What do I need to do to get x265 playback? I installed the x265 slackbuild and also ffmpeg like this:

Still I only get audio and no video in mplayer/smplayer. Is there something I'm missing?

Is there any free test file that doesn't work?
http://www.h265files.com/
If you start it from an terminal does it show any errors for video?

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x265 is only needed if you want to encode video in h265, you don't need it installed if you only want to watch the video. It is likely your mplayer is old enough that it doesn't support h265 decoding (and the mplayer included in Slackware won't use your separately installed ffmpeg as it has everything included). You probably just need to compile a newer version of mplayer. You may want to just grab the source for mplayer from -current and build that. I don't think you'll run into any issues with it, but if you do, you could just grab the stuff for 14.1 and then just use a later release (possibly changing the version in the SlackBuild if it doesn't find it automatically).

You can use the same wget line I provided earlier, except it would end in xap/mplayer instead of x/mesa (also, if you're going to grab it from -current, you'll want to change the 14.1 to -current).

EDIT: As Nille_kungen mentions, output from the terminal would be help in verifying what the issue is, but I'd bet it's just an outdated mplayer. I know xbmc's Gotham version didn't have any support for h265 since the ffmpeg it uses internally didn't have support for it.

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I found this in the output of smplayer:

The slackbuild of mplayer from -current didn't work. It ended with this error:

Not sure if this means anything but the ffmpeg-2.7.2.tar.xz that is part of this slackbuild doesn't contain the file libavutil/x86/asm.h.

Most simple solution: Install Eric's VLC player.

Second solution: install my MPlayer from MLED.

Third solution: rebuild MPlayer from -current on Slackware stable.

Cheers,

Niki

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follow the hint, post the config.log on pastebin.

As I suspected, the internal ffmpeg that is included with the stock 14.1 mplayer is too old and doesn't recognize h265 (which is why it gives 0x31766568 as the video format).

To find out why it isn't compiling, do as ponce suggested and check the config.log. It might help find the issue. If you're still stuck, continue following ponce's advice and post it to pastebin.

You can also follow Niki's suggestion and install VLC, however, I am not a fan of that interface and prefer mplayer. But if it suits you, Eric does a great job with the package and it should work fine. If you go that route, I would definitely suggest installing Eric's precompiled package. You could compile it yourself, but it is a HUGE compile, because he includes any dependencies directly within the package, so it'd take some time.

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well read this. http://slackware.uk/slackware/slackw...yer.SlackBuild
and the legal reasons.
install x264, x265 ,lamemp3, etc etc etc. and rebuild Mplayer with YES. one of the first things I rebuild.

I've built a new mplayer 1.2 release with rworkman's old slackbuild.
Since 1.2 release includes outdated ffmpeg, I just extract latest ffmpeg-2.8.4 into $CWD/ffmpeg and use this workaround:

I use ffplay to play x265. No problem here

if it is installed and it is set to yes it will grab the patented ones. Been that way for years. if you have a ffmpeg alread installed that has all the stuff built into it then that means it is in the lib's. and Mplayer will link against it. simple is just a front end to mplayer so is kplayer.
remember to install mplayer-codecs from slackbuilds.

As I mentioned in my first post, x264/x265 are only needed if you will be using mencoder to encode those formats. They are not needed to decode h264/h265.

Also, if you read the section about patents, you will see that h264/h265 are not mentioned. The last line specifically mentions what patent issues are there "lame mp3, faac, AMR and dvdcss libraries". If you notice, other than libdvdcss, all the issues lie with encoding, not decoding. So, if you're just using mplayer to play files, and don't intend on encoding anything with mencoder, there's no need to worry about lame, faac, or AMR.

This is a new thing that needs this workaround, ffmpeg now comes bundled with mplayer 1.2 src. Old mplayer doesn't include ffmpeg.

compile MPlayer from -current. A new dependency is libvdpau, you can get it from SBo: http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14...ries/libvdpau/ or compile it from the script provided by -current, too.

As mentioned above, you can just use VLC. It will probably eat less resources than MPlayer when showing a h265 video

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Sorry but unless I'm mistaken there is no "config.log". There is no source placed in /tmp/SBo/ where I expected to find it. In fact if I do

it comes up with nothing called "config.log"

I know I can use VLC but I don't like it. It's not the interface that bothers me but it has some issues with video playback on my computer. Every once in a while the image gets distorted and takes several seconds to come out of it.