mplayer

powerful media player

TLDR

Play video file

$ mplayer [video.mp4]

Play audio file

$ mplayer [audio.mp3]

Play fullscreen

$ mplayer -fs [video.mp4]

Specify audio output

$ mplayer -ao [alsa] [file]

Loop playback

$ mplayer -loop [0] [file]

Set start position

$ mplayer -ss [00:01:30] [video.mp4]

Dump audio stream

$ mplayer -dumpaudio -dumpfile [out.mp3] [video.mp4]

mplayer is a powerful, command-line media player that supports a vast range of audio and video formats. It uses FFmpeg's libavcodec and libavformat for decoding, along with native codecs for some formats.Keyboard shortcuts control playback: arrow keys seek, p pauses, q quits, f toggles fullscreen, and +/- adjusts audio delay. The player can also be controlled via a FIFO pipe or slave mode for scripting.

PARAMETERS

FILE

Media file to play.

-fs

Fullscreen mode.

-ao DRIVER

Audio output driver.

-vo DRIVER

Video output driver.

-loop N

Loop count (0=infinite).

-ss TIME

Seek to position.

-dumpaudio

Dump raw audio stream to a file.

-dumpfile FILE

Filename for dumped audio/video stream.

-speed FACTOR

Playback speed multiplier (0.01-100, default: 1.0).

-quiet

Suppress most status messages.

-identify

Print media properties (useful for scripting).

INSTALL

sudo apt install mplayer

sudo pacman -S mplayer

sudo apk add mplayer

brew install mplayer

nix profile install nixpkgs#mplayer

CAVEATS

MPlayer is considered legacy software; mpv is its actively maintained successor with a modern codebase. Some distributions no longer package MPlayer. Configuration files are in ~/.mplayer/.

HISTORY

MPlayer was started by Árpád Gereöffy in 2000. It became one of the most popular open-source media players on Linux and influenced several successors including mpv (forked in 2013) and MPlayer2.