Mplayer and DivX Codec! <grr>
 

Hi!

Ok first up sorry I know this is a very common issue here but I am getting desperate and very irritated!

I recently installed mplayer from source and it works fine. BUT (there always a but) I need to get DivX videos working.

I am not sure where to start the DivX section of the mplayer documentation at www.mplayerhq.hu is very difficult to follow when it comes ot the DIVx section. I'm not even sure if describing one method of installing DivX of three different ones!

Can anyone tell me what I am supposed download to get DivX working in mplayer so I can watch movies...

BTW Is there a download page anywhere for the RPM version of mplayer for mandrake 9.0 . I downloaded this version before though have lost the URL for it now!

Thanks in advance!

Tom

divx should be working by default assuming you are using an official tarball from mplayerhq.hu the lavc libraries that come with mplayer can play nearly all (i.e. except really crap windows encoded ones) by default. check you do have something in the libavcodec directory in the mplayer source, and that it shows up when you run ./configure for mplayer. you can also install the divx4linux package but you really shouldn't need anythign else at all.

You need to download

w32codec.tar.bz2

from : http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design5/dload.html

Then read the README file in your mplayer source directory. Look for this area :
______________________________
STEP2: Installing Win32 Codecs
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

MPlayer and libavcodec have builtin support for the most common audio and video formats, but some others are playable only with the Win32 DLLs or the XAnim binary plugins. Examples include WMV8 video, DivX with WMA audio (not normal DivX files) and Indeo. This step is not mandatory, but recommended for getting MPlayer to play more different file types. Note that Win32 codecs only work on Intel x86 compatible PCs.

Unpack the codecs archive and put the contents in a directory where MPlayer will find them. The default directory is /usr/lib/win32/ but you can change that to something else by using the '--with-win32libdir=DIR' option when you run './configure'.

Then rebuild your mplayer

Thanks for the quick reply!

I solved my problem turned out I was not getting any video at all without first upgrading my NVIDIA graphics driver.

After that everythings fine!

At least I know what to do if I get a DivX video that wont play!

Thanks!

do you need an nvidia graphics driver to view DIVX movies?

no, you don't.