How To Build Uoti's git MPlayer Branch on Linux

step by step instructions for Ubuntu and Mandriva Linux

Uoti Urpala, one of the core developers of mplayer, maintains a forked branch of mplayer that contains a lot of interesting patches that are not (yet) included in the main svn repository. His branch is often referred to as the 'git branch' on forums, since it's kept in a git code repository (http://repo.or.cz/w/mplayer.git).
Some of the features included in Uoti's branch are multithreading (which enables mplayer to take advantage of multi core cpus), Matroska (mkv) ordered chapters, better SSA/ASS subtitle support, improved VDPAU support, and other improvements.

Build Instructions

First part: install the build environment

Ubuntu specific (tested on Ubuntu 9.10 32bit):
Run the following commands in a console/terminal window consecutively.

Download and install mplayer build dependencies:
sudo apt-get build-dep mplayer-nogui
Install further required development packages:
sudo apt-get install git-core autoconf libtool

Mandriva specific (tested on Mandriva 2010.0 32bit):
Run the following commands in a console/terminal window consecutively as 'root' user.

Download the Mandriva mplayer source RPM as reference for build dependencies:
wget http://bit.ly/d86Z4L
Download and install mplayer build dependencies:
urpmi --buildrequires mplayer*.src.rpm
When asked to select one out of a choice of dependencies always enter '1'

Install further required development packages:
urpmi git-core autoconf libtool make automake

Second part: get and build the mplayer git source

Run the following commands in a console/terminal window as normal user (not 'root').
Download the mplayer git build scripts:
git clone git://repo.or.cz/mplayer-build.git
cd mplayer-build/
Enable multi threading patches:
./enable-mt
Download mplayer and related libraries source code
./init --shallow
Build mplayer
make
Once 'make' has completed successfully, you have a freshly built git mplayer executable available in the mplayer/ sub-directory, ready to use.
Test it (adjust the numer of threads to match the cores of your cpu):
./mplayer/mplayer -lavdopts threads=4 /path/to/some/movie-file.mkv

Once you have tested the freshly build mplayer executable, you could put it into '/usr/local/bin' and make sure your PATH is set to search '/usr/local/bin' before '/usr/bin' so that when you call mplayer, the git version will be used by default.

References:
Uoti's post on the mplayer mailing list describing his git branch:
http://lists.mplayerhq.hu/pipermail/mplayer-users/2009-December/078440.html

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[04/Apr/2010 - art-how_to_build_uotis_git_mplayer_branch]

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