Re: Bug#613806: ITP: mplayer2 -- next generation movie player for Unix-like systems
Reinhard Tartler <siretart <at> tauware.de> writes:
> Package: wnpp
> Severity: wishlist
> Owner: Reinhard Tartler <siretart <at> tauware.de>
>
> * Package name : mplayer2
> Version : 2.0beta1
> Upstream Author : Uoti Urpala <uoti.urpala <at> pp1.inet.fi>
> * URL : http://www.mplayer2.org/
> * License : GPL
> Programming Lang: C
> Description : next generation movie player for Unix-like systems
>
> MPlayer plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, Ogg/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV,
> QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM, RoQ, PVA files,
> supported by many native, XAnim, RealPlayer, and Win32 DLL codecs. It
> can also play VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, RealMedia, and DivX movies.
>
> Another big feature of MPlayer is the wide range of supported output
> drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, DirectFB,
> The text above is copied from the existing mplayer package. It is
The long description really needs a rewrite.
> basically a well-known and quite popular fork of mplayer. TBH, I'm a bit
> unsure what to do with it. From the first look, it seems that mplayer2
> is better suited for being included in a distro release, but not (yet)
> in its current form. Currently, it includes a copy of ffmpeg-mt, a
I'm not sure if you've misunderstood something or just phrased things
inaccurately, but I think this description is at least misleading for people who
aren't already familiar with the setup.
The player itself does not include a copy of any FFmpeg version, and can be
compiled against any external library versions. However, using FFmpeg-mt is the
best choice for the majority of users. Since there aren't packaged versions
available for most distros (and it's not really suited for a systemwide install
in its current form due to some API issues), the alternative recommended for
most users is to statically link against a custom-compiled FFmpeg-mt. The build
wrapper exists to make it easy to do this without needing separate manual
library building steps. However, use of the wrapper is in no way forced, and
users/packagers are free to choose what form of FFmpeg libraries to compile
against.
> well-known fork of the ffmpeg package, which features multithreaded h264
> decoding and actually is already in debian as part of the
> chromium-browser package. While ffmpeg-mt is currently being
> integrated/merged into ffmpeg upstream, mplayer2's future is not that
> certain.
If by future you mean the possibility of a merge with MPlayer 1, I think it's
pretty certain that won't happen. It's possible that at some point MPlayer 1
will die and be completely replaced by MPlayer2, but any other kind of "merge"
seems unlikely.
> Having this in mind, I intend to maintain the package under the
> pkg-multimedia umbrella. mplayer2 shoudl go to experimental for now,
> including ffmpeg-mt. Help and ideas with that is more than welcome!
I think having a package using FFmpeg-mt available is good, as it's a
substantial performance improvement over anything available in Debian today.
However as above this isn't directly forced by MPlayer2 itself.
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