NAME

mplayer - movie player
mencoder - movie encoder

SYNOPSIS

mplayer [options] [file|URL|playlist|-]
mplayer [options] file1 [specific options] [file2] [specific options]
mplayer [options] {group of files and options} [group-specific options]
mplayer [br]://[title][/device] [options]
mplayer [dvd|dvdnav]://[title|[start_title]-end_title][/device] [options]
mplayer vcd://track[/device]
mplayer tv://[channel][/input_id] [options]
mplayer radio://[channel|frequency][/capture] [options]
mplayer pvr:// [options]
mplayer dvb://[card_number@]channel [options]
mplayer mf://[filemask|@listfile] [-mf options] [options]
mplayer [cdda|cddb]://track[-endtrack][:speed][/device] [options]
mplayer cue://file[:track] [options]
mplayer [file|mms[t]|http|http_proxy|rt[s]p|ftp|udp|unsv|icyx|noicyx|smb]:// [user:pass@]URL[:port] [options]
mplayer sdp://file [options]
mplayer mpst://host[:port]/URL [options]
mplayer tivo://host/[list|llist|fsid] [options]
gmplayer [options] [file|URL|playlist] [-skin skin]
mencoder [options] file [file|URL|-] [-o file | file://file | smb://[user:pass@]host/filepath]
mencoder [options] file1 [specific options] [file2] [specific options]

DESCRIPTION

mplayer is a movie player for Linux (runs on many other platforms and CPU architectures, see the documentation). It plays most MPEG/VOB, AVI, ASF/WMA/WMV, RM, QT/MOV/MP4, Ogg/OGM, MKV, VIVO, FLI, NuppelVideo, yuv4mpeg, FILM and RoQ files, supported by many native and binary codecs. You can watch VCD, SVCD, DVD, Blu-ray, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5, WMV and even H.264 movies, too.

MPlayer supports a wide range of video and audio output drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fbdev, AAlib, libcaca, DirectFB, Quartz, Mac OS X CoreVideo, but you can also use GGI, SDL (and all their drivers), VESA (on every VESA-compatible card, even without X11), some low-level card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3dfx and ATI) and some hardware MPEG decoder boards, such as the Siemens DVB, Hauppauge PVR (IVTV), DXR2 and DXR3/Hollywood+. Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen mode.

MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls. European/ISO8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub) and DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions).

mencoder (MPlayer's Movie Encoder) is a simple movie encoder, designed to encode MPlayer-playable movies (see above) to other MPlayer-playable formats (see below). It encodes to MPEG-4 (DivX/Xvid), one of the libavcodec codecs and PCM/MP3/VBRMP3 audio in 1, 2 or 3 passes. Furthermore it has stream copying abilities, a powerful filter system (crop, expand, flip, postprocess, rotate, scale, noise, RGB/YUV conversion) and more.

gmplayer is MPlayer with a graphical user interface. Besides some own options (stored in gui.conf), it has the same options as MPlayer, however some MPlayer options will be stored in gui.conf so that they can be chosen independently from MPlayer. (See GUI CONFIGURATION FILE below.)

Usage examples to get you started quickly can be found at the end of this man page.

Also see the HTML documentation!

INTERACTIVE CONTROL

MPlayer has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control MPlayer using keyboard, mouse, joystick or remote control (with LIRC). See the -input option for ways to customize it.

keyboard control

mouse control

joystick control

USAGE

Every 'flag' option has a 'noflag' counterpart, e.g. the opposite of the -fs option is -nofs.

If an option is marked as (XXX only), it will only work in combination with the XXX option or if XXX is compiled in.

NOTE: The suboption parser (used for example for -ao pcm suboptions) supports a special kind of string-escaping intended for use with external GUIs.
It has the following format:
%n%string_of_length_n
EXAMPLES:
mplayer -ao pcm:file=%10%C:test.wav test.avi
Or in a script:
mplayer -ao pcm:file=%`expr length "$NAME"`%"$NAME" test.avi

CONFIGURATION FILES

You can put all of the options in configuration files which will be read every time MPlayer/MEncoder is run. The system-wide configuration file 'mplayer.conf' is in your configuration directory (e.g. /etc/mplayer or /usr/local/etc/mplayer), the user specific one is '~/.mplayer/config'. The configuration file for MEncoder is 'mencoder.conf' in your configuration directory (e.g. /etc/mplayer or /usr/local/etc/mplayer), the user specific one is '~/.mplayer/mencoder.conf'. User specific options override system-wide options (in case of gmplayer, gui.conf options override user specific options) and options given on the command line override all. The syntax of the configuration files is 'option=<value>', everything after a '#' is considered a comment. Options that work without values can be enabled by setting them to 'yes' or '1' or 'true' and disabled by setting them to 'no' or '0' or 'false'. Even suboptions can be specified in this way.

You can also write file-specific configuration files. If you wish to have a configuration file for a file called 'movie.avi', create a file named 'movie.avi.conf' with the file-specific options in it and put it in ~/.mplayer/. You can also put the configuration file in the same directory as the file to be played, as long as you give the -use-filedir-conf option (either on the command line or in your global config file). If a file-specific configuration file is found in the same directory, no file-specific configuration is loaded from ~/.mplayer. In addition, the -use-filedir-conf option enables directory-specific configuration files. For this, MPlayer first tries to load a mplayer.conf from the same directory as the file played and then tries to load any file-specific configuration.

EXAMPLE MPLAYER CONFIGURATION FILE:

# Use Matrox driver by default.
vo=xmga
# I love practicing handstands while watching videos.
flip=yes
# Decode/encode multiple files from PNG,
# start with mf://filemask
mf=type=png:fps=25
# Eerie negative images are cool.
vf=eq2=1.0:-0.8
# OSD progress bar vertical alignment
progbar-align=50

EXAMPLE MENCODER CONFIGURATION FILE:

# Make MEncoder output to a default filename.
o=encoded.avi
# The next 4 lines allow mencoder tv:// to start capturing immediately.
oac=pcm=yes
ovc=lavc=yes
lavcopts=vcodec=mjpeg
tv=driver=v4l2:input=1:width=768:height=576:device=/dev/video0:audiorate=48000
# more complex default encoding option set
lavcopts=vcodec=mpeg4:autoaspect=1
lameopts=aq=2:vbr=4
ovc=lavc=1
oac=lavc=1
passlogfile=pass1stats.log
noautoexpand=1
subfont-autoscale=3
subfont-osd-scale=6
subfont-text-scale=4
subalign=2
subpos=96
spuaa=20

GUI CONFIGURATION FILE

GUI's own options are (MPlayer option names in parentheses): ao_alsa_device (alsa:device=) (ALSA only), ao_alsa_mixer (mixer) (ALSA only), ao_alsa_mixer_channel (mixer-channel) (ALSA only), ao_esd_device (esd:) (ESD only), ao_extra_stereo (af extrastereo) (default: 1.0), ao_extra_stereo_coefficient (af extrastereo=), ao_oss_device (oss:) (OSS only), ao_oss_mixer (mixer) (OSS only), ao_oss_mixer_channel (mixer-channel) (OSS only), ao_sdl_subdriver (sdl:) (SDL only), ao_surround (unused), ao_volnorm (af volnorm), autosync (enable/disable), autosync_size (autosync), cache (enable/disable), cache_size (cache), enable_audio_equ (af equalizer), equ_band_00 ... equ_band_59, (af equalizer=), equ_channel_1 ... equ_channel_6 (af channels=), gui_main_pos_x, gui_main_pos_y, gui_save_pos (yes/no), gui_tv_digital (yes/no), gui_video_out_pos_x, gui_video_out_pos_y, load_fullscreen (yes/no), playbar (enable/disable), replay_gain (enable/disable), replay_gain_adjustment (-30..10), show_videowin (yes/no), vf_lavc (vf lavc) (DXR3 only), vf_pp (vf pp), vo_dxr3_device (unused) (DXR3 only).

MPlayer options stored in gui.conf (GUI option names, MPlayer option names in parentheses) are: a_afm (afm), ao_driver (ao), ass_bottom_margin (ass-bottom-margin) (ASS only), ass_enabled (ass) (ASS only), ass_top_margin (ass-top-margin) (ASS only), ass_use_margins (ass-use-margins) (ASS only), cdrom_device (cdrom-device), dvd_device (dvd-device), font_autoscale (subfont-autoscale) (FreeType only), font_blur (subfont-blur) (FreeType only), font_encoding (subfont-encoding), font_factor (ffactor), font_name (font), font_osd_scale (subfont-osd-scale) (FreeType only), font_outline (subfont-outline) (FreeType only), font_text_scale (subfont-text-scale) (FreeType only), gui_skin (skin), idle (idle), osd_level (osdlevel), playlist_support (allow-dangerous-playlist-parsing), softvol (softvol), stopxscreensaver (stop-xscreensaver), sub_auto_load (autosub), sub_cp (subcp) (iconv only), sub_overlap (overlapsub), sub_pos (subpos), sub_unicode (unicode), sub_utf8 (utf8), v_flip (flip), v_framedrop (framedrop), v_idx (idx), v_ni (ni), v_vfm (vfm), vf_autoq (autoq), vo_direct_render (panscan), vo_doublebuffering (dr), vo_driver (vo), vo_panscan (double).

PROFILES

To ease working with different configurations profiles can be defined in the configuration files. A profile starts with its name between square brackets, e.g. '[my-profile]'. All following options will be part of the profile. A description (shown by -profile help) can be defined with the profile-desc option. To end the profile, start another one or use the profile name 'default' to continue with normal options.

EXAMPLE MPLAYER PROFILE:

[protocol.dvd]
profile-desc="profile for dvd:// streams"
vf=pp=hb/vb/dr/al/fd
alang=en
[protocol.dvdnav]
profile-desc="profile for dvdnav:// streams"
profile=protocol.dvd
mouse-movements=yes
nocache=yes
[extension.flv]
profile-desc="profile for .flv files"
flip=yes
[vo.pnm]
outdir=/tmp
[ao.alsa]
device=spdif

EXAMPLE MENCODER PROFILE:

[mpeg4]
profile-desc="MPEG4 encoding"
ovc=lacv=yes
lavcopts=vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=1200
[mpeg4-hq]
profile-desc="HQ MPEG4 encoding"
profile=mpeg4
lavcopts=mbd=2:trell=yes:v4mv=yes

GENERAL OPTIONS

-codecpath <dir>

Specify a directory for binary codecs.

-codecs-file <filename> (also see -afm, -ac, -vfm, -vc)

Override the standard search path and use the specified file instead of the builtin codecs.conf.

-include <configuration file> (also see -gui-include)

Specify configuration file to be parsed after the default ones.

-list-options

Prints all available options.

-msgcharset <charset>

Convert console messages to the specified character set (default: autodetect). Text will be in the encoding specified with the --charset configure option. Set this to "noconv" to disable conversion (for e.g. iconv problems).
NOTE: The option takes effect after command line parsing has finished. The MPLAYER_CHARSET environment variable can help you get rid of the first lines of garbled output.

-msgcolor

Enable colorful console output on terminals that support ANSI color.

-msglevel <all=<level>:<module>=<level>:...>

Control verbosity directly for each module. The 'all' module changes the verbosity of all the modules not explicitly specified on the command line. See '-msglevel help' for a list of all modules.
NOTE: Some messages are printed before the command line is parsed and are therefore not affected by -msglevel. To control these messages you have to use the MPLAYER_VERBOSE environment variable, see its description below for details.
Available levels:

-msgmodule

Prepend module name in front of each console message.

-noconfig <options>

Do not parse selected configuration files.
NOTE: If -include or -use-filedir-conf options are specified at the command line, they will be honoured.

Available options are:

-quiet 

Make console output less verbose; in particular, prevents the status line (i.e. A: 0.7 V: 0.6 A-V: 0.068 ...) from being displayed. Particularly useful on slow terminals or broken ones which do not properly handle carriage return (i.e. \r).

-priority <prio> (Windows and OS/2 only)

Set process priority for MPlayer according to the predefined priorities available under Windows and OS/2. Possible values of <prio>:

-profile <profile1,profile2,...>

Use the given profile(s), -profile help displays a list of the defined profiles.

-really-quiet (also see -quiet)

Display even less output and status messages than with -quiet. Also suppresses the GUI error message boxes.

-show-profile <profile>

Show the description and content of a profile.

-use-filedir-conf

Look for a file-specific configuration file in the same directory as the file that is being played.
WARNING: May be dangerous if playing from untrusted media.

-v     

Increment verbosity level, one level for each -v found on the command line.

PLAYER OPTIONS (MPLAYER ONLY)

-autoq <quality> (use with -vf [s]pp)

Dynamically changes the level of postprocessing depending on the available spare CPU time. The number you specify will be the maximum level used. Usually you can use some big number. You have to use -vf [s]pp without parameters in order for this to work.

-autosync <factor>

Gradually adjusts the A/V sync based on audio delay measurements. Specifying -autosync 0, the default, will cause frame timing to be based entirely on audio delay measurements. Specifying -autosync 1 will do the same, but will subtly change the A/V correction algorithm. An uneven video framerate in a movie which plays fine with -nosound can often be helped by setting this to an integer value greater than 1. The higher the value, the closer the timing will be to -nosound. Try -autosync 30 to smooth out problems with sound drivers which do not implement a perfect audio delay measurement. With this value, if large A/V sync offsets occur, they will only take about 1 or 2 seconds to settle out. This delay in reaction time to sudden A/V offsets should be the only side-effect of turning this option on, for all sound drivers.

-benchmark

Prints some statistics on CPU usage and dropped frames at the end of playback. Use in combination with -nosound and -vo null for benchmarking only the video codec.
NOTE: With this option MPlayer will also ignore frame duration when playing only video (you can think of that as infinite fps).

-colorkey <number>

Changes the colorkey to an RGB value of your choice. 0x000000 is black and 0xffffff is white. Only supported by the cvidix, fbdev, svga, vesa, winvidix, xmga, xvidix, xover, xv (see -vo xv:ck), xvmc (see -vo xv:ck) and directx video output drivers.

-nocolorkey

Disables colorkeying. Only supported by the cvidix, fbdev, svga, vesa, winvidix, xmga, xvidix, xover, xv (see -vo xv:ck), xvmc (see -vo xv:ck) and directx video output drivers.

-correct-pts (EXPERIMENTAL)

Switches MPlayer to an experimental mode where timestamps for video frames are calculated differently and video filters which add new frames or modify timestamps of existing ones are supported. The more accurate timestamps can be visible for example when playing subtitles timed to scene changes with the -ass option. Without -correct-pts the subtitle timing will typically be off by some frames. This option does not work correctly with some demuxers and codecs.

-crash-debug (DEBUG CODE)

Automatically attaches gdb upon crash or SIGTRAP. Support must be compiled in by configuring with --enable-crash-debug.

-doubleclick-time

Time in milliseconds to recognize two consecutive button presses as a double-click (default: 300). Set to 0 to let your windowing system decide what a double-click is (-vo directx only).
NOTE: You will get slightly different behaviour depending on whether you bind MOUSE_BTN0_DBL or MOUSE_BTN0-MOUSE_BTN0_DBL.

-edlout <filename>

Creates a new file and writes edit decision list (EDL) records to it. During playback, the user hits 'i' to mark the start or end of a skip block. This provides a starting point from which the user can fine-tune EDL entries later. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html for details.

-edl-backward-delay <number>

When using EDL during playback and jumping backwards it is possible to end up in the middle of an EDL record. In that case MPlayer will seek further backwards to the start position of the EDL record and then immediately skip the scene specified in the EDL record. To avoid this kind of behavior, MPlayer jumps to a fixed time interval before the start of the EDL record. This parameter allows you to specify that time interval in seconds (default: 2 seconds).

-edl-start-pts

Adjust positions in EDL records according to playing file's start time. Some formats, especially MPEG TS usually start with non-zero PTS values and when producing EDL file with -edlout option, EDL records contain absolute values that are correct only for this particular file. If re-encoded into a different format, this EDL file no longer applies. Specifying -edl-start-pts will automatically adjust EDL positions according to start time: when producing EDL file, it will substract start time from every EDL record, when playing with EDL file, it will add file's start time to every EDL position.

-noedl-start-pts

Disable adjusting EDL positions.

-enqueue (GUI only)

Enqueue files given on the command line in the playlist instead of playing them immediately.

-fixed-vo

Enforces a fixed video system for multiple files (one (un)initialization for all files). Therefore only one window will be opened for all files. Currently the following drivers are fixed-vo compliant: gl, gl_tiled, mga, svga, x11, xmga, xv, xvidix and dfbmga.

-framedrop (also see -hardframedrop, experimental without -nocorrect-pts)

Skip displaying some frames to maintain A/V sync on slow systems. Video filters are not applied to such frames. For B-frames even decoding is skipped completely.

-(no)gui

Enable or disable the GUI interface (default depends on binary name). Only works as the first argument on the command line. Does not work as a config-file option.

-gui-include <GUI configuration file> (also see -include) (GUI only)

Specify a GUI configuration file to be parsed after the default gui.conf.

-h, -help, --help

Show short summary of options.

-hardframedrop (experimental without -nocorrect-pts)

More intense frame dropping (breaks decoding). Leads to image distortion! Note that especially the libmpeg2 decoder may crash with this, so consider using "-vc ffmpeg12,".

-heartbeat-cmd

Command that is executed every 30 seconds during playback via system() - i.e. using the shell.

NOTE: MPlayer uses this command without any checking, it is your responsibility to ensure it does not cause security problems (e.g. make sure to use full paths if "." is in your path like on Windows). It also only works when playing video (i.e. not with -novideo but works with -vo null).

This can be "misused" to disable screensavers that do not support the proper X API (also see -stop-xscreensaver). If you think this is too complicated, ask the author of the screensaver program to support the proper X APIs.

EXAMPLE for xscreensaver: mplayer -heartbeat-cmd "xscreensaver-command -deactivate" file

EXAMPLE for GNOME screensaver: mplayer -heartbeat-cmd "gnome-screensaver-command -p" file

-heartbeat-interval

Specify how often the -heartbeat-cmd should be executed, in seconds between executions (default: 30.0).

-identify

Shorthand for -msglevel identify=4. Show file parameters in an easily parseable format. Also prints more detailed information about subtitle and audio track languages and IDs. In some cases you can get more information by using -msglevel identify=6. For example, for a DVD or Blu-ray it will list the chapters and time length of each title, as well as a disk ID. Combine this with -frames 0 to suppress all video output. The wrapper script TOOLS/midentify.sh suppresses the other MPlayer output and (hopefully) shellescapes the filenames.

-idle (also see -slave)

Makes MPlayer wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to play. Mostly useful in slave mode where MPlayer can be controlled through input commands.
For gmplayer -idle is the default, -noidle will quit the GUI after all files have been played.

-input <commands>

This option can be used to configure certain parts of the input system. Paths are relative to ~/.mplayer/.
NOTE: Autorepeat is currently only supported by joysticks.

Available commands are:

-key-fifo-size <2-65000>

Specify the size of the FIFO that buffers key events (default: 7). A FIFO of size n can buffer (n-1) events. If it is too small some events may be lost. If it is too big, MPlayer may seem to hang while it processes the buffered events. To get the same behavior as before this option was introduced, set it to 2 for Linux or 1024 for Windows. For small value you should disable double-clicks by setting -doubleclick-time to 0 so they do not compete with regular events for buffer space.

-lircconf <filename> (LIRC only)

Specifies a configuration file for LIRC (default: ~/.lircrc).

-list-properties

Print a list of the available properties.

-loop <number>

Loops movie playback <number> times. 0 means forever. Use -loop 0 to automatically reconnect to live streaming URLs.

-menu (OSD menu only)

Turn on OSD menu support.

-menu-cfg <filename> (OSD menu only)

Use an alternative menu.conf.

-menu-chroot <path> (OSD menu only)

Chroot the file selection menu to a specific location.

EXAMPLE:

-menu-keepdir (OSD menu only)

File browser starts from the last known location instead of current directory.

-menu-root <value> (OSD menu only)

Specify the main menu.

-menu-startup (OSD menu only)

Display the main menu at MPlayer startup.

-mouse-movements

Permit MPlayer to receive pointer events reported by the video output driver. Necessary to select the buttons in DVD menus. Supported for X11-based VOs (x11, xv, xvmc, etc) and the gl, gl_tiled, direct3d and corevideo VOs.

-noar

Turns off AppleIR remote support.

-noconsolecontrols

Prevent MPlayer from reading key events from standard input. Useful when reading data from standard input. This is automatically enabled when - is found on the command line. There are situations where you have to set it manually, e.g. if you open /dev/stdin (or the equivalent on your system), use stdin in a playlist or intend to read from stdin later on via the loadfile or loadlist slave commands.

-nojoystick

Turns off joystick support.

-nolirc

Turns off LIRC support.

-nomouseinput

Disable mouse button press/release input (mozplayerxp's context menu relies on this option).

-rtc (RTC only)

Turns on usage of the Linux RTC (realtime clock - /dev/rtc) as timing mechanism. This wakes up the process every 1/1024 seconds to check the current time. Useless with modern Linux kernels configured for desktop use as they already wake up the process with similar accuracy when using normal timed sleep.

-pausing <0-3> (MPlayer only)

Specifies the default pausing behaviour of commands, i.e. whether MPlayer will continue playback or stay paused after the command has finished. See DOCS/tech/slave.txt for further details.

-playing-msg <string>

Print out a string before starting playback. The following expansions are supported:

-playlist <filename>

Play files according to a playlist file (ASX, Winamp, SMIL, or one-file-per-line format).
WARNING: The way MPlayer parses and uses playlist files is not safe against maliciously constructed files. Such files may trigger harmful actions. This has been the case for all MPlayer versions, but unfortunately this fact was not well documented earlier, and some people have even misguidedly recommended use of -playlist with untrusted sources. Do NOT use -playlist with random internet sources or files you don't trust!
NOTE: This option is considered an entry so options found after it will apply only to the elements of this playlist.
FIXME: This needs to be clarified and documented thoroughly.

-allow-dangerous-playlist-parsing

This enables parsing any file as a playlist if e.g. a server advertises a file as playlist. Only enable if you know all servers involved are trustworthy. MPlayer's playlist code is not designed to handle malicious playlist files.

-rtc-device <device>

Use the specified device for RTC timing.

-shuffle

Play files in random order.

-skin <name> (GUI only)

Loads a skin from the directory given as parameter below the default skin directories, ~/.mplayer/skins/ and /usr/local/share/mplayer/skins/.

EXAMPLE:

-slave (also see -input)

Switches on slave mode, in which MPlayer works as a backend for other programs. Instead of intercepting keyboard events, MPlayer will read commands separated by a newline (\n) from stdin.
NOTE: See -input cmdlist for a list of slave commands and DOCS/tech/slave.txt for their description. Also, this is not intended to disable other inputs, e.g. via the video window, use some other method like -input nodefault-bindings:conf=/dev/null for that.

-softsleep

Time frames by repeatedly checking the current time instead of asking the kernel to wake up MPlayer at the correct time. Useful if your kernel timing is imprecise and you cannot use the RTC either. Comes at the price of higher CPU consumption.

-sstep <sec>

Skip <sec> seconds after every frame. The normal framerate of the movie is kept, so playback is accelerated. Since MPlayer can only seek to the next keyframe this may be inexact.

-udp-ip <ip>

Sets the destination address for datagrams sent by the -udp-master. Setting it to a broadcast address allows multiple slaves having the same broadcast address to sync to the master (default: 127.0.0.1).

-udp-master

Send a datagram to -udp-ip on -udp-port just before playing each frame. The datagram indicates the master's position in the file.

-udp-port <port>

Sets the destination port for datagrams sent by the -udp-master, and the port a -udp-slave listens on (default: 23867).

-udp-seek-threshold <sec>

When the master seeks, the slave has to decide whether to seek as well, or to catch up by decoding frames without pausing between frames. If the master is more than <sec> seconds away from the slave, the slave seeks. Otherwise, it "runs" to catch up or waits for the master. This should almost always be left at its default setting of 1 second.

-udp-slave

Listen on -udp-port and match the master's position.

DEMUXER/STREAM OPTIONS

-a52drc <level>

Select the Dynamic Range Compression level for AC-3 audio streams. <level> is a float value ranging from 0 to 1, where 0 means no compression and 1 (which is the default) means full compression (make loud passages more silent and vice versa). Values up to 2 are also accepted, but are purely experimental. This option only shows an effect if the AC-3 stream contains the required range compression information.

-aid <ID> (also see -alang)

Select audio channel (MPEG: 0-31, AVI/OGM: 1-99, ASF/RM: 0-127, VOB(AC-3): 128-159, VOB(LPCM): 160-191, MPEG-TS 17-8190). MPlayer prints the available audio IDs when run in verbose (-v) mode. When playing an MPEG-TS stream, MPlayer/MEncoder will use the first program (if present) with the chosen audio stream.

-ausid <ID> (also see -alang)

Select audio substream channel. Currently the valid range is 0x55..0x75 and applies only to MPEG-TS when handled by the native demuxer (not by libavformat). The format type may not be correctly identified because of how this information (or lack thereof) is embedded in the stream, but it will demux correctly the audio streams when multiple substreams are present. MPlayer prints the available substream IDs when run with -identify.

-alang <language code[,language code,...]> (also see -aid)

Specify a priority list of audio languages to use. Different container formats employ different language codes. DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter language codes, Matroska, MPEG-TS and NUT use ISO 639-2 three letter language codes while OGM uses a free-form identifier. MPlayer prints the available languages when run in verbose (-v) mode.

EXAMPLE:

-audio-demuxer <[+]name> (-audiofile only)

Force audio demuxer type for -audiofile. Use a '+' before the name to force it, this will skip some checks! Give the demuxer name as printed by -audio-demuxer help. For backward compatibility it also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in libmpdemux/demuxer.h. -audio-demuxer audio or -audio-demuxer 17 forces MP3.

-audiofile <filename>

Play audio from an external file (WAV, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis) while viewing a movie.

-audiofile-cache <kBytes>

Enables caching for the stream used by -audiofile, using the specified amount of memory.

-reuse-socket (udp:// only)

Allows a socket to be reused by other processes as soon as it is closed.

-bandwidth <Bytes> (network only)

Specify the maximum bandwidth for network streaming (for servers that are able to send content in different bitrates). Useful if you want to watch live streamed media behind a slow connection. With Real RTSP streaming, it is also used to set the maximum delivery bandwidth allowing faster cache filling and stream dumping.

-bluray-angle <angle ID> (Blu-ray only)

Some Blu-ray discs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles. Here you can tell MPlayer which angles to use (default: 1).

-bluray-device <path to disc> (Blu-ray only)

Specify the Blu-ray disc location. Must be a directory with Blu-ray structure.

-cache <kBytes>

This option specifies how much memory (in kBytes) to use when precaching a file or URL. Especially useful on slow media.

-nocache

Turns off caching.

-cache-min <percentage>

Playback will start when the cache has been filled up to <percentage> of the total.

-cache-seek-min <percentage>

If a seek is to be made to a position within <percentage> of the cache size from the current position, MPlayer will wait for the cache to be filled to this position rather than performing a stream seek (default: 50).

-capture (MPlayer only)

Allows capturing the primary stream (not additional audio tracks or other kind of streams) into the file specified by -dumpfile or by default. If this option is given, capturing can be started and stopped by pressing the key bound to this function (see section INTERACTIVE CONTROL). Same as for -dumpstream, this will likely not produce usable results for anything else than MPEG streams. Note that, due to cache latencies, captured data may begin and end somewhat delayed compared to what you see displayed.

-cdda <option1:option2> (CDDA only)

This option can be used to tune the CD Audio reading feature of MPlayer.

Available options are:

-cdrom-device <path to device>

Specify the CD-ROM device (default: /dev/cdrom).

-channels <number> (also see -af channels)

Request the number of playback channels (default: 2). MPlayer asks the decoder to decode the audio into as many channels as specified. Then it is up to the decoder to fulfill the requirement. This is usually only important when playing videos with AC-3 audio (like DVDs). In that case liba52 does the decoding by default and correctly downmixes the audio into the requested number of channels. To directly control the number of output channels independently of how many channels are decoded, use the channels filter.
NOTE: This option is honored by codecs (AC-3 only), filters (surround) and audio output drivers (OSS at least).

Available options are:

-chapter <chapter ID>[-<endchapter ID>]

Specify which chapter to start playing at. Optionally specify which chapter to end playing at (default: 1).

-cookies (network only)

Send cookies when making HTTP requests.

-cookies-file <filename> (network only)

Read HTTP cookies from <filename> (default: ~/.mozilla/ and ~/.netscape/) and skip reading from default locations. The file is assumed to be in Netscape format.

-delay <sec>

audio delay in seconds (positive or negative float value)
Negative values delay the audio, and positive values delay the video. Note that this is the exact opposite of the -audio-delay MEncoder option.
NOTE: When used with MEncoder, this is not guaranteed to work correctly with -ovc copy; use -audio-delay instead.

-ignore-start

Ignore the specified starting time for streams in AVI files. In MPlayer, this nullifies stream delays in files encoded with the -audio-delay option. During encoding, this option prevents MEncoder from transferring original stream start times to the new file; the -audio-delay option is not affected. Note that MEncoder sometimes adjusts stream starting times automatically to compensate for anticipated decoding delays, so do not use this option for encoding without testing it first.

-demuxer <[+]name>

Force demuxer type. Use a '+' before the name to force it, this will skip some checks! Give the demuxer name as printed by -demuxer help. For backward compatibility it also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in libmpdemux/demuxer.h.

-dumpaudio (MPlayer only)

Dumps raw compressed audio stream to ./stream.dump (useful with MPEG/AC-3, in most other cases the resulting file will not be playable). If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream on the command line only the last one will work.

-dumpfile <filename> (MPlayer only)

Specify which file MPlayer should dump to. Should be used together with -dumpaudio / -dumpvideo / -dumpstream / -capture.

-dumpstream (MPlayer only)

Dumps the raw stream to ./stream.dump. Useful when ripping from DVD or network. If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream on the command line only the last one will work.

-dumpvideo (MPlayer only)

Dump raw compressed video stream to ./stream.dump (not very usable). If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream on the command line only the last one will work.

-dvbin <options> (DVB only)

Pass the following parameters to the DVB input module, in order to override the default ones:

-dvd-device <path to device> (DVD only)

Specify the DVD device or .iso filename (default: /dev/dvd). You can also specify a directory that contains files previously copied directly from a DVD (with e.g. vobcopy).

-dvd-speed <factor or speed in KB/s> (DVD only)

Try to limit DVD speed (default: 0, no change). DVD base speed is about 1350KB/s, so a 8x drive can read at speeds up to 10800KB/s. Slower speeds make the drive more quiet, for watching DVDs 2700KB/s should be quiet and fast enough. MPlayer resets the speed to the drive default value on close. Values less than 100 mean multiples of 1350KB/s, i.e. -dvd-speed 8 selects 10800KB/s.
NOTE: You need write access to the DVD device to change the speed.

-dvdangle <angle ID> (DVD only)

Some DVD discs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles. Here you can tell MPlayer which angles to use (default: 1).

-edl <filename>

Enables edit decision list (EDL) actions during playback. Video will be skipped over and audio will be muted and unmuted according to the entries in the given file. See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/edl.html for details on how to use this.

-endpos <[[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]|size[b|kb|mb]> (also see -ss and -sb)

Stop at given time or byte position.
NOTE: Byte position may not be accurate, as it can only stop at a frame boundary. When used in conjunction with -ss option, -endpos time will shift forward by seconds specified with -ss if not a byte position. In addition it may not work well or not at all when used with any of the -dump options.

EXAMPLE:

-forceidx

Force index rebuilding. Useful for files with broken index (A/V desync, etc). This will enable seeking in files where seeking was not possible. You can fix the index permanently with MEncoder (see the documentation).
NOTE: This option only works if the underlying media supports seeking (i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).

-fps <float value>

Override video framerate. Useful if the original value is wrong or missing.

-frames <number>

Play/convert only first <number> frames, then quit.

-hr-mp3-seek (MP3 only)

Hi-res MP3 seeking. Enabled when playing from an external MP3 file, as we need to seek to the very exact position to keep A/V sync. Can be slow especially when seeking backwards since it has to rewind to the beginning to find an exact frame position.

-http-header-fields <field1,field2>

Set custom HTTP fields when accessing HTTP stream.

EXAMPLE:

-idx (also see -forceidx)

Rebuilds index of files if no index was found, allowing seeking. Useful with broken/incomplete downloads, or badly created files.
NOTE: This option only works if the underlying media supports seeking (i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).

-noidx

Skip rebuilding index file. MEncoder skips writing the index with this option.

-ipv4-only-proxy (network only)

Skip the proxy for IPv6 addresses. It will still be used for IPv4 connections.

-loadidx <index file>

The file from which to read the video index data saved by -saveidx. This index will be used for seeking, overriding any index data contained in the AVI itself. MPlayer will not prevent you from loading an index file generated from a different AVI, but this is sure to cause unfavorable results.
NOTE: This option is obsolete now that MPlayer has OpenDML support.

-mc <seconds/frame>

maximum A-V sync correction per frame (in seconds)
-mc 0 should always be combined with -noskip for mencoder, otherwise it will almost certainly cause A-V desync.

-mf <option1:option2:...>

Used when decoding from multiple PNG or JPEG files.

Available options are:

-ni

Force treating files as non-interleaved. In particular forces usage of non-interleaved AVI parser (fixes playback of some bad AVI files). Can also help playing files that otherwise play audio and video alternating instead of at the same time. This can significantly increase memory usage, thus it would be preferable to fix interleaving of affected files.

-nobps (AVI only)

Do not use average byte/second value for A-V sync. Helps with some AVI files with broken header.

-noextbased

Disables extension-based demuxer selection. By default, when the file type (demuxer) cannot be detected reliably (the file has no header or it is not reliable enough), the filename extension is used to select the demuxer. Always falls back on content-based demuxer selection.

-passwd <password> (also see -user) (network only)

Specify password for HTTP authentication.

-prefer-ipv4 (network only)

Use IPv4 on network connections. Falls back on IPv6 automatically.

-prefer-ipv6 (IPv6 network only)

Use IPv6 on network connections. Falls back on IPv4 automatically.

-psprobe <byte position>

When playing an MPEG-PS or MPEG-PES streams, this option lets you specify how many bytes in the stream you want MPlayer to scan in order to identify the video codec used. This option is needed to play EVO or VDR files containing H.264 streams.

-pvr <option1:option2:...> (PVR only)

This option tunes various encoding properties of the PVR capture module. It has to be used with any hardware MPEG encoder based card supported by the V4L2 driver. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150/250/350/500 and all IVTV based cards are known as PVR capture cards. Be aware that only Linux 2.6.18 kernel and above is able to handle MPEG stream through V4L2 layer. For hardware capture of an MPEG stream and watching it with MPlayer/MEncoder, use 'pvr://' as a movie URL.

Available options are:

-radio <option1:option2:...> (radio only)

These options set various parameters of the radio capture module. For listening to radio with MPlayer use 'radio://<frequency>' (if channels option is not given) or 'radio://<channel_number>' (if channels option is given) as a movie URL. You can see allowed frequency range by running MPlayer with '-v'. To start the grabbing subsystem, use 'radio://<frequency or channel>/capture'. If the capture keyword is not given you can listen to radio using the line-in cable only. Using capture to listen is not recommended due to synchronization problems, which makes this process uncomfortable.

Available options are:

-rawaudio <option1:option2:...>

This option lets you play raw audio files. You have to use -demuxer rawaudio as well. It may also be used to play audio CDs which are not 44kHz 16-bit stereo. For playing raw AC-3 streams use -rawaudio format=0x2000 -demuxer rawaudio.

Available options are:

-rawvideo <option1:option2:...>

This option lets you play raw video files. You have to use -demuxer rawvideo as well.

Available options are:

-referrer <string> (network only)

Specify a referrer path or URL for HTTP requests.

-rtsp-port

Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to force the client's port number. This option may be useful if you are behind a router and want to forward the RTSP stream from the server to a specific client.

-rtsp-destination

Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to force the destination IP address to be bound. This option may be useful with some RTSP server which do not send RTP packets to the right interface. If the connection to the RTSP server fails, use -v to see which IP address MPlayer tries to bind to and try to force it to one assigned to your computer instead.

-rtsp-stream-over-tcp (LIVE555 and NEMESI only)

Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to specify that the resulting incoming RTP and RTCP packets be streamed over TCP (using the same TCP connection as RTSP). This option may be useful if you have a broken internet connection that does not pass incoming UDP packets (see http://www.live555.com/mplayer/).

-rtsp-stream-over-http (LIVE555 only)

Used with 'http://' URLs to specify that the resulting incoming RTP and RTCP packets be streamed over HTTP.

-saveidx <filename>

Force index rebuilding and dump the index to <filename>. Currently this only works with AVI files.
NOTE: This option is obsolete now that MPlayer has OpenDML support.

-sb <byte position> (also see -ss)

Seek to byte position. Useful for playback from CD-ROM images or VOB files with junk at the beginning.

-speed <0.01-100>

Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given as parameter. Not guaranteed to work correctly with -oac copy. Add -af scaletempo to get past the 4x limit on playback.

-srate <Hz>

Select the output sample rate to be used (of course sound cards have limits on this). If the sample frequency selected is different from that of the current media, the resample or lavcresample audio filter will be inserted into the audio filter layer to compensate for the difference. The type of resampling can be controlled by the -af-adv option. The default is fast resampling that may cause distortion.

-ss <time> (also see -sb)

Seek to given time position. Use -ss nopts to disable seeking, -ss 0 has different behaviour.

EXAMPLE:

-tskeepbroken

Tells MPlayer not to discard TS packets reported as broken in the stream. Sometimes needed to play corrupted MPEG-TS files.

-tsprobe <byte position>

When playing an MPEG-TS stream, this option lets you specify how many bytes in the stream you want MPlayer to search for the desired audio and video IDs.

-tsprog <1-65534>

When playing an MPEG-TS stream, you can specify with this option which program (if present) you want to play. Can be used with -vid and -aid.

-tv <option1:option2:...> (TV/PVR only)

This option tunes various properties of the TV capture module. For watching TV with MPlayer, use 'tv://' or 'tv://<channel_number>' or even 'tv://<channel_name> (see option channels for channel_name below) as a movie URL. You can also use 'tv:///<input_id>' to start watching a movie from a composite or S-Video input (see option input for details).

Available options are:

-tvscan <option1:option2:...> (TV and MPlayer only)

Tune the TV channel scanner. MPlayer will also print value for "-tv channels=" option, including existing and just found channels.

Available suboptions are:

-user <username> (also see -passwd) (network only)

Specify username for HTTP authentication.

-user-agent <string>

Use <string> as user agent for HTTP streaming.

-vid <ID>

Select video channel (MPG: 0-15, ASF: 0-255, MPEG-TS: 17-8190). When playing an MPEG-TS stream, MPlayer/MEncoder will use the first program (if present) with the chosen video stream.

-vivo <suboption> (DEBUG CODE)

Force audio parameters for the VIVO demuxer (for debugging purposes). FIXME: Document this.

OSD/SUBTITLE OPTIONS

NOTE: Also see -vf expand.

-ass (FreeType only)

Turn on SSA/ASS subtitle rendering. With this option, libass will be used for SSA/ASS external subtitles and Matroska tracks. You may also want to use -embeddedfonts.
NOTE: Unlike normal OSD, libass uses fontconfig by default. To disable it, use -nofontconfig.

-ass-border-color <value>

Sets the border (outline) color for text subtitles. The color format is RRGGBBAA.

-ass-bottom-margin <value>

Adds a black band at the bottom of the frame. The SSA/ASS renderer can place subtitles there (with -ass-use-margins).

-ass-color <value>

Sets the color for text subtitles. The color format is RRGGBBAA.

-ass-font-scale <value>

Set the scale coefficient to be used for fonts in the SSA/ASS renderer.

-ass-force-style <[Style.]Param=Value[,...]>

Override some style or script info parameters.

EXAMPLE:

-ass-hinting <type>

Set hinting type. <type> can be:

-ass-line-spacing <value>

Set line spacing value for SSA/ASS renderer.

-ass-styles <filename>

Load all SSA/ASS styles found in the specified file and use them for rendering text subtitles. The syntax of the file is exactly like the [V4 Styles] / [V4+ Styles] section of SSA/ASS.

-ass-top-margin <value>

Adds a black band at the top of the frame. The SSA/ASS renderer can place toptitles there (with -ass-use-margins).

-ass-use-margins

Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are available.

-dumpjacosub (MPlayer only)

Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based JACOsub subtitle format. Creates a dumpsub.js file in the current directory.

-dumpmicrodvdsub (MPlayer only)

Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the MicroDVD subtitle format. Creates a dumpsub.sub file in the current directory.

-dumpmpsub (MPlayer only)

Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to MPlayer's subtitle format, MPsub. Creates a dump.mpsub file in the current directory.

-dumpsami (MPlayer only)

Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based SAMI subtitle format. Creates a dumpsub.smi file in the current directory.

-dumpsrtsub (MPlayer only)

Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based SubViewer (SRT) subtitle format. Creates a dumpsub.srt file in the current directory.
NOTE: Some broken hardware players choke on SRT subtitle files with Unix line endings. If you are unlucky enough to have such a box, pass your subtitle files through unix2dos or a similar program to replace Unix line endings with DOS/Windows line endings.

-dumpsub (MPlayer only) (BETA CODE)

Dumps the subtitle substream from VOB streams. Also see the -dump*sub and -vobsubout* options.

-embeddedfonts (FreeType only)

Enables extraction of Matroska embedded fonts (default: disabled). These fonts can be used for SSA/ASS subtitle rendering (-ass option). Font files are created in the ~/.mplayer/fonts directory.
NOTE: With FontConfig 2.4.2 or newer, embedded fonts are opened directly from memory, and this option is enabled by default.

-ffactor <number>

Resample the font alphamap. Can be:

-flip-hebrew (FriBiDi only)

Turns on flipping subtitles using FriBiDi.

-noflip-hebrew-commas

Change FriBiDi's assumptions about the placements of commas in subtitles. Use this if commas in subtitles are shown at the start of a sentence instead of at the end.

-font <path to font.desc file, path to font (FreeType), font pattern (Fontconfig)>

Search for the OSD/subtitle fonts in an alternative directory (default for normal fonts: ~/.mplayer/font/font.desc, default for FreeType fonts: ~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf, default for Fontconfig: "sans-serif").
NOTE: With FreeType, this option determines the path to the font file. With Fontconfig, this option determines the Fontconfig font pattern.

EXAMPLE:

-fontconfig (fontconfig only)

Enables the usage of fontconfig managed fonts (default: autodetect).
NOTE: By default fontconfig is used for libass-rendered subtitles and not used for OSD. With -fontconfig it is used for both libass and OSD, with -nofontconfig it is not used at all, i.e. only then -font and -subfont will work with a given path to font.

-forcedsubsonly

Display only forced subtitles for the DVD subtitle stream selected by e.g. -slang.

-fribidi-charset <charset name> (FriBiDi only)

Specifies the character set that will be passed to FriBiDi when decoding non-UTF-8 subtitles (default: ISO8859-8).

-ifo <VOBsub IFO file>

Indicate the file that will be used to load palette and frame size for VOBsub subtitles.

-noautosub

Turns off automatic subtitle file loading. Note: VOBsub subtitles are not affected.

-osd-duration <time>

Set the duration of the OSD messages in ms (default: 1000).

-osd-fractions <0-2>

Set how fractions of seconds of the current timestamp are printed on the OSD:

-osdlevel <0-3> (MPlayer only)

Specifies which mode the OSD should start in.

-overlapsub

Allows the next subtitle to be displayed while the current one is still visible (default is to enable the support only for specific formats).

-progbar-align <0-100>

Specify the vertical alignment of the progress bar (0: top, 100: bottom, default is 50, i.e. centered).

-sid <ID> (also see -slang, -vobsubid)

Display the subtitle stream specified by <ID> (0-31). MPlayer prints the available subtitle IDs when run in verbose (-v) mode. If you cannot select one of the subtitles on a DVD, also try -vobsubid.

-nosub

Disables any otherwise auto-selected internal subtitles (as e.g. the Matroska/mkv demuxer supports). Use -noautosub to disable the loading of external subtitle files.

-slang <language code[,language code,...]> (also see -sid)

Specify a priority list of subtitle languages to use. Different container formats employ different language codes. DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter language codes, Matroska uses ISO 639-2 three letter language codes while OGM uses a free-form identifier. MPlayer prints the available languages when run in verbose (-v) mode.

EXAMPLE:

-spuaa <mode>

Antialiasing/scaling mode for DVD/VOBsub. A value of 16 may be added to <mode> in order to force scaling even when original and scaled frame size already match. This can be employed to e.g. smooth subtitles with gaussian blur. Available modes are:

-spualign <-1-2>

Specify how SPU (DVD/VOBsub) subtitles should be aligned.

-spugauss <0.0-3.0>

Variance parameter of gaussian used by -spuaa 4. Higher means more blur (default: 1.0).

-sub <subtitlefile1,subtitlefile2,...>

Use/display these subtitle files. Only one file can be displayed at the same time.

-sub-bg-alpha <0-255>

Specify the alpha channel value for subtitles and OSD backgrounds. Big values mean more transparency. 0 means completely transparent.

-sub-bg-color <0-255>

Specify the color value for subtitles and OSD backgrounds. Currently subtitles are grayscale so this value is equivalent to the intensity of the color. 255 means white and 0 black.

-sub-demuxer <[+]name> (-subfile only) (BETA CODE)

Force subtitle demuxer type for -subfile. Use a '+' before the name to force it, this will skip some checks! Give the demuxer name as printed by -sub-demuxer help. For backward compatibility it also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in subreader.h.

-sub-fuzziness <mode>

Adjust matching fuzziness when searching for subtitles (does not apply to VOBsub):

-sub-no-text-pp

Disables any kind of text post processing done after loading the subtitles. Used for debug purposes.

-subalign <0-2>

Specify which edge of the subtitles should be aligned at the height given by -subpos.

-subcc <1-8> 

Display DVD Closed Caption (CC) subtitles from the specified channel. Values 5 to 8 select a mode that can extract EIA-608 compatibility streams from EIA-708 data. These are not the VOB subtitles, these are special ASCII subtitles for the hearing impaired encoded in the VOB userdata stream on most region 1 DVDs. CC subtitles have not been spotted on DVDs from other regions so far.

-subcp <codepage> (iconv only)

If your system supports iconv(3), you can use this option to specify the subtitle codepage. It takes priority over both -utf8 and -unicode.

EXAMPLE:

-subcp enca:<language>:<fallback codepage> (ENCA only)

You can specify your language using a two letter language code to make ENCA detect the codepage automatically. If unsure, enter anything and watch mplayer -v output for available languages. Use __ (two underscores) if your language is not supported. Fallback codepage specifies the codepage to use, when autodetection fails.

EXAMPLE:

-sub-paths <path1,path2,...>

Specify extra subtitle paths to track in the media directory.

EXAMPLE: Assuming that /path/to/movie/movie.avi is played and -sub-paths sub,subtitles,/tmp/subs is specified, MPlayer searches for subtitle files in these directories:

-subdelay <sec>

Delays subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be negative.

-subfile <filename> (BETA CODE)

Currently useless. Same as -audiofile, but for subtitle streams (OggDS?).

-subfont <path to font (FreeType), font pattern (Fontconfig)> (FreeType only)

Sets the subtitle font (see -font). If no -subfont is given, -font is used.

-subfont-autoscale <0-3> (FreeType only)

Sets the autoscale mode.
NOTE: 0 means that text scale and OSD scale are font heights in points.

The mode can be:

-subfont-blur <0-8> (FreeType only)

Sets the font blur radius (default: 2).

-subfont-encoding <value>

Sets the font encoding. When set to 'unicode', all the glyphs from the font file will be rendered and unicode will be used (default: unicode). (Without FreeType, setting any other value than 'unicode' will disable unicode glyphs rendering for font.desc files. With FreeType and for other values than 'unicode' your system has to support iconv(3) in order for this to work.)

-subfont-osd-scale <0-100> (FreeType only)

Sets the autoscale coefficient of the OSD elements (default: 6).

-subfont-outline <0-8> (FreeType only)

Sets the font outline thickness (default: 2).

-subfont-text-scale <0-100> (FreeType only)

Sets the subtitle text autoscale coefficient as percentage of the screen size (default: 5).

-subfps <rate>

Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: movie fps).
NOTE: <rate> > movie fps speeds the subtitles up for frame-based subtitle files and slows them down for time-based ones.

-subpos <0-150> (useful with -vf expand)

Specify the position of subtitles on the screen. The value is the vertical position of the subtitle in % of the screen height. Values larger than 100 allow part of the subtitle to be cut off.

-subwidth <10-100>

Specify the maximum width of subtitles on the screen. Useful for TV-out. The value is the width of the subtitle in % of the screen width.

-noterm-osd

Disable the display of OSD messages on the console when no video output is available.

-term-osd-esc <escape sequence>

Specify the escape sequence to use before writing an OSD message on the console. The escape sequence should move the pointer to the beginning of the line used for the OSD and clear it (default: ^[[A\r^[[K).

-unicode

Tells MPlayer to handle the subtitle file as unicode. (It will only take effect if neither -subcp nor -utf8 is given.)

-unrarexec <path to unrar executable> (not supported on MingW)

Specify the path to the unrar executable so MPlayer can use it to access rar-compressed VOBsub files (default: not set, so the feature is off). The path must include the executable's filename, i.e. /usr/local/bin/unrar.

-utf8   

Tells MPlayer to handle the subtitle file as UTF-8. (It will only take effect if -subcp isn't given, and it takes priority over -unicode.)

-vobsub <VOBsub file without extension>

Specify a VOBsub file to use for subtitles. Has to be the full pathname without extension, i.e. without the '.idx', '.ifo' or '.sub'.

-vobsubid <0-31>

Specify the VOBsub subtitle ID.

AUDIO OUTPUT OPTIONS (MPLAYER ONLY)

-abs <value> (-ao oss only) (OBSOLETE)

Override audio driver/card buffer size detection.

-format <format> (also see the format audio filter)

Select the sample format used for output from the audio filter layer to the sound card. The values that <format> can adopt are listed below in the description of the format audio filter.

-mixer <device>

Use a mixer device different from the default /dev/mixer. For ALSA this is the mixer name.

-mixer-channel <mixer line>[,mixer index] (-ao oss and -ao alsa only)

This option will tell MPlayer to use a different channel for controlling volume than the default PCM. Options for OSS include vol, pcm, line. For a complete list of options look for SOUND_DEVICE_NAMES in /usr/include/linux/soundcard.h. For ALSA you can use the names e.g. alsamixer displays, like Master, Line, PCM.
NOTE: ALSA mixer channel names followed by a number must be specified in the <name,number> format, i.e. a channel labeled 'PCM 1' in alsamixer must be converted to PCM,1.

-softvol

Force the use of the software mixer, instead of using the sound card mixer.

-softvol-max <10.0-10000.0>

Set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 110). A value of 200 will allow you to adjust the volume up to a maximum of double the current level. With values below 100 the initial volume (which is 100%) will be above the maximum, which e.g. the OSD cannot display correctly.

-volstep <0-100>

Set the step size of mixer volume changes in percent of the whole range (default: 3).

-volume <-1-100> (also see -af volume)

Set the startup volume in the mixer, either hardware or software (if used with -softvol). A value of -1 (the default) will not change the volume.

AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)

Audio output drivers are interfaces to different audio output facilities. The syntax is:

-ao <driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>

Specify a priority list of audio output drivers to be used.

If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on drivers not contained in the list. Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE: See -ao help for a list of compiled-in audio output drivers.

EXAMPLE:

Available audio output drivers are:

alsa   

ALSA 0.9/1.x audio output driver

oss    

OSS audio output driver

sdl (SDL only)

highly platform independent SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) library audio output driver

arts   

audio output through the aRts daemon

esd    

audio output through the ESD daemon

jack    

audio output through JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit)

nas    

audio output through NAS

coreaudio (Mac OS X only)

native Mac OS X audio output driver

openal 

Experimental OpenAL audio output driver

pulse  

PulseAudio audio output driver

sgi (SGI only)

native SGI audio output driver

sun (Sun only)

native Sun audio output driver

win32 (Windows only)

native Windows waveout audio output driver

dsound (Windows only)

DirectX DirectSound audio output driver

kai (OS/2 only)

OS/2 KAI audio output driver

dart (OS/2 only)

OS/2 DART audio output driver

dxr2 (also see -dxr2) (DXR2 only)

Creative DXR2 specific output driver

ivtv (IVTV only)

IVTV specific MPEG audio output driver. Works with -ac hwmpa only.

v4l2 (requires Linux 2.6.22+ kernel)

Audio output driver for V4L2 cards with hardware MPEG decoder.

mpegpes (DVB only)

Audio output driver for DVB cards that writes the output to an MPEG-PES file if no DVB card is installed.

null   

Produces no audio output but maintains video playback speed. Use -nosound for benchmarking.

pcm    

raw PCM/wave file writer audio output

plugin  

plugin audio output driver

VIDEO OUTPUT OPTIONS (MPLAYER ONLY)

-adapter <value>

Set the graphics card that will receive the image. You can get a list of available cards when you run this option with -v. Currently only works with the directx video output driver.

-bpp <depth>

Override the autodetected color depth. Only supported by the fbdev, dga, svga, vesa video output drivers.

-border

Play movie with window border and decorations. Since this is on by default, use -noborder to disable the standard window decorations.

-brightness <-100-100>

Adjust the brightness of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported by all video output drivers.

-contrast <-100-100>

Adjust the contrast of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported by all video output drivers.

-display <name> (X11 only)

Specify the hostname and display number of the X server you want to display on.

EXAMPLE:

-dr    

Turns on direct rendering (not supported by all codecs and video outputs). This can result in significantly faster blitting on some systems, on most the difference will be minimal. In some cases, particularly with decoders specifying their buffer requirements badly, it can be vastly slower.
WARNING: May cause OSD/SUB corruption!

-dxr2 <option1:option2:...>

This option is used to control the dxr2 video output driver.

-fbmode <modename> (-vo fbdev only)

Change video mode to the one that is labeled as <modename> in /etc/fb.modes.
NOTE: VESA framebuffer does not support mode changing.

-fbmodeconfig <filename> (-vo fbdev only)

Override framebuffer mode configuration file (default: /etc/fb.modes).

-fs (also see -zoom)

Fullscreen playback (centers movie, and paints black bands around it). Not supported by all video output drivers.

-fsmode-dontuse <0-31> (OBSOLETE, use the -fs option)

Try this option if you still experience fullscreen problems.

-fstype <type1,type2,...> (X11 only)

Specify a priority list of fullscreen modes to be used. You can negate the modes by prefixing them with '-'. If you experience problems like the fullscreen window being covered by other windows try using a different order.
NOTE: See -fstype help for a full list of available modes.

The available types are:

-fs-border-left <pixels>

-fs-border-right <pixels>

-fs-border-top <pixels>

-fs-border-bottom <pixels>

Specify extra borders in full screen mode. The borders apply to all displayed elements: video, OSD and EOSD. The number of pixels is specified in terms of screen resolution. Currently only supported with by the gl video output driver.

-gamma <-100-100>

Adjust the gamma of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported by all video output drivers.

-geometry x[%][:y[%]] or [WxH][+-x+-y]

Adjust where the output is on the screen initially. The x and y specifications are in pixels measured from the top-left of the screen to the top-left of the image being displayed, however if a percentage sign is given after the argument it turns the value into a percentage of the screen size in that direction. It also supports the standard X11 -geometry option format, in which e.g. +10-50 means "place 10 pixels from the left border and 50 pixels from the lower border" and "--20+-10" means "place 20 pixels beyond the right and 10 pixels beyond the top border". If an external window is specified using the -wid option, then the x and y coordinates are relative to the top-left corner of the window rather than the screen. The coordinates are relative to the screen given with -screen for the video output drivers that fully support -screen (direct3d, gl, gl_tiled, vdpau, x11, xv, xvmc, corevideo).
NOTE: This option is only supported by the x11, xmga, xv, xvmc, xvidix, gl, gl_tiled, direct3d, directx, fbdev, sdl, dfxfb and corevideo video output drivers.

EXAMPLE:

-gui-wid <window ID> (also see -wid) (GUI only)

This tells the GUI to also use an X11 window and stick itself to the bottom of the video, which is useful to embed a mini-GUI in a browser (with the MPlayer plugin for instance).

-hue <-100-100>

Adjust the hue of the video signal (default: 0). You can get a colored negative of the image with this option. Not supported by all video output drivers.

-monitor-dotclock <range[,range,...]> (-vo fbdev and vesa only)

Specify the dotclock or pixelclock range of the monitor.

-monitor-hfreq <range[,range,...]> (-vo fbdev and vesa only)

Specify the horizontal frequency range of the monitor.

-monitor-vfreq <range[,range,...]> (-vo fbdev and vesa only)

Specify the vertical frequency range of the monitor.

-monitoraspect <ratio> (also see -aspect)

Set the aspect ratio of your monitor or TV screen. A value of 0 disables a previous setting (e.g. in the config file). Overrides the -monitorpixelaspect setting if enabled.

EXAMPLE:

-monitorpixelaspect <ratio> (also see -aspect)

Set the aspect of a single pixel of your monitor or TV screen (default: 1). A value of 1 means square pixels (correct for (almost?) all LCDs).

-name (X11 only)

Set the window class name.

-nodouble

Disables double buffering, mostly for debugging purposes. Double buffering fixes flicker by storing two frames in memory, and displaying one while decoding another. It can affect OSD negatively, but often removes OSD flickering.

-nograbpointer

Do not grab the mouse pointer after a video mode change (-vm). Useful for multihead setups.

-nokeepaspect

Do not keep window aspect ratio when resizing windows. Only works with the x11, xv, xmga, xvidix, directx video output drivers. Furthermore under X11 your window manager has to honor window aspect hints.

-ontop 

Makes the player window stay on top of other windows. Supported by video output drivers which use X11, except SDL, as well as directx, corevideo, quartz, ggi and gl_tiled.

-panscan <0.0-1.0>

Enables pan-and-scan functionality (cropping the sides of e.g. a 16:9 movie to make it fit a 4:3 display without black bands). The range controls how much of the image is cropped. Only works with the directx, xv, xmga, mga, gl, gl_tiled, quartz, corevideo and xvidix video output drivers.
NOTE: Values between -1 and 0 are allowed as well, but highly experimental and may crash or worse. Use at your own risk!

-panscanrange <-19.0-99.0> (experimental)

Change the range of the pan-and-scan functionality (default: 1). Positive values mean multiples of the default range. Negative numbers mean you can zoom in up to a factor of -panscanrange+1. E.g. -panscanrange -3 allows a zoom factor of up to 4. This feature is experimental.

-border-pos-x <0.0-1.0> (-vo gl,xv,xvmc,vdpau,direct3d only, default 0.5)

When black borders are added to adjust for aspect, this determines where they are placed. 0.0 places borders on the right, 1.0 on the left. Values outside the range 0.0 - 1.0 will add extra black borders on one side and remove part of the image on the other side.

-border-pos-y <0.0-1.0> (-vo gl,xv,xvmc,vdpau,direct3d only, default 0.5)

As -border-pos-x but for top/bottom borders. 0.0 places borders on the bottom, 1.0 on the top.

-monitor-orientation <0-3> (experimental)

Rotate display by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Rotates also the OSD, not just the video image itself. Currently only supported by the gl video output driver. For all other video outputs -vf ass,expand=osd=1,rotate=n can be used, in the future this might even happen automatically.

-refreshrate <Hz>

Set the monitor refreshrate in Hz. Currently only supported by -vo directx combined with the -vm option.

-rootwin

Play movie in the root window (desktop background). Desktop background images may cover the movie window, though. Only works with the x11, xv, xmga, xvidix, quartz, corevideo and directx video output drivers.

-saturation <-100-100>

Adjust the saturation of the video signal (default: 0). You can get grayscale output with this option. Not supported by all video output drivers.

-screenh <pixels>

Specify the screen height for video output drivers which do not know the screen resolution like fbdev, x11 and TV-out.

-screenw <pixels>

Specify the screen width for video output drivers which do not know the screen resolution like fbdev, x11 and TV-out.

-(no)stop-xscreensaver (X11 only)

Turns off xscreensaver at startup and turns it on again on exit (default: enabled). If your screensaver supports neither the XSS nor XResetScreenSaver API please use -heartbeat-cmd instead.

-title (also see -use-filename-title)

Set the window title. Supported by X11-based video output drivers.

-use-filename-title (also see -title)

Set the window title using the media filename, when not set with -title. Supported by X11-based video output drivers.

-vm    

Try to change to a different video mode. Supported by the dga, x11, xv, sdl and directx video output drivers. If used with the directx video output driver the -screenw, -screenh, -bpp and -refreshrate options can be used to set the new display mode.

-vsync   

Enables VBI for the vesa, dfbmga and svga video output drivers.

-wid <window ID> (also see -gui-wid) (X11, OpenGL and DirectX only)

This tells MPlayer to attach to an existing window. Useful to embed MPlayer in a browser (e.g. the plugger extension). This option fills the given window completely, thus aspect scaling, panscan, etc are no longer handled by MPlayer but must be managed by the application that created the window.

-screen <-2-...> (alias for -xineramascreen)

In Xinerama configurations (i.e. a single desktop that spans across multiple displays) this option tells MPlayer which screen to display the movie on. A value of -2 means fullscreen across the whole virtual display (in this case Xinerama information is completely ignored), -1 means fullscreen on the display the window currently is on. The initial position set via the -geometry option is relative to the specified screen. Will usually only work with "-fstype -fullscreen" or "-fstype none". This option is not suitable to only set the startup screen (because it will always display on the given screen in fullscreen mode), -geometry is the best that is available for that purpose currently. Supported by at least the direct3d, gl, gl_tiled, x11, xv and corevideo video output drivers.

-zrbw (-vo zr only)

Display in black and white. For optimal performance, this can be combined with '-lavdopts gray'.

-zrcrop <[width]x[height]+[x offset]+[y offset]> (-vo zr only)

Select a part of the input image to display, multiple occurrences of this option switch on cinerama mode. In cinerama mode the movie is distributed over more than one TV (or beamer) to create a larger image. Options appearing after the n-th -zrcrop apply to the n-th MJPEG card, each card should at least have a -zrdev in addition to the -zrcrop. For examples, see the output of -zrhelp and the Zr section of the documentation.

-zrdev <device> (-vo zr only)

Specify the device special file that belongs to your MJPEG card, by default the zr video output driver takes the first v4l device it can find.

-zrfd (-vo zr only)

Force decimation: Decimation, as specified by -zrhdec and -zrvdec, only happens if the hardware scaler can stretch the image to its original size. Use this option to force decimation.

-zrhdec <1|2|4> (-vo zr only)

Horizontal decimation: Ask the driver to send only every 2nd or 4th line/pixel of the input image to the MJPEG card and use the scaler of the MJPEG card to stretch the image to its original size.

-zrhelp (-vo zr only)

Display a list of all -zr* options, their default values and a cinerama mode example.

-zrnorm <norm> (-vo zr only)

Specify the TV norm as PAL or NTSC (default: no change).

-zrquality <1-20> (-vo zr only)

A number from 1 (best) to 20 (worst) representing the JPEG encoding quality.

-zrvdec <1|2|4> (-vo zr only)

Vertical decimation: Ask the driver to send only every 2nd or 4th line/pixel of the input image to the MJPEG card and use the scaler of the MJPEG card to stretch the image to its original size.

-zrxdoff <x display offset> (-vo zr only)

If the movie is smaller than the TV screen, this option specifies the x offset from the upper-left corner of the TV screen (default: centered).

-zrydoff <y display offset> (-vo zr only)

If the movie is smaller than the TV screen, this option specifies the y offset from the upper-left corner of the TV screen (default: centered).

VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)

Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facilities. The syntax is:

-vo <driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>

Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.

If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on drivers not contained in the list. Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE: See -vo help for a list of compiled-in video output drivers.

EXAMPLE:

Available video output drivers are:

xv (X11 only)

Uses the XVideo extension of XFree86 4.x to enable hardware accelerated playback. If you cannot use a hardware specific driver, this is probably the best option. For information about what colorkey is used and how it is drawn run MPlayer with -v option and look out for the lines tagged with [xv common] at the beginning.

x11 (X11 only)

Shared memory video output driver without hardware acceleration that works whenever X11 is present.

xover (X11 only)

Adds X11 support to all overlay based video output drivers. Currently only supported by tdfx_vid.

vdpau (with -vc ffmpeg12vdpau, ffwmv3vdpau, ffvc1vdpau, ffh264vdpau or ffodivxvdpau)

Video output that uses VDPAU to decode video via hardware. Also supports displaying of software-decoded video.

xvmc (X11 with FFmpeg MPEG-1/2 decoder only)

Video output driver that uses the XvMC (X Video Motion Compensation) extension of XFree86 4.x to speed up MPEG-1/2 and VCR2 decoding.

dga (X11 only)

Play video through the XFree86 Direct Graphics Access extension. Considered obsolete.

sdl (SDL only, buggy/outdated)

Highly platform independent SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer) library video output driver. Since SDL uses its own X11 layer, MPlayer X11 options do not have any effect on SDL. Note that it has several minor bugs (-vm/-novm is mostly ignored, -fs behaves like -novm should, window is in top-left corner when returning from fullscreen, panscan is not supported, ...).

vidix  

VIDIX (VIDeo Interface for *niX) is an interface to the video acceleration features of different graphics cards. Very fast video output driver on cards that support it.

xvidix (X11 only)

X11 frontend for VIDIX

cvidix 

Generic and platform independent VIDIX frontend, can even run in a text console with nVidia cards.

winvidix (Windows only)

Windows frontend for VIDIX

direct3d (Windows only) (BETA CODE!)

Video output driver that uses the Direct3D interface (useful for Vista).

directx (Windows only)

Video output driver that uses the DirectX interface.

kva (OS/2 only)

Video output driver that uses the libkva interface.

quartz (Mac OS X only)

Mac OS X Quartz video output driver. Under some circumstances, it might be more efficient to force a packed YUV output format, with e.g. -vf format=yuy2.

corevideo (Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.3.9 with QuickTime 7)

Mac OS X CoreVideo video output driver

fbdev (Linux only)

Uses the kernel framebuffer to play video.

fbdev2 (Linux only)

Uses the kernel framebuffer to play video, alternative implementation.

vesa   

Very general video output driver that should work on any VESA VBE 2.0 compatible card.

svga   

Play video using the SVGA library.

gl     

OpenGL video output driver, simple version. Video size must be smaller than the maximum texture size of your OpenGL implementation. Intended to work even with the most basic OpenGL implementations, but also makes use of newer extensions, which allow support for more colorspaces and direct rendering. For optimal speed try adding the options
-dr -noslices
The code performs very few checks, so if a feature does not work, this might be because it is not supported by your card/OpenGL implementation even if you do not get any error message. Use glxinfo or a similar tool to display the supported OpenGL extensions.

gl_tiled

Variant of the OpenGL video output driver. Supports videos larger than the maximum texture size but lacks many of the advanced features and optimizations of the gl driver and is unlikely to be extended further.

matrixview

OpenGL-based renderer creating a Matrix-like running-text effect.

null   

Produces no video output. Useful for benchmarking.

aa     

ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.
NOTE: The driver does not handle -aspect correctly.
HINT: You probably have to specify -monitorpixelaspect. Try 'mplayer -vo aa -monitorpixelaspect 0.5'.

caca   

Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.

bl     

Video playback using the Blinkenlights UDP protocol. This driver is highly hardware specific.

ggi    

GGI graphics system video output driver

directfb

Play video using the DirectFB library.

dfbmga 

Matrox G400/G450/G550 specific video output driver that uses the DirectFB library to make use of special hardware features. Enables CRTC2 (second head), displaying video independently of the first head.

mga (Linux only)

Matrox specific video output driver that makes use of the YUV back end scaler on Gxxx cards through a kernel module. If you have a Matrox card, this is the fastest option.

xmga (Linux, X11 only)

The mga video output driver, running in an X11 window.

s3fb (Linux only) (also see -dr)

S3 Virge specific video output driver. This driver supports the card's YUV conversion and scaling, double buffering and direct rendering features. Use -vf format=yuy2 to get hardware-accelerated YUY2 rendering, which is much faster than YV12 on this card.

wii (Linux only)

Nintendo Wii/GameCube specific video output driver.

3dfx (Linux only)

3dfx-specific video output driver that directly uses the hardware on top of X11. Only 16 bpp are supported.

tdfxfb (Linux only)

This driver employs the tdfxfb framebuffer driver to play movies with YUV acceleration on 3dfx cards.

tdfx_vid (Linux only)

3dfx-specific video output driver that works in combination with the tdfx_vid kernel module.

dxr2 (also see -dxr2) (DXR2 only)

Creative DXR2 specific video output driver.

dxr3 (DXR3 only)

Sigma Designs em8300 MPEG decoder chip (Creative DXR3, Sigma Designs Hollywood Plus) specific video output driver. Also see the lavc video filter.

ivtv (IVTV only)

Conexant CX23415 (iCompression iTVC15) or Conexant CX23416 (iCompression iTVC16) MPEG decoder chip (Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150/250/350/500) specific video output driver for TV-out. Also see the lavc video filter.

v4l2 (requires Linux 2.6.22+ kernel)

Video output driver for V4L2 compliant cards with built-in hardware MPEG decoder. Also see the lavc video filter.

mpegpes (DVB only)

Video output driver for DVB cards that writes the output to an MPEG-PES file if no DVB card is installed.

zr (also see -zr* and -zrhelp)

Video output driver for a number of MJPEG capture/playback cards.

zr2 (also see the zrmjpeg video filter)

Video output driver for a number of MJPEG capture/playback cards, second generation.

md5sum 

Calculate MD5 sums of each frame and write them to a file. Supports RGB24 and YV12 colorspaces. Useful for debugging.

yuv4mpeg

Transforms the video stream into a sequence of uncompressed YUV 4:2:0 images and stores it in a file (default: ./stream.yuv). The format is the same as the one employed by mjpegtools, so this is useful if you want to process the video with the mjpegtools suite. It supports the YV12 format. If your source file has a different format and is interlaced, make sure to use -vf scale=::1 to ensure the conversion uses interlaced mode. You can combine it with the -fixed-vo option to concatenate files with the same dimensions and fps value.

gif89a 

Output each frame into a single animated GIF file in the current directory. It supports only RGB format with 24 bpp and the output is converted to 256 colors.

jpeg   

Output each frame into a JPEG file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.

pnm    

Output each frame into a PNM file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name. It supports PPM, PGM and PGMYUV files in both raw and ASCII mode. Also see pnm(5), ppm(5) and pgm(5).

png    

Output each frame into a PNG file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name. 24bpp RGB and BGR formats are supported.

mng    

Output video into an animated MNG file using 24 bpp RGB images with lossless compression.

tga    

Output each frame into a Targa file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name. The purpose of this video output driver is to have a simple lossless image writer to use without any external library. It supports the BGR[A] color format, with 15, 24 and 32 bpp. You can force a particular format with the format video filter.

EXAMPLE:

DECODING/FILTERING OPTIONS

-ac <[-|+]codec1,[-|+]codec2,...[,]>

Specify a priority list of audio codecs to be used, according to their codec name in codecs.conf. Use a '-' before the codec name to omit it. Use a '+' before the codec name to force it, this will likely crash! If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on codecs not contained in the list.
NOTE: See -ac help for a full list of available codecs.

EXAMPLE:

-af-adv <force=(0-7):list=(filters)> (also see -af)

Specify advanced audio filter options:

-afm <driver1,driver2,...>

Specify a priority list of audio codec families to be used, according to their codec name in codecs.conf. Falls back on the default codecs if none of the given codec families work.
NOTE: See -afm help for a full list of available codec families.

EXAMPLE:

-aspect <ratio> (also see -zoom)

Override movie aspect ratio, in case aspect information is incorrect or missing in the file being played.

EXAMPLE:

-noaspect

Disable automatic movie aspect ratio compensation.

-field-dominance <-1-1>

Set first field for interlaced content. Useful for deinterlacers that double the framerate: -vf tfields=1, -vf yadif=1, -vo vdpau:deint and -vo xvmc:bobdeint.

-flip  

Flip image upside-down.

-lavdopts <option1:option2:...> (DEBUG CODE)

Specify libavcodec decoding parameters. Separate multiple options with a colon.

EXAMPLE:

-noslices

Disable drawing video by 16-pixel height slices/bands, instead draws the whole frame in a single run. May be faster or slower, depending on video card and available cache. It has effect only with libmpeg2 and libavcodec codecs.

-nosound

Do not play/encode sound. Useful for benchmarking.

-novideo

Do not play/encode video. In many cases this will not work, use -vc null -vo null instead.

-pp <quality> (also see -vf pp)

Set the DLL postprocess level. This option is no longer usable with -vf pp. It only works with Win32 DirectShow DLLs with internal postprocessing routines. The valid range of -pp values varies by codec, it is mostly 0-6, where 0=disable, 6=slowest/best.

-pphelp (also see -vf pp)

Show a summary about the available postprocess filters and their usage.

-ssf <mode>

Specifies software scaler parameters.

EXAMPLE:

-stereo <mode>

Select type of MP2/MP3 stereo output.

-sws <software scaler type> (also see -vf scale and -zoom)

Specify the software scaler algorithm to be used with the -zoom option. This affects video output drivers which lack hardware acceleration, e.g. x11.

Available types are:

-vc <[-|+]codec1,[-|+]codec2,...[,]>

Specify a priority list of video codecs to be used, according to their codec name in codecs.conf. Use a '-' before the codec name to omit it. Use a '+' before the codec name to force it, this will likely crash! If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on codecs not contained in the list.
NOTE: See -vc help for a full list of available codecs.

EXAMPLE:

-vfm <driver1,driver2,...>

Specify a priority list of video codec families to be used, according to their names in codecs.conf. Falls back on the default codecs if none of the given codec families work.
NOTE: See -vfm help for a full list of available codec families.

EXAMPLE:

-x <x> (also see -zoom) (MPlayer only)

Scale image to width <x> (if software/hardware scaling is available). Disables aspect calculations.

-xvidopts <option1:option2:...>

Specify additional parameters when decoding with Xvid.
NOTE: Since libavcodec is faster than Xvid you might want to use the libavcodec postprocessing filter (-vf pp) and decoder (-vfm ffmpeg) instead.

Xvid's internal postprocessing filters:

-xy <value> (also see -zoom)

-y <y> (also see -zoom) (MPlayer only)

Scale image to height <y> (if software/hardware scaling is available). Disables aspect calculations.

-zoom  

Allow software scaling, where available. This will allow scaling with output drivers (like x11, fbdev) that do not support hardware scaling where MPlayer disables scaling by default for performance reasons.

AUDIO FILTERS

Audio filters allow you to modify the audio stream and its properties. The syntax is:

-af <filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>

Setup a chain of audio filters.

NOTE: To get a full list of available audio filters, see -af help.

Audio filters are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the filter list.

-af-add <filter1[,filter2,...]>

Appends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.

-af-pre <filter1[,filter2,...]>

Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.

-af-del <index1[,index2,...]>

Deletes the filters at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).

-af-clr

Completely empties the filter list.

Available filters are:

resample[=srate[:sloppy[:type]]]

Changes the sample rate of the audio stream. Can be used if you have a fixed frequency sound card or if you are stuck with an old sound card that is only capable of max 44.1kHz. This filter is automatically enabled if necessary. It only supports 16-bit integer and float in native-endian format as input.
NOTE: With MEncoder, you need to also use -srate <srate>.

lavcresample[=srate[:length[:linear[:count[:cutoff]]]]]

Changes the sample rate of the audio stream to an integer <srate> in Hz. It only supports the 16-bit native-endian format.
NOTE: With MEncoder, you need to also use -srate <srate>.

lavcac3enc[=tospdif[:bitrate[:minchn]]]

Encode multi-channel audio to AC-3 at runtime using libavcodec. Supports 16-bit native-endian input format, maximum 6 channels. The output is big-endian when outputting a raw AC-3 stream, native-endian when outputting to S/PDIF. The output sample rate of this filter is same with the input sample rate. When input sample rate is 48kHz, 44.1kHz, or 32kHz, this filter directly use it. Otherwise a resampling filter is auto-inserted before this filter to make the input and output sample rate be 48kHz. You need to specify '-channels N' to make the decoder decode audio into N-channel, then the filter can encode the N-channel input to AC-3.

sweep[=speed]

Produces a sine sweep.

sinesuppress[=freq:decay]

Remove a sine at the specified frequency. Useful to get rid of the 50/60Hz noise on low quality audio equipment. It probably only works on mono input.

bs2b[=option1:option2:...]

Bauer stereophonic to binaural transformation using libbs2b. Improves the headphone listening experience by making the sound similar to that from loudspeakers, allowing each ear to hear both channels and taking into account the distance difference and the head shadowing effect. It is applicable only to 2 channel audio.

hrtf[=flag]

Head-related transfer function: Converts multichannel audio to 2 channel output for headphones, preserving the spatiality of the sound.

equalizer=[g1:g2:g3:...:g10]

10 octave band graphic equalizer, implemented using 10 IIR band pass filters. This means that it works regardless of what type of audio is being played back. The center frequencies for the 10 bands are:

channels=nch[:nr:from1:to1:from2:to2:from3:to3:...]

Can be used for adding, removing, routing and copying audio channels. If only <nch> is given the default routing is used, it works as follows: If the number of output channels is bigger than the number of input channels empty channels are inserted (except mixing from mono to stereo, then the mono channel is repeated in both of the output channels). If the number of output channels is smaller than the number of input channels the exceeding channels are truncated.

format[=format] (also see -format)

Convert between different sample formats. Automatically enabled when needed by the sound card or another filter.

volume[=v[:sc]]

Implements software volume control. Use this filter with caution since it can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the sound. In most cases it is best to set the level for the PCM sound to max, leave this filter out and control the output level to your speakers with the master volume control of the mixer. In case your sound card has a digital PCM mixer instead of an analog one, and you hear distortion, use the MASTER mixer instead. If there is an external amplifier connected to the computer (this is almost always the case), the noise level can be minimized by adjusting the master level and the volume knob on the amplifier until the hissing noise in the background is gone.
This filter has a second feature: It measures the overall maximum sound level and prints out that level when MPlayer exits. This volume estimate can be used for setting the sound level in MEncoder such that the maximum dynamic range is utilized. This feature currently only works with floating-point data, use e.g. -af-adv force=5, or use -af stats.
NOTE: This filter is not reentrant and can therefore only be enabled once for every audio stream.

pan=n[:L00:L01:L02:...L10:L11:L12:...Ln0:Ln1:Ln2:...]

Mixes channels arbitrarily. Basically a combination of the volume and the channels filter that can be used to down-mix many channels to only a few, e.g. stereo to mono or vary the "width" of the center speaker in a surround sound system. This filter is hard to use, and will require some tinkering before the desired result is obtained. The number of options for this filter depends on the number of output channels. An example how to downmix a six-channel file to two channels with this filter can be found in the examples section near the end.

sub[=fc:ch]

Adds a subwoofer channel to the audio stream. The audio data used for creating the subwoofer channel is an average of the sound in channel 0 and channel 1. The resulting sound is then low-pass filtered by a 4th order Butterworth filter with a default cutoff frequency of 60Hz and added to a separate channel in the audio stream.
Warning: Disable this filter when you are playing DVDs with Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, otherwise this filter will disrupt the sound to the subwoofer.

center 

Creates a center channel from the front channels. May currently be low quality as it does not implement a high-pass filter for proper extraction yet, but averages and halves the channels instead.

surround[=delay]

Decoder for matrix encoded surround sound like Dolby Surround. Many files with 2 channel audio actually contain matrixed surround sound. Requires a sound card supporting at least 4 channels.

delay[=ch1:ch2:...]

Delays the sound to the loudspeakers such that the sound from the different channels arrives at the listening position simultaneously. It is only useful if you have more than 2 loudspeakers.

export[=mmapped_file[:nsamples]]

Exports the incoming signal to other processes using memory mapping (mmap()). Memory mapped areas contain a header:

int nch                      /*number of channels*/
int size                     /*buffer size*/
unsigned long long counter   /*Used to keep sync, updated every


                               time new data is exported.*/

The rest is payload (non-interleaved) 16 bit data.

extrastereo[=mul]

(Linearly) increases the difference between left and right channels which adds some sort of "live" effect to playback.

volnorm[=method:target]

Maximizes the volume without distorting the sound.

ladspa=file:label[:controls...]

Load a LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API) plugin. This filter is reentrant, so multiple LADSPA plugins can be used at once.

comp   

Compressor/expander filter usable for microphone input. Prevents artifacts on very loud sound and raises the volume on very low sound. This filter is untested, maybe even unusable.

gate   

Noise gate filter similar to the comp audio filter. This filter is untested, maybe even unusable.

karaoke

Simple voice removal filter exploiting the fact that voice is usually recorded with mono gear and later 'center' mixed onto the final audio stream. Beware that this filter will turn your signal into mono. Works well for 2 channel tracks; do not bother trying it on anything but 2 channel stereo.

scaletempo[=option1:option2:...]

Scales audio tempo without altering pitch, optionally synced to playback speed (default).
This works by playing ´stride´ ms of audio at normal speed then consuming ´stride*scale´ ms of input audio. It pieces the strides together by blending ´overlap´% of stride with audio following the previous stride. It optionally performs a short statistical analysis on the next ´search´ ms of audio to determine the best overlap position.

stats  

Collects and prints statistics about the audio stream, especially the volume. These statistics are especially intended to help adjusting the volume while avoiding clipping. The volumes are printed in dB and compatible with the volume audio filter, they are always rounded towards -0dB.

The 'n_samples' field is the total number of samples seen by the filter. The 'mean_volume' field is the root mean square. The 'max_volume' field is exactly what it says. The 'histogram_Xdb' fields count how many samples were at -XdB, for X just below max_volume.

For example, if max_volume is -7dB and histogram_7dB is 19, 'volume=7' will not cause clipping and 'volume=8' will cause clipping on exactly 19 samples.

VIDEO FILTERS

Video filters allow you to modify the video stream and its properties. The syntax is:

-vf <filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>

Setup a chain of video filters.

Many parameters are optional and set to default values if omitted. To explicitly use a default value set a parameter to '-1'. Parameters w:h means width x height in pixels, x:y means x;y position counted from the upper left corner of the bigger image.
NOTE: To get a full list of available video filters, see -vf help.

Video filters are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the filter list.

-vf-add <filter1[,filter2,...]>

Appends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.

-vf-pre <filter1[,filter2,...]>

Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.

-vf-del <index1[,index2,...]>

Deletes the filters at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).

-vf-clr

Completely empties the filter list.

With filters that support it, you can access parameters by their name.

-vf <filter>=help

Prints the parameter names and parameter value ranges for a particular filter.

-vf <filter=named_parameter1=value1[:named_parameter2=value2:...]>

Sets a named parameter to the given value. Use on and off or yes and no to set flag parameters.

Available filters are:

crop[=w:h:x:y]

Crops the given part of the image and discards the rest. Useful to remove black bands from widescreen movies.

cropdetect[=limit:round[:reset]]

Calculates necessary cropping parameters and prints the recommended parameters to stdout.

rectangle[=w:h:x:y]

Draws a rectangle of the requested width and height at the specified coordinates over the image and prints current rectangle parameters to the console. This can be used to find optimal cropping parameters. If you bind the input.conf directive 'change_rectangle' to keystrokes, you can move and resize the rectangle on the fly.

expand[=w:h:x:y:o:a:r]

Expands (not scales) movie resolution to the given value and places the unscaled original at coordinates x, y. Can be used for placing subtitles/OSD in the resulting black bands.

flip (also see -flip)

Flips the image upside down.

mirror 

Mirrors the image on the Y axis.

rotate[=<0-7>]

Rotates the image by 90 degrees and optionally flips it. For values between 4-7 rotation is only done if the movie geometry is portrait and not landscape.

scale[=w:h[:interlaced[:chr_drop[:par[:par2[:presize[:noup[:arnd]]]]]]]]

Scales the image with the software scaler (slow) and performs a YUV<->RGB colorspace conversion (also see -sws).

dsize[=aspect|w:h:aspect-method:r]

Changes the intended display size/aspect at an arbitrary point in the filter chain. Aspect can be given as a fraction (4/3) or floating point number (1.33). Alternatively, you may specify the exact display width and height desired. Note that this filter does not do any scaling itself; it just affects what later scalers (software or hardware) will do when auto-scaling to correct aspect.

yvu9   

Forces software YVU9 to YV12 colorspace conversion. Deprecated in favor of the software scaler.

yuvcsp 

Clamps YUV color values to the CCIR 601 range without doing real conversion.

palette

RGB/BGR 8 -> 15/16/24/32bpp colorspace conversion using palette.

format[=fourcc[:outfourcc]]

Restricts the colorspace for the next filter without doing any conversion. Use together with the scale filter for a real conversion.
NOTE: For a list of available formats see format=fmt=help.

noformat[=fourcc]

Restricts the colorspace for the next filter without doing any conversion. Unlike the format filter, this will allow any colorspace except the one you specify.
NOTE: For a list of available formats see noformat=fmt=help.

pp[=filter1[:option1[:option2...]]/[-]filter2...] (also see -pphelp)

Enables the specified chain of postprocessing subfilters. Subfilters must be separated by '/' and can be disabled by prepending a '-'. Each subfilter and some options have a short and a long name that can be used interchangeably, i.e. dr/dering are the same. All subfilters share common options to determine their scope:

spp[=quality[:qp[:mode]]]

Simple postprocessing filter that compresses and decompresses the image at several (or - in the case of quality level 6 - all) shifts and averages the results.

uspp[=quality[:qp]]

Ultra simple & slow postprocessing filter that compresses and decompresses the image at several (or - in the case of quality level 8 - all) shifts and averages the results. The way this differs from the behavior of spp is that uspp actually encodes & decodes each case with libavcodec Snow, whereas spp uses a simplified intra only 8x8 DCT similar to MJPEG.

fspp[=quality[:qp[:strength[:bframes]]]]

faster version of the simple postprocessing filter

pp7[=qp[:mode]]

Variant of the spp filter, similar to spp=6 with 7 point DCT where only the center sample is used after IDCT.

qp=equation

quantization parameter (QP) change filter

geq=equation

generic equation change filter

test   

Generate various test patterns.

rgbtest[=width:height]

Generate an RGB test pattern useful for detecting RGB vs BGR issues. You should see a red, green and blue stripe from top to bottom.

lavc[=quality:fps]

Fast software YV12 to MPEG-1 conversion with libavcodec for use with DVB/DXR3/IVTV/V4L2.

dvbscale[=aspect]

Set up optimal scaling for DVB cards, scaling the x axis in hardware and calculating the y axis scaling in software to keep aspect. Only useful together with expand and scale.

noise[=luma[u][t|a][h][p]:chroma[u][t|a][h][p]]

Adds noise.

denoise3d[=luma_spatial:chroma_spatial:luma_tmp:chroma_tmp]

This filter aims to reduce image noise producing smooth images and making still images really still (This should enhance compressibility.).

hqdn3d[=luma_spatial:chroma_spatial:luma_tmp:chroma_tmp]

High precision/quality version of the denoise3d filter. Parameters and usage are the same.

ow[=depth[:luma_strength[:chroma_strength]]]

Overcomplete Wavelet denoiser.

eq[=brightness:contrast] (OBSOLETE)

Software equalizer with interactive controls just like the hardware equalizer, for cards/drivers that do not support brightness and contrast controls in hardware. Might also be useful with MEncoder, either for fixing poorly captured movies, or for slightly reducing contrast to mask artifacts and get by with lower bitrates.

eq2[=gamma:contrast:brightness:saturation:rg:gg:bg:weight]

Alternative software equalizer that uses lookup tables (very slow), allowing gamma correction in addition to simple brightness and contrast adjustment. Note that it uses the same MMX optimized code as -vf eq if all gamma values are 1.0. The parameters are given as floating point values.

hue[=hue:saturation]

Software equalizer with interactive controls just like the hardware equalizer, for cards/drivers that do not support hue and saturation controls in hardware.

halfpack[=f]

Convert planar YUV 4:2:0 to half-height packed 4:2:2, downsampling luma but keeping all chroma samples. Useful for output to low-resolution display devices when hardware downscaling is poor quality or is not available. Can also be used as a primitive luma-only deinterlacer with very low CPU usage.

ilpack[=mode]

When interlaced video is stored in YUV 4:2:0 formats, chroma interlacing does not line up properly due to vertical downsampling of the chroma channels. This filter packs the planar 4:2:0 data into YUY2 (4:2:2) format with the chroma lines in their proper locations, so that in any given scanline, the luma and chroma data both come from the same field.

harddup

Only useful with MEncoder. If harddup is used when encoding, it will force duplicate frames to be encoded in the output. This uses slightly more space, but is necessary for output to MPEG files or if you plan to demux and remux the video stream after encoding. Should be placed at or near the end of the filter chain unless you have a good reason to do otherwise.

softskip

Only useful with MEncoder. Softskip moves the frame skipping (dropping) step of encoding from before the filter chain to some point during the filter chain. This allows filters which need to see all frames (inverse telecine, temporal denoising, etc.) to function properly. Should be placed after the filters which need to see all frames and before any subsequent filters that are CPU-intensive.

decimate[=max:hi:lo:frac]

Drops frames that do not differ greatly from the previous frame in order to reduce framerate. The main use of this filter is for very-low-bitrate encoding (e.g. streaming over dialup modem), but it could in theory be used for fixing movies that were inverse-telecined incorrectly.

dint[=sense:level]

The drop-deinterlace (dint) filter detects and drops the first from a set of interlaced video frames.

lavcdeint (OBSOLETE)

FFmpeg deinterlacing filter, same as -vf pp=fd

lavfi=filtergraph

FFmpeg libavfilter wrapper. filtergraph defines a whole libavfilter graph with one input and one output. See http://www.ffmpeg.org/libavfilter.html#SEC4 for details.

As a special case, if filtergraph is $word then the value of the word environment variable is used; this is necessary if commas are present in the graph description, as mplayer uses them as a delimiter between filters.

NOTE: This filter is considered experimental, it may interact strangely with other filters.

EXAMPLE:
overlay="movie=$small_video, scale=160:120 [ca]; [in] [ca] overlay=16:8" mplayer -vf lavfi='$overlay' $big_video

kerndeint[=thresh[:map[:order[:sharp[:twoway]]]]]

Donald Graft's adaptive kernel deinterlacer. Deinterlaces parts of a video if a configurable threshold is exceeded.

unsharp[=l|cWxH:amount[:l|cWxH:amount]]

unsharp mask / gaussian blur

swapuv 

Swap U & V plane.

il[=d|i][s][:[d|i][s]]

(De)interleaves lines. The goal of this filter is to add the ability to process interlaced images pre-field without deinterlacing them. You can filter your interlaced DVD and play it on a TV without breaking the interlacing. While deinterlacing (with the postprocessing filter) removes interlacing permanently (by smoothing, averaging, etc) deinterleaving splits the frame into 2 fields (so called half pictures), so you can process (filter) them independently and then re-interleave them.

fil[=i|d]

(De)interleaves lines. This filter is very similar to the il filter but much faster, the main disadvantage is that it does not always work. Especially if combined with other filters it may produce randomly messed up images, so be happy if it works but do not complain if it does not for your combination of filters.

field[=n]

Extracts a single field from an interlaced image using stride arithmetic to avoid wasting CPU time. The optional argument n specifies whether to extract the even or the odd field (depending on whether n is even or odd).

detc[=var1=value1:var2=value2:...]

Attempts to reverse the 'telecine' process to recover a clean, non-interlaced stream at film framerate. This was the first and most primitive inverse telecine filter to be added to MPlayer/MEncoder. It works by latching onto the telecine 3:2 pattern and following it as long as possible. This makes it suitable for perfectly-telecined material, even in the presence of a fair degree of noise, but it will fail in the presence of complex post-telecine edits. Development on this filter is no longer taking place, as ivtc, pullup, and filmdint are better for most applications. The following arguments (see syntax above) may be used to control detc's behavior:

ivtc[=1]

Experimental 'stateless' inverse telecine filter. Rather than trying to lock on to a pattern like the detc filter does, ivtc makes its decisions independently for each frame. This will give much better results for material that has undergone heavy editing after telecine was applied, but as a result it is not as forgiving of noisy input, for example TV capture. The optional parameter (ivtc=1) corresponds to the dr=1 option for the detc filter, and should be used with MEncoder but not with MPlayer. As with detc, you must specify the correct output framerate (-ofps 24000/1001) when using MEncoder. Further development on ivtc has stopped, as the pullup and filmdint filters appear to be much more accurate.

pullup[=jl:jr:jt:jb:sb:mp]

Third-generation pulldown reversal (inverse telecine) filter, capable of handling mixed hard-telecine, 24000/1001 fps progressive, and 30000/1001 fps progressive content. The pullup filter is designed to be much more robust than detc or ivtc, by taking advantage of future context in making its decisions. Like ivtc, pullup is stateless in the sense that it does not lock onto a pattern to follow, but it instead looks forward to the following fields in order to identify matches and rebuild progressive frames. It is still under development, but believed to be quite accurate.

filmdint[=options]

Inverse telecine filter, similar to the pullup filter above. It is designed to handle any pulldown pattern, including mixed soft and hard telecine and limited support for movies that are slowed down or sped up from their original framerate for TV. Only the luma plane is used to find the frame breaks. If a field has no match, it is deinterlaced with simple linear approximation. If the source is MPEG-2, this must be the first filter to allow access to the field-flags set by the MPEG-2 decoder. Depending on the source MPEG, you may be fine ignoring this advice, as long as you do not see lots of "Bottom-first field" warnings. With no options it does normal inverse telecine, and should be used together with mencoder -fps 30000/1001 -ofps 24000/1001. When this filter is used with MPlayer, it will result in an uneven framerate during playback, but it is still generally better than using pp=lb or no deinterlacing at all. Multiple options can be specified separated by /.

softpulldown

This filter works only correct with MEncoder and acts on the MPEG-2 flags used for soft 3:2 pulldown (soft telecine). If you want to use the ivtc or detc filter on movies that are partly soft telecined, inserting this filter before them should make them more reliable.

divtc[=options]

Inverse telecine for deinterlaced video. If 3:2-pulldown telecined video has lost one of the fields or is deinterlaced using a method that keeps one field and interpolates the other, the result is a juddering video that has every fourth frame duplicated. This filter is intended to find and drop those duplicates and restore the original film framerate. When using this filter, you must specify -ofps that is 4/5 of the fps of the input file and place the softskip later in the filter chain to make sure that divtc sees all the frames. Two different modes are available: One pass mode is the default and is straightforward to use, but has the disadvantage that any changes in the telecine phase (lost frames or bad edits) cause momentary judder until the filter can resync again. Two pass mode avoids this by analyzing the whole video beforehand so it will have forward knowledge about the phase changes and can resync at the exact spot. These passes do not correspond to pass one and two of the encoding process. You must run an extra pass using divtc pass one before the actual encoding throwing the resulting video away. Use -nosound -ovc raw -o /dev/null to avoid wasting CPU power for this pass. You may add something like crop=2:2:0:0 after divtc to speed things up even more. Then use divtc pass two for the actual encoding. If you use multiple encoder passes, use divtc pass two for all of them. The options are:

phase[=t|b|p|a|u|T|B|A|U][:v]

Delay interlaced video by one field time so that the field order changes. The intended use is to fix PAL movies that have been captured with the opposite field order to the film-to-video transfer. The options are:

telecine[=start]

Apply 3:2 'telecine' process to increase framerate by 20%. This most likely will not work correctly with MPlayer, but it can be used with 'mencoder -fps 30000/1001 -ofps 30000/1001 -vf telecine'. Both fps options are essential! (A/V sync will break if they are wrong.) The optional start parameter tells the filter where in the telecine pattern to start (0-3).

tinterlace[=mode]

Temporal field interlacing - merge pairs of frames into an interlaced frame, halving the framerate. Even frames are moved into the upper field, odd frames to the lower field. This can be used to fully reverse the effect of the tfields filter (in mode 0). Available modes are:

tfields[=mode[:field_dominance]]

Temporal field separation - split fields into frames, doubling the output framerate. Like the telecine filter, tfields might not work completely right unless used with MEncoder and both -fps and -ofps set to the desired (double) framerate!

yadif=[mode[:field_dominance]]

Yet another deinterlacing filter

mcdeint=[mode[:parity[:qp]]]

Motion compensating deinterlacer. It needs one field per frame as input and must thus be used together with tfields=1 or yadif=1/3 or equivalent.

boxblur=radius:power[:radius:power]

box blur

sab=radius:pf:colorDiff[:radius:pf:colorDiff]

shape adaptive blur

smartblur=radius:strength:threshold[:radius:strength:threshold]

smart blur

perspective=x0:y0:x1:y1:x2:y2:x3:y3:t

Correct the perspective of movies not filmed perpendicular to the screen.

2xsai  

Scale and smooth the image with the 2x scale and interpolate algorithm.

1bpp   

1bpp bitmap to YUV/BGR 8/15/16/32 conversion

down3dright[=lines]

Reposition and resize stereoscopic images. Extracts both stereo fields and places them side by side, resizing them to maintain the original movie aspect.

bmovl=hidden:opaque:fifo

The bitmap overlay filter reads bitmaps from a FIFO and displays them on top of the movie, allowing some transformations on the image. Also see TOOLS/bmovl-test.c for a small bmovl test program.

framestep=I|[i]step

Renders only every nth frame or every intra frame (keyframe).

If you call the filter with I (uppercase) as the parameter, then only keyframes are rendered. For DVDs it generally means one in every 15/12 frames (IBBPBBPBBPBBPBB), for AVI it means every scene change or every keyint value (see -lavcopts keyint= value if you use MEncoder to encode the video).

When a keyframe is found, an 'I!' string followed by a newline character is printed, leaving the current line of MPlayer/MEncoder output on the screen, because it contains the time (in seconds) and frame number of the keyframe (You can use this information to split the AVI.).

If you call the filter with a numeric parameter 'step' then only one in every 'step' frames is rendered.

If you put an 'i' (lowercase) before the number then an 'I!' is printed (like the I parameter).

If you give only the i then nothing is done to the frames, only I! is printed.

tile=xtiles:ytiles:output:start:delta

Tile a series of images into a single, bigger image. If you omit a parameter or use a value less than 0, then the default value is used. You can also stop when you are satisfied (... -vf tile=10:5 ...). It is probably a good idea to put the scale filter before the tile :-)

The parameters are:

delogo[=x:y:w:h:t]

Suppresses a TV station logo by a simple interpolation of the surrounding pixels. Just set a rectangle covering the logo and watch it disappear (and sometimes something even uglier appear - your mileage may vary).

remove-logo=/path/to/logo_bitmap_file_name.pgm

Suppresses a TV station logo, using a PGM or PPM image file to determine which pixels comprise the logo. The width and height of the image file must match those of the video stream being processed. Uses the filter image and a circular blur algorithm to remove the logo.

zrmjpeg[=options]

Software YV12 to MJPEG encoder for use with the zr2 video output device.

screenshot=prefix

Allows acquiring screenshots of the movie using slave mode commands that can be bound to keypresses. See the slave mode documentation and the INTERACTIVE CONTROL section for details. By default files named 'shotNNNN.png' will be saved in the working directory, using the first available number - no files will be overwritten. Specify a prefix to change the name or location, e.g. -vf screenshot=shots/now will save the files in the directory shots with nowNNNN.png as name. The filter has no overhead when not used and accepts an arbitrary colorspace, so it is safe to add it to the configuration file. Make sure that the screenshot filter is added after all other filters whose effect you want to record on the saved image. E.g. it should be the last filter if you want to have an exact screenshot of what you see on the monitor.

ass    

Moves SSA/ASS subtitle rendering to an arbitrary point in the filter chain. Only useful with the -ass option.

EXAMPLE:

blackframe[=amount:threshold]

Detect frames that are (almost) completely black. Can be useful to detect chapter transitions or commercials. Output lines consist of the frame number of the detected frame, the percentage of blackness, the frame type and the frame number of the last encountered keyframe.

stereo3d[=in:out]

Stereo3d converts between different stereoscopic image formats.

gradfun[=strength[:radius]]

Fix the banding artifacts that are sometimes introduced into nearly flat regions by truncation to 8bit colordepth. Interpolates the gradients that should go where the bands are, and dithers them.

This filter is designed for playback only. Do not use it prior to lossy compression, because compression tends to lose the dither and bring back the bands.

fixpts[=options]

Fixes the presentation timestamps (PTS) of the frames. By default, the PTS passed to the next filter is dropped, but the following options can change that:

GENERAL ENCODING OPTIONS (MENCODER ONLY)

-audio-delay <any floating-point number>

Delays either audio or video by setting a delay field in the header (default: 0.0). This does not delay either stream while encoding, but the player will see the delay field and compensate accordingly. Positive values delay the audio, and negative values delay the video. Note that this is the exact opposite of the -delay option. For example, if a video plays correctly with -delay 0.2, you can fix the video with MEncoder by using -audio-delay -0.2.

Currently, this option only works with the default muxer (-of avi). If you are using a different muxer, then you must use -delay instead.

-audio-density <1-50>

Number of audio chunks per second (default is 2 for 0.5s long audio chunks).
NOTE: CBR only, VBR ignores this as it puts each packet in a new chunk.

-audio-preload <0.0-2.0>

Sets up the audio buffering time interval (default: 0.5s).

-fafmttag <format>

Can be used to override the audio format tag of the output file.

EXAMPLE:

-ffourcc <fourcc>

Can be used to override the video fourcc of the output file.

EXAMPLE:

-force-avi-aspect <0.2-3.0>

Override the aspect stored in the AVI OpenDML vprp header. This can be used to change the aspect ratio with '-ovc copy'.

-frameno-file <filename> (DEPRECATED)

Specify the name of the audio file with framenumber mappings created in the first (audio only) pass of a special three pass encoding mode.
NOTE: Using this mode will most likely give you A-V desync. Do not use it. It is kept for backwards compatibility only and will possibly be removed in a future version.

-hr-edl-seek

Use a more precise, but much slower method for skipping areas. Areas marked for skipping are not seeked over, instead all frames are decoded, but only the necessary frames are encoded. This allows starting at non-keyframe boundaries.
NOTE: Not guaranteed to work right with '-ovc copy'.

-info <option1:option2:...> (AVI only)

Specify the info header of the resulting AVI file.

Available options are:

-noautoexpand

Do not automatically insert the expand filter into the MEncoder filter chain. Useful to control at which point of the filter chain subtitles are rendered when hardcoding subtitles onto a movie.

-noencodedups

Do not attempt to encode duplicate frames in duplicate; always output zero-byte frames to indicate duplicates. Zero-byte frames will be written anyway unless a filter or encoder capable of doing duplicate encoding is loaded. Currently the only such filter is harddup.

-noodml (-of avi only)

Do not write OpenDML index for AVI files >1GB.

-noskip

Do not skip frames.

-o <filename>

Outputs to the given filename.
If you want a default output filename, you can put this option in the MEncoder config file.

-oac <codec name>

Encode with the given audio codec (no default set).
NOTE: Use -oac help to get a list of available audio codecs.

EXAMPLE:

-of <format> (BETA CODE!)

Encode to the specified container format (default: AVI).
NOTE: Use -of help to get a list of available container formats.

EXAMPLE:

-ofps <fps>

Specify a frames per second (fps) value for the output file, which can be different from that of the source material. Must be set for variable fps (ASF, some MOV) and progressive (30000/1001 fps telecined MPEG) files.

-ovc <codec name>

Encode with the given video codec (no default set).
NOTE: Use -ovc help to get a list of available video codecs.

EXAMPLE:

-passlogfile <filename>

Dump first pass information to <filename> instead of the default divx2pass.log in two pass encoding mode.

-skiplimit <value>

Specify the maximum number of frames that may be skipped after encoding one frame (-noskiplimit for unlimited).

-vobsubout <basename>

Specify the basename for the output .idx and .sub files. This turns off subtitle rendering in the encoded movie and diverts it to VOBsub subtitle files.

-vobsuboutid <langid>

Specify the language two letter code for the subtitles. This overrides what is read from the DVD or the .ifo file.

-vobsuboutindex <index>

Specify the index of the subtitles in the output files (default: 0).

-force-key-frames <time>,<time>,...

Force key frames at the specified timestamps, more precisely at the first frame after each specified time.

This option can be used to ensure that a seek point is present at a chapter mark or any other designated place in the output file.

The timestamps must be specified in ascending order.

Since MEncoder does not send timestamps along the filter chain, you probably need to use the fixpts filter for this option to work.

Not all codecs support forced key frames. Currently, support is only implemented for the following encoders: lavc, x264, xvid.

CODEC SPECIFIC ENCODING OPTIONS (MENCODER ONLY)

You can specify codec specific encoding parameters using the following syntax:

-<codec>opts <option1[=value1]:option2[=value2]:...>

Where <codec> may be: lavc, xvidenc, mp3lame, toolame, twolame, nuv, xvfw, faac, x264enc, mpeg, lavf.