dev/vcsa<terminal>! That isn't autodetected by aalib, but vo_aa tries to find the best mode. See http://aa-project.sourceforge.net/tune for further tuning issues.

This driver was designed and introduced as a generic driver for any video card which has VESA VBE 2.0 compatible BIOS. Another advantage of this driver is that it tries to force TV output on. VESA BIOS EXTENSION (VBE) Version 3.0 Date: September 16, 1998 (Page 70) says:

Dual-Controller Designs.  VBE 3.0 supports the dual-controller design by assuming that since both controllers are typically provided by the same OEM, under control of a single BIOS ROM on the same graphics card, it is possible to hide the fact that two controllers are indeed present from the application. This has the limitation of preventing simultaneous use of the independent controllers, but allows applications released before VBE 3.0 to operate normally. The VBE Function 00h (Return Controller Information) returns the combined information of both controllers, including the combined list of available modes. When the application selects a mode, the appropriate controller is activated. Each of the remaining VBE functions then operates on the active controller.

So you have chances to get working TV-out by using this driver. (I guess that TV-out frequently is standalone head or standalone output at least.)

Avoid if possible. Outputs to X11 (uses shared memory extension), with no hardware acceleration at all. Supports (MMX/3DNow/SSE accelerated, but still slow) software scaling, use the options -fs -zoom. Most cards have hardware scaling support, use the -vo xv output for them, or -vo xmga for Matroxes.

The problem is that most cards' driver doesn't support hardware acceleration on the second head/TV. In those cases, you see green/blue colored window instead of the movie. This is where this driver comes in handy, but you need powerful CPU to use software scaling. Don't use the SDL driver's software output+scaler, it has worse image quality!

Software scaling is very slow, you better try changing video modes instead. It's very simple. See the DGA section's modelines, and insert them into your XF86Config.

If you can't find the modes you inserted, browse XFree86's output. Some drivers can't use low pixelclocks that are needed for low resolution video modes.

PREAMBLE.  VIDIX is the abbreviation for VIDeo Interface for *niX. VIDIX was designed and introduced as an interface for fast user-space drivers providing such video performance as mga_vid does for Matrox cards. It's also very portable.

This interface was designed as an attempt to fit existing video acceleration interfaces (known as mga_vid, rage128_vid, radeon_vid, pm3_vid) into a fixed scheme. It provides highlevel interface to chips which are known as BES (BackEnd scalers) or OV (Video Overlays). It doesn't provide lowlevel interface to things which are known as graphics servers. (I don't want to compete with X11 team in graphics mode switching). I.e. main goal of this interface is to maximize the speed of video playback.

Indeed it doesn't matter which video output driver is used with VIDIX.

USAGE METHODS.  When VIDIX is used as subdevice (-vo vesa:vidix) then video mode configuration is performed by video output device (vo_server in short). Therefore you can pass into command line of MPlayer the same keys as for vo_server. In addition it understands -double key as globally visible parameter. (I recommend using this key with VIDIX at least for ATI's card). As for -vo xvidix, currently it recognizes the following options: -fs -zoom -x -y -double.

Also you can specify VIDIX's driver directly as third subargument in command line:

mplayer -vo xvidix:mga_vid.so -fs -zoom -double file.avi

mplayer -vo vesa:vidix:radeon_vid.so -fs -zoom -double -bpp 32 file.avi

VIDIX is new technology and it's extremely possible that on your system it won't work. In this case only solution for you it's port it (mainly libdha). But there is hope that it will work on those systems where X11 does.

Since VIDIX requires direct hardware access you can either run it as root or set the SUID bit on the MPlayer binary (Warning: This is a security risk!). Alternatively, you can use a special kernel module, like this:

    mplayer -vf format=uyvy -vc divxds -vo cvidix example.avi
  

"DirectFB is a graphics library which was designed with embedded systems in mind. It offers maximum hardware accelerated performance at a minimum of resource usage and overhead." - quoted from http://www.directfb.org

I'll exclude DirectFB features from this section.

Though MPlayer is not supported as a "video provider" in DirectFB, this output driver will enable video playback through DirectFB. It will - of course - be accelerated, on my Matrox G400 DirectFB's speed was the same as XVideo.

Always try to use the newest version of DirectFB. You can use DirectFB options on the command line, using the -dfbopts option. Layer selection can be done by the subdevice method, e.g.: -vo directfb:2 (layer -1 is default: autodetect)

Please read the main DirectFB section or general informations.

This video output driver will enable CRTC2 (on the second head) on the Matrox G400/G450/G550 card, displaying video independently of the first head.

Instructions on how to make it work can be found in the tech section or directly on Ville Syrjala's home page.

MPlayer supports cards with the Siemens DVB chipset from vendors like Siemens, Technotrend, Galaxis or Hauppauge. The latest DVB drivers are available from the Linux TV site. If you want to do software transcoding you should have at least a 1GHz CPU.

Configure should detect your DVB card. If it did not, force detection with

./configure --enable-dvb

If you have ost headers at a non-standard path, set the path with

./configure --with-extraincdir=DVB source directory/ost/include

Then compile and install as usual.

USAGE.  Hardware decoding (playing standard MPEG1/2 files) can be done with this command:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes file.mpg|vob

Software decoding or transcoding different formats to MPEG1 can be achieved using a command like this:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes yourfile.ext
mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vf expand yourfile.ext

Note that DVB cards only support heights 288 and 576 for PAL or 240 and 480 for NTSC. You must rescale for other heights by adding scale=width:height with the width and height you want to the -vf option. DVB cards accept various widths, like 720, 704, 640, 512, 480, 352 etc and do hardware scaling in horizontal direction, so you do not need to scale horizontally in most cases. For a 512x384 (aspect 4:3) DivX try:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vf scale=512:576

If you have a widescreen movie and you do not want to scale it to full height, you can use the expand=w:h filter to add black bands. To view a 640x384 DivX, try:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vf expand=640:576 file.avi

If your CPU is too slow for a full size 720x576 DivX, try downscaling:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vf scale=352:576 file.avi

If speed does not improve, try vertical downscaling, too:

mplayer -ao mpegpes -vo mpegpes -vf scale=352:288 file.avi

For OSD and subtitles use the OSD feature of the expand filter. So, instead of expand=w:h or expand=w:h:x:y, use expand=w:h:x:y:1 (the 5th parameter :1 at the end will enable OSD rendering). You may want to move the image up a bit to get a bigger black zone for subtitles. You may also want to move subtitles up, if they are outside your TV screen, use the -subpos <0-100> option to adjust this (-subpos 80 is a good choice).

In order to play non-25fps movies on a PAL TV or with a slow CPU, add the -framedrop option.

To keep the aspect ratio of DivX files and get the optimal scaling parameters (hardware horizontal scaling and software vertical scaling while keeping the right aspect ratio), use the new dvbscale filter:

for a  4:3 TV: -vf dvbscale,scale=-1:0,expand=-1:576:-1:-1:1
for a 16:9 TV: -vf dvbscale=1024,scale=-1:0,expand=-1:576:-1:-1:1

Using your DVB card for watching Digital TV (DVB input module).  First you need to pass the dvb_shutdown_timeout=0 parameter to the kernel module dvb-core, or MPlayer will die after 10 seconds.

You should also have the programs scan and szap/tzap/czap installed; they are all included in the drivers package.

Verify that your drivers are working properly with a program such as dvbstream (that is the base of the DVB input module).

Now you should compile a ~/.mplayer/channels.conf file, with the syntax accepted by szap/tzap/czap, or have scan compile it for you.

Make sure that you have have only Free to Air channels in your channels.conf file, or MPlayer will hang on the others.

To show the first of the channels present in your list, run

  mplayer dvb://

If you want to watch a specific channel, such as R1, run

  mplayer dvb://R1

To change channels press the h (next) and k (previous) keys, or use the OSD menu (requires a working OSD subsystem).

If your ~/.mplayer/menu.conf contains a <dvbsel> entry, such as the one in the example file etc/dvb-menu.conf (that you can use to overwrite ~/.mplayer/menu.conf), the main menu will show a sub-menu entry that will permit you to choose one of the channels present in your channels.conf.

If you want to save a program to disk you can use

  mplayer -dumpfile r1.ts -dumpstream dvb://R1

If you want to record it in a different format (re-encoding it) instead you can run a command such as

  mencoder -o r1.avi -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=800 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=128 -pp=ci dvb://R1

Read the man page for a list of options that you can pass to the DVB input module.

FUTURE.  If you have questions or want to hear feature announcements and take part in discussions on this subject, join our MPlayer-DVB mailing list. Please remember that the list language is English.

In the future you may expect the ability to display OSD and subtitles using the native OSD feature of DVB cards, as well as more fluent playback of non-25fps movies and realtime transcoding between MPEG2 and MPEG4 (partial decompression).

MPlayer supports hardware accelerated playback with the Creative DXR2 card.

First of all you will need properly installed DXR2 drivers. You can find the drivers and installation instructions at the DXR2 Resource Center site.

The overlay chipset used on the DXR2 is of pretty bad quality but the default settings should work for everybody. The OSD may be usable with the overlay (not on TV) by drawing it in the colorkey. With the default colorkey settings you may get variable results, usually you will see the colorkey around the characters or some other funny effect. But if you properly adjust the colorkey settings you should be able to get acceptable results.

Please see the manpage for available options.

MPlayer supports hardware accelerated playback with the Creative DXR3 and Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus cards. These cards both use the em8300 MPEG decoder chip from Sigma Designs.

First of all you will need properly installed DXR3/H+ drivers, version 0.12.0 or later. You can find the drivers and installation instructions at the DXR3 & Hollywood Plus for Linux site. configure should detect your card automatically, compilation should go without problems.

This is a display-driver (-vo zr) for a number of MJPEG capture/playback cards (tested for DC10+ and Buz, and it should work for the LML33, the DC10). The driver works by encoding the frame to JPEG and then sending it to the card. For the JPEG encoding libavcodec is used, and required. With the special cinerama mode, you can watch movies in true wide screen provided that you have two beamers and two MJPEG cards. Depending on resolution and quality settings, this driver may require a lot of CPU power, remember to specify -framedrop if your machine is too slow. Note: My AMD K6-2 350MHz is (with -framedrop) quite adequate for watching VCD sized material and downscaled movies.

This driver talks to the kernel driver available at http://mjpeg.sourceforge.net, so you must get it working first. The presence of an MJPEG card is autodetected by the configure script, if autodetection fails, force detection with

./configure --enable-zr

The output can be controlled by several options, a long description of the options can be found in the man page, a short list of options can be viewed by running

mplayer -zrhelp

Things like scaling and the OSD (on screen display) are not handled by this driver but can be done using the video filters. For example, suppose that you have a movie with a resolution of 512x272 and you want to view it fullscreen on your DC10+. There are three main possibilities, you may scale the movie to a width of 768, 384 or 192. For performance and quality reasons, I would choose to scale the movie to 384x204 using the fast bilinear software scaler. The commandline is

mplayer -vo zr -sws 0 -vf scale=384:204 movie.avi

Cropping can be done by the crop filter and by this driver itself. Suppose that a movie is too wide for display on your Buz and that you want to use -zrcrop to make the movie less wide, then you would issue the following command

mplayer -vo zr -zrcrop 720x320+80+0 benhur.avi

if you want to use the crop filter, you would do

mplayer -vo zr -vf crop=720:320:80:0 benhur.avi

Extra occurrences of -zrcrop invoke cinerama mode, i.e. you can distribute the movie over several TV's or beamers to create a larger screen. Suppose you have two beamers. The left one is connected to your Buz at /dev/video1 and the right one is connected to your DC10+ at /dev/video0. The movie has a resolution of 704x288. Suppose also that you want the right beamer in black and white and that the left beamer should have JPEG frames at quality 10, then you would issue the following command

mplayer -vo zr -zrdev /dev/video0 -zrcrop 352x288+352+0 -zrxdoff 0 -zrbw \
          -zrcrop 352x288+0+0 -zrdev /dev/video1 -zrquality 10 movie.avi

You see that the options appearing before the second -zrcrop only apply to the DC10+ and that the options after the second -zrcrop apply to the Buz. The maximum number of MJPEG cards participating in cinerama is four, so you can build a 2x2 vidiwall.

Finally an important remark: Do not start or stop XawTV on the playback device during playback, it will crash your computer. It is, however, fine to FIRST start XawTV, THEN start MPlayer, wait for MPlayer to finish and THEN stop XawTV.

This driver is capable of playback using the Blinkenlights UDP protocol. If you don't know what Blinkenlights is, you don't need this driver.

Under Linux you have two methods to get G400 TV out working:

Building a Matrox TV-out cable.  No one takes any responsibility, nor guarantee for any damage caused by this documentation.

Cable for G400.  The CRTC2 connector's fourth pin is the composite video signal. The ground are the sixth, seventh and eighth pins. (info contributed from Balázs Rácz)

Cable for G450.  The CRTC2 connector's first pin is the composite video signal. The ground are the fifth, sixth, seventh, and fifteenth (5, 6, 7, 15) pins. (info contributed from Balázs Kerekes)

TV output support for these cards has only been recently introduced, and is not yet in the mainstream kernel. Currently the mga_vid module can't be used AFAIK, because the G450/G550 driver works only in one configuration: the first CRTC chip (with much more features) on the first display (on monitor), and the second CRTC (no BES - for explanation on BES, please see the G400 section above) on TV. So you can only use MPlayer's fbdev output driver at the present.

The first CRTC can't be routed to the second head currently. The author of the kernel matroxfb driver - Petr Vandrovec - will maybe make support for this, by displaying the first CRTC's output onto both of the heads at once, as currently recommended for G400, see the section above.

The necessary kernel patch and the detailed howto is downloadable from http://www.bglug.ca/matrox_tvout/

PREAMBLE.  Currently ATI doesn't want to support any of its TV-out chips under Linux, because of their licensed Macrovision technology.

On other cards, just use the VESA driver, without VIDIX. Powerful CPU is needed, though.

Only thing you need to do - Have the TV connector plugged in before booting your PC since video BIOS initializes itself only once during POST procedure.

Check this URL.

First, you MUST download the closed-source drivers from http://nvidia.com. I will not describe the installation and configuration process because it does not cover the scope of this documentation.

After XFree86, XVideo, and 3D acceleration is properly working, edit your card's Device section in the XF86Config file, according to the following example (adapt for your card/TV):

Section "Device"
        Identifier      "GeForce"
        VendorName      "ASUS"
        BoardName       "nVidia GeForce2/MX 400"
        Driver          "nvidia"
        #Option         "NvAGP" "1"
        Option          "NoLogo"
        Option          "CursorShadow"  "on"

        Option          "TwinView"
        Option          "TwinViewOrientation" "Clone"
        Option          "MetaModes" "1024x768,640x480"
        Option          "ConnectedMonitor" "CRT, TV"
        Option          "TVStandard" "PAL-B"
        Option          "TVOutFormat" "Composite"

EndSection

Of course the important thing is the TwinView part.

Tested on a Toshiba Tecra 8000. Its TV output chip is a miserable crap. Avoid if possible.

You must use -vo vesa. The tested chip was capable of 1.333333 aspect ratio only, so be sure to use the -x, -y options and/or the -vf scale,crop,expand filters if the box doesn't let you enable TV output. Maximum resolution was 720*576 at 16bpp.

Known issues: VESA-only, 1.33333 limitation, image isn't always centered, movie becomes 4bpp in every 10 minutes, and stays that way. Frequent hard freezes, LCD display problems.

MPlayer w pełni obsługuje zmniejszanie/zwiększanie częstotliwości (up/downsampling) poprzez filtr zmieniający częstotliwość próbkowania - resample filter. Może on być użyty, jeżeli masz stałą częstotliwość na karcie, albo jeżeli nie jest ona w stanie obsłużyć więcej niż 44.1kHz. Filtr jest automatycznie uruchamiany, jeżeli jest to konieczne, ale może również zostać włączony z poziomu linii poleceń. Ma on trzy opcje:

Przykład:

mplayer -af resample=44100:0:0

Filtr kanałów (channels filter) można użyć w celu dodania lub usunięcia kanałów, można go także użyć do kopiowania lub przekierowywania kanałów. Jest on automatycznie włączony, jeżeli wyjście warstwy audio filtrów różni się od wejściowego lub jeśli zażądano jego uruchomienia. Filtr wyłącza się sam, jeżeli nie jest używany. Liczba parametrów jest dynamiczna:

Jeżeli podana jest tylko opcja nch, filtr używa domyślnego przekierowywanie, które działa następująco: Jeśli liczba kanałów wyjściowych jest większa niż wejściowych, tworzone są puste kanały (w przypadku miksowania z mono do stereo, kanał mono jest powtarzany w obu kanałach wyjściowych). Jeżeli liczba kanałów wyjściowych jest mniejsza niż wejściowych, nadmiarowe kanały są usuwane.

Przykład 1:

mplayer -af channels=4:4:0:1:1:0:2:2:3:3 media.avi

Przykład 2:

mplayer -af channels=6:4:0:0:0:1:0:2:0:3 media.avi

Filtr formatu (format filter) przekształca jedne formaty próbek w inne. Jest uruchamiany automatycznie, jeśli tylko jest wymagany przez kartę lub inny filtr dźwiękowy.

Przykład:

mplayer -af format=4:float media.avi

Filtr opóźniający (delay filter) opóźnia dźwięk zmierzający do głośników, tak żeby strumienie dźwiękowe z różnych kanałów dotarły do nich jednocześnie. Jest to użyteczne, jeżeli masz więcej niż 2 głośniki. Filtr ma kilka opcji:

Aby obliczyć opóźnienie dla poszczególnych kanałów, wykonaj następuje czynności:

Przykład:

mplayer -af delay=10.5:10.5:0:0:7:0 media.avi

Programowa regulacja głośności (software volume control) jest obsługiwana poprzez filtr głośności (volume filter). Używaj go ostrożnie, gdyż może obniżyć stosunek sygnału do szumu. W większości wypadków najlepszym rozwiązaniem jest ustawienie miksera PCM na maksymalną wartość, wyłączenie filtru i regulacja głośności poziomem głośności ogólnej miksera. Jeżeli Twoja karta ma cyfrowy mikser PCM zamiast analogowego i zauważysz przekłamania, użyj miksera MASTER. Jeżeli do komputera podłączony jest zewnętrzny wzmacniacz (co zazwyczaj ma miejsce), poziom hałasu może zostać zredukowany poprzez dostrojenie głównego poziomu głośności (master level) i pokrętła głośności, dopóki syczenie w tle nie ustanie. Filtr ma dwie opcje:

Przykład:

mplayer -af volume=10.1:0 media.avi

Ten filtr ma drugą właściwość: Mierzy ogólny, maksymalny poziom dźwięku i wypisuje go po zakończeniu MPlayera. Oszacowana głośność może być użyta do ustawienia poziomu dźwięku w MEncoderze tak, żeby maksymalny zasięg dynamiczny był możliwy do osiągnięcia.

Filtr korektora (equalizer filter) to 10 oktawowy korektor graficzny zaimplementowany przy pomocy 10 filtrów pasmowych IIR. Oznacza to, że działa bez względu na format odtwarzanego dźwięku. Środkowe częstotliwości dla tych 10 pasm to:

Jeżeli częstotliwość próbkowania odtwarzanego dźwięku jest niższa niż środkowa częstotliwość dla odpowiedniego pasma, to jest ono wyłączane. Znanym błędem jest to, że właściwości dla najwyższego pasma nie są całkowicie symetryczne, jeżeli częstotliwość próbki jest zbliżona do częstotliwości środkowej danego pasma. Można obejść ten problem zwiększając jej częstotliwość (up-sampling), zanim ta dotrze do filtru korektora (equalizer filter).

Filtr ma 10 parametrów:

Przykład:

mplayer -af equalizer=11:11:10:5:0:-12:0:5:12:12 media.avi

Użyj filtru pan (pan filter), żeby dowolnie miksować kanały. Najprościej tłumacząc jest to połączenie programowej regulacji głośności (software volume control) i filtru kanałów (channels filter). Istnieją dla niego 2 podstawowe zastosowania:

Filtr jest trudny w użyciu i będzie wymagał zastosowania żmudnej metody prób i błędów, zanim zostanie osiągnięty oczekiwany rezultat. Liczba parametrów filtru zależy od liczby kanałów:

Przykład 1:

mplayer -af pan=1:0.5:0.5 -channels 1 media.avi

Przykład 2:

mplayer -af pan=3:1:0:1:0.5:0.5 -channels 3 media.avi

Filtr subwoofera (sub filter) dodaje kanał subwoofera do strumienia audio. Dane audio użyte do stworzenia tego kanału są średnią dźwięku w 0 i 1 kanale. Dźwięk wynikowy zostanie poddany działaniu dolnoprzepustowego filtru Butterwortha czwartego rzędu (4th order Butterworth filter) z domyślną częstotliwością graniczną na poziomie 60Hz i dodany do oddzielnego kanału w strumieniu audio. Uwaga: Wyłącz ten filtr, jeżeli odtwarzasz DVD z dźwiękiem w systemie Dolby Digital 5.1, w przeciwnym wypadku, jego działanie zakłóci dźwięk subwoofera. Filtr ma 2 parametry:

Przykład:

mplayer -af sub=100:4 -channels 5 media.avi

Macierzowo zakodowany dźwięk przestrzenny, może być zdekodowany filtrem przestrzennym (surround filter). Dolby Surround jest przykładem formatu zakodowanego macierzowo. Wiele plików zawierających 2 kanały audio, w rzeczywistości zawiera dźwięk przestrzenny zakodowany w tym systemie. Aby użyć tego filtru potrzebujesz karty z obsługą przynajmniej 4 kanałów. Filtr posiada jedną opcję:

Przykład:

mplayer -af surround=15 -channels 4 media.avi

Ten filtr audio eksportuje nadchodzący sygnał do innych procesów, używając mapowania pamięci (mmap()). Zmapowane obszary zawierają nagłówek:

int nch                      /*ilość kanałów*/
int size                     /*rozmiar bufora*/
unsigned long long counter   /*Używany do zachowania synchronizacji,
                               aktualizowany za każdym razem kiedy
                               eksportowane są nowe dane.*/

Przykład:

mplayer -af export=/tmp/mplayer-af_export:1024 media.avi

MPlayer w pełni obsługuje zmniejszanie/zwiększanie częstotliwości próbkowania (up/downsampling) dźwięku. Wtyczka ta może być użyta, jeżeli masz kartę ze stałą częstotliwością lub posiadasz kartę, która nie jest w stanie obsłużyć więcej niż 44.1 kHz. Ograniczenia Twojego sprzętu nie są automatycznie wykrywane, więc musisz wyraźnie podać częstotliwość. Wtyczka ma jeden przełącznik: fout, który używany jest do ustawiania żądanej częstotliwości wyjściowej. Domyślną wartością jest 48 kHz i podawana jest w Hz.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=resample:fout=freq

MPlayer posiada wtyczkę, która umożliwia dekodowanie macierzowo zakodowanego dźwięku przestrzennego. Dolby Surround jest przykładem takiego formatu. Wiele plików zawierających 2 kanały audio w rzeczywistości zawiera dźwięk przestrzenny zakodowany macierzowo. Aby skorzystać z tej właściwości potrzebujesz karty z obsługą przynajmniej 4 kanałów.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=surround

Jeżeli Twój sterownik do karty dźwiękowej nie obsługuje 16-bitowego typu danych ze znakiem, wtyczka ta może być użyta do jego zmiany na format zrozumiały dla karty. Posiada jeden parametr - format, który może być ustawiony na jedną z wartości umieszczonych w libao2/afmt.h. Wtyczka ta jest raczej rzadko potrzebna i jest przeznaczona dla zaawansowanych użytkowników. Mniej na uwadze, że zmienia ona tylko format próbki a nie jej częstotliwość czy ilość kanałów.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=format:format=outfmt

Wtyczka opóźnia dźwięk i jest przykładem tego, jak tworzyć nowe wtyczki. Nie ma dla niej żadnego sensownego zastosowania z punktu widzenia użytkownika i wspomniałem tylko o niej ze względu na kompletność tej dokumentacji. Nie używaj tej wtyczki, chyba że jesteś deweloperem.

Wtyczka jest programowym odpowiednikiem regulacji głośnością i może być używana na maszynach z uszkodzonym urządzeniem miksującym. Może być również przydatna, jeżeli ktoś chce zmienić poziom wyjściowy głośności w MPlayerze bez zmiany ustawień PCM w mikserze. Ma jeden parametr - volume, który służy do ustawienia początkowej głośności. Może przyjmować wartości pomiędzy 0 a 255. Wartością domyślna jest 101, co odpowiada wzmocnieniu równemu 0dB. Używaj tej wtyczki ostrożnie, gdyż możesz obniżyć stosunek sygnału do szumu. W większości wypadków najlepszym rozwiązaniem jest ustawienie miksera PCM na maksymalną wartość i, zamiast wtyczką, regulować głośność przy pomocy głośników. Jeżeli do komputera podłączony jest zewnętrzny wzmacniacz (a zazwyczaj jest), poziom hałasu może zostać zredukowany poprzez dostrojenie głównego poziomu głośności (master level) i pokrętła głośności, dopóki syczenie w tle nie ustanie.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=volume:volume=0-255

Wtyczka ma również kompresor lub zdolność do miękkiego obcinania (soft-clipping). Kompresja może być użyta, jeżeli dynamika dźwięku jest bardzo wysoka lub jeżeli moc głośników jest zbyt niska. Bądź ostrożny, ponieważ ta funkcja powoduje zakłócenia dźwięku i powinna być użyta w ostateczności.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=volume:softclip

Wtyczka (liniowo) zwiększa różnicę pomiędzy lewym a prawym kanałem (jak wtyczka extrastereo w XMMS), co dodaje efekt "na żywo" do odtwarzanego dźwięku.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=extrastereo
mplayer media.avi -aop list=extrastereo:mul=3.45

Wtyczka ustawia maksymalny poziom dźwięku, bez powodowania zakłóceń.

Sposób użycia:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=volnorm