[ Presentation | Installation of basic libraries ( mad ,  libdvdcss , libdvdread , libdvdnav , libdvbpsi , live555 ) |  Multi-format players ( presentation , vlc ,  xine ,  MPlayer   ) | Video streaming ( presentation , broadcast to a computer , streaming on the network ,   video on demand ) ]

Last modified February 20, 2025

Video players

Presentation

This page presents the most common video players under Linux, they will allow you to play almost all types of video formats (container and codec) including DVDs.

We assume that you have gone through the pages basic tools for video and video container.

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Installing the basic libraries

Mad Installation

MAD is a high quality MPEG audio decoder. The official URL is www.underbit.com/products/mad/ you will find the latest archive there that you unzip by typing:

tar xvfz libmad-0.15.1b.tar.gz

This gives the directory mad-0.15.1b in which you type successively 

./configure
make

if you encounter the following error

cc1: error: command line option "-fforce-mem" not recognized Edit the

configure file and remove fforce-mem

optimize="$optimize -fforce-mem"

rerun configure and make then as root

make install
ldconfig

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Installing libdvdread

This library offers tools to read DVDs. The URL is http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan where we will retrieve the archive that we uncompress by typing

tar xvfj libdvdread-6.1.3.tar.bz2

This gives the libdvdread-6.1.3 directory in which we type

./configure
make

Then as root

make install

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Installing libdvdnav

This library of functions provides tools to be able to "navigate" in a DVD, that is to say to be able to use the interactive menus proposed in most DVDs. The URL is http://download.videolan.org/pub/videolan / we retrieve the archive there which we uncompress by typing

tar xvfj libdvdnav-6.1.1.tar.bz2

This gives the directory libdvdnav-6.1.1 in which we type

./configure
make

Then as root

make install

Installing libdvdcss

Libdvdcss is a library offering tools to read MPEG2 stream from a hard disk or DVD. It also allows to read encrypted DVDs. The URL is   http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvdcss.html we retrieve the archive that we uncompress as

tar xvfj libdvdcss-1.4.3.tar.bz2

This gives the directory libdvdcss-1.4.3 in which we type

./configure
make

Then as root

make install

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Installing libdvbpsi

libdvbpsi whose site is http://www.videolan.org/developers/libdvbpsi.html  allows the broadcasting of MPEG2 streams, we retrieve the archive there which we decompress by typing

tar xvfj libdvbpsi-1.3.3.tar.bz2

This gives the directory libdvbpsi-1.3.3 in which we type

./configure
make

then as root

make install

this library is necessary for vlc to do video streaming.

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Installing live555

live555 whose site http://www.live555.com/liveMedia/public/ allows streaming and video reception, it is necessary for vlc. We unzip the archive by typing

tar xvfz live555-latest.tar.gz 

This gives the live directory in which we edit the config.linux file to add the -fPIC option

COMPILE_OPTS = $(INCLUDES) -I/usr/local/include -I. -O2 -fPIC -DSOCKLEN_T=socklen_t -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE=1 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64

we then type

./genMakefiles linux

we then type

make

If you encounter the following error

BasicTaskScheduler.cpp: In member function 'virtual void BasicTaskScheduler::SingleStep(unsigned int)':
BasicTaskScheduler.cpp:191:40: error: 'struct std::atomic_flag' has no member named 'test'

You need to go back to the config.linux file and add the last option

COMPILE_OPTS = $(INCLUDES) -I/usr/local/include -I. -O2 -fPIC -DSOCKLEN_T=socklen_t -D_LARGEFILE_SOURCE=1 -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -DNO_STD_LIB

we retype

./genMakefiles linux
make clean
make

we then type as root

make install
ln -s /usr/local/linux/multimedia/live/liveMedia/include/ /usr/include/liveMedia
ln -s /usr/local/linux/multimedia/live/groupsock/include /usr/include/groupsock
ln -s /usr/local/linux/multimedia/live/UsageEnvironment/include/ /usr/include/UsageEnvironment
ln -s /usr/local/linux/multimedia/live/BasicUsageEnvironment/include/ /usr/include/BasicUsageEnvironment

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Multi-format readers

Presentation

Here I present the most common players, namely VLC, MPlayer and to a lesser extent xine. These different players are capable of playing almost all audio and video codecs and containers imaginable including ogm and matroska .

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VLC

Facility

VLC is a particularly powerful video player, the official site is http://www.videolan.org I was unable to install the latest stable version 3.0.20 which generates a bunch of errors, so I retrieved the development version with git

git clone https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc.git this gives the vlc

directory . It only works with qt6, we will eventually install the packages qt6qml-devel , lua-devel, lib64cddb-devel , qt6-devel , qt6quick-devel, qt6quickcontrols2-devel, fribidi , fribidi-devel , lib64sndfile-devel , lib64gcrypt-devel , wayland-protocols-devel , lib64SDL_image-devel . We return to vlc and type

./bootstrap
./configure --enable-gles2 --enable-fdkaac --enable-qt

then we type

make

I encounter this error

access/live555.cpp: In function 'bool wait_Live555_response(demux_t*, int)':
access/live555.cpp:573:36: error: cannot convert 'char*' to 'EventLoopWatchVariable*' {aka 'std::atomic<char>*'}
  573 | p_sys->scheduler->doEventLoop( &p_sys->event_rtsp );

I have not found any other solution than to deactivate live555 by typing the command

./configure --enable-gles2 --enable-fdkaac --enable-qt --disable-live555

I type make again and then I encounter the error

audio_filter/channel_mixer/spatialaudio.cpp: In function "int Open(vlc_object_t*)":
audio_filter/channel_mixer/spatialaudio.cpp:542:33: error: no matching function for call to "CAmbisonicZoomer::Configure(unsigned int&, bool, int)"
  542 | if (!p_sys->zoomer.Configure(p_sys->i_order, true, 0))

I couldn't find any other solution than to disable spatialaudio by typing the command

./configure --enable-gles2 --enable-fdkaac --enable-qt --disable-live555 --disable-spatialaudio

now for the next error

/bin/ld: /usr/local/lib64/libmatroska.a(KaxBlock.cpp.o): in function `libmatroska::KaxInternalBlock::ReadData(libebml::IOCallback&, libebml::ScopeMode)':
KaxBlock.cpp:(.text+0x1b8c): undefined reference to `libebml::SafeReadIOCallback::EndOfStreamX::EndOfStreamX(unsigned long)'
/bin/ld: KaxBlock.cpp:(.text+0x1bcf): undefined reference to `libebml::SafeReadIOCallback::SafeReadIOCallback(libebml::EbmlBinary const&)'
/bin/ld: KaxBlock.cpp:(.text+0x1be2): undefined reference to `libebml::SafeReadIOCallback::GetUInt8()'

I have not found any other solution than to disable Matroska support

./configure --enable-gles2 --enable-fdkaac --enable-qt --disable-live555 --disable-spatialaudio --disable-matroska

I type make again then as root

make install

we add in the file /etc/ld.so.conf the following line

/usr/local/lib/vlc

then we type

ldconfig

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Use

Just type vlc , the interface is particularly rich (much more than xine or mplayer which are basic in comparison).

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Xine

Facility

In this paragraph I detail the installation of the tarball version available on the official website. Before going further we can install the following packages

lib64cdio-devel
lib64vcd-devel
lib64xt-devel
lib64xvmc-devel
lib64graphicsmagick-devel

I had to create these two links beforehand

ln -s /usr/include/GraphicsMagick/wand/ /usr/include
ln -s /usr/include/GraphicsMagick/magick/ /usr/include

We will retrieve xine at the URL xine.sourceforge.net. We unzip the first archive by typing

tar xvf xine-lib-1.2.11.tar.xz

This gives the xine-lib-1.2.11 directory in which we type

./configure

Here is the result

xine-lib summary:
----------------
 * input plugins:
   - file - stdin_fifo
  * Network:
   - rtsp - rtp
   - net - pnm
   - http - ftp
   - https - ftpes
   - gopher
   - tls
   - mms
   - IPv6
   (disabled plugins: sftp scp nfs smb)
  * Optical discs:
   - cdda
   - vcdo
   - vcd
   - dvd (external libs)
  * Devices:
   - dvb
   - v4l2
   (disabled plugins: v4l)
  * Misc:
   - vdr
   - avio (libavformat)
   - test
   (disabled plugins: gnome-vfs)

 * demultiplexer plugins:
   - 4xm - aac
   - ac3 - aiff
   - asf
   - avformat (with libavformat)
   - avi - cdda
   - ea wve - film
   - FLAC
   - FLAC (with libFLAC)
   - fli - flv
   - idcin - iff
   - image
   - interplay mve - ivf
   - matroska
   - mng
   - mod
   - mpeg - mpeg_audio
   - mpeg_block - mpeg_elem
   - mpeg_pes - mpeg_ts
   - Nosefart (NSF)
   - nsf - nsv
   - ogg
   - psx str - pva
   - qt/mpeg-4 - raw dv
   - real/realaudio - roq
   - smjpeg - snd/au
   - vmd - voc
   - vox - vqa
   - wav
   - wc3 mve - ws aud
   - yuv4mpeg2
   (disabled plugins: WavPack)

 * video decoder plugins:
   - MPEG 1.2 (libmpeg2)
   - Amiga Bitplane
   - Raw RGB
   - Raw YUV
   - dxr3_video
   - gdk-pixbuf
   - image
   - libjpeg
   - libpng
   - theora
   - vdpau
   - libvpx (VP8/VP9)
   - libaom (AV1)
   - ffmpeg
   (disabled plugins: w32dll mmal OpenHEVC dav1d)

 * audio decoder plugins:
   - linear PCM
   - dvaudio
   - GSM 06.10
   - faad
   - Nosefart (NSF)
   - FLAC (with libFLAC)
   - speex
   - vorbis
   - MAD (MPG 1/2/3) (*INTERNAL* library)
   - DTS (*INTERNAL* library)
   - A52/ra-dnet (external library, float math)
   - Musepack (*INTERNAL* library)
   - ffmpeg
   (disabled plugins: w32dll WavPack)

 * subtitle decoder plugins:
   - spu - spucc
   - spucmml - sputext
   - spudvb
   - PGS (BluRay) - TextST (BluRay)
   - dxr3_spu

 * post effect plugins:
  * planar video effects:
   - invert - expand
   - eq - eq2
   - boxblur - denoise3d
   - unsharp - tvtime
   - postproc
   - vdr
  * SFX:
   - goom - oscope
   - fftscope - mosaico
   - tdaudioanalyzer
  * Audio:
   - upmix - upmix_mono
   - volnorm - scretch

 * video driver plugins:
   - OpenGL 2.0 (with bicubic scaling)
       - X11 (GLX) backend
       - X11 (EGL) backend
       - Wayland (EGL) backend
   - XShm (X11 shared memory)
   - Xv (XVideo *shared*)
   - XxMC (XVideo extended motion compensation)
   - OpenGL (with GLU support)
   - vaapi (Video Acceleration (VA) API for Linux)
   - vdpau (X11 Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix)
   - XvMC (XVideo motion compensation)
   - xcb-shm (X shared memory using XCB)
   - xcb-xv (XVideo using XCB)
   - aa (Ascii ART)
   - fb (Linux framebuffer device)
   - sdl (Simple DirectMedia Layer)
   - dxr3 (Hollywood+ and Creative dxr3, mpeg video only)
   (disabled plugins: sunfb caca directfb directx stk macos mmal vidix)

 * audio driver plugins:
   - alsa (ALSA - Advanced Linux Sound Architecture)
   - Jack
   - oss (Open Sound System)
   - pulseaudio (PulseAudio sound server)
   (disabled plugins: CoreAudio directx esd fusionsound irixal sun sndio)
---

Then we type

make

I also had to delete the occurrences of -Werror-implicit-function-declaration in the CFLAGS variable in the src/video_dec/Makefile file

then as root

make install

In the file /etc/ld.so.conf we add the lines

/usr/local/lib/xine/plugins/2.8
/usr/local/lib/xine/plugins/2.8/post

Then we type, still as root

ldconfig

Now we unzip the second archive by typing

tar xvf xine-ui-0.99.12.tar.xz

This gives the xine-ui-0.99.12 directory in which we type successively

./configure
make

Then as root

make install

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Use

You can launch xine by simply typing

xine

This is the result with the CelomaChrome skin

Xine looks like a living room DVD player

You can find other skins here http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/12097414/dir/fedora_1/com/xine-skins-1.8-1.fr.noarch.rpm.html it may be necessary to install it without dependencies ( urpmi --allow-nodeps ).
The skins will be found under /usr/share/xine/skins you will have to copy them under /usr/local/share/xine/skins you just have to unzip them under /usr/local/share/xine/skins .

xine is able to read video files using MPEG1 (VCD) or MPEG2 (SVCD) and even MPEG4 (xvid or DivX) compatible codes. It reads DVDs as soon as you have installed libdvdcss it is no longer necessary to install any plugin ( xine-dvdnav, d4d, d5d, ...) everything is included in xine-lib .

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MPlayer

The official site is http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html the latest stable version MPlayer 1.5 no longer compiles easily, I went with the subversion snapshot version which you uncompress by typing

tar xvfj mplayer-checkout-snapshot.tar.bz2

This gives the directory mplayer-checkout-2025-02-205. First we will unzip the Windows codecs that we will retrieve in the download section of the site. First we create the home directory:

mkdir /usr/local/lib/win32

In which we copy the codecs

cp essential-20071007.tar.bz2 /usr/local/lib/win32/

Which we uncompress after having placed ourselves under /usr/local/lib/win32/

tar xvfj essential-20071007.tar.bz2 

In the essential-20071007 directory  thus obtained, type

mv * ..

You can now delete the /usr/local/lib/win32/essential-20071007 directory.
Let's go back to the mplayer directory , then type

./configure --language=en --enable-gui

At the end of ./configure we have the main options that will be used for the compilation of MPlayer

Config files successfully generated by ./configure --language=fr --enable-gui !

  Install prefix: /usr/local
  Data directory: /usr/local/share/mplayer
  Config direct.: /usr/local/etc/mplayer

  Byte order: little-endian
  Optimizing for: native

  Languages:
    Messages/GUI: fr
    Manual pages: fr
    Documentation: fr

  Enabled optional drivers:
    Input: dvdnav ftp pvr tv-v4l2 tv librtmp cddb cdda dvdread vcd dvb networking
    Codecs: libaom libdav1d libvpx x264 xvid ffmpeg(internal) real xanim libopus faad2 faac liba52 mpg123 libtheora libgsm speex libvorbis twolame libmad liblzo OpenJPEG
    Audio output: sndio alsa jack pulse oss v4l2 mpegpes(dvb)
    Video output: v4l2 matrixview opengl pnm jpeg mng mpegpes(dvb) fbdev aa ggi xvidix cvidix vdpau xv x11 xover yuv4mpeg md5sum tga

  Disabled optional drivers:
    Input: vstream radio tv-v4l1 tv-dshow live555 nemesi bluray smb
    Codecs: crystalhd libdv libopencore_amrwb libopencore_amrnb qtx win32 ilbc musepack libdca libmpeg2 toolame gif
    Audio output: sun openal nas esd arts dxr2 sdl
    Video output: zr zr2 dxr3 dxr2 sdl vesa gif89a svga poo winvidix 3dfx xmga dga directfb dfbmga bl xvr100 tdfx_vid wii s3fb tdfxfb mga

You can type make if you encounter the error

libao2/ao_jack.c:74:8: error: unknown type name 'AVFifoBuffer'
   74 | static AVFifoBuffer *buffer;

You will need to retrieve the following patch https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/packaging/packages/mplayer/-/blob/main/ffmpeg-7.patch   which you apply by typing

patch -p0 < ffmpeg-7.patch

we type make again then as root make install

Now we can retrieve the themes whose default theme is called Blue. We will copy it under /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins

cp Blue-1.13.tar.bz2 /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins

In this directory we then type successively

cd /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins
tar xvfj Blue-1.13.tar.bz2
ln -s Blue default

It's done we can type MPlayer by typing

gmplayer

And here is the result

The video appears in a separate window and not in the small window. Another view of MPlayer using a skin copying well known player...

MPlayer can play almost all formats (MPEG1, MPEG2, MPEG4, ...), including raw DV format! To play DVDs in the menu (right click on the display window) DVD->Open a disc, then DVD->Audio languages->French. It also recognizes ogm containers and matroska.

It has nothing to do with video, but MPlayer allows you to listen to the radio! A list of French-speaking radio stations can be found here https://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/liste_radio_france just choose one and type the link

mplayer http://direct.francebleu.fr/live/fbarmorique-midfi.mp3

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Video streaming

Presentation

We will use vlc

Broadcast a video to a specific station

Just type the command

vlc video.avi --sout '#std{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=192.168.26.50:1234}'

192.168.26.50 is the IP address of the client station and 1234 is the broadcast port, on the client station to receive the stream, just type

vlc udp://@:1234

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Streaming on a network

Streaming allows reception on multiple client stations of a network

vlc video.avi --sout '#std{access=mmsh,dst=:1234}'

for reception from any client station, simply type

vlc mmsh://serveurdiffusion:1234

serveurdiffusion being the name of the broadcast server and 1234 the broadcast port.

to transcode and then broadcast in UDP multicast at the address 224.1.0.200 we will type

vlc video.avi --sout '#transcode{vcode=mp4v,acodec=mpga,vb=800,ab=128,deinterlace}
:standard{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=224.1.0.200,sap,name="mystream"} '

to simply broadcast in UDP multicast at the address 224.1.0.200 we will type

vlc video.avi --sout '#duplicate{dst=standard{access=udp,mux=ts,dst=224.1.0.200,sap,name="mystream"}}'

to read the file just type

vlc udp:@224.1.0.200

the multicast stream can be stopped by the routers on can add to the broadcast command the option --ttl X with X corresponding to the number of routers.

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Video on Demand (VoD)

You need to launch the video on demand manager server accessible on the streaming server by telnet

vlc --extraintf telnet --telnet-password videolan --rtsp-host 192.168.1.11:1234 

the password to the streaming server will be videolan , its address 192.168.1.11 and the streaming port 1234, we will now add videos. We connect to the server by telnet , the default port being 4212

telnet 192.168.1.11 4212
Trying 192.168.1.11...
Connected to 192.168.1.11.
Escape character is '^]'.
Password:
Welcome, Master
>

to add a video after the prompt type

> new canal1 vod enabled setup canal1 input "/maurice/video/perso/tahiti/danses/danses-marquisiennes-xvid.avi"

to add a second one

> new canal2 vod enabled setup canal2 input "/maurice/video/perso/tahiti/dansesmangareva.avi"

Now from a client station to read canal1 type

vlc rstp://192.168.1.11:1234/canal1

 

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