MPlayer - The Movie Player for LINUX

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 fully supports sound up/down-sampling through the resample filter. It can be used if you have a fixed frequency sound card or if you are stuck with an old sound card that is only capable of max 44.1kHz. This filter is automatically enabled if it is necessary, but it can also be explicitly enabled on the command line. It has three options:

Example:

mplayer -af resample=44100:0:0

The channels filter can be used for adding and removing channels, it can also be used for routing or copying channels. It is automatically enabled when the output from the audio filter layer differs from the input layer or when it is requested by another filter. This filter unloads itself if not needed. The number of options is dynamic:

If only nch is given the default routing is used, it works as follows: If the number of output channels is bigger than the number of input channels empty channels are inserted (except mixing from mono to stereo, then the mono channel is repeated in both of the output channels). If the number of output channels is smaller than the number of input channels the exceeding channels are truncated.

Example 1:

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

Example 2:

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

The format filter converts between different sample formats. It is automatically enabled when needed by the sound card or another filter.

Example:

mplayer -af format=4:float media.avi

The delay filter delays the sound to the loudspeakers such that the sound from the different channels arrives at the listening position simultaneously. It is only useful if you have more than 2 loudspeakers. This filter has a variable number of parameters:

To calculate the required delay for the different channels do as follows:

Example:

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

Software volume control is implemented by the volume audio filter. Use this filter with caution since it can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the sound. In most cases it is best to set the level for the PCM sound to max, leave this filter out and control the output level to your speakers with the master volume control of the mixer. In case your sound card has a digital PCM mixer instead of an analog one, and you hear distortion, use the MASTER mixer instead. If there is an external amplifier connected to the computer (this is almost always the case), the noise level can be minimized by adjusting the master level and the volume knob on the amplifier until the hissing noise in the background is gone. This filter has two options:

Example:

mplayer -af volume=10.1:0 media.avi

This filter has a second feature: It measures the overall maximum sound level and prints out that level when MPlayer exits. This volume estimate can be used for setting the sound level in MEncoder such that the maximum dynamic range is utilized.

The equalizer filter represents a 10 octave band graphic equalizer, implemented using 10 IIR band pass filters. This means that it works regardless of what type of audio is being played back. The center frequencies for the 10 bands are:

If the sample rate of the sound being played back is lower than the center frequency for a frequency band, then that band will be disabled. A known bug with this filter is that the characteristics for the uppermost band are not completely symmetric if the sample rate is close to the center frequency of that band. This problem can be worked around by up-sampling the sound using the resample filter before it reaches this filter.

This filter has 10 parameters:

Example:

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

Use the pan filter to mix channels arbitrarily. It is basically a combination of the volume control and the channels filter. There are two major uses for this filter:

This filter is hard to use, and will require some tinkering before the desired result is obtained. The number of options for this filter depends on the number of output channels:

Example 1:

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

Example 2:

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

The sub filter adds a sub woofer channel to the audio stream. The audio data used for creating the sub-woofer channel is an average of the sound in channel 0 and channel 1. The resulting sound is then low-pass filtered by a 4th order Butterworth filter with a default cutoff frequency of 60Hz and added to a separate channel in the audio stream. Warning: Disable this filter when you are playing DVDs with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, otherwise this filter will disrupt the sound to the sub-woofer. This filter has two parameters:

Example:

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

Matrix encoded surround sound can be decoded by the surround filter. Dolby Surround is an example of a matrix encoded format. Many files with 2 channel audio actually contain matrixed surround sound. To use this feature you need a sound card supporting at least 4 channels. This filter has one parameter:

Example:

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

This audio filter exports the incoming signal to other processes using memory mapping (mmap()). Memory mapped areas contain a header:

int nch                      /*number of channels*/
int size		     /*buffer size*/
unsigned long long counter   /*Used to keep sync, it's updated
                               every time new data is exported.*/

Example:

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

MPlayer fully supports up/downsampling of the sound. This plugin can be used if you have a fixed frequency sound card or if you are stuck with an old sound card that is only capable of max 44.1 kHz. Limitations in your hardware are not auto detected, so you have to specify the sample frequency explicitly. This plugin has one switch: fout which is used for setting the desired output sample frequency. It defaults to 48 kHz, and is given in Hz.

Usage:

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

MPlayer has an audio plugin that can decode matrix encoded surround sound. Dolby Surround is an example of a matrix encoded format. Many files with 2 channel audio actually contain matrixed surround sound. To use this feature you need a sound card supporting at least 4 channels.

Usage:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=surround

If your sound card driver does not support signed 16-bit int data type, this plugin can be used to change the format to one which your sound card can understand. It has one switch, format, which can be set to one of the numbers found in libao2/afmt.h. This plugin is hardly ever needed and is intended for advanced users. Keep in mind that this plugin only changes the sample format and not the sample frequency or the number of channels.

Usage:

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

This plugin delays the sound and is intended as an example of how to develop new plugins. It can not be used for anything useful from a users perspective and is mentioned here for the sake of completeness only. Do not use this plugin unless you are a developer.

This plugin is a software replacement for the volume control, and can be used on machines with a broken mixer device. It can also be used if one wants to change the output volume of MPlayer without changing the PCM volume setting in the mixer. It has one switch volume that is used for setting the initial sound level. The initial sound level can be set to values between 0 and 255 and defaults to 101 which equals 0dB amplification. Use this plugin with caution since it can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the sound. In most cases it is best to set the level for the PCM sound to max, leave this plugin out and control the output level to your speakers with the master volume control of the mixer. If there is an external amplifier connected to the computer (this is almost always the case), the noise level can be minimized by adjusting the master level and the volume knob on the amplifier until the hissing noise in the background is gone.

Usage:

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

This plugin also has compressor or "soft-clipping" capabilities. Compression can be used if the dynamic range of the sound is very high or if the dynamic range of the loudspeakers is very low. Be aware that this feature creates distortion and should be considered a last resort.

Usage:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=volume:softclip

This plugin (linearly) increases the difference between left and right channels (like the XMMS extrastereo plugin) which gives some sort of "live" effect to playback.

Usage:

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

This plugin maximizes the volume without distorting the sound.

Usage:

mplayer media.avi -aop list=volnorm