I compiled mplayer from source with ./configure --enable-gui and chose a default skin. The mplayer w/ selected skin loads, but i get a font error...

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

I downloaded fonts from their site and put it in the ~.mplayer dir. (mv font-arial-iso-8859-1 ~/.mplayer) and still get the same error when the gui loads up. I also get another error after i try to play video...

Error opening/inititalizing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

I can play files through the command line by mplayer <file name>

Get a particular font, ie with a ttf extension and rename it to subfont.ttf.

Copy that into the spot where it is expecting it - ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf.

Ie it needs to find exactly that file.

I don't think it matters what font in particular, I seem to remember the example I read used arial.