Ten years of MPlayer

[Posted November 11, 2010 by corbet]

From:		Arpi <arpi-AT-thot.banki.hu>
To:		mplayer-dev-eng-AT-mplayerhq.hu
Subject:		Happy Birthday MPlayer!!!
Date:		Thu, 11 Nov 2010 00:01:45 +0100
Message-ID:		<201011102301.oAAN1jq5022786@thot.banki.hu>
Archive-link:		Article

Hi,

It was exactly 10 years ago, that I've released first MPlayer version, v0.01:
http://www1.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/old_stuff/releases/MPlay...
Yes, f*cking 10 years!!!! Nov 11, 2000... Time goes on so fast...

I want to thank you all for the contributions, patches, bugs, docs, testing etc.

Especially Michael Niedermayer, Fabrice Bellard and Nick Kurshev,
who made it to be the best & fastest open-source player!

And sorry Nick, I made a big mistake rejecting your multi-threaded patches.
Unfortunatelly your idea came too early, nobody (at least me) thought that
desktop PCs will ever have multiple CPUs...  and now that even cheap notebooks
and netbooks have multi-core CPUs, it would be very useful for HD playback...

Also special thanks to Gabucino, Pontscho and LGB, for your support in the
early days, when everybody thought i'm mad, working on video player for linux...

A'rpi

ps: Albeu, i'll never forgive your playtree patches :)

(Log in to post comments)

Posted Nov 11, 2010 17:23 UTC (Thu) by Rubberman (guest, #70320) [Link]

Finally, when they get to v1.0, the answer to the eternal question "Are we done yet?" will be "yes"... :-)

thanking people

Posted Nov 11, 2010 17:45 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

(Off-topic: I'm glad he thanked people by name. It often seems silly to me when project leaders say "And this was a team effort, I'd like to thank the whole team" - but then don't give any indication as to who the team is.)

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 18:21 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Thank you for Mplayer. It's a otherwise shining beacon of awesomeness for Linux multimedia in a decade of otherwise dominated by mostly mediocre software with poor compatibility and poor performance.

Thank goodness that mplayer is continuing development and that Linux is much better then it used to be! Yay progress!

It makes me happy.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 19:00 UTC (Thu) by relaxed (guest, #25502) [Link]

Happy Birthday!

This may sound silly but in 2002 I made the switch from Windows to Linux (Red Hat at the time) specifically because of MPlayer. I was amazed that it would play any type of audio or video you threw at it. With Windows you had to search for the correct codecs to install and it didn't always work.

Thanks to all the MPlayer devs who helped make it great!

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 11:50 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

This roughly mirrors my own experience. After the frustration of dealing with video on Windows and trying xanim, realplay and even windows media player 6 via wine, I got around to trying mplayer in 2002 and was amazed. On my pII 350 I had full screen video in all of the crazy formats that anime fansubbers liked to use and it has kept getting better with every release.

I remember the first time I worked around a broken DVD drive by putting the disc in another computer, mounting root via sshfs and telling mplayer -dvd-device /mnt/remote/dev/dvd0 - it was a crazy notion and blew my mind when it worked (some caching needed).

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 13:41 UTC (Fri) by dvadell (guest, #36194) [Link]

Around that time, my benchmark for linux was browsing the web with a running mplayer in the root window of X, like a wallpaper. If I could do that, then my new workstation / kernel / XFCE / netscape was ok.

Those were one of the things I was proud to show to my friends.

Thanks MPlayer!!

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 16:53 UTC (Fri) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

It's interesting how times have changed. I too remember that on Windows I had to search for various codecs while on Linux mplayer just worked in the early 2000s.

However, today I don't even remember when was the last time I had to install some codec on Windows (either they've standardized on fewer formats or it's just VLC that supports everything) but the last time I checked I wasn't able to playback video fullscreen with audio on Linux due to video driver or pulseaudio problems...

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 23:22 UTC (Fri) by AndreE (guest, #60148) [Link]

Firstly, driver problems are a completely unrelated issue. You can't blame media frameworks for driver issues.

Secondly, try playing back mkv or vorbis on windows or osx, then try to tell me it ' just works'. Truth is, despite the moaning and wailing, codec management on linux is FAR easier than on windows or osx.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 14, 2010 12:30 UTC (Sun) by Jedai (guest, #66369) [Link]

Well that's not completely true... If you use the tools that came from the free software universe like VLC or mplayer, it works pretty well (on Windows at least) ! There's also some compilation of tools like CCCP, that use ffmpeg and media player classic.

In other words, if you don't want to have problem playing your media files on Windows, you better use one of the solutions that originated under Linux or at least came from the free software community. ;-)

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 7:47 UTC (Mon) by NAR (subscriber, #1313) [Link]

That's the irony of the situation: the free software world fixed the media player issue on Windows while it doesn't work anymore on Linux...

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 19, 2010 12:56 UTC (Fri) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

Works For Me.

I use mplayer under Linux and, when necessary, under Windows. Both work equally well.

Most Windows users I know use VLC these days, or MPC with the CCCP. For knowledgeable users codec issues are virtually nonexistent anywhere any more.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 23, 2010 19:49 UTC (Tue) by leoc (subscriber, #39773) [Link]

For knowledgeable users codec issues are virtually nonexistent anywhere any more.

AFAIK there is no equivalent to mplayer or VLC for Android. Playing various videos on my Nexus One currently requires the hassle of re-encoding.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 20:37 UTC (Thu) by BaldHeadedGeek (guest, #1078) [Link]

Just want to add my congratulations and gratitude. As a Java developer I've been able to embed and control mplayer to use in my project and it works quite well.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 20:37 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

Am I the only one for whom mplayer keeps crashing all the time? Often, not more than a few quick seeks are required to make it crash...

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 20:53 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

I find it very stable. Maybe it's a distro problem? (I run Debian unstable)

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 20:57 UTC (Thu) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

> (I run Debian unstable)
So do I.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 21:25 UTC (Thu) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]

Then it's more then likely a driver issue. Either with audio or video devices.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 17:00 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

Yeah, I guess a problem within mplayer must be totally impossible, since it's so absolutely awesome.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 19:07 UTC (Fri) by dmk (subscriber, #50141) [Link]

No. Because only you are seeing the issue it can not be mplayer. *doh*

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 14, 2010 21:49 UTC (Sun) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

You are not a developer, are you?

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 14:22 UTC (Mon) by dmk (subscriber, #50141) [Link]

Sorry. My Post was probably a bit insulting.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 6:11 UTC (Mon) by jzbiciak (subscriber, #5246) [Link]

Slow down there, professor!

I personally would be more likely to say "an issue specific to a driver." Without diagnosing it, it's hard to say whether the driver or MPlayer that needs to be fixed. Or it could be something else, such as 64-bit vs. 32-bit.

Now if it works for 99.5% of people and only 0.5% see a problem with a certain driver/OS combination, if nothing else the issue is esoteric.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 23:41 UTC (Mon) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

*sigh*
Do I really have to mark up everything with <sarcasm> in order for people to get it?

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 16, 2010 4:43 UTC (Tue) by jzbiciak (subscriber, #5246) [Link]

I knew you were being snarky / sarcastic. My reply was as much a response to you as the person you replied to, while trying to step back from the (IMHO unproductive) snark. Saying "must be a driver issue" is a rather flippant escape. "Specific to a driver" is both more accurate and doesn't prematurely assign blame.

Personally, I'm rather impressed with MPlayer and am quite happy for its existence. Its presence has lifted all boats in the media player department, so far as I can see. It's unfortunate it isn't perfect, but I think we can all agree it's rather impressive.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 11, 2010 21:37 UTC (Thu) by teknohog (guest, #70891) [Link]

Here's another happy MPlayer user since 2001 :)

I do find the multithreading debate strange, though. In 2001, as a lowly summer student at CERN, we had dual P3 machines, complete with parallelizing compilers. Of course, scientific computing has used specialized multiproc machines for decades, but these were plain beige boxes. It has been hilarious to follow the "multicore" craze which supposedly needs brand new tools and paradigms, which some industries have been using for ages.

There have also been reports that multithreading improves MPlayer performance even on single-threaded CPUs. This goes way back to MPlayerXP, where it was explained that threading will distribute the load more evenly in time. I have personally witnessed this with the mplayer-uau fork, which btw plays HD H.264 video smoothly on an Atom D510, no GPU decoding involved.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 6:56 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Somewhat OT: can I request that LWN link to archives other than GMANE, which has a truly awful interface for following conversations? Mailman, when available, would be great. Here's the mailman link to Arpi's mail.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 11:16 UTC (Fri) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

I assume you are joking.

PS: gmane has many interfaces

Archive linking

Posted Nov 12, 2010 14:20 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

The archive linking, to be sustainable, must be automatic; there's no way we can go digging around in list-specific archives for every message. As far as I can tell, that means gmane, which also makes it possible for us to follow all those lists in the first place. If people have suggestions we're all ears, but I don't know of a better alternative at the moment.

Archive linking

Posted Nov 12, 2010 14:24 UTC (Fri) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Hm.. I see your point, but in this case, the "thread" link is in fact broken. I can't find additional messages in the thread on gmane: in fact I can't even see this message when I click on the index for the list.

Archive linking

Posted Nov 15, 2010 16:45 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Hm.. I see your point, but in this case, the "thread" link is in fact broken.

It is actually even worse: there is apparently some corruption in this specific thread. Here is how it looks when everything works fine (= most of the time): http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.mplayer.devel/4157

[answering other message]

> Then the links supplied should be NNTP links.

Fair comment... however I doubt NNTP links are well supported in browsers. Well it is probably worth trying anyway? There seems to be enough real estate for NTTP links to be *added* and not replace HTTP links.

> What are supplied (by LWN) are HTTP links, and those suck by any reasonable standard.

Gmane's HTTP thread view is excellent since it saves clicking "back" and allows reading a message and viewing its position in the thread at the same time. It is basically the same successful layout found in most graphical mailers.

I agree that other views are not great.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 15:18 UTC (Fri) by ldarby (guest, #41318) [Link]

The problem with Mailman is that it breaks threads over month boundaries, which is really annoying.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 14, 2010 19:47 UTC (Sun) by The_Barbarian (subscriber, #48152) [Link]

Yes, but not as annoying as gmane (any interface)

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 9:47 UTC (Mon) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

The main gmane interface is... the NNTP client of your choice. So you are basically saying that every NNTP client sucks more than mailman's web interface. That's a bold statement.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 10:05 UTC (Mon) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Then the links supplied should be NNTP links. What are supplied (by LWN) are HTTP links, and those suck by any reasonable standard.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 11:52 UTC (Fri) by jondkent (guest, #19595) [Link]

I remember reviewing mplayer, and a bunch of other media players, back in 2002 for Linux Journal (http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/5644). It was very good then, though not the best because I felt it needed quite a powerful PC for the time, certainly the 2nd best.

Can't believe its 10 years old now, that's amazing. I still run it today, and fall back the VLC when I have to.

One day it'll become 1.0

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 12, 2010 23:09 UTC (Fri) by tardyp (subscriber, #58715) [Link]

Thanks for the source link.

It's funny that the only video codec supported in this first release was via mplayer's famous wine hack to use win32 codecs.

Since that mplayer team has given birth to the most used video codec library, ffmpeg.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 18, 2010 4:40 UTC (Thu) by hadess (guest, #24252) [Link]

> Since that mplayer team has given birth to the most used video codec
> library, ffmpeg.

No it didn't. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ffmpeg#History

The MPlayer devs might have helped ffmpeg greatly, but they didn't give birth to it.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 13, 2010 15:46 UTC (Sat) by jacky_zz (guest, #71207) [Link]

Happy Birthday!

does anybody make mplayer as a single/multi static/dynamic library, which could be used under windows develop environment. could it be requested?

if it could be, is someone tell me how to do? my e-mail is jackyxinli@gmail.com, please contact me how to do, i'll appreciate you do me a faviour, thanks.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 10:30 UTC (Mon) by eduperez (guest, #11232) [Link]

> And sorry Nick, I made a big mistake rejecting your multi-threaded patches. Unfortunatelly your idea came too early, nobody (at least me) thought that desktop PCs will ever have multiple CPUs... and now that even cheap notebooks and netbooks have multi-core CPUs, it would be very useful for HD playback...

I think a public apology such as this one says a lot about the author.

Ten years of MPlayer

Posted Nov 15, 2010 11:47 UTC (Mon) by ravipinto (guest, #71232) [Link]

MPlayer was first media player on Linux that worked for me without any problems (way back when it was just introduced) and the one which still just works!!!
Thanks Arpi and everyone involved with this fantastic piece of software!!

Another big fan here

Posted Nov 17, 2010 0:35 UTC (Wed) by Baylink (guest, #755) [Link]

And I'll note that since they're in 1.0rc, they're pretty asymptotic indeed. :-)

Now, if only I could track down Robert Juliano, who did *most* of the work for karaoke keychange playback... but not quite enough, and get some help from him on the rest...

http://markplusplus.wordpress.com/2006/10/01/pitch-correc...