Some background:

I've read the mplayer homepage's FAQ, documentation, and the docs that come with MPlayer 0.90rc4. I've also searched these fora for "codec" "codecs" "mplayer" "mplayer codecs" "mplayer codec" and found LOTS of info. However, I can't find anything that says where codecs other than win32 are supposed to go--maybe I'm just missing it or just not "getting it".

I downloaded the following:
win32codecs.tar.bz2
rp8win32codecs.tar.bz2
rp8codecs.tar.bz2
qt6dlls.tar.bz2
proton-1.1.tar.bz2 #skin
MPlayer-0.90rc4.tar.bz2

Before doing anything, I checked to make sure I met the requirements for gcc, X, etc. Everything checked out. As per stuff I've read, I installed win32 codecs to proper location (/usr/lib/win32). However, I couldn't find anything saying where the other codecs and dll's should go so I left them out. At any rate, the compiling process went smoothly. I didn't run into any errors during ./configure, make, or make install--that I can recall, and now I don't remember where to check for the log for configure.log.

Anyone have any ideas as to where to install all these codecs/dll's I've unpacked? Also, when I try to open a file, I get the following:

phyx@frankenstein:~$ mplayer -vo xv /home/phyx/test.asf
Using GNU internationalization
Original domain: messages
Original dirname: /usr/share/locale
Current domain: mplayer
Current dirname: /usr/local/share/locale


MPlayer 0.90rc4-2.95.3 (C) 2000-2003 Arpad Gereoffy (see DOCS)

CPU: Advanced Micro Devices K6-2 (Family: 5, Stepping: 0)
Detected cache-line size is 32 bytes
CPUflags: MMX: 1 MMX2: 0 3DNow: 1 3DNow2: 0 SSE: 0 SSE2: 0
Compiled for x86 CPU with extensions: MMX 3DNow

Reading config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/mplayer.conf: No such file or directory
Reading config file /home/phyx/.mplayer/config
Reading /home/phyx/.mplayer/codecs.conf: can't open '/home/phyx/.mplayer/codecs.
conf': No such file or directory
Reading /usr/local/etc/mplayer/codecs.conf: 50 audio & 135 video codecs
font: can't open file: /home/phyx/.mplayer/font/font.desc
font: can't open file: /usr/local/share/mplayer/font/font.desc
Linux RTC init error in ioctl (rtc_irqp_set 1024): Permission denied
Try adding "echo 1024 > /proc/sys/dev/rtc/max-user-freq" to your system startup scripts.
Using usleep() timing
Can't open input config file /home/phyx/.mplayer/input.conf : No such file or directory
Can't open input config file /usr/local/etc/mplayer/input.conf : No such file or directory
Falling back on default (hardcoded) input config

Playing /home/phyx/test.asf
ASF file format detected.
VIDEO: [MP43] 240x180 24bpp
Clip info:
name:
author:
copyright:
comments:
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 22050 Hz, 2 ch, 16 bit (0x10), ratio: 4005->88200 (32.0 kbit)
Selected audio codec: [ffwmav2] afm:ffmpeg (DivX audio v2 (ffmpeg))
==========================================================================
Error opening/initializing the selected video_out (-vo) device.

I don't remember reading anywhere where I had to create .conf files or anything like that other than win32 in /usr/lib. The "permission denied" thing I can probably take care of, but the rest is puzzling me. Anyone out there who knows a great deal about MPlayer that can point me in the right direction here? Thanks for reading this far down the post and for any help you might provide.

you can run
mplayer -vo help
and it will list the possible types of video output
available. try them till you get one that works,
like
mplayer -vo sdl
mplayer will save it to the config for you

the reason you're not getting a video output is probably because you've not got the Xfree86-devel pacakge installed, meaning that mplayer hasn't got enough information availble to it to enable the decent video outputs, mainly xv.

as for the codecs... afaik it's all listed in the docs, however you can specify where they are easily enough with --with-livelibdir=/usr/local/lib/live etc... "./configure --help"

Thanks, whansard. I'll give it a shot and post the results.

Acid_kewpie, I do have the x-devel package installed--I just checked. I searched through all the docs for exact codec/dll installation locations and the only one that gave exact locations is for the win32 ones. Judging by your advice to try --with-livelibdir=/usr/local/lib/live I am assuming that they are to go into /usr/local/lib. I'll go through the docs again, and I'll try ./configure --help too just to see what I can find though. Thanks for the tip.

mplayer -vo help produced the following:

I tried them all and none of them worked. There were various reasons so I'll go investigate them. Thanks for the tip though. I'll see what else I can do.

you might want to install the sdl package and
recompile mplayer

x11
dga and
sdl work best for me, and
it looks like you don't have those available.

Sounds good. Do any of those come with the MPlayer package? I can't seem to find any of them on the mplayer site. I found SDL and downloaded it, but no luck with dga so far. Shouldn't the x11 already be on my machine with xfree86 4.2.1?

Okay, I just recompiled mplayer and now my mplayer -vo help looks like this:

Available video output drivers:
xmga Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay in X11 window (using /dev/mga_vid)
mga Matrox G200/G4x0/G550 overlay (/dev/mga_vid)
xv X11/Xv
x11 X11 ( XImage/Shm )
gl X11 (OpenGL)
gl2 X11 (OpenGL) - multiple textures version
dga DGA ( Direct Graphic Access V2.0 )
fbdev Framebuffer Device
svga SVGAlib
aa AAlib
png PNG file
jpeg JPEG file
gif89a animated GIF output
null Null video output
pgm PGM file
md5 MD5 sum
mpegpes Mpeg-PES file
yuv4mpeg yuv4mpeg output for mjpegtools (to "stream.yuv")
vesa VESA VBE 2.0 video output
xvidix X11 (VIDIX)

Quite the difference. I'm going to install SDL now.

personally i thought SDL bites ass, as the scaling is done outside of mplayer itself, so features such as on screen display get scaled up with the video, so it's all clunky if you have a small video that's put to full screen. xv is generally trhe best alround output i'd say...

Thanks guys! I've got video, now for sound and the GUI skin (wife's afraid of command line).