here is an except from the README file for installing mplayer

STEP5: Installing the onscreen display fonts
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Unpack the archive and choose one of the available font sizes. Then copy the
font files of the corresponding size into /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/ or
~/.mplayer/font/ (or whatever you set with './configure --datadir=DIR').

I did the following command
#mv font-arial-18-iso-8859-1 /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/
which leaves me with this directory
/usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font-arial-18-iso-8859-1

I am getting this error when I run gmplayer

New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
Please supply the text font file (~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf).
subtitle font: load_sub_face failed

I wrote this question yesterday, only two people looked at it, So I am going to try bumping it

try to symlink subfont.ttf to the font you wanna use.
Here is what i did.

ln -s /usr/X11R6/lib/fonts/TTF/arial.ttf subfont.ttf

I did not have those fonts but I did try linking the fonts that I downloaded from the mplayer sight. still did not work

thanks for your advice