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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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 [dvd|dvdnav]://[title|[start_title]-end_title]
[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|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] [-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 Video CD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx,
DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, too.
MPlayer supports a wide range of video and audio output
drivers. It works with X11, Xv, DGA, OpenGL, SVGAlib, fb-
dev, 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/:Holly-
wood+. Most of them support software or hardware scaling,
so you can enjoy movies in fullscreen mode.
MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status informa-
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
tion, 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 (Mi-
croDVD, SubRip, OGM, SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA,
AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub) and DVD subti-
tles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions).
mencoder (MPlayer's Movie Encoder) is a simple movie en-
coder, 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. It
has the same options as MPlayer.
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
<- and ->
Seek backward/:forward 10 seconds.
up and down
Seek forward/:backward 1 minute.
pgup and pgdown
Seek forward/:backward 10 minutes.
[ and ]
Decrease/increase current playback speed by
10%.
{ and }
Halve/double current playback speed.
backspace
Reset playback speed to normal.
< and >
Go backward/:forward in the playlist.
ENTER
Go forward in the playlist, even over the end.
HOME and END
next/:previous playtree entry in the parent
list
INS and DEL (ASX playlist only)
next/:previous alternative source.
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p / SPACE
Pause (pressing again unpauses).
.
Step forward. Pressing once will pause movie,
every consecutive press will play one frame
and then go into pause mode again (any other
key unpauses).
q / ESC
Stop playing and quit.
+ and -
Adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
/ and *
Decrease/:increase volume.
9 and 0
Decrease/:increase volume.
( and )
Adjust audio balance in favor of left/:right
channel.
m
Mute sound.
_ (MPEG-TS, AVI and libavformat only)
Cycle through the available video tracks.
# (DVD, MPEG, Matroska, AVI and libavformat only)
Cycle through the available audio tracks.
TAB (MPEG-TS only)
Cycle through the available programs.
f
Toggle fullscreen (also see -fs).
T
Toggle stay-on-top (also see -ontop).
w and e
Decrease/:increase pan-and-scan range.
o
Toggle OSD states: none / seek / seek + timer
/ seek + timer + total time.
d
Toggle frame dropping states: none / skip dis-
play / skip decoding (see -framedrop and
-hardframedrop).
v
Toggle subtitle visibility.
j
Cycle through the available subtitles.
y and g
Step forward/backward in the subtitle list.
F
Toggle displaying "forced subtitles".
a
Toggle subtitle alignment: top / middle / bot-
tom.
x and z
Adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
r and t
Move subtitles up/down.
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i (-edlout mode only)
Set start or end of an EDL skip and write it
out to the given file.
s (-vf screenshot only)
Take a screenshot.
S (-vf screenshot only)
Start/stop taking screenshots.
I
Show filename on the OSD.
! and @
Seek to the beginning of the previous/next
chapter.
D (-vo xvmc, -vf yadif, -vf kerndeint only)
Activate/deactivate deinterlacer.
(The following keys are valid only when using a
hardware accelerated video output (xv, (x)vidix,
(x)mga, etc), the software equalizer (-vf eq or -vf
eq2) or hue filter (-vf hue).)
1 and 2
Adjust contrast.
3 and 4
Adjust brightness.
5 and 6
Adjust hue.
7 and 8
Adjust saturation.
(The following keys are valid only when using the
quartz or macosx video output driver.)
command + 0
Resize movie window to half its original size.
command + 1
Resize movie window to its original size.
command + 2
Resize movie window to double its original
size.
command + f
Toggle fullscreen (also see -fs).
command + [ and command + ]
Set movie window alpha.
(The following keys are valid only when using the
sdl video output driver.)
c
Cycle through available fullscreen modes.
n
Restore original mode.
(The following keys are valid if you have a key-
board with multimedia keys.)
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PAUSE
Pause.
STOP
Stop playing and quit.
PREVIOUS and NEXT
Seek backward/:forward 1 minute.
(The following keys are only valid if GUI support
is compiled in and will take precedence over the
keys defined above.)
ENTER
Start playing.
ESC
Stop playing.
l
Load file.
t
Load subtitle.
c
Open skin browser.
p
Open playlist.
r
Open preferences.
(The following keys are only valid if you compiled
with TV or DVB input support and will take prece-
dence over the keys defined above.)
h and k
Select previous/:next channel.
n
Change norm.
u
Change channel list.
(The following keys are only valid if you compiled
with dvdnav support: They are used to navigate the
menus.)
keypad 8
Select button up.
keypad 2
Select button down.
keypad 4
Select button left.
keypad 6
Select button right.
keypad 5
Return to main menu.
keypad 7
Return to nearest menu (the order of prefer-
ence is: chapter->title->root).
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keypad ENTER
Confirm choice.
(The following keys are only valid if teletext sup-
port is enabled during compilation: They are used
for controlling TV teletext.)
X Switch teletext on/:off.
Q and W
Go to next/:prev teletext page.
mouse control
button 3 and button 4
Seek backward/:forward 1 minute.
button 5 and button 6
Decrease/:increase volume.
joystick control
left and right
Seek backward/:forward 10 seconds.
up and down
Seek forward/:backward 1 minute.
button 1
Pause.
button 2
Toggle OSD states: none / seek / seek +
timer / seek + timer + total time.
button 3 and button 4
Decrease/:increase volume.
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 in-
tended 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
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your configuration directory (e.g. /etc/:mplayer or
/usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer), the user specific one is
'~/:.mplayer/:config'. The configuration file for MEn-
coder is 'mencoder.conf' in your configuration directory
(e.g. /etc/:mplayer or /usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer), the us-
er specific one is '~/:.mplayer/:mencoder.conf. User spe-
cific options override system-wide options and options
given on the command line override either. 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 direc-
tory 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).
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
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
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subalign=2
subpos=96
spuaa=20
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-pro-
file]'. All following options will be part of the pro-
file. A description (shown by -profile help) can be de-
fined with the profile-desc option. To end the profile,
start another one or use the profile name 'default' to
continue with normal options.
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
-codecs-file <filename> (also see -afm, -ac, -vfm, -vc)
Override the standard search path and use the spec-
ified file instead of the builtin codecs.conf.
-include <configuration file>
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 en-
coding specified with the --charset configure op-
tion. 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 environ-
ment variable can help you get rid of the first
lines of garbled output.
-msglevel <all==:...>
Control verbosity directly for each module. The
'all' module changes the verbosity of all the mod-
ules not explicitly specified on the command line.
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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:
-1 complete silence
0 fatal messages only
1 error messages
2 warning messages
3 short hints
4 informational messages
5 status messages (default)
6 verbose messages
7 debug level 2
8 debug level 3
9 debug level 4
-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 only)
Set process priority for MPlayer according to the
predefined priorities available under Windows.
Possible values of <prio>:
idle|belownormal|normal|abovenormal|high|real-
time
WARNING: Using realtime priority can cause system
lockup.
-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.
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-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 de-
pending on the available spare CPU time. The num-
ber 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 au-
dio 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 tim-
ing 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 op-
tion 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.
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-correct-pts (experimental)
Switches MPlayer to an experimental mode where
timestamps for video frames are calculated differ-
ently and video filters which add new frames or
modify timestamps of existing ones are supported.
The more accurate timestamps can be visible for ex-
ample 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 de-
pending 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.
-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. Cur-
rently the following drivers are fixed-vo compli-
ant: gl, gl2, mga, svga, x11, xmga, xv, xvidix and
dfbmga.
-framedrop (also see -hardframedrop)
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.
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-(no)gui
Enable or disable the GUI interface (default de-
pends on binary name). Only works as the first ar-
gument on the command line. Does not work as a
config-file option.
-h, -help, --help
Show short summary of options.
-hardframedrop
More intense frame dropping (breaks decoding).
Leads to image distortion!
-identify
Shorthand for -msglevel identify=4. Show file pa-
rameters 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 identi-
fy=6. For example, for a DVD it will list the time
length of each title, as well as a disk ID. The
wrapper script TOOLS/:midentify suppresses the oth-
er 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.
-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:
conf=<filename>
Specify input configuration file other than
the default ~/:.mplayer/:input.conf.
~/:.mplayer/:<filename> is assumed if no
full path is given.
ar-delay
Delay in milliseconds before we start to
autorepeat a key (0 to disable).
ar-rate
Number of key presses to generate per sec-
ond on autorepeat.
keylist
Prints all keys that can be bound to com-
mands.
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cmdlist
Prints all commands that can be bound to
keys.
js-dev
Specifies the joystick device to use (de-
fault: /dev/:input/:js0).
file=<filename>
Read commands from the given file. Mostly
useful with a FIFO.
NOTE: When the given file is a FIFO MPlayer
opens both ends so you can do several 'echo
"seek 10" > mp_pipe' and the pipe will stay
valid.
-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 (leading to "stuck mouse buttons" and simi-
lar effects). 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 in-
troduced, set it to 2 for Linux or 1024 for Win-
dows.
-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 for-
ever.
-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 loca-
tion.
EXAMPLE:
-menu-chroot=/home
Will restrict the file selection menu to
/:home and downward (i.e. no access to /
will be possible, but /home/user_name
will).
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-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 (currently only deriva-
tives of X11 are supported). Necessary to select
the buttons in DVD menus.
-noconsolecontrols
Prevent MPlayer from reading key events from stan-
dard 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 com-
mands.
-nojoystick
Turns off joystick support.
-nolirc
Turns off LIRC support.
-nomouseinput
Disable mouse button press/:release input (mozplay-
erxp'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.
-playing-msg <string>
Print out a string before starting playback. The
following expansions are supported:
${NAME}
Expand to the value of the property NAME.
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$(NAME:TEXT)
Expand TEXT only if the property NAME is
available.
-playlist <filename>
Play files according to a playlist file (ASX,
Winamp, SMIL, or one-file-per-line format).
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.
-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, /usr/:lo-
cal/:share/:mplayer/:skins/: and ~/.mplay-
er/:skins/.
EXAMPLE:
-skin fittyfene
Tries /usr/:local/:share/:mplay-
er/:skins/:fittyfene and afterwards
~/.mplayer/:skins/:fittyfene.
-slave (also see -input)
Switches on slave mode, in which MPlayer works as a
backend for other programs. Instead of intercept-
ing keyboard events, MPlayer will read commands
separated by a newline (\n) from stdin.
NOTE: See -input cmdlist for a list of slave com-
mands and DOCS/tech/slave.txt for their descrip-
tion.
-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 ac-
celerated. Since MPlayer can only seek to the next
keyframe this may be inexact.
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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). This
option only shows an effect if the AC-3 stream con-
tains 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.
-alang <language code[,language code,...]> (also see -aid)
Specify a priority list of audio languages to use.
Different container formats employ different lan-
guage codes. DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter lan-
guage 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:
mplayer dvd://1 -alang hu,en
Chooses the Hungarian language track on a
DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian
is not available.
mplayer -alang jpn example.mkv
Plays a Matroska file in Japanese.
-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 -au-
dio-demuxer help. For backward compatibility it
also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in libmpde-
mux/:demuxer.h. -audio-demuxer audio or -audio-de-
muxer 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.
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-reuse-socket (udp:// only)
Allows a socket to be reused by other processes as
soon as it is closed.
-bandwidth <value> (network only)
Specify the maximum bandwidth for network streaming
(for servers that are able to send content in dif-
ferent 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.
-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 <per-
centage> of the cache size from the current posi-
tion, MPlayer will wait for the cache to be filled
to this position rather than performing a stream
seek (default: 50).
-cdda <option1:option2> (CDDA only)
This option can be used to tune the CD Audio read-
ing feature of MPlayer.
Available options are:
speed=<value>
Set CD spin speed.
paranoia=<0-2>
Set paranoia level. Values other than 0
seem to break playback of anything but the
first track.
0: disable checking (default)
1: overlap checking only
2: full data correction and verification
generic-dev=<value>
Use specified generic SCSI device.
sector-size=<value>
Set atomic read size.
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overlap=<value>
Force minimum overlap search during verifi-
cation to <value> sectors.
toc-bias
Assume that the beginning offset of track 1
as reported in the TOC will be addressed as
LBA 0. Some Toshiba drives need this for
getting track boundaries correct.
toc-offset=<value>
Add <value> sectors to the values reported
when addressing tracks. May be negative.
(no)skip
(Never) accept imperfect data reconstruc-
tion.
-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 in-
dependently 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:
2 stereo
4 surround
6 full 5.1
-chapter <chapter ID>[-] (dvd:// and
dvdnav:// on- ly)
Specify which chapter to start playing at. Option-
ally specify which chapter to end playing at (de-
fault: 1).
-cookies (network only)
Send cookies when making HTTP requests.
-cookies-file <filename> (network only)
Read HTTP cookies from <filename> (default:
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~/.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 val-
ues delay the video. Note that this is the exact
opposite of the -audio-delay MEncoder option.
NOTE: When used with MEncoder, this is not guaran-
teed 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 de-
lays 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 start-
ing times automatically to compensate for antici-
pated 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 de-
muxer name as printed by -demuxer help. For back-
ward 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, -dump-
stream 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.
-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
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
(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 mod-
ule, in order to override the default ones:
card=<1-4>
Specifies using card number 1-4 (default:
1).
file=<filename>
Instructs MPlayer to read the channels list
from <filename>. Default is ~/.mplay-
er/:channels.conf.{sat,ter,cbl,atsc} (based
on your card type) or ~/.mplayer/:chan-
nels.conf as a last resort.
timeout=<1-30>
Maximum number of seconds to wait when try-
ing to tune a frequency before giving up
(default: 30).
-dvd-device <path to device> (DVD only)
Specify the DVD device (default: /dev/:dvd). You
can also specify a directory that contains files
previously copied directly from a DVD (with e.g.
vobcopy). Note that using -dumpstream is usually a
better way to copy DVD titles in the first place
(see the examples).
-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.mplayer-
hq.hu/:DOCS/:HTML/:en/:edl.html for details on how
to use this.
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-endpos <[[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]|size[b|kb|mb]> (also see -ss
and -sb)
Stop at given time or byte position.
NOTE: Byte position is enabled only for MEncoder
and will 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.
EXAMPLE:
-endpos 56
Stop at 56 seconds.
-endpos 01:10:00
Stop at 1 hour 10 minutes.
-ss 10 -endpos 56
Stop at 1 minute 6 seconds.
-endpos 100mb
Encode only 100 MB.
-forceidx
Force index rebuilding. Useful for files with bro-
ken 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 me-
dia 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 espe-
cially when seeking backwards since it has to
rewind to the beginning to find an exact frame po-
sition.
-idx (also see -forceidx)
Rebuilds index of files if no index was found, al-
lowing seeking. Useful with broken/:incomplete
downloads, or badly created files.
NOTE: This option only works if the underlying me-
dia supports seeking (i.e. not with stdin, pipe,
etc).
-noidx Skip rebuilding index file. MEncoder skips writing
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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)
-mf <option1:option2:...>
Used when decoding from multiple PNG or JPEG files.
Available options are:
w=<value>
input file width (default: autodetect)
h=<value>
input file height (default: autodetect)
fps=<value>
output fps (default: 25)
type=<value>
input file type (available: jpeg, png, tga,
sgi)
-ni (AVI only)
Force usage of non-interleaved AVI parser (fixes
playback of some bad AVI 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 de-
fault, when the file type (demuxer) cannot be de-
tected 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.
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-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 stream, 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
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 cap-
ture of an MPEG stream and watching it with MPlay-
er/MEncoder, use 'pvr://' as a movie URL.
Available options are:
aspect=<0-3>
Specify input aspect ratio:
0: 1:1
1: 4:3 (default)
2: 16:9
3: 2.21:1
arate=<32000-48000>
Specify encoding audio rate (default: 48000
Hz, available: 32000, 44100 and 48000 Hz).
alayer=<1-3>
Specify MPEG audio layer encoding (default:
2).
abitrate=<32-448>
Specify audio encoding bitrate in kbps (de-
fault: 384).
amode=<value>
Specify audio encoding mode. Available
preset values are 'stereo', 'joint_stereo',
'dual' and 'mono' (default: stereo).
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vbitrate=<value>
Specify average video bitrate encoding in
Mbps (default: 6).
vmode=<value>
Specify video encoding mode:
vbr: Variable BitRate (default)
cbr: Constant BitRate
vpeak=<value>
Specify peak video bitrate encoding in Mbps
(only useful for VBR encoding, default:
9.6).
fmt=<value>
Choose an MPEG format for encoding:
ps: MPEG-2 Program Stream (default)
ts: MPEG-2 Transport Stream
mpeg1: MPEG-1 System Stream
vcd: Video CD compatible stream
svcd: Super Video CD compatible stream
dvd: DVD compatible stream
-radio <option1:option2:...> (radio only)
These options set various parameters of the radio
capture module. For listening to radio with MPlay-
er use 'radio://<frequency>' (if channels option is
not given) or 'radio://<channel_number>' (if chan-
nels option is given) as a movie URL. You can see
allowed frequency range by running MPlayer with
'-v'. To start the grabbing subsystem, use 'ra-
dio://<frequency or channel>/capture'. If the cap-
ture 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:
device=<value>
Radio device to use (default: /dev/radio0
for Linux and /dev/tuner0 for *BSD).
driver=<value>
Radio driver to use (default: v4l2 if
available, otherwise v4l). Currently, v4l
and v4l2 drivers are supported.
volume=<0..100>
sound volume for radio device (default 100)
freq_min=<value> (*BSD BT848 only)
minimum allowed frequency (default: 87.50)
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freq_max=<value> (*BSD BT848 only)
maximum allowed frequency (default: 108.00)
channels=<frequency>-,,...
Set channel list. Use _ for spaces in
names (or play with quoting ;-). The chan-
nel names will then be written using OSD
and the slave commands radio_step_channel
and radio_set_channel will be usable for a
remote control (see LIRC). If given, num-
ber in movie URL will be treated as channel
position in channel list.
EXAMPLE: radio://1, radio://104.4, ra-
dio_set_channel 1
adevice=<value> (radio capture only)
Name of device to capture sound from.
Without such a name capture will be dis-
abled, even if the capture keyword appears
in the URL. For ALSA devices use it in the
form hw=<card>.. If the device
name contains a '=', the module will use
ALSA to capture, otherwise OSS.
arate=<value> (radio capture only)
Rate in samples per second (default:
44100).
NOTE: When using audio capture set also
-rawaudio rate=<value> option with the same
value as arate. If you have problems with
sound speed (runs too quickly), try to play
with different rate values (e.g.
48000,44100,32000,...).
achannels=<value> (radio capture only)
Number of audio channels to capture.
-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:
channels=<value>
number of channels
rate=<value>
rate in samples per second
samplesize=<value>
sample size in bytes
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bitrate=<value>
bitrate for rawaudio files
format=<value>
fourcc in hex
-rawvideo <option1:option2:...>
This option lets you play raw video files. You
have to use -demuxer rawvideo as well.
Available options are:
fps=<value>
rate in frames per second (default: 25.0)
sqcif|qcif|cif|4cif|pal|ntsc
set standard image size
w=<value>
image width in pixels
h=<value>
image height in pixels
i420|yv12|yuy2|y8
set colorspace
format=<value>
colorspace (fourcc) in hex or string con-
stant. Use -rawvideo format=help for a
list of possible strings.
size=<value>
frame size in Bytes
EXAMPLE:
mplayer foreman.qcif -demuxer rawvideo -rawvideo
qcif
Play the famous "foreman" sample video.
mplayer sample-720x576.yuv -demuxer
rawvideo -rawvideo w=720:h=576
Play a raw YUV sample.
-rtsp-port
Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to force the client's port
number. This option may be useful if you are be-
hind 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 re-
sulting incoming RTP and RTCP packets be streamed
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over TCP (using the same TCP connection as RTSP).
This option may be useful if you have a broken in-
ternet connection that does not pass incoming UDP
packets (see http://www.live555.com/:mplayer/).
-saveidx <filename>
Force index rebuilding and dump the index to <file-
name>. 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 begin-
ning.
-speed <0.01-100>
Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given
as parameter. Not guaranteed to work correctly
with -oac copy.
-srate <Hz>
Selects 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 au-
dio 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 op-
tion. The default is fast resampling that may
cause distortion.
-ss <time> (also see -sb)
Seek to given time position.
EXAMPLE:
-ss 56
Seeks to 56 seconds.
-ss 01:10:00
Seeks to 1 hour 10 min.
-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
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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 cap-
ture module. For watching TV with MPlayer, use
'tv://' or 'tv://<channel_number>' or even
'tv://<channel_name> (see option channels for chan-
nel_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:
noaudio
no sound
automute=<0-255> (v4l and v4l2 only)
If signal strength reported by device is
less than this value, audio and video will
be muted. In most cases automute=100 will
be enough. Default is 0 (automute dis-
abled).
driver=<value>
See -tv driver=help for a list of compiled-
in TV input drivers. available: dummy,
v4l, v4l2, bsdbt848 (default: autodetect)
device=<value>
Specify TV device (default: /dev/:video0).
NOTE: For the bsdbt848 driver you can pro-
vide both bktr and tuner device names sepa-
rating them with a comma, tuner after bktr
(e.g. -tv device=/dev/bktr1,/dev/tuner1).
input=<value>
Specify input (default: 0 (TV), see console
output for available inputs).
freq=<value>
Specify the frequency to set the tuner to
(e.g. 511.250). Not compatible with the
channels parameter.
outfmt=<value>
Specify the output format of the tuner with
a preset value supported by the V4L driver
(yv12, rgb32, rgb24, rgb16, rgb15, uyvy,
yuy2, i420) or an arbitrary format given as
hex value. Try outfmt=help for a list of
all available formats.
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width=<value>
output window width
height=<value>
output window height
fps=<value>
framerate at which to capture video (frames
per second)
buffersize=<value>
maximum size of the capture buffer in
megabytes (default: dynamical)
norm=<value>
For bsdbt848 and v4l, PAL, SECAM, NTSC are
available. For v4l2, see the console out-
put for a list of all available norms, also
see the normid option below.
normid=<value> (v4l2 only)
Sets the TV norm to the given numeric ID.
The TV norm depends on the capture card.
See the console output for a list of avail-
able TV norms.
channel=<value>
Set tuner to <value> channel.
chanlist=<value>
available: europe-east, europe-west, us-
bcast, us-cable, etc
channels=<channel>-,-,...
Set names for channels. NOTE: If <channel>
is an integer greater than 1000, it will be
treated as frequency (in kHz) rather than
channel name from frequency table.
Use _ for spaces in names (or play with
quoting ;-). The channel names will then
be written using OSD, and the slave com-
mands tv_step_channel, tv_set_channel and
tv_last_channel will be usable for a remote
control (see LIRC). Not compatible with
the frequency parameter.
NOTE: The channel number will then be the
position in the 'channels' list, beginning
with 1.
EXAMPLE: tv://1, tv://TV1, tv_set_channel
1, tv_set_channel TV1
[brightness|contrast|hue|saturation]=<-100-100>
Set the image equalizer on the card.
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audiorate=<value>
Set audio capture bitrate.
forceaudio
Capture audio even if there are no audio
sources reported by v4l.
alsa
Capture from ALSA.
amode=<0-3>
Choose an audio mode:
0: mono
1: stereo
2: language 1
3: language 2
forcechan=<1-2>
By default, the count of recorded audio
channels is determined automatically by
querying the audio mode from the TV card.
This option allows forcing stereo/:mono
recording regardless of the amode option
and the values returned by v4l. This can
be used for troubleshooting when the TV
card is unable to report the current audio
mode.
adevice=<value>
Set an audio device. <value> should be
/dev/:xxx for OSS and a hardware ID for AL-
SA. You must replace any ':' by a '.' in
the hardware ID for ALSA.
audioid=<value>
Choose an audio output of the capture card,
if it has more than one.
[volume|bass|treble|balance]=<0-65535> (v4l1)
[volume|bass|treble|balance]=<0-100> (v4l2)
These options set parameters of the mixer
on the video capture card. They will have
no effect, if your card does not have one.
For v4l2 50 maps to the default value of
the control, as reported by the driver.
gain=<0-100> (v4l2)
Set gain control for video devices (usually
webcams) to the desired value and switch
off automatic control. A value of 0 en-
ables automatic control. If this option is
omitted, gain control will not be modified.
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immediatemode=<bool>
A value of 0 means capture and buffer audio
and video together (default for MEncoder).
A value of 1 (default for MPlayer) means to
do video capture only and let the audio go
through a loopback cable from the TV card
to the sound card.
mjpeg
Use hardware MJPEG compression (if the card
supports it). When using this option, you
do not need to specify the width and height
of the output window, because MPlayer will
determine it automatically from the decima-
tion value (see below).
decimation=<1|2|4>
choose the size of the picture that will be
compressed by hardware MJPEG compression:
1: full size
704x576 PAL
704x480 NTSC
2: medium size
352x288 PAL
352x240 NTSC
4: small size
176x144 PAL
176x120 NTSC
quality=<0-100>
Choose the quality of the JPEG compression
(< 60 recommended for full size).
tdevice=<value>
Specify TV teletext device (example:
/dev/:vbi0) (default: none).
tformat=<format>
Specify TV teletext display format (de-
fault: 0):
0: opaque
1: transparent
2: opaque with inverted colors
3: transparent with inverted colors
tpage=<100-899>
Specify initial TV teletext page number
(default: 100).
tlang=<-1-127>
Specify default teletext language code (de-
fault: 0), which will be used as primary
language until a type 28 packet is re-
ceived. Useful when the teletext system
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 31
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
uses a non-latin character set, but lan-
guage codes are not transmitted via tele-
text type 28 packets for some reason. To
see a list of supported language codes set
this option to -1.
-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:
autostart
Begin channel scanning immediately after
startup (default: disabled).
period=<0.1-2.0>
Specify delay in seconds before switching
to next channel (default: 0.5). Lower val-
ues will cause faster scanning, but can de-
tect inactive TV channels as active.
threshold=<1-100>
Threshold value for the signal strength (in
percent), as reported by the device (de-
fault: 50). A signal strength higher than
this value will indicate that the currently
scanning channel is active.
-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 op-
tion, libass will be used for SSA/ASS external sub-
titles and Matroska tracks. You may also want to
use -embeddedfonts.
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-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 for-
mat 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 parameters.
EXAMPLE:
-ass-force-style FontName=Arial,Default.Bold=1
-ass-hinting <type>
Set hinting type.
<type>
0: No hinting.
1: FreeType autohinter, light mode.
2: FreeType autohinter, normal mode.
3: Font native hinter.
0-3 + 4: The same, but hinting will only be
performed if OSD is rendered at screen res-
olution and, therefore, will not be scaled.
The default value is 7 (use native hinter
for unscaled OSD and no hinting otherwise).
-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.
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-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. Cre-
ates 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 directo-
ry.
-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 subti-
tle 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. Al-
so see the -dump*sub and -vobsubout* options.
-embeddedfonts (FreeType only)
Enables extraction of Matroska embedded fonts (de-
fault: disabled). These fonts can be used for
SSA/ASS subtitle rendering (-ass option). Font
files are created in the ~/.mplayer/:fonts directo-
ry.
NOTE: With FontConfig 2.4.2 or newer, embedded
fonts are opened directly from memory, and this op-
tion is enabled by default.
-ffactor <number>
Resample the font alphamap. Can be:
0 plain white fonts
0.75 very narrow black outline (default)
1 narrow black outline
10 bold black outline
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 34
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-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 sub-
titles are shown at the start of a sentence instead
of at the end.
-font <path to font.desc file>
Search for the OSD/:SUB fonts in an alternative di-
rectory (default for normal fonts: ~/:.mplay-
er/:font/:font.desc, default for FreeType fonts:
~/.mplayer/:subfont.ttf).
NOTE: With FreeType, this option determines the
path to the text font file. With fontconfig, this
option determines the fontconfig font name.
EXAMPLE:
-font ~/:.mplayer/:arial-14/:font.desc
-font ~/:.mplayer/:arialuni.ttf
-font 'Bitstream Vera Sans'
-fontconfig (fontconfig only)
Enables the usage of fontconfig managed fonts.
-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.
-osd-duration <time>
Set the duration of the OSD messages in ms (de-
fault: 1000).
-osdlevel <0-3> (MPlayer only)
Specifies which mode the OSD should start in.
0 subtitles only
1 volume + seek (default)
2 volume + seek + timer + percentage
3 volume + seek + timer + percentage + total
time
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-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).
-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 se-
lect one of the subtitles on a DVD, also try -vob-
subid.
-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 lan-
guage codes, Matroska uses ISO 639-2 three letter
language codes while OGM uses a free-form identifi-
er. MPlayer prints the available languages when
run in verbose (-v) mode.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer dvd://1 -slang hu,en
Chooses the Hungarian subtitle track on a
DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian
is not available.
mplayer -slang jpn example.mkv
Plays a Matroska file with Japanese subti-
tles.
-spuaa <mode>
Antialiasing/:scaling mode for DVD/:VOBsub. A val-
ue 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:
0 none (fastest, very ugly)
1 approximate (broken?)
2 full (slow)
3 bilinear (default, fast and not too bad)
4 uses swscaler gaussian blur (looks very
good)
-spualign <-1-2>
Specify how SPU (DVD/:VOBsub) subtitles should be
aligned.
-1 original position
0 Align at top (original behavior, default).
1 Align at center.
2 Align at bottom.
-spugauss <0.0-3.0>
Variance parameter of gaussian used by -spuaa 4.
Higher means more blur (default: 1.0).
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 36
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-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 transparen-
cy. 0 means completely transparent.
-sub-bg-color <0-255>
Specify the color value for subtitles and OSD back-
grounds. 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 subread-
er.h.
-sub-fuzziness <mode>
Adjust matching fuzziness when searching for subti-
tles:
0 exact match
1 Load all subs containing movie name.
2 Load all subs in the current directory.
-sub-no-text-pp
Disables any kind of text post processing done af-
ter loading the subtitles. Used for debug purpos-
es.
-subalign <0-2>
Specify which edge of the subtitles should be
aligned at the height given by -subpos.
0 Align subtitle top edge (original behav-
ior).
1 Align subtitle center.
2 Align subtitle bottom edge (default).
-subcc
Display DVD Closed Caption (CC) subtitles. 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 sub-
titles have not been spotted on DVDs from other re-
gions so far.
-subcp <codepage> (iconv only)
If your system supports iconv(3), you can use this
option to specify the subtitle codepage.
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 37
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
EXAMPLE:
-subcp latin2
-subcp cp1250
-subcp enca:<language>: (ENCA only)
You can specify your language using a two letter
language code to make ENCA detect the codepage au-
tomatically. If unsure, enter anything and watch
mplayer -v output for available languages. Fall-
back codepage specifies the codepage to use, when
autodetection fails.
EXAMPLE:
-subcp enca:cs:latin2
Guess the encoding, assuming the subtitles
are Czech, fall back on latin 2, if the de-
tection fails.
-subcp enca:pl:cp1250
Guess the encoding for Polish, fall back on
cp1250.
-subdelay <sec>
Delays subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be nega-
tive.
-subfile <filename> (BETA CODE)
Currently useless. Same as -audiofile, but for
subtitle streams (OggDS?).
-subfont <filename> (FreeType only)
Sets the subtitle 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:
0 no autoscale
1 proportional to movie height
2 proportional to movie width
3 proportional to movie diagonal (default)
-subfont-blur <0-8> (FreeType only)
Sets the font blur radius (default: 2).
-subfont-encoding <value> (FreeType only)
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).
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-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 (de-
fault: movie fps).
NOTE: <rate> > movie fps speeds the subtitles up
for frame-based subtitle files and slows them down
for time-based ones.
-subpos <0-100> (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.
-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 uni-
code.
-utf8
Tells MPlayer to handle the subtitle file as UTF-8.
-vobsub <VOBsub file without extension>
Specify a VOBsub file to use for subtitles. Has to
be the full pathname without extension, i.e. with-
out the '.idx', '.ifo' or '.sub'.
-vobsubid <0-31>
Specify the VOBsub subtitle ID.
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 39
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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 de-
scription 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_DE-
VICE_NAMES in /usr/:include/:linux/:soundcard.h.
For ALSA you can use the names e.g. alsamixer dis-
plays, 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 con-
verted to PCM,1.
-softvol
Force the use of the software mixer, instead of us-
ing the sound card mixer.
-softvol-max <10.0-10000.0>
Set the maximum amplification level in percent (de-
fault: 110). A value of 200 will allow you to ad-
just the volume up to a maximum of double the cur-
rent level. With values below 100 the initial vol-
ume (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 per-
cent of the whole range (default: 3).
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 option-
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 40
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
al and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE: See -ao help for a list of compiled-in audio output
drivers.
EXAMPLE:
-ao alsa,oss,
Try the ALSA driver, then the OSS driver,
then others.
-ao alsa:noblock:device=hw=0.3
Sets noblock-mode and the device-name as
first card, fourth device.
Available audio output drivers are:
alsa
ALSA 0.9/1.x audio output driver
noblock
Sets noblock-mode.
device=<device>
Sets the device name. Replace any ',' with
'.' and any ':' with '=' in the ALSA device
name. For hwac3 output via S/PDIF, use an
"iec958" or "spdif" device, unless you re-
ally know how to set it correctly.
alsa5
ALSA 0.5 audio output driver
oss
OSS audio output driver
<dsp-device>
Sets the audio output device (default:
/dev/:dsp).
<mixer-device>
Sets the audio mixer device (default:
/dev/:mixer).
<mixer-channel>
Sets the audio mixer channel (default:
pcm).
sdl (SDL only)
highly platform independent SDL (Simple Directmedia
Layer) library audio output driver
<driver>
Explicitly choose the SDL audio driver to
use (default: let SDL choose).
arts
audio output through the aRts daemon
esd
audio output through the ESD daemon
<server>
Explicitly choose the ESD server to use
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 41
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
(default: localhost).
jack
audio output through JACK (Jack Audio Connection
Kit)
port=<name>
Connects to the ports with the given name
(default: physical ports).
name=<client
Client name that is passed to JACK (de-
fault: MPlayer [<PID>]). Useful if you
want to have certain connections estab-
lished automatically.
(no)estimate
Estimate the audio delay, supposed to make
the video playback smoother (default: en-
abled).
nas
audio output through NAS
macosx (Mac OS X only)
native Mac OS X audio output driver
openal Experimental, unfinished (will downmix to mono)
OpenAL audio output driver
sgi (SGI only)
native SGI audio output driver
<output device name>
Explicitly choose the output device/:inter-
face to use (default: system-wide default).
For example, 'Analog Out' or 'Digital Out'.
sun (Sun only)
native Sun audio output driver
<device>
Explicitly choose the audio device to use
(default: /dev/:audio).
win32 (Windows only)
native Windows waveout audio output driver
dsound (Windows only)
DirectX DirectSound audio output driver
device=<devicenum>
Sets the device number to use. Playing a
file with -v will show a list of available
devices.
dxr2 (also see -dxr2) (DXR2 only)
Creative DXR2 specific output driver
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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 in-
stalled.
card=<1-4>
DVB card to use if more than one card is
present.
file=<filename>
output filename
null
Produces no audio output but maintains video play-
back speed. Use -nosound for benchmarking.
pcm
raw PCM/wave file writer audio output
(no)waveheader
Include or do not include the wave header
(default: included). When not included,
raw PCM will be generated.
file=<filename>
Write the sound to <filename> instead of
the default audiodump.wav. If nowaveheader
is specified, the default is audiodump.pcm.
fast
Try to dump faster than realtime. Make
sure the output does not get truncated
(usually with "Too many video packets in
buffer" message). It is normal that you
get a "Your system is too SLOW to play
this!" message.
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 sup-
ported by the fbdev, dga, svga, vesa video output
drivers.
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 43
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-border
Play movie with window border and decorations.
Since this is on by default, use -noborder to dis-
able the standard window decorations. Supported by
the directx video output driver.
-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:
-display xtest.localdomain:0
-dr
Turns on direct rendering (not supported by all
codecs and video outputs)
WARNING: May cause OSD/SUB corruption!
-dxr2 <option1:option2:...>
This option is used to control the dxr2 video out-
put driver.
ar-mode=<value>
aspect ratio mode (0 = normal, 1 = pan-and-
scan, 2 = letterbox (default))
iec958-encoded
Set iec958 output mode to encoded.
iec958-decoded
Set iec958 output mode to decoded (de-
fault).
macrovision=<value>
macrovision mode (0 = off (default), 1 =
agc, 2 = agc 2 colorstripe, 3 = agc 4 col-
orstripe)
mute
mute sound output
unmute
unmute sound output
ucode=<value>
path to the microcode
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TV output
75ire
enable 7.5 IRE output mode
no75ire
disable 7.5 IRE output mode (default)
bw
b/w TV output
color
color TV output (default)
interlaced
interlaced TV output (default)
nointerlaced
disable interlaced TV output
norm=<value>
TV norm (ntsc (default), pal, pal60, palm,
paln, palnc)
square-pixel
set pixel mode to square
ccir601-pixel
set pixel mode to ccir601
overlay
cr-left=<0-500>
Set the left cropping value (default: 50).
cr-right=<0-500>
Set the right cropping value (default:
300).
cr-top=<0-500>
Set the top cropping value (default: 0).
cr-bottom=<0-500>
Set the bottom cropping value (default: 0).
ck-[r|g|b]=<0-255>
Set the r(ed), g(reen) or b(lue) gain of
the overlay color-key.
ck-[r|g|b]min=<0-255>
minimum value for the respective color key
ck-[r|g|b]max=<0-255>
maximum value for the respective color key
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
ignore-cache
Ignore cached overlay settings.
update-cache
Update cached overlay settings.
ol-osd
Enable overlay onscreen display.
nool-osd
Disable overlay onscreen display (default).
ol[h|w|x|y]-cor=<-20-20>
Adjust the overlay size (h,w) and position
(x,y) in case it does not match the window
perfectly (default: 0).
overlay
Activate overlay (default).
nooverlay
Activate TVout.
overlay-ratio=<1-2500>
Tune the overlay (default: 1000).
-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 chang-
ing.
-fbmodeconfig <filename> (-vo fbdev only)
Override framebuffer mode configuration file (de-
fault: /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.
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
The available types are:
above
Use the _NETWM_STATE_ABOVE hint if avail-
able.
below
Use the _NETWM_STATE_BELOW hint if avail-
able.
fullscreen
Use the _NETWM_STATE_FULLSCREEN hint if
available.
layer
Use the _WIN_LAYER hint with the default
layer.
layer=<0...15>
Use the _WIN_LAYER hint with the given lay-
er number.
netwm
Force NETWM style.
none
Do not set fullscreen window layer.
stays_on_top
Use _NETWM_STATE_STAYS_ON_TOP hint if
available.
EXAMPLE:
layer,stays_on_top,above,fullscreen
Default order, will be used as a fallback
if incorrect or unsupported modes are spec-
ified.
-fullscreen
Fixes fullscreen switching on OpenBox 1.x.
-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 direc-
tion. It also supports the standard X11 -geometry
option format. 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.
NOTE: This option is only supported by the x11, xm-
ga, xv, xvmc, xvidix, gl, gl2, directx and tdfxfb
video output drivers.
EXAMPLE:
50:40
Places the window at x=50, y=40.
50%:50%
Places the window in the middle of the
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
screen.
100%
Places the window at the middle of the
right edge of the screen.
100%:100%
Places the window at the bottom right cor-
ner of the screen.
-guiwid <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 on-
ly)
Specify the horizontal frequency range of the moni-
tor.
-monitor-vfreq <range[,range,...]> (-vo fbdev and vesa on-
ly)
Specify the vertical frequency range of the moni-
tor.
-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 -monitorpixe-
laspect setting if enabled.
EXAMPLE:
-monitoraspect 4:3 or 1.3333
-monitoraspect 16:9 or 1.7777
-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).
-nodouble
Disables double buffering, mostly for debugging
purposes. Double buffering fixes flicker by stor-
ing two frames in memory, and displaying one while
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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 win-
dows. 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 win-
dows. Supported by video output drivers which use
X11, except SDL, as well as directx, macosx,
quartz, ggi and gl2.
-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 xv, xmga, mga, gl, gl2, quartz, macosx 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. Do not report bugs
unless you are using -vo gl.
-refreshrate <Hz>
Set the monitor refreshrate in Hz. Currently only
supported by -vo directx combined with the -vm op-
tion.
-rootwin
Play movie in the root window (desktop background).
Desktop background images may cover the movie win-
dow, though. Only works with the x11, xv, xmga,
xvidix, quartz, macosx and directx video output
drivers.
-saturation <-100-100>
Adjust the saturation of the video signal (default:
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
0). You can get grayscale output with this option.
Not supported by all video output drivers.
-screenh <pixels>
Specify the vertical screen resolution for video
output drivers which do not know the screen resolu-
tion like fbdev, x11 and TVout.
-screenw <pixels>
Specify the horizontal screen resolution for video
output drivers which do not know the screen resolu-
tion like fbdev, x11 and TVout.
-stop-xscreensaver (X11 only)
Turns off xscreensaver at startup and turns it on
again on exit.
-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 -re-
freshrate options can be used to set the new dis-
play mode.
-vsync
Enables VBI for the vesa, dfbmga and svga video
output drivers.
-wid <window ID> (also see -guiwid) (X11, OpenGL and
DirectX on- ly)
This tells MPlayer to attach to an existing window.
Useful to embed MPlayer in a browser (e.g. the
plugger extension).
-xineramascreen <-2-...> (X11 only)
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".
-zrbw (-vo zr only)
Display in black and white. For optimal perfor-
mance, 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, multi-
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
ple 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 larg-
er 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).
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
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 option-
al and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE: See -vo help for a list of compiled-in video output
drivers.
EXAMPLE:
-vo xmga,xv,
Try the Matrox X11 driver, then the Xv
driver, then others.
-vo directx:noaccel
Uses the DirectX driver with acceleration
features turned off.
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.
port=<number>
Select a specific XVideo port.
ck=<cur|use|set>
Select the source from which the colorkey
is taken (default: cur).
cur The default takes the colorkey cur-
rently set in Xv.
use Use but do not set the colorkey
from MPlayer (use -colorkey option
to change it).
set Same as use but also sets the sup-
plied colorkey.
ck-method=<man|bg|auto>
Sets the colorkey drawing method (default:
man).
man Draw the colorkey manually (reduces
flicker in some cases).
bg Set the colorkey as window back-
ground.
auto Let Xv draw the colorkey.
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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.
<vo_driver>
Select the driver to use as source to over-
lay on top of X11.
xvmc (X11 with -vc ffmpeg12mc only)
Video output driver that uses the XvMC (X Video Mo-
tion Compensation) extension of XFree86 4.x to
speed up MPEG-1/2 and VCR2 decoding.
port=<number>
Select a specific XVideo port.
(no)benchmark
Disables image display. Necessary for
proper benchmarking of drivers that change
image buffers on monitor retrace only
(nVidia). Default is not to disable image
display (nobenchmark).
(no)bobdeint
Very simple deinterlacer. Might not look
better than -vf tfields=1, but it is the
only deinterlacer for xvmc (default: nobob-
deint).
(no)queue
Queue frames for display to allow more par-
allel work of the video hardware. May add
a small (not noticeable) constant A/V
desync (default: noqueue).
(no)sleep
Use sleep function while waiting for ren-
dering to finish (not recommended on Linux)
(default: nosleep).
ck=cur|use|set
Same as -vo xv:ck (see -vo xv).
ck-method=man|bg|auto
Same as -vo xv:ck-method (see -vo xv).
dga (X11 only)
Play video through the XFree86 Direct Graphics Ac-
cess extension. Considered obsolete.
sdl (SDL only)
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.
driver=<driver>
Explicitly choose the SDL driver to use.
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(no)forcexv
Use XVideo through the sdl video output
driver (default: forcexv).
(no)hwaccel
Use hardware accelerated scaler (default:
hwaccel).
vidix
VIDIX (VIDeo Interface for *niX) is an interface to
the video acceleration features of different graph-
ics cards. Very fast video output driver on cards
that support it.
<subdevice>
Explicitly choose the VIDIX subdevice driv-
er to use. Available subdevice drivers are
cyberblade, mach64, mga_crtc2, mga, nvidia,
pm2, pm3, radeon, rage128, sis_vid and
unichrome.
xvidix (X11 only)
X11 frontend for VIDIX
<subdevice>
same as vidix
cvidix
Generic and platform independent VIDIX frontend,
can even run in a text console with nVidia cards.
<subdevice>
same as vidix
winvidix (Windows only)
Windows frontend for VIDIX
<subdevice>
same as vidix
directx (Windows only)
Video output driver that uses the DirectX inter-
face.
noaccel
Turns off hardware acceleration. Try this
option if you have display problems.
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 for-
mat=yuy2.
device_id=<number>
Choose the display device to use in
fullscreen.
fs_res=<width>:
Specify the fullscreen resolution (useful
on slow systems).
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
macosx (Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.3.9 with QuickTime 7)
Mac OS X CoreVideo video output driver
device_id=<number>
Choose the display device to use in
fullscreen.
fbdev (Linux only)
Uses the kernel framebuffer to play video.
<device>
Explicitly choose the fbdev device name to
use (e.g. /dev/:fb0) or the name of the
VIDIX subdevice if the device name starts
with 'vidix' (e.g. 'vidixsis_vid' for the
sis driver).
fbdev2 (Linux only)
Uses the kernel framebuffer to play video, alterna-
tive implementation.
<device>
Explicitly choose the fbdev device name to
use (default: /dev/:fb0).
vesa
Very general video output driver that should work
on any VESA VBE 2.0 compatible card.
(no)dga
Turns DGA mode on or off (default: on).
neotv_pal
Activate the NeoMagic TV out and set it to
PAL norm.
neotv_ntsc
Activate the NeoMagic TV out and set it to
NTSC norm.
vidix
Use the VIDIX driver.
lvo:
Activate the Linux Video Overlay on top of
VESA mode.
svga
Play video using the SVGA library.
<video mode>
Specify video mode to use. The mode can be
given in a <width>xx for-
mat, e.g. 640x480x16M or be a graphics mode
number, e.g. 84.
bbosd
Draw OSD into black bands below the movie
(slower).
native
Use only native drawing functions. This
avoids direct rendering, OSD and hardware
acceleration.
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
retrace
Force frame switch on vertical retrace.
Usable only with -double. It has the same
effect as the -vsync option.
sq
Try to select a video mode with square pix-
els.
vidix
Use svga with VIDIX.
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.
Please use -dr if it works with your OpenGL imple-
mentation, since for higher resolutions this pro-
vides a big speedup. 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.
(no)scaled-osd
Changes the way the OSD behaves when the
size of the window changes (default: dis-
abled). When enabled behaves more like the
other video output drivers, which is better
for fixed-size fonts. Disabled looks much
better with FreeType fonts and uses the
borders in fullscreen mode. Does not work
correctly with ass subtitles (see -ass),
you can instead render them without OpenGL
support via -vf ass.
osdcolor=<0xRRGGBB>
Color for OSD (default: 0xffffff, corre-
sponds to white).
rectangle=<0,1,2>
Select usage of rectangular textures which
saves video RAM, but often is slower (de-
fault: 0).
0: Use power-of-two textures (default).
1: Use the GL_ARB_texture_rectangle ex-
tension.
2: Use the GL_ARB_texture_non_pow-
er_of_two extension. In some cases only
supported in software and thus very
slow.
swapinterval=<n>
Minimum interval between two buffer swaps,
counted in displayed frames (default: 1).
1 is equivalent to enabling VSYNC, 0 to
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
disabling VSYNC. Values below 0 will leave
it at the system default. This limits the
framerate to (horizontal refresh rate / n).
Requires GLX_SGI_swap_control support to
work. With some (most/all?) implementa-
tions this only works in fullscreen mode.
yuv=<n>
Select the type of YUV to RGB conversion.
0: Use software conversion (default).
Compatible with all OpenGL versions.
Provides brightness, contrast and satu-
ration control.
1: Use register combiners. This uses an
nVidia-specific extension (GL_NV_regis-
ter_combiners). At least three texture
units are needed. Provides saturation
and hue control. This method is fast
but inexact.
2: Use a fragment program. Needs the
GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at
least three texture units. Provides
brightness, contrast, saturation and hue
control.
3: Use a fragment program using the POW
instruction. Needs the GL_ARB_frag-
ment_program extension and at least
three texture units. Provides bright-
ness, contrast, saturation, hue and gam-
ma control. Gamma can also be set inde-
pendently for red, green and blue.
Method 4 is usually faster.
4: Use a fragment program with addition-
al lookup. Needs the GL_ARB_frag-
ment_program extension and at least four
texture units. Provides brightness,
contrast, saturation, hue and gamma con-
trol. Gamma can also be set indepen-
dently for red, green and blue.
5: Use ATI-specific method (for older
cards). This uses an ATI-specific ex-
tension (GL_ATI_fragment_shader - not
GL_ARB_fragment_shader!). At least
three texture units are needed. Pro-
vides saturation and hue control. This
method is fast but inexact.
6: Use a 3D texture to do conversion via
lookup. Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_pro-
gram extension and at least four texture
units. Extremely slow (software emula-
tion) on some (all?) ATI cards since it
uses a texture with border pixels. Pro-
vides brightness, contrast, saturation,
hue and gamma control. Gamma can also
be set independently for red, green and
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 57
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
blue. Speed depends more on GPU memory
bandwidth than other methods.
lscale=<n>
Select the scaling function to use for lu-
minance scaling. Only valid for yuv modes
2, 3, 4 and 6.
0: Use simple linear filtering (de-
fault).
1: Use bicubic filtering (better quali-
ty). Needs one additional texture unit.
Older cards will not be able to handle
this for chroma at least in fullscreen
mode.
2: Use cubic filtering in horizontal,
linear filtering in vertical direction.
Works on a few more cards than method 1.
cscale=<n>
Select the scaling function to use for
chrominance scaling. For details see
lscale.
customprog=<filename>
Load a custom fragment program from <file-
name>. See TOOLS/edgedect.fp for an exam-
ple.
customtex=<filename>
Load a custom "gamma ramp" texture from
<filename>. This can be used in combina-
tion with yuv=4 or with the customprog op-
tion.
(no)customtlin
If enabled (default) use GL_LINEAR interpo-
lation, otherwise use GL_NEAREST for cus-
tomtex texture.
(no)customtrect
If enabled, use texture_rectangle for cus-
tomtex texture. Default is disabled.
Normally there is no reason to use the following
options, they mostly exist for testing purposes.
(no)glfinish
Call glFinish() before swapping buffers.
Slower but in some cases more correct out-
put (default: disabled).
(no)manyfmts
Enables support for more (RGB and BGR) col-
or formats (default: enabled). Needs
OpenGL version >= 1.2.
slice-height=<0-...>
Number of lines copied to texture in one
piece (default: 0). 0 for whole image.
NOTE: If YUV colorspace is used (see yuv
suboption), special rules apply:
If the decoder uses slice rendering (see
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MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
-noslices), this setting has no effect,
the size of the slices as provided by
the decoder is used.
If the decoder does not use slice ren-
dering, the default is 16.
(no)osd
Enable or disable support for OSD rendering
via OpenGL (default: enabled). This option
is for testing; to disable the OSD use -os-
dlevel 0 instead.
(no)aspect
Enable or disable aspect scaling and pan-
and-scan support (default: enabled). Dis-
abling might increase speed.
gl2
OpenGL video output driver, second generation.
Supports OSD and videos larger than the maximum
texture size.
(no)glfinish
same as gl (default: enabled)
yuv=<n>
Select the type of YUV to RGB conversion.
If set to anything except 0 OSD will be
disabled and brightness, contrast and gamma
setting is only available via the global X
server settings. Apart from this the val-
ues have the same meaning as for -vo gl.
null
Produces no video output. Useful for benchmarking.
aa
ASCII art video output driver that works on a text
console. You can get a list and an explanation of
available suboptions executing mplayer -vo aa:help
NOTE: Driver does not not handle -aspect correctly.
HINT: You probably have to specify -monitorpixe-
laspect. 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 proto-
col. This driver is highly hardware specific.
<subdevice>
Explicitly choose the Blinkenlights subde-
vice driver to use. It is something like
arcade:host=localhost:2323 or
hdl:file=name1,file=name2. You must speci-
fy a subdevice.
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ggi
GGI graphics system video output driver
<driver>
Explicitly choose the GGI driver to use.
Replace any ',' that would appear in the
driver string by a '.'.
directfb
Play video using the DirectFB library.
(no)input
Use the DirectFB instead of the MPlayer
keyboard code (default: enabled).
buffermode=single|double|triple
Double and triple buffering give best re-
sults if you want to avoid tearing issues.
Triple buffering is more efficient than
double buffering as it does not block
MPlayer while waiting for the vertical re-
trace. Single buffering should be avoided
(default: single).
fieldparity=top|bottom
Control the output order for interlaced
frames (default: disabled). Valid values
are top = top fields first, bottom = bottom
fields first. This option does not have
any effect on progressive film material
like most MPEG movies are. You need to en-
able this option if you have tearing issues
or unsmooth motions watching interlaced
film material.
layer=N
Will force layer with ID N for playback
(default: -1 - auto).
dfbopts=<list>
Specify a parameter list for DirectFB.
dfbmga
Matrox G400/:G450/:G550 specific video output driv-
er that uses the DirectFB library to make use of
special hardware features. Enables CRTC2 (second
head), displaying video independently of the first
head.
(no)input
same as directfb (default: disabled)
buffermode=single|double|triple
same as directfb (default: triple)
fieldparity=top|bottom
same as directfb
(no)bes
Enable the use of the Matrox BES (backend
scaler) (default: disabled). Gives very
good results concerning speed and output
quality as interpolated picture processing
is done in hardware. Works only on the
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primary head.
(no)spic
Make use of the Matrox sub picture layer to
display the OSD (default: enabled).
(no)crtc2
Turn on TV-out on the second head (default:
enabled). The output quality is amazing as
it is a full interlaced picture with proper
sync to every odd/:even field.
tvnorm=pal|ntsc|auto
Will set the TV norm of the Matrox card
without the need for modifying /etc/:di-
rectfbrc (default: disabled). Valid norms
are pal = PAL, ntsc = NTSC. Special norm
is auto (auto-adjust using PAL/:NTSC) be-
cause it decides which norm to use by look-
ing at the framerate of the movie.
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.
<device>
Explicitly choose the Matrox device name to
use (default: /dev/:mga_vid).
xmga (Linux, X11 only)
The mga video output driver, running in an X11 win-
dow.
<device>
Explicitly choose the Matrox device name to
use (default: /dev/:mga_vid).
s3fb (Linux only) (see also -vf yuv2 and -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 yuy2 to get hardware-accelerated YUY2 ren-
dering, which is much faster than YV12 on this
card.
<device>
Explicitly choose the fbdev device name to
use (default: /dev/:fb0).
3dfx (Linux only)
3dfx-specific video output driver that directly us-
es 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.
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<device>
Explicitly choose the fbdev device name to
use (default: /dev/:fb0).
tdfx_vid (Linux only)
3dfx-specific video output driver that works in
combination with the tdfx_vid kernel module.
<device>
Explicitly choose the device name to use
(default: /dev/:tdfx_vid).
dxr2 (also see -dxr2) (DXR2 only)
Creative DXR2 specific video output driver.
<vo_driver>
Output video subdriver to use as overlay
(x11, xv).
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.
overlay
Activates the overlay instead of TVOut.
prebuf
Turns on prebuffering.
sync
Will turn on the new sync-engine.
norm=<norm>
Specifies the TV norm.
0: Does not change current norm (de-
fault).
1: Auto-adjust using PAL/:NTSC.
2: Auto-adjust using PAL/:PAL-60.
3: PAL
4: PAL-60
5: NTSC
<0-3>
Specifies the device number to use if you
have more than one em8300 card.
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.
device
Explicitly choose the MPEG decoder device
name to use (default: /dev/video16).
output
Explicitly choose the TV-Out output to be
used for the video signal.
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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.
device
Explicitly choose the MPEG decoder device
name to use (default: /dev/video16).
output
Explicitly choose the TV-Out output to be
used for the video signal.
mpegpes (DVB only)
Video output driver for DVB cards that writes the
output to an MPEG-PES file if no DVB card is in-
stalled.
card=<1-4>
Specifies the device number to use if you
have more than one DVB output card (V3 API
only, such as 1.x.y series drivers).
<filename>
output filename (default: ./grab.mpg)
zr (also see -zr* and -zrhelp)
Video output driver for a number of MJPEG cap-
ture/:playback cards.
zr2 (also see the zrmjpeg video filter)
Video output driver for a number of MJPEG cap-
ture/:playback cards, second generation.
dev=<device>
Specifies the video device to use.
norm=<PAL|NTSC|SECAM|auto>
Specifies the video norm to use (default:
auto).
(no)prebuf
(De)Activate prebuffering, not yet support-
ed.
md5sum
Calculate MD5 sums of each frame and write them to
a file. Supports RGB24 and YV12 colorspaces. Use-
ful for debugging.
outfile=<value>
Specify the output filename (default:
./md5sums).
yuv4mpeg
Transforms the video stream into a sequence of un-
compressed 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 mjpeg-
tools suite. It supports the YV12, RGB (24 bpp)
and BGR (24 bpp) format. You can combine it with
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the -fixed-vo option to concatenate files with the
same dimensions and fps value.
interlaced
Write the output as interlaced frames, top
field first.
interlaced_bf
Write the output as interlaced frames, bot-
tom field first.
file=<filename>
Write the output to <filename> instead of
the default stream.yuv.
NOTE: If you do not specify any option the output
is progressive (i.e. not interlaced).
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.
<fps>
Float value to specify framerate (default:
5.0).
<output>
Specify the output filename (default:
./out.gif).
NOTE: You must specify the framerate before the
filename or the framerate will be part of the file-
name.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer video.nut -vo gif89a:fps=15:out-
put=test.gif
jpeg
Output each frame into a JPEG file in the current
directory. Each file takes the frame number padded
with leading zeros as name.
[no]progressive
Specify standard or progressive JPEG (de-
fault: noprogressive).
[no]baseline
Specify use of baseline or not (default:
baseline).
optimize=<0-100>
optimization factor (default: 100)
smooth=<0-100>
smooth factor (default: 0)
quality=<0-100>
quality factor (default: 75)
outdir=<dirname>
Specify the directory to save the JPEG
files to (default: ./).
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subdirs=<prefix>
Create numbered subdirectories with the
specified prefix to save the files in in-
stead of the current directory.
maxfiles=<value> (subdirs only)
Maximum number of files to be saved per
subdirectory. Must be equal to or larger
than 1 (default: 1000).
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).
ppm
Write PPM files (default).
pgm
Write PGM files.
pgmyuv
Write PGMYUV files. PGMYUV is like PGM,
but it also contains the U and V plane, ap-
pended at the bottom of the picture.
raw
Write PNM files in raw mode (default).
ascii
Write PNM files in ASCII mode.
outdir=<dirname>
Specify the directory to save the PNM files
to (default: ./).
subdirs=<prefix>
Create numbered subdirectories with the
specified prefix to save the files in in-
stead of the current directory.
maxfiles=<value> (subdirs only)
Maximum number of files to be saved per
subdirectory. Must be equal to or larger
than 1 (default: 1000).
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 for-
mats are supported.
z=<0-9>
Specifies the compression level. 0 is no
compression, 9 is maximum 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.
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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:
mplayer video.nut -vf format=bgr15 -vo tga
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:
-ac mp3acm
Force the l3codeca.acm MP3 codec.
-ac mad,
Try libmad first, then fall back on others.
-ac hwac3,a52,
Try hardware AC-3 passthrough, software
AC-3, then others.
-ac hwdts,
Try hardware DTS passthrough, then fall
back on others.
-ac -ffmp3,
Skip FFmpeg's MP3 decoder.
-af-adv <force=(0-7):list=(filters)> (also see -af)
Specify advanced audio filter options:
force=<0-7>
Forces the insertion of audio filters to
one of the following:
0: Use completely automatic filter in-
sertion.
1: Optimize for accuracy (default).
2: Optimize for speed. Warning: Some
features in the audio filters may
silently fail, and the sound quality may
drop.
3: Use no automatic insertion of filters
and no optimization. Warning: It may be
possible to crash MPlayer using this
setting.
4: Use automatic insertion of filters
according to 0 above, but use floating
point processing when possible.
5: Use automatic insertion of filters
according to 1 above, but use floating
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point processing when possible.
6: Use automatic insertion of filters
according to 2 above, but use floating
point processing when possible.
7: Use no automatic insertion of filters
according to 3 above, and use floating
point processing when possible.
list=<filters>
Same as -af.
-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:
-afm ffmpeg
Try FFmpeg's libavcodec codecs first.
-afm acm,dshow
Try Win32 codecs first.
-aspect <ratio> (also see -zoom)
Override movie aspect ratio, in case aspect infor-
mation is incorrect or missing in the file being
played.
EXAMPLE:
-aspect 4:3 or -aspect 1.3333
-aspect 16:9 or -aspect 1.7777
-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 and -vo xvmc:bobdeint.
-1 auto (default): If the decoder does not ex-
port the appropriate information, it falls
back to 0 (top field first).
0 top field first
1 bottom field first
-flip
Flip image upside-down.
-lavdopts <option1:option2:...> (DEBUG CODE)
Specify libavcodec decoding parameters. Separate
multiple options with a colon.
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EXAMPLE:
-lavdopts gray:skiploopfilter=all:skipframe=non-
ref
Available options are:
bitexact
Only use bit-exact algorithms in all decod-
ing steps (for codec testing).
bug=<value>
Manually work around encoder bugs.
0: nothing
1: autodetect bugs (default)
2 (msmpeg4v3): some old lavc generated
msmpeg4v3 files (no autodetection)
4 (mpeg4): Xvid interlacing bug (autode-
tected if fourcc==XVIX)
8 (mpeg4): UMP4 (autodetected if four-
cc==UMP4)
16 (mpeg4): padding bug (autodetected)
32 (mpeg4): illegal vlc bug (autodetect-
ed per fourcc)
64 (mpeg4): Xvid and DivX qpel bug (au-
todetected per fourcc/:version)
128 (mpeg4): old standard qpel (autode-
tected per fourcc/:version)
256 (mpeg4): another qpel bug (autode-
tected per fourcc/:version)
512 (mpeg4): direct-qpel-blocksize bug
(autodetected per fourcc/:version)
1024 (mpeg4): edge padding bug (autode-
tected per fourcc/:version)
debug=<value>
Display debugging information.
0: disabled
1: picture info
2: rate control
4: bitstream
8: macroblock (MB) type
16: per-block quantization parameter
(QP)
32: motion vector
0x0040: motion vector visualization (use
-noslices)
0x0080: macroblock (MB) skip
0x0100: startcode
0x0200: PTS
0x0400: error resilience
0x0800: memory management control opera-
tions (H.264)
0x1000: bugs
0x2000: Visualize quantization parameter
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(QP), lower QP are tinted greener.
0x4000: Visualize block types.
ec=<value>
Set error concealment strategy.
1: Use strong deblock filter for damaged
MBs.
2: iterative motion vector (MV) search
(slow)
3: all (default)
er=<value>
Set error resilience strategy.
0: disabled
1: careful (Should work with broken en-
coders.)
2: normal (default) (Works with compli-
ant encoders.)
3: aggressive (More checks, but might
cause problems even for valid bit-
streams.)
4: very aggressive
fast (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264 only)
Enable optimizations which do not comply to
the specification and might potentially
cause problems, like simpler dequantiza-
tion, simpler motion compensation, assuming
use of the default quantization matrix, as-
suming YUV 4:2:0 and skipping a few checks
to detect damaged bitstreams.
gray
grayscale only decoding (a bit faster than
with color)
idct=<0-99> (see -lavcopts)
For best decoding quality use the same IDCT
algorithm for decoding and encoding. This
may come at a price in accuracy, though.
lowres=<number>[,]
Decode at lower resolutions. Low resolu-
tion decoding is not supported by all
codecs, and it will often result in ugly
artifacts. This is not a bug, but a side
effect of not decoding at full resolution.
0: disabled
1: 1/2 resolution
2: 1/4 resolution
3: 1/8 resolution
If <w> is specified lowres decoding will be
used only if the width of the video is ma-
jor than or equal to <w>.
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sb=<number> (MPEG-2 only)
Skip the given number of macroblock rows at
the bottom.
st=<number> (MPEG-2 only)
Skip the given number of macroblock rows at
the top.
skiploopfilter=<skipvalue> (H.264 only)
Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) dur-
ing H.264 decoding. Since the filtered
frame is supposed to be used as reference
for decoding dependent frames this has a
worse effect on quality than not doing de-
blocking on e.g. MPEG-2 video. But at
least for high bitrate HDTV this provides a
big speedup with no visible quality loss.
<skipvalue> can be either one of the fol-
lowing:
none: Never skip.
default: Skip useless processing steps
(e.g. 0 size packets in AVI).
nonref: Skip frames that are not refer-
enced (i.e. not used for decoding other
frames, the error cannot "build up").
bidir: Skip B-Frames.
nonkey: Skip all frames except
keyframes.
all: Skip all frames.
skipidct=<skipvalue> (MPEG-1/2 only)
Skips the IDCT step. This degrades quality
a lot of in almost all cases (see skiploop-
filter for available skip values).
skipframe=<skipvalue>
Skips decoding of frames completely. Big
speedup, but jerky motion and sometimes bad
artifacts (see skiploopfilter for available
skip values).
threads=<1-8> (MPEG-1/2 only)
number of threads to use for decoding (de-
fault: 1)
vismv=<value>
Visualize motion vectors.
0: disabled
1: Visualize forward predicted MVs of P-
frames.
2: Visualize forward predicted MVs of B-
frames.
4: Visualize backward predicted MVs of
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B-frames.
vstats
Prints some statistics and stores them in
./vstats_*.log.
-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 benchmark-
ing.
-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=slow-
est/:best.
-pphelp (also see -vf pp)
Show a summary about the available postprocess fil-
ters and their usage.
-ssf <mode>
Specifies software scaler parameters.
EXAMPLE:
-vf scale -ssf lgb=3.0
lgb=<0-100>
gaussian blur filter (luma)
cgb=<0-100>
gaussian blur filter (chroma)
ls=<-100-100>
sharpen filter (luma)
cs=<-100-100>
sharpen filter (chroma)
chs=<h>
chroma horizontal shifting
cvs=<v>
chroma vertical shifting
-stereo <mode>
Select type of MP2/:MP3 stereo output.
0 stereo
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1 left channel
2 right channel
-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:
0 fast bilinear
1 bilinear
2 bicubic (good quality) (default)
3 experimental
4 nearest neighbor (bad quality)
5 area
6 luma bicubic / chroma bilinear
7 gauss
8 sincR
9 lanczos
10 natural bicubic spline
NOTE: Some -sws options are tunable. The descrip-
tion of the scale video filter has further informa-
tion.
-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:
-vc divx
Force Win32/:VfW DivX codec, no fallback.
-vc -divxds,-divx,
Skip Win32 DivX codecs.
-vc ffmpeg12,mpeg12,
Try libavcodec's MPEG-1/2 codec, then libm-
peg2, then others.
-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:
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-vfm ffmpeg,dshow,vfw
Try the libavcodec, then Directshow, then
VfW codecs and fall back on others, if they
do not work.
-vfm xanim
Try XAnim codecs first.
-x <x> (also see -zoom) (MPlayer only)
Scale image to width <x> (if software/:hardware
scaling is available). Disables aspect calcula-
tions.
-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:
deblock-chroma (also see -vf pp)
chroma deblock filter
deblock-luma (also see -vf pp)
luma deblock filter
dering-luma (also see -vf pp)
luma deringing filter
dering-chroma (also see -vf pp)
chroma deringing filter
filmeffect (also see -vf noise)
Adds artificial film grain to the video.
May increase perceived quality, while low-
ering true quality.
rendering methods:
dr2
Activate direct rendering method 2.
nodr2
Deactivate direct rendering method 2.
-xy <value> (also see -zoom)
value<=8
Scale image by factor <value>.
value>8
Set width to value and calculate height to
keep correct aspect ratio.
-y <y> (also see -zoom) (MPlayer only)
Scale image to height <y> (if software/:hardware
scaling is available). Disables aspect calcula-
tions.
-zoom
Allow software scaling, where available. This will
allow scaling with output drivers (like x11, fbdev)
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that do not support hardware scaling where MPlayer
disables scaling by default for performance rea-
sons.
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.
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 on-
ly capable of max 44.1kHz. This filter is automat-
ically 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>.
<srate>
output sample frequency in Hz. The valid
range for this parameter is 8000 to 192000.
If the input and output sample frequency
are the same or if this parameter is omit-
ted the filter is automatically unloaded.
A high sample frequency normally improves
the audio quality, especially when used in
combination with other filters.
<sloppy>
Allow (1) or disallow (0) the output fre-
quency to differ slightly from the frequen-
cy given by <srate> (default: 1). Can be
used if the startup of the playback is ex-
tremely slow.
<type>
Selects which resampling method to use.
0: linear interpolation (fast, poor
quality especially when upsampling)
1: polyphase filterbank and integer pro-
cessing
2: polyphase filterbank and floating
point processing (slow, best quality)
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af resample=44100:0:0
would set the output frequency of the re-
sample filter to 44100Hz using exact output
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frequency scaling and linear interpolation.
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>.
<srate>
the output sample rate
<length>
length of the filter with respect to the
lower sampling rate (default: 16)
<linear>
if 1 then filters will be linearly interpo-
lated between polyphase entries
<count>
log2 of the number of polyphase entries
(..., 10->1024, 11->2048, 12->4096, ...)
(default: 10->1024)
<cutoff>
cutoff frequency (0.0-1.0), default set de-
pending upon filter length
sweep[=speed]
Produces a sine sweep.
<0.0-1.0>
Sine function delta, use very low values to
hear the sweep.
sinesuppress[=freq:decay]
Remove a sine at the specified frequency. Useful
to get rid of the 50/60Hz noise on low quality au-
dio equipment. It probably only works on mono in-
put.
<freq>
The frequency of the sine which should be
removed (in Hz) (default: 50)
<decay>
Controls the adaptivity (a larger value
will make the filter adapt to amplitude and
phase changes quicker, a smaller value will
make the adaptation slower) (default:
0.0001). Reasonable values are around
0.001.
hrtf[=flag]
Head-related transfer function: Converts multichan-
nel audio to 2 channel output for headphones, pre-
serving the spatiality of the sound.
Flag Meaning
m matrix decoding of the rear channel
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s 2-channel matrix decoding
0 no matrix decoding (default)
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:
No. frequency
0 31.25 Hz
1 62.50 Hz
2 125.00 Hz
3 250.00 Hz
4 500.00 Hz
5 1.00 kHz
6 2.00 kHz
7 4.00 kHz
8 8.00 kHz
9 16.00 kHz
If the sample rate of the sound being played is
lower than the center frequency for a frequency
band, then that band will be disabled. A known bug
with this filter is that the characteristics for
the uppermost band are not completely symmetric if
the sample rate is close to the center frequency of
that band. This problem can be worked around by
upsampling the sound using the resample filter be-
fore it reaches this filter.
<g1>:::...:
floating point numbers representing the
gain in dB for each frequency band (-12-12)
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af equalizer=11:11:10:5:0:-12:0:5:12:12
media.avi
Would amplify the sound in the upper and
lower frequency region while canceling it
almost completely around 1kHz.
channels=nch[:nr:from1:to1:from2:to2:from3:to3:...]
Can be used for adding, removing, routing and copy-
ing audio channels. If only <nch> is given the de-
fault 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 (ex-
cept mixing from mono to stereo, then the mono
channel is repeated in both of the output chan-
nels). If the number of output channels is smaller
than the number of input channels the exceeding
channels are truncated.
<nch>
number of output channels (1-6)
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<nr>
number of routes (1-6)
<from1:to1:from2:to2:from3:to3:...>
Pairs of numbers between 0 and 5 that de-
fine where to route each channel.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af channels=4:4:0:1:1:0:2:2:3:3 me-
dia.avi
Would change the number of channels to 4
and set up 4 routes that swap channel 0 and
channel 1 and leave channel 2 and 3 intact.
Observe that if media containing two chan-
nels was played back, channels 2 and 3
would contain silence but 0 and 1 would
still be swapped.
mplayer -af channels=6:4:0:0:0:1:0:2:0:3 me-
dia.avi
Would change the number of channels to 6
and set up 4 routes that copy channel 0 to
channels 0 to 3. Channel 4 and 5 will con-
tain silence.
mplayer -af channels=6:6:0:4:1:0:2:1:3:2:4:3:5:5
media.avi
Should make the 6-channel ffdca (DTS) out-
put work correctly with ALSA.
format[=format] (also see -format)
Convert between different sample formats. Automat-
ically enabled when needed by the sound card or an-
other filter.
<format>
Sets the desired format. The general form
is 'sbe', where 's' denotes the sign (ei-
ther 's' for signed or 'u' for unsigned),
'b' denotes the number of bits per sample
(16, 24 or 32) and 'e' denotes the endian-
ness ('le' means little-endian, 'be' big-
endian and 'ne' the endianness of the com-
puter MPlayer is running on). Valid values
(amongst others) are: 's16le', 'u32be' and
'u24ne'. Exceptions to this rule that are
also valid format specifiers: u8, s8, floa-
tle, floatbe, floatne, mulaw, alaw, mpeg2,
ac3 and imaadpcm.
volume[=v[:sc]]
Implements software volume control. Use this fil-
ter 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
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mixer instead of an analog one, and you hear dis-
tortion, 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.
NOTE: This filter is not reentrant and can there-
fore only be enabled once for every audio stream.
<v>
Sets the desired gain in dB for all chan-
nels in the stream from -200dB to +60dB,
where -200dB mutes the sound completely and
+60dB equals a gain of 1000 (default: 0).
<sc>
Turns soft clipping on (1) or off (0).
Soft-clipping can make the sound more
smooth if very high volume levels are used.
Enable this option if the dynamic range of
the loudspeakers is very low.
WARNING: This feature creates distortion
and should be considered a last resort.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af volume=10.1:0 media.avi
Would amplify the sound by 10.1dB and hard-
clip if the sound level is too high.
pan=n[:L00:L01:L02:...L10:L11:L12:...Ln0:Ln1:Ln2:...]
Mixes channels arbitrarily. Basically a combina-
tion 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 cen-
ter speaker in a surround sound system. This fil-
ter 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.
<n>
number of output channels (1-6)
<Lij>
How much of input channel i is mixed into
output channel j (0-1). So in principle
you first have n numbers saying what to do
with the first input channel, then n num-
bers that act on the second input channel
etc. If you do not specify any numbers for
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some input channels, 0 is assumed.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af pan=1:0.5:0.5 media.avi
Would down-mix from stereo to mono.
mplayer -af pan=3:1:0:0.5:0:1:0.5 media.avi
Would give 3 channel output leaving chan-
nels 0 and 1 intact, and mix channels 0 and
1 into output channel 2 (which could be
sent to a subwoofer for example).
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.
<fc>
cutoff frequency in Hz for the low-pass
filter (20Hz to 300Hz) (default: 60Hz) For
the best result try setting the cutoff fre-
quency as low as possible. This will im-
prove the stereo or surround sound experi-
ence.
<ch>
Determines the channel number in which to
insert the sub-channel audio. Channel num-
ber can be between 0 and 5 (default: 5).
Observe that the number of channels will
automatically be increased to <ch> if nec-
essary.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af sub=100:4 -channels 5 media.avi
Would add a sub-woofer channel with a cut-
off frequency of 100Hz to output channel 4.
center
Creates a center channel from the front channels.
May currently be low quality as it does not imple-
ment a high-pass filter for proper extraction yet,
but averages and halves the channels instead.
<ch>
Determines the channel number in which to
insert the center channel. Channel number
can be between 0 and 5 (default: 5). Ob-
serve that the number of channels will au-
tomatically be increased to <ch> if neces-
sary.
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surround[=delay]
Decoder for matrix encoded surround sound like Dol-
by Surround. Many files with 2 channel audio actu-
ally contain matrixed surround sound. Requires a
sound card supporting at least 4 channels.
<delay>
delay time in ms for the rear speakers (0
to 1000) (default: 20) This delay should be
set as follows: If d1 is the distance from
the listening position to the front speak-
ers and d2 is the distance from the listen-
ing position to the rear speakers, then the
delay should be set to 15ms if d1 <= d2 and
to 15 + 5*(d1-d2) if d1 > d2.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af surround=15 -channels 4 media.avi
Would add surround sound decoding with 15ms
delay for the sound to the rear speakers.
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 use-
ful if you have more than 2 loudspeakers.
ch1,ch2,...
The delay in ms that should be imposed on
each channel (floating point number between
0 and 1000).
To calculate the required delay for the different
channels do as follows:
1. Measure the distance to the loudspeakers in me-
ters in relation to your listening position,
giving you the distances s1 to s5 (for a 5.1
system). There is no point in compensating for
the subwoofer (you will not hear the difference
anyway).
2. Subtract the distances s1 to s5 from the maximum
distance, i.e. s[i] = max(s) - s[i]; i = 1...5.
3. Calculate the required delays in ms as d[i] =
1000*s[i]/342; i = 1...5.
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af delay=10.5:10.5:0:0:7:0 media.avi
Would delay front left and right by 10.5ms,
the two rear channels and the sub by 0ms
and the center channel by 7ms.
export[=mmapped_file[:nsamples]]
Exports the incoming signal to other processes us-
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ing 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.
<mmapped_file>
file to map data to (default: ~/.mplay-
er/:mplayer-af_export)
<nsamples>
number of samples per channel (default:
512)
EXAMPLE:
mplayer -af export=/tmp/mplayer-af_export:1024
media.avi
Would export 1024 samples per channel to
'/tmp/mplayer-af_export'.
extrastereo[=mul]
(Linearly) increases the difference between left
and right channels which adds some sort of "live"
effect to playback.
<mul>
Sets the difference coefficient (default:
2.5). 0.0 means mono sound (average of
both channels), with 1.0 sound will be un-
changed, with -1.0 left and right channels
will be swapped.
volnorm[=method:target]
Maximizes the volume without distorting the sound.
<method>
Sets the used method.
1: Use a single sample to smooth the
variations via the standard weighted
mean over past samples (default).
2: Use several samples to smooth the
variations via the standard weighted
mean over past samples.
<target>
Sets the target amplitude as a fraction of
the maximum for the sample type (default:
0.25).
ladspa=file:label[:controls...]
Load a LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plug-
in API) plugin. This filter is reentrant, so mul-
tiple LADSPA plugins can be used at once.
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<file>
Specifies the LADSPA plugin library file.
If LADSPA_PATH is set, it searches for the
specified file. If it is not set, you must
supply a fully specified pathname.
<label>
Specifies the filter within the library.
Some libraries contain only one filter, but
others contain many of them. Entering
'help' here, will list all available fil-
ters within the specified library, which
eliminates the use of 'listplugins' from
the LADSPA SDK.
<controls>
Controls are zero or more floating point
values that determine the behavior of the
loaded plugin (for example delay, threshold
or gain). In verbose mode (add -v to the
MPlayer command line), all available con-
trols and their valid ranges are printed.
This eliminates the use of 'analyseplugin'
from the LADSPA SDK.
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.
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 parame-
ter to '-1'. Parameters w:h means width x height in pix-
els, 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
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-vf help.
Video filters are managed in lists. There are a few com-
mands to manage the filter list.
-vf-add <filter1[,filter2,...]>
Appends the filters given as arguments to the fil-
ter list.
-vf-pre <filter1[,filter2,...]>
Prepends the filters given as arguments to the fil-
ter 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_parame-
ter2=val- ue2:...]>
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.
<w>,
Cropped width and height, defaults to orig-
inal width and height.
<x>,
Position of the cropped picture, defaults
to center.
cropdetect[=limit:round]
Calculates necessary cropping parameters and prints
the recommended parameters to stdout.
<limit>
Threshold, which can be optionally speci-
fied from nothing (0) to everything (255)
(default: 24).
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<round>
Value which the width/:height should be di-
visible by (default: 16). The offset is
automatically adjusted to center the video.
Use 2 to get only even dimensions (needed
for 4:2:2 video). 16 is best when encoding
to most video codecs.
rectangle[=w:h:x:y]
The plugin responds to the input.conf directive
'change_rectangle' that takes two parameters.
<w>,
width and height (default: -1, maximum pos-
sible width where boundaries are still vis-
ible.)
<x>,
top left corner position (default: -1, up-
permost leftmost)
expand[=w:h:x:y:o:a:r]
Expands (not scales) movie resolution to the given
value and places the unscaled original at coordi-
nates x, y. Can be used for placing subtitles/:OSD
in the resulting black bands.
<w>,
Expanded width,height (default: original
width,height). Negative values for w and h
are treated as offsets to the original
size.
EXAMPLE:
expand=0:-50:0:0
Adds a 50 pixel border to the
bottom of the picture.
<x>,
position of original image on the expanded
image (default: center)
<o>
OSD/:subtitle rendering
0: disable (default)
1: enable
<a>
Expands to fit an aspect instead of a reso-
lution (default: 0).
EXAMPLE:
expand=800:::::4/3
Expands to 800x600, unless the
source is higher resolution, in
which case it expands to fill a
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4/3 aspect.
<r>
Rounds up to make both width and height di-
visible by <r> (default: 1).
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.
0 Rotate by 90 degrees clockwise and flip
(default).
1 Rotate by 90 degrees clockwise.
2 Rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise.
3 Rotate by 90 degrees counterclockwise and
flip.
scale[=w:h[:ilaced[:chr_drop[:par[:par2[:pre-
size[:noup[:arnd]]]]]]]]
Scales the image with the software scaler (slow)
and performs a YUV<->RGB colorspace conversion (al-
so see -sws).
<w>,
scaled width/:height (default: original
width/:height)
NOTE: If -zoom is used, and underlying fil-
ters (including libvo) are incapable of
scaling, it defaults to d_width/:d_height!
0: scaled d_width/:d_height
-1: original width/:height
-2: Calculate w/h using the other di-
mension and the prescaled aspect ratio.
-3: Calculate w/h using the other di-
mension and the original aspect ratio.
-(n+8): Like -n above, but rounding the
dimension to the closest multiple of 16.
<ilaced>
Toggle interlaced scaling.
0: off (default)
1: on
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<chr_drop>
chroma skipping
0: Use all available input lines for
chroma.
1: Use only every 2. input line for
chroma.
2: Use only every 4. input line for
chroma.
3: Use only every 8. input line for
chroma.
<par>[:] (also see -sws)
Set some scaling parameters depending on
the type of scaler selected with -sws.
-sws 2 (bicubic): B (blurring) and C
(ringing)
0.00:0.60 default
0.00:0.75 VirtualDub's "precise bicubic"
0.00:0.50 Catmull-Rom spline
0.33:0.33 Mitchell-Netravali spline
1.00:0.00 cubic B-spline
-sws 7 (gaussian): sharpness (0 (soft) -
100 (sharp))
-sws 9 (lanczos): filter length (1-10)
<presize>
Scale to preset sizes.
qntsc: 352x240 (NTSC quarter screen)
qpal: 352x288 (PAL quarter screen)
ntsc: 720x480 (standard NTSC)
pal: 720x576 (standard PAL)
sntsc: 640x480 (square pixel NTSC)
spal: 768x576 (square pixel PAL)
<noup>
Disallow upscaling past the original dimen-
sions.
0: Allow upscaling (default).
1: Disallow upscaling if one dimension
exceeds its original value.
2: Disallow upscaling if both dimensions
exceed their original values.
<arnd>
Accurate rounding for the vertical scaler,
which may be faster or slower than the de-
fault rounding.
0: Disable accurate rounding (default).
1: Enable accurate rounding.
dsize[=aspect|w:h:aspect-method:r]
Changes the intended display size/:aspect at an ar-
bitrary point in the filter chain. Aspect can be
given as a fraction (4/3) or floating point number
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(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 af-
fects what later scalers (software or hardware)
will do when auto-scaling to correct aspect.
<w>,
New display width and height. Can also be
these special values:
0: original display width and height
-1: original video width and height
(default)
-2: Calculate w/h using the other di-
mension and the original display aspect
ratio.
-3: Calculate w/h using the other di-
mension and the original video aspect
ratio.
EXAMPLE:
dsize=800:-2
Specifies a display resolution
of 800x600 for a 4/3 aspect
video, or 800x450 for a 16/9
aspect video.
<aspect-method>
Modifies width and height according to
original aspect ratios.
-1: Ignore original aspect ratio (de-
fault).
0: Keep display aspect ratio by using
<w> and as maximum resolution.
1: Keep display aspect ratio by using
<w> and as minimum resolution.
2: Keep video aspect ratio by using <w>
and <h> as maximum resolution.
3: Keep video aspect ratio by using <w>
and <h> as minimum resolution.
EXAMPLE:
dsize=800:600:0
Specifies a display resolution
of at most 800x600, or smaller,
in order to keep aspect.
<r>
Rounds up to make both width and height di-
visible by <r> (default: 1).
yuy2
Forces software YV12/:I420/:422P to YUY2 conver-
sion. Useful for video cards/:drivers with slow
YV12 but fast YUY2 support.
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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 with-
out doing real conversion.
rgb2bgr[=swap]
RGB 24/32 <-> BGR 24/32 colorspace conversion.
swap
Also perform R <-> B swapping.
palette
RGB/BGR 8 -> 15/16/24/32bpp colorspace conversion
using palette.
format[=fourcc]
Restricts the colorspace for the next filter with-
out doing any conversion. Use together with the
scale filter for a real conversion.
NOTE: For a list of available formats see for-
mat=fmt=help.
<fourcc>
format name like rgb15, bgr24, yv12, etc
(default: yuy2)
noformat[=fourcc]
Restricts the colorspace for the next filter with-
out doing any conversion. Unlike the format fil-
ter, this will allow any colorspace except the one
you specify.
NOTE: For a list of available formats see nofor-
mat=fmt=help.
<fourcc>
format name like rgb15, bgr24, yv12, etc
(default: yv12)
pp[=filter1[:option1[:option2...]]/[-]filter2...] (also
see -pphelp)
Enables the specified chain of postprocessing sub-
filters. Subfilters must be separated by '/' and
can be disabled by prepending a '-'. Each subfil-
ter 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:
a/autoq
Automatically switch the subfilter off if
the CPU is too slow.
c/chrom
Do chrominance filtering, too (default).
y/nochrom
Do luminance filtering only (no chromi-
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nance).
n/noluma
Do chrominance filtering only (no lumi-
nance).
NOTE: -pphelp shows a list of available subfilters.
Available subfilters are
hb/hdeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where
higher values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where
lower values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 39).
vb/vdeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
vertical deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where
higher values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where
lower values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 39).
ha/hadeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
accurate horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where
higher values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where
lower values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 39).
va/vadeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
accurate vertical deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where
higher values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where
lower values mean more deblocking (de-
fault: 39).
The horizontal and vertical deblocking filters
share the difference and flatness values so you
cannot set different horizontal and vertical
thresholds.
h1/x1hdeblock
experimental horizontal deblocking filter
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v1/x1vdeblock
experimental vertical deblocking filter
dr/dering
deringing filter
tn/tmpnoise[:threshold1[:threshold2[:thresh-
old3]]]
temporal noise reducer
<threshold1>: larger -> stronger filter-
ing
<threshold2>: larger -> stronger filter-
ing
<threshold3>: larger -> stronger filter-
ing
al/autolevels[:f/fullyrange]
automatic brightness / contrast correction
f/fullyrange: Stretch luminance to
(0-255).
lb/linblenddeint
Linear blend deinterlacing filter that
deinterlaces the given block by filtering
all lines with a (1 2 1) filter.
li/linipoldeint
Linear interpolating deinterlacing filter
that deinterlaces the given block by lin-
early interpolating every second line.
ci/cubicipoldeint
Cubic interpolating deinterlacing filter
deinterlaces the given block by cubically
interpolating every second line.
md/mediandeint
Median deinterlacing filter that deinter-
laces the given block by applying a median
filter to every second line.
fd/ffmpegdeint
FFmpeg deinterlacing filter that deinter-
laces the given block by filtering every
second line with a (-1 4 2 4 -1) filter.
l5/lowpass5
Vertically applied FIR lowpass deinterlac-
ing filter that deinterlaces the given
block by filtering all lines with a (-1 2 6
2 -1) filter.
fq/forceQuant[:quantizer]
Overrides the quantizer table from the in-
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put with the constant quantizer you speci-
fy.
<quantizer>: quantizer to use
de/default
default pp filter combination
(hb:a,vb:a,dr:a)
fa/fast
fast pp filter combination (h1:a,v1:a,dr:a)
ac
high quality pp filter combination
(ha:a:128:7,va:a,dr:a)
EXAMPLE:
-vf pp=hb/vb/dr/al
horizontal and vertical deblocking, dering-
ing and automatic brightness/:contrast
-vf pp=de/-al
default filters without brightness/:con-
trast correction
-vf pp=default/tmpnoise:1:2:3
Enable default filters & temporal denoiser.
-vf pp=hb:y/vb:a
Horizontal deblocking on luminance only,
and switch vertical deblocking on or off
automatically depending on available CPU
time.
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.
<quality>
0-6 (default: 3)
<qp>
Force quantization parameter (default: 0,
use QP from video).
<mode>
0: hard thresholding (default)
1: soft thresholding (better deringing, but
blurrier)
4: like 0, but also use B-frames' QP (may
cause flicker)
5: like 1, but also use B-frames' QP (may
cause flicker)
uspp[=quality[:qp]]
Ultra simple & slow postprocessing filter that com-
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presses 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.
<quality>
0-8 (default: 3)
<qp>
Force quantization parameter (default: 0,
use QP from video).
fspp[=quality[:qp[:strength[:bframes]]]]
faster version of the simple postprocessing filter
<quality>
4-5 (equivalent to spp; default: 4)
<qp>
Force quantization parameter (default: 0,
use QP from video).
<-15-32>
Filter strength, lower values mean more de-
tails but also more artifacts, while higher
values make the image smoother but also
blurrier (default: 0 - PSNR optimal).
<bframes>
0: do not use QP from B-frames (default)
1: use QP from B-frames too (may cause
flicker)
pp7[=qp[:mode]]
Variant of the spp filter, similar to spp=6 with 7
point DCT where only the center sample is used af-
ter IDCT.
<qp>
Force quantization parameter (default: 0,
use QP from video).
<mode>
0: hard thresholding
1: soft thresholding (better deringing, but
blurrier)
2: medium thresholding (default, good re-
sults)
qp=equation
quantization parameter (QP) change filter
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<equation>
some equation like "2+2*sin(PI*qp)"
geq=equation
generic equation change filter
<equation>
Some equation, e.g. 'p(W-X\,Y)' to flip
the image horizontally. You can use
whitespace to make the equation more read-
able. There are a couple of constants that
can be used in the equation:
PI: the number pi
E: the number e
X / Y: the coordinates of the current
sample
W / H: width and height of the image
SW / SH: width/height scale depending on
the currently filtered plane, e.g. 1,1
and 0.5,0.5 for YUV 4:2:0.
p(x,y): returns the value of the pixel
at location x/y of the current plane.
test
Generate various test patterns.
rgbtest
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 libav-
codec for use with DVB/:DXR3/:IVTV/:V4L2.
<quality>
1-31: fixed qscale
32-: fixed bitrate in kbits
<fps>
force output fps (float value) (default: 0,
autodetect based on height)
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.
<aspect>
Control aspect ratio, calculate as
DVB_HEIGHT*ASPECTRATIO (default:
576*4/3=768), set it to 576*(16/9)=1024 for
a 16:9 TV.
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EXAMPLE:
-vf dvbscale,scale=-1:0,ex-
pand=-1:576:-1:-1:1,lavc
FIXME: Explain what this does.
noise[=luma[u][t|a][h][p]:chroma[u][t|a][h][p]]
Adds noise.
<0-100>
luma noise
<0-100>
chroma noise
u uniform noise (gaussian otherwise)
t temporal noise (noise pattern changes be-
tween frames)
a averaged temporal noise (smoother, but a
lot slower)
h high quality (slightly better looking,
slightly slower)
p mix random noise with a (semi)regular pat-
tern
denoise3d[=luma_spatial:chroma_spatial:luma_tmp:chro-
ma_tmp]
This filter aims to reduce image noise producing
smooth images and making still images really still
(This should enhance compressibility.).
<luma_spatial>
spatial luma strength (default: 4)
<chroma_spatial>
spatial chroma strength (default: 3)
<luma_tmp>
luma temporal strength (default: 6)
<chroma_tmp>
chroma temporal strength (default:
luma_tmp*chroma_spatial/luma_spatial)
hqdn3d[=luma_spatial:chroma_spatial:luma_tmp:chroma_tmp]
High precision/:quality version of the denoise3d
filter. Parameters and usage are the same.
eq[=brightness:contrast] (OBSOLETE)
Software equalizer with interactive controls just
like the hardware equalizer, for cards/:drivers
that do not support brightness and contrast con-
trols in hardware. Might also be useful with MEn-
coder, either for fixing poorly captured movies, or
for slightly reducing contrast to mask artifacts
and get by with lower bitrates.
<-100-100>
initial brightness
<-100-100>
initial contrast
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eq2[=gamma:contrast:brightness:saturation:rg:gg:bg:weight]
Alternative software equalizer that uses lookup ta-
bles (very slow), allowing gamma correction in ad-
dition to simple brightness and contrast adjust-
ment. 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.
<0.1-10>
initial gamma value (default: 1.0)
<-2-2>
initial contrast, where negative values re-
sult in a negative image (default: 1.0)
<-1-1>
initial brightness (default: 0.0)
<0-3>
initial saturation (default: 1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the red component (default:
1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the green component (de-
fault: 1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the blue component (de-
fault: 1.0)
<0-1>
The weight parameter can be used to reduce
the effect of a high gamma value on bright
image areas, e.g. keep them from getting
overamplified and just plain white. A val-
ue of 0.0 turns the gamma correction all
the way down while 1.0 leaves it at its
full strength (default: 1.0).
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.
<-180-180>
initial hue (default: 0.0)
<-100-100>
initial saturation, where negative values
result in a negative chroma (default: 1.0)
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 dis-
play 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.
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<f>
By default, halfpack averages pairs of
lines when downsampling. Any value differ-
ent from 0 or 1 gives the default (averag-
ing) behavior.
0: Only use even lines when downsam-
pling.
1: Only use odd lines when downsampling.
ilpack[=mode]
When interlaced video is stored in YUV 4:2:0 for-
mats, chroma interlacing does not line up properly
due to vertical downsampling of the chroma chan-
nels. 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.
<mode>
Select the sampling mode.
0: nearest-neighbor sampling, fast but
incorrect
1: linear interpolation (default)
harddup
Only useful with MEncoder. If harddup is used when
encoding, it will force duplicate frames to be en-
coded 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 af-
ter 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 be-
fore the filter chain to some point during the fil-
ter 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 en-
coding (e.g. streaming over dialup modem), but it
could in theory be used for fixing movies that were
inverse-telecined incorrectly.
<max>
Sets the maximum number of consecutive
frames which can be dropped (if positive),
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or the minimum interval between dropped
frames (if negative).
<hi>,,
A frame is a candidate for dropping if no
8x8 region differs by more than a threshold
of <hi>, and if not more than por-
tion (1 meaning the whole image) differs by
more than a threshold of <lo>. Values of
<hi> and are for 8x8 pixel blocks and
represent actual pixel value differences,
so a threshold of 64 corresponds to 1 unit
of difference for each pixel, or the same
spread out differently over the block.
dint[=sense:level]
The drop-deinterlace (dint) filter detects and
drops the first from a set of interlaced video
frames.
<0.0-1.0>
relative difference between neighboring
pixels (default: 0.1)
<0.0-1.0>
What part of the image has to be detected
as interlaced to drop the frame (default:
0.15).
lavcdeint (OBSOLETE)
FFmpeg deinterlacing filter, same as -vf pp=fd
kerndeint[=thresh[:map[:order[:sharp[:twoway]]]]]
Donald Graft's adaptive kernel deinterlacer. Dein-
terlaces parts of a video if a configurable thresh-
old is exceeded.
<0-255>
threshold (default: 10)
<map>
0: Ignore pixels exceeding the threshold
(default).
1: Paint pixels exceeding the threshold
white.
<order>
0: Leave fields alone (default).
1: Swap fields.
<sharp>
0: Disable additional sharpening (de-
fault).
1: Enable additional sharpening.
<twoway>
0: Disable twoway sharpening (default).
1: Enable twoway sharpening.
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unsharp[=l|cWxH:amount[:l|cWxH:amount]]
unsharp mask / gaussian blur
l
Apply effect on luma component.
c
Apply effect on chroma components.
<width>x
width and height of the matrix, odd sized
in both directions (min = 3x3, max = 13x11
or 11x13, usually something between 3x3 and
7x7)
amount
Relative amount of sharpness/:blur to add
to the image (a sane range should be
-1.5-1.5).
<0: blur
>0: sharpen
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 fil-
ter your interlaced DVD and play it on a TV without
breaking the interlacing. While deinterlacing
(with the postprocessing filter) removes interlac-
ing 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.
d deinterleave (placing one above the other)
i interleave
s swap fields (exchange even & odd lines)
fil[=i|d]
(De)interleaves lines. This filter is very similar
to the il filter but much faster, the main disad-
vantage is that it does not always work. Especial-
ly 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 combi-
nation of filters.
d Deinterleave fields, placing them side by
side.
i Interleave fields again (reversing the ef-
fect of fil=d).
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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 ex-
tract 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 re-
cover a clean, non-interlaced stream at film fram-
erate. This was the first and most primitive in-
verse telecine filter to be added to MPlayer/:MEn-
coder. 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:
<dr>
Set the frame dropping mode.
0: Do not drop frames to maintain fixed
output framerate (default).
1: Always drop a frame when there have
been no drops or telecine merges in the
past 5 frames.
2: Always maintain exact 5:4 input to
output frame ratio.
NOTE: Use mode 1 or 2 with MEncoder.
<am>
Analysis mode.
0: Fixed pattern with initial frame num-
ber specified by <fr>.
1: aggressive search for telecine pat-
tern (default)
<fr>
Set initial frame number in sequence. 0-2
are the three clean progressive frames; 3
and 4 are the two interlaced frames. The
default, -1, means 'not in telecine se-
quence'. The number specified here is the
type for the imaginary previous frame be-
fore the movie starts.
<t0>, , ,
Threshold values to be used in certain
modes.
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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 indepen-
dently for each frame. This will give much better
results for material that has undergone heavy edit-
ing 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) corre-
sponds 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 state-
less in the sense that it does not lock onto a pat-
tern to follow, but it instead looks forward to the
following fields in order to identify matches and
rebuild progressive frames. It is still under de-
velopment, but believed to be quite accurate.
jl, jr, jt, and jb
These options set the amount of "junk" to
ignore at the left, right, top, and bottom
of the image, respectively. Left/:right
are in units of 8 pixels, while top/:bottom
are in units of 2 lines. The default is 8
pixels on each side.
sb (strict breaks)
Setting this option to 1 will reduce the
chances of pullup generating an occasional
mismatched frame, but it may also cause an
excessive number of frames to be dropped
during high motion sequences. Conversely,
setting it to -1 will make pullup match
fields more easily. This may help process-
ing of video where there is slight blurring
between the fields, but may also cause
there to be interlaced frames in the out-
put.
mp (metric plane)
This option may be set to 1 or 2 to use a
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chroma plane instead of the luma plane for
doing pullup's computations. This may im-
prove accuracy on very clean source materi-
al, but more likely will decrease accuracy,
especially if there is chroma noise (rain-
bow effect) or any grayscale video. The
main purpose of setting mp to a chroma
plane is to reduce CPU load and make pullup
usable in realtime on slow machines.
NOTE: Always follow pullup with the softskip filter
when encoding to ensure that pullup is able to see
each frame. Failure to do so will lead to incor-
rect output and will usually crash, due to design
limitations in the codec/:filter layer.
filmdint[=options]
Inverse telecine filter, similar to the pullup fil-
ter 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 ac-
cess to the field-flags set by the MPEG-2 decoder.
Depending on the source MPEG, you may be fine ig-
noring 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 play-
back, but it is still generally better than using
pp=lb or no deinterlacing at all. Multiple options
can be specified separated by /.
crop=<w>:::
Just like the crop filter, but faster, and
works on mixed hard and soft telecined con-
tent as well as when y is not a multiple of
4. If x or y would require cropping frac-
tional pixels from the chroma planes, the
crop area is extended. This usually means
that x and y must be even.
io=<ifps>:
For each ifps input frames the filter will
output ofps frames. The ratio of ifps/:of-
ps should match the -fps/-ofps ratio. This
could be used to filter movies that are
broadcast on TV at a frame rate different
from their original framerate.
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luma_only=<n>
If n is nonzero, the chroma plane is copied
unchanged. This is useful for YV12 sampled
TV, which discards one of the chroma
fields.
mmx2=<n>
On x86, if n=1, use MMX2 optimized func-
tions, if n=2, use 3DNow! optimized func-
tions, otherwise, use plain C. If this op-
tion is not specified, MMX2 and 3DNow! are
auto-detected, use this option to override
auto-detection.
fast=<n>
The larger n will speed up the filter at
the expense of accuracy. The default value
is n=3. If n is odd, a frame immediately
following a frame marked with the RE-
PEAT_FIRST_FIELD MPEG flag is assumed to be
progressive, thus filter will not spend any
time on soft-telecined MPEG-2 content.
This is the only effect of this flag if
MMX2 or 3DNow! is available. Without MMX2
and 3DNow, if n=0 or 1, the same calcula-
tions will be used as with n=2 or 3. If
n=2 or 3, the number of luma levels used to
find the frame breaks is reduced from 256
to 128, which results in a faster filter
without losing much accuracy. If n=4 or 5,
a faster, but much less accurate metric
will be used to find the frame breaks,
which is more likely to misdetect high ver-
tical detail as interlaced content.
verbose=<n>
If n is nonzero, print the detailed metrics
for each frame. Useful for debugging.
dint_thres=<n>
Deinterlace threshold. Used during de-in-
terlacing of unmatched frames. Larger val-
ue means less deinterlacing, use n=256 to
completely turn off deinterlacing. Default
is n=8.
comb_thres=<n>
Threshold for comparing a top and bottom
fields. Defaults to 128.
diff_thres=<n>
Threshold to detect temporal change of a
field. Default is 128.
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sad_thres=<n>
Sum of Absolute Difference threshold, de-
fault is 64.
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 du-
plicated. This filter is intended to find and drop
those duplicates and restore the original film
framerate. When using this filter, you must speci-
fy -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 dif-
ferent 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:
pass=1|2
Use two pass mode.
file=<filename>
Set the two pass log filename (default:
"framediff.log").
threshold=<value>
Set the minimum strength the telecine pat-
tern must have for the filter to believe in
it (default: 0.5). This is used to avoid
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recognizing false pattern from the parts of
the video that are very dark or very still.
window=<numframes>
Set the number of past frames to look at
when searching for pattern (default: 30).
Longer window improves the reliability of
the pattern search, but shorter window im-
proves the reaction time to the changes in
the telecine phase. This only affects the
one pass mode. The two pass mode currently
uses fixed window that extends to both fu-
ture and past.
phase=0|1|2|3|4
Sets the initial telecine phase for one
pass mode (default: 0). The two pass mode
can see the future, so it is able to use
the correct phase from the beginning, but
one pass mode can only guess. It catches
the correct phase when it finds it, but
this option can be used to fix the possible
juddering at the beginning. The first pass
of the two pass mode also uses this, so if
you save the output from the first pass,
you get constant phase result.
deghost=<value>
Set the deghosting threshold (0-255 for one
pass mode, -255-255 for two pass mode, de-
fault 0). If nonzero, deghosting mode is
used. This is for video that has been
deinterlaced by blending the fields togeth-
er instead of dropping one of the fields.
Deghosting amplifies any compression arti-
facts in the blended frames, so the parame-
ter value is used as a threshold to exclude
those pixels from deghosting that differ
from the previous frame less than specified
value. If two pass mode is used, then neg-
ative value can be used to make the filter
analyze the whole video in the beginning of
pass-2 to determine whether it needs
deghosting or not and then select either
zero or the absolute value of the parame-
ter. Specify this option for pass-2, it
makes no difference on pass-1.
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 op-
posite field order to the film-to-video transfer.
The options are:
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t Capture field order top-first, transfer
bottom-first. Filter will delay the bottom
field.
b Capture bottom-first, transfer top-first.
Filter will delay the top field.
p Capture and transfer with the same field
order. This mode only exists for the docu-
mentation of the other options to refer to,
but if you actually select it, the filter
will faithfully do nothing ;-)
a Capture field order determined automatical-
ly by field flags, transfer opposite. Fil-
ter selects among t and b modes on a frame
by frame basis using field flags. If no
field information is available, then this
works just like u.
u Capture unknown or varying, transfer oppo-
site. Filter selects among t and b on a
frame by frame basis by analyzing the im-
ages and selecting the alternative that
produces best match between the fields.
T Capture top-first, transfer unknown or
varying. Filter selects among t and p us-
ing image analysis.
B Capture bottom-first, transfer unknown or
varying. Filter selects among b and p us-
ing image analysis.
A Capture determined by field flags, transfer
unknown or varying. Filter selects among
t, b and p using field flags and image
analysis. If no field information is
available, then this works just like U.
This is the default mode.
U Both capture and transfer unknown or vary-
ing. Filter selects among t, b and p using
image analysis only.
v Verbose operation. Prints the selected
mode for each frame and the average squared
difference between fields for t, b, and p
alternatives.
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
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-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 pa-
rameter tells the filter where in the telecine pat-
tern 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:
0 Move odd frames into the upper field, even
into the lower field, generating a full-
height frame at half framerate.
1 Only output odd frames, even frames are
dropped; height unchanged.
2 Only output even frames, odd frames are
dropped; height unchanged.
3 Expand each frame to full height, but pad
alternate lines with black; framerate un-
changed.
4 Interleave even lines from even frames with
odd lines from odd frames. Height un-
changed at half framerate.
tfields[=mode[:field_dominance]]
Temporal field separation - split fields into
frames, doubling the output framerate. Like the
telecine filter, tfields will only work properly
with MEncoder, and only if both -fps and -ofps are
set to the desired (double) framerate!
<mode>
0: Leave fields unchanged (will
jump/:flicker).
1: Interpolate missing lines. (The algo-
rithm used might not be so good.)
2: Translate fields by 1/4 pixel with lin-
ear interpolation (no jump).
4: Translate fields by 1/4 pixel with 4tap
filter (higher quality) (default).
<field_dominance> (DEPRECATED)
-1: auto (default) Only works if the de-
coder exports the appropriate information
and no other filters which discard that in-
formation come before tfields in the filter
chain, otherwise it falls back to 0 (top
field first).
0: top field first
1: bottom field first
NOTE: This option will possibly be removed
in a future version. Use -field-dominance
instead.
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yadif=[mode[:field_dominance]]
Yet another deinterlacing filter
<mode>
0: Output 1 frame for each frame.
1: Output 1 frame for each field.
2: Like 0 but skips spatial interlacing
check.
3: Like 1 but skips spatial interlacing
check.
<field_dominance> (DEPRECATED)
Operates like tfields.
NOTE: This option will possibly be removed
in a future version. Use -field-dominance
instead.
mcdeint=[mode[:parity[:qp]]]
Motion compensating deinterlacer. It needs one
field per frame as input and must thus be used to-
gether with tfields=1 or yadif=1/3 or equivalent.
<mode>
0: fast
1: medium
2: slow, iterative motion estimation
3: extra slow, like 2 plus multiple refer-
ence frames
<parity>
0 or 1 selects which field to use (note: no
autodetection yet!).
<qp>
Higher values should result in a smoother
motion vector field but less optimal indi-
vidual vectors.
boxblur=radius:power[:radius:power]
box blur
<radius>
blur filter strength
<power>
number of filter applications
sab=radius:pf:colorDiff[:radius:pf:colorDiff]
shape adaptive blur
<radius>
blur filter strength (~0.1-4.0) (slower if
larger)
<pf>
prefilter strength (~0.1-2.0)
<colorDiff>
maximum difference between pixels to still
be considered (~0.1-100.0)
smartblur=radius:strength:threshold[:ra-
dius:strength:threshold]
smart blur
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<radius>
blur filter strength (~0.1-5.0) (slower if
larger)
<strength>
blur (0.0-1.0) or sharpen (-1.0-0.0)
<threshold>
filter all (0), filter flat areas (0-30) or
filter edges (-30-0)
perspective=x0:y0:x1:y1:x2:y2:x3:y3:t
Correct the perspective of movies not filmed per-
pendicular to the screen.
<x0>,,...
coordinates of the top left, top right,
bottom left, bottom right corners
<t>
linear (0) or cubic resampling (1)
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. Ex-
tracts both stereo fields and places them side by
side, resizing them to maintain the original movie
aspect.
<lines>
number of lines to select from the middle
of the image (default: 12)
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.
<hidden>
Set the default value of the 'hidden' flag
(0=visible, 1=hidden).
<opaque>
Set the default value of the 'opaque' flag
(0=transparent, 1=opaque).
<fifo>
path/:filename for the FIFO (named pipe
connecting 'mplayer -vf bmovl' to the con-
trolling application)
FIFO commands are:
RGBA32 width height xpos ypos alpha clear
followed by width*height*4 Bytes of raw RG-
BA32 data.
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ABGR32 width height xpos ypos alpha clear
followed by width*height*4 Bytes of raw AB-
GR32 data.
RGB24 width height xpos ypos alpha clear
followed by width*height*3 Bytes of raw
RGB24 data.
BGR24 width height xpos ypos alpha clear
followed by width*height*3 Bytes of raw
BGR24 data.
ALPHA width height xpos ypos alpha
Change alpha transparency of the specified
area.
CLEAR width height xpos ypos
Clear area.
OPAQUE
Disable all alpha transparency. Send "AL-
PHA 0 0 0 0 0" to enable it again.
HIDE
Hide bitmap.
SHOW
Show bitmap.
Arguments are:
<width>,
image/area size
<xpos>,
Start blitting at position x/y.
<alpha>
Set alpha difference. If you set this to
-255 you can then send a sequence of ALPHA-
commands to set the area to -225, -200,
-175 etc for a nice fade-in-effect! ;)
0: same as original
255: Make everything opaque.
-255: Make everything transparent.
<clear>
Clear the framebuffer before blitting.
0: The image will just be blitted on top
of the old one, so you do not need to
send 1.8MB of RGBA32 data every time a
small part of the screen is updated.
1: clear
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).
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When a keyframe is found, an 'I!' string followed
by a newline character is printed, leaving the cur-
rent 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 ren-
dered.
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 im-
age. 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:
<xtiles>
number of tiles on the x axis (default: 5)
<ytiles>
number of tiles on the y axis (default: 5)
<output>
Render the tile when 'output' number of
frames are reached, where 'output' should
be a number less than xtile * ytile. Miss-
ing tiles are left blank. You could, for
example, write an 8 * 7 tile every 50
frames to have one image every 2 seconds @
25 fps.
<start>
outer border thickness in pixels (default:
2)
<delta>
inner border thickness in pixels (default:
4)
delogo[=x:y:w:h:t]
Suppresses a TV station logo by a simple interpola-
tion of the surrounding pixels. Just set a rectan-
gle covering the logo and watch it disappear (and
sometimes something even uglier appear - your
mileage may vary).
<x>,
top left corner of the logo
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<w>,
width and height of the cleared rectangle
<t> Thickness of the fuzzy edge of the rectan-
gle (added to w and h). When set to -1, a
green rectangle is drawn on the screen to
simplify finding the right x,y,w,h parame-
ters.
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.
/path/to/logo_bitmap_file_name.pgm
[path] + filename of the filter image.
zrmjpeg[=options]
Software YV12 to MJPEG encoder for use with the zr2
video output device.
maxheight=<h>|maxwidth=
These options set the maximum width and
height the zr card can handle (the MPlayer
filter layer currently cannot query those).
{dc10+,dc10,buz,lml33}-{PAL|NTSC}
Use these options to set maxwidth and max-
height automatically to the values known
for card/:mode combo. For example, valid
options are: dc10-PAL and buz-NTSC (de-
fault: dc10+PAL)
color|bw
Select color or black and white encoding.
Black and white encoding is faster. Color
is the default.
hdec={1,2,4}
Horizontal decimation 1, 2 or 4.
vdec={1,2,4}
Vertical decimation 1, 2 or 4.
quality=1-20
Set JPEG compression quality [BEST] 1 - 20
[VERY BAD].
fd|nofd
By default, decimation is only performed if
the Zoran hardware can upscale the result-
ing MJPEG images to the original size. The
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option fd instructs the filter to always
perform the requested decimation (ugly).
screenshot
Allows acquiring screenshots of the movie using
slave mode commands that can be bound to keypress-
es. See the slave mode documentation and the IN-
TERACTIVE CONTROL section for details. Files named
'shotNNNN.png' will be saved in the working direc-
tory, using the first available number - no files
will be overwritten. The filter has no overhead
when not used and accepts an arbitrary colorspace,
so it is safe to add it to the configuration file.
ass
Moves SSA/ASS subtitle rendering to an arbitrary
point in the filter chain. Only useful with the
-ass option.
EXAMPLE:
-vf ass,screenshot
Moves SSA/ASS rendering before the screen-
shot filter. Screenshots taken this way
will contain subtitles.
blackframe[=amount:threshold]
Detect frames that are (almost) completely black.
Can be useful to detect chapter transitions or com-
mercials. 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 en-
countered keyframe.
<amount>
Percentage of the pixels that have to be
below the threshold (default: 98).
<threshold>
Threshold below which a pixel value is con-
sidered black (default: 32).
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 according-
ly. Positive values delay the audio, and negative
values delay the video. Note that this is the ex-
act 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.
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Currently, this option only works with the default
muxer (-of avi). If you are using a different mux-
er, 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:
-fafmttag 0x55
Will have the output file contain 0x55
(mp3) as audio format tag.
-ffourcc <fourcc>
Can be used to override the video fourcc of the
output file.
EXAMPLE:
-ffourcc div3
Will have the output file contain 'div3' as
video fourcc.
-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 ra-
tio 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'.
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-info <option1:option2:...> (AVI only)
Specify the info header of the resulting AVI file.
Available options are:
help
Show this description.
name=<value>
title of the work
artist=<value>
artist or author of the work
genre=<value>
original work category
subject=<value>
contents of the work
copyright=<value>
copyright information
srcform=<value>
original format of the digitized material
comment=<value>
general comments about the work
-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 ren-
dered when hardcoding subtitles onto a movie.
-noencodedups
Do not attempt to encode duplicate frames in dupli-
cate; always output zero-byte frames to indicate
duplicates. Zero-byte frames will be written any-
way unless a filter or encoder capable of doing du-
plicate 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.
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-oac <codec name>
Encode with the given audio codec (no default set).
NOTE: Use -oac help to get a list of available au-
dio codecs.
EXAMPLE:
-oac copy
no encoding, just streamcopy
-oac pcm
Encode to uncompressed PCM.
-oac mp3lame
Encode to MP3 (using LAME).
-oac lavc
Encode with a libavcodec codec.
-of <format> (BETA CODE!)
Encode to the specified container format (default:
AVI).
NOTE: Use -of help to get a list of available con-
tainer formats.
EXAMPLE:
-of avi
Encode to AVI.
-of mpeg
Encode to MPEG (also see -mpegopts).
-of lavf
Encode with libavformat muxers (also see
-lavfopts).
-of rawvideo
raw video stream (no muxing - one video
stream only)
-of rawaudio
raw audio stream (no muxing - one audio
stream only)
-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:
-ovc copy
no encoding, just streamcopy
-ovc raw
Encode to an arbitrary uncompressed format
(use '-vf format' to select).
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-ovc lavc
Encode with a libavcodec codec.
-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 subti-
tles. 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).
CODEC SPECIFIC ENCODING OPTIONS (MENCODER ONLY)
You can specify codec specific encoding parameters using
the following syntax:
-<codec>opts
Where <codec> may be: lavc, xvidenc, lame, toolame,
twolame, nuv, xvfw, faac, x264enc, mpeg, lavf.
lame (-lameopts)
help
get help
vbr=<0-4>
variable bitrate method
0 cbr
1 mt
2 rh (default)
3 abr
4 mtrh
abr
average bitrate
cbr
constant bitrate Also forces CBR mode encoding on
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subsequent ABR presets modes.
br=<0-1024>
bitrate in kbps (CBR and ABR only)
q=<0-9>
quality (0 - highest, 9 - lowest) (VBR only)
aq=<0-9>
algorithmic quality (0 - best/slowest, 9 -
worst/fastest)
ratio=<1-100>
compression ratio
vol=<0-10>
audio input gain
mode=<0-3>
(default: auto)
0 stereo
1 joint-stereo
2 dualchannel
3 mono
padding=<0-2>
0 none
1 all
2 adjust
fast
Switch on faster encoding on subsequent VBR presets
modes. This results in slightly lower quality and
higher bitrates.
highpassfreq=<freq>
Set a highpass filtering frequency in Hz. Frequen-
cies below the specified one will be cut off. A
value of -1 will disable filtering, a value of 0
will let LAME choose values automatically.
lowpassfreq=<freq>
Set a lowpass filtering frequency in Hz. Frequen-
cies above the specified one will be cut off. A
value of -1 will disable filtering, a value of 0
will let LAME choose values automatically.
preset=<value>
preset values
help
Print additional options and information
about presets settings.
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medium
VBR encoding, good quality, 150-180 kbps
bitrate range
standard
VBR encoding, high quality, 170-210 kbps
bitrate range
extreme
VBR encoding, very high quality, 200-240
kbps bitrate range
insane
CBR encoding, highest preset quality, 320
kbps bitrate
<8-320>
ABR encoding at average given kbps bitrate
EXAMPLES:
fast:preset=standard
suitable for most people and most music
types and already quite high quality
cbr:preset=192
Encode with ABR presets at a 192 kbps
forced constant bitrate.
preset=172
Encode with ABR presets at a 172 kbps aver-
age bitrate.
preset=extreme
for people with extremely good hearing and
similar equipment
toolame and twolame (-toolameopts and -twolameopts respective-
ly)
br=<32-384>
In CBR mode this parameter indicates the bitrate in
kbps, when in VBR mode it is the minimum bitrate
allowed per frame. VBR mode will not work with a
value below 112.
vbr=<-50-50> (VBR only)
variability range; if negative the encoder shifts
the average bitrate towards the lower limit, if
positive towards the higher. When set to 0 CBR is
used (default).
maxvbr=<32-384> (VBR only)
maximum bitrate allowed per frame, in kbps
mode=<stereo | jstereo | mono | dual>
(default: mono for 1-channel audio, stereo other-
wise)
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psy=<-1-4>
psychoacoustic model (default: 2)
errprot=<0 | 1>
Include error protection.
debug=<0-10>
debug level
faac (-faacopts)
br=<bitrate>
average bitrate in kbps (mutually exclusive with
quality)
quality=<1-1000>
quality mode, the higher the better (mutually ex-
clusive with br)
object=<1-4>
object type complexity
1 MAIN (default)
2 LOW
3 SSR
4 LTP (extremely slow)
mpeg=<2|4>
MPEG version (default: 4)
tns
Enables temporal noise shaping.
cutoff=<0-sampling_rate/2>
cutoff frequency (default: sampling_rate/2)
raw
Stores the bitstream as raw payload with extradata
in the container header (default: 0, corresponds to
ADTS). Do not set this flag if not explicitly re-
quired or you will not be able to remux the audio
stream later on.
lavc (-lavcopts)
Many libavcodec (lavc for short) options are tersely docu-
mented. Read the source for full details.
EXAMPLE:
vcodec=msmpeg4:vbitrate=1800:vhq:keyint=250
acodec=<value>
audio codec (default: mp2)
ac3
Dolby Digital (AC-3)
adpcm_*
Adaptive PCM formats - see the HTML docu-
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mentation for details.
flac
Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
g726
G.726 ADPCM
libamr_nb
3GPP Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) narrow-band
libamr_wb
3GPP Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR) wide-band
libfaac
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) - using FAAC
libmp3lame
MPEG-1 audio layer 3 (MP3) - using LAME
mp2
MPEG-1 audio layer 2 (MP2)
pcm_*
PCM formats - see the HTML documentation
for details.
roq_dpcm
Id Software RoQ DPCM
sonic
experimental simple lossy codec
sonicls
experimental simple lossless codec
vorbis
Vorbis
wmav1
Windows Media Audio v1
wmav2
Windows Media Audio v2
abitrate=<value>
audio bitrate in kbps (default: 224)
atag=<value>
Use the specified Windows audio format tag (e.g.
atag=0x55).
bit_exact
Use only bit exact algorithms (except (I)DCT). Ad-
ditionally bit_exact disables several optimizations
and thus should only be used for regression tests,
which need binary identical files even if the en-
coder version changes. This also suppresses the
user_data header in MPEG-4 streams. Do not use
this option unless you know exactly what you are
doing.
threads=<1-8>
Maximum number of threads to use (default: 1). May
have a slight negative effect on motion estimation.
vcodec=<value>
Employ the specified codec (default: mpeg4).
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asv1
ASUS Video v1
asv2
ASUS Video v2
dvvideo
Sony Digital Video
ffv1
FFmpeg's lossless video codec
ffvhuff
nonstandard 20% smaller HuffYUV using YV12
flv
Sorenson H.263 used in Flash Video
h261
H.261
h263
H.263
h263p
H.263+
huffyuv
HuffYUV
libtheora
Theora
libx264
x264 H.264/AVC MPEG-4 Part 10
libxvid
Xvid MPEG-4 Part 2 (ASP)
ljpeg
Lossless JPEG
mjpeg
Motion JPEG
mpeg1video
MPEG-1 video
mpeg2video
MPEG-2 video
mpeg4
MPEG-4 (DivX 4/5)
msmpeg4
DivX 3
msmpeg4v2
MS MPEG4v2
roqvideo
ID Software RoQ Video
rv10
an old RealVideo codec
snow (also see: vstrict)
FFmpeg's experimental wavelet-based codec
svq1
Apple Sorenson Video 1
wmv1
Windows Media Video, version 1 (AKA WMV7)
wmv2
Windows Media Video, version 2 (AKA WMV8)
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vqmin=<1-31>
minimum quantizer (pass 1/2)
1 Not recommended (much larger file, little
quality difference and weird side effects:
msmpeg4, h263 will be very low quality,
ratecontrol will be confused resulting in
lower quality and some decoders will not be
able to decode it).
2 Recommended for normal mpeg4/:mpeg1video
encoding (default).
3 Recommended for h263(p)/:msmpeg4. The rea-
son for preferring 3 over 2 is that 2 could
lead to overflows. (This will be fixed for
h263(p) by changing the quantizer per MB in
the future, msmpeg4 cannot be fixed as it
does not support that.)
lmin=<0.01-255.0>
Minimum frame-level Lagrange multiplier for rate-
control (default: 2.0). Lavc will rarely use quan-
tizers below the value of lmin. Lowering lmin will
make lavc more likely to choose lower quantizers
for some frames, but not lower than the value of
vqmin. Likewise, raising lmin will make lavc less
likely to choose low quantizers, even if vqmin
would have allowed them. You probably want to set
lmin approximately equal to vqmin. When adaptive
quantization is in use, changing lmin/lmax may have
less of an effect; see mblmin/mblmax.
lmax=<0.01-255.0>
maximum Lagrange multiplier for ratecontrol (de-
fault: 31.0)
mblmin=<0.01-255.0>
Minimum macroblock-level Lagrange multiplier for
ratecontrol (default:2.0). This parameter affects
adaptive quantization options like qprd, lumi_mask,
etc..
mblmax=<0.01-255.0>
Maximum macroblock-level Lagrange multiplier for
ratecontrol (default: 31.0).
vqscale=<0-31>
Constant quantizer /: constant quality encoding
(selects fixed quantizer mode). A lower value
means better quality but larger files (default:
-1). In case of snow codec, value 0 means lossless
encoding. Since the other codecs do not support
this, vqscale=0 will have an undefined effect. 1
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is not recommended (see vqmin for details).
vqmax=<1-31>
Maximum quantizer (pass 1/2), 10-31 should be a
sane range (default: 31).
mbqmin=<1-31>
obsolete, use vqmin
mbqmax=<1-31>
obsolete, use vqmax
vqdiff=<1-31>
maximum quantizer difference between consecutive I-
or P-frames (pass 1/2) (default: 3)
vmax_b_frames=<0-4>
maximum number of B-frames between non-B-frames:
0 no B-frames (default)
0-2 sane range for MPEG-4
vme=<0-5>
motion estimation method. Available methods are:
0 none (very low quality)
1 full (slow, currently unmaintained and dis-
abled)
2 log (low quality, currently unmaintained
and disabled)
3 phods (low quality, currently unmaintained
and disabled)
4 EPZS: size=1 diamond, size can be adjusted
with the *dia options (default)
5 X1 (experimental, currently aliased to
EPZS)
8 iter (iterative overlapped block, only used
in snow)
NOTE: 0-3 currently ignores the amount of bits
spent, so quality may be low.
me_range=<0-9999>
motion estimation search range (default: 0 (unlim-
ited))
mbd=<0-2> (see also *cmp, qpel)
Macroblock decision algorithm (high quality mode),
encode each macro block in all modes and choose the
best. This is slow but results in better quality
and file size. When mbd is set to 1 or 2, the val-
ue of mbcmp is ignored when comparing macroblocks.
If any comparison setting (precmp, subcmp, cmp, or
mbcmp) is nonzero, however, a slower but better
half-pel motion search will be used, regardless of
what mbd is set to. If qpel is set, quarter-pel
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motion search will be used regardless.
0 Use comparison function given by mbcmp (de-
fault).
1 Select the MB mode which needs the fewest
bits (=vhq).
2 Select the MB mode which has the best rate
distortion.
vhq
Same as mbd=1, kept for compatibility reasons.
v4mv
Allow 4 motion vectors per macroblock (slightly
better quality). Works better if used with mbd>0.
obmc
overlapped block motion compensation (H.263+)
loop
loop filter (H.263+) note, this is broken
inter_threshold <-1000-1000>
Does absolutely nothing at the moment.
keyint=<0-300>
maximum interval between keyframes in frames (de-
fault: 250 or one keyframe every ten seconds in a
25fps movie. This is the recommended default for
MPEG-4). Most codecs require regular keyframes in
order to limit the accumulation of mismatch error.
Keyframes are also needed for seeking, as seeking
is only possible to a keyframe - but keyframes need
more space than other frames, so larger numbers
here mean slightly smaller files but less precise
seeking. 0 is equivalent to 1, which makes every
frame a keyframe. Values >300 are not recommended
as the quality might be bad depending upon decoder,
encoder and luck. It is a common for MPEG-1/2 to
use values <=30.
sc_threshold=<-1000000000-1000000000>
Threshold for scene change detection. A keyframe
is inserted by libavcodec when it detects a scene
change. You can specify the sensitivity of the de-
tection with this option. -1000000000 means there
is a scene change detected at every frame,
1000000000 means no scene changes are detected (de-
fault: 0).
sc_factor=<any positive integer>
Causes frames with higher quantizers to be more
likely to trigger a scene change detection and make
libavcodec use an I-frame (default: 1). 1-16 is a
sane range. Values between 2 and 6 may yield in-
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creasing PSNR (up to approximately 0.04 dB) and
better placement of I-frames in high-motion scenes.
Higher values than 6 may give very slightly better
PSNR (approximately 0.01 dB more than sc_factor=6),
but noticably worse visual quality.
vb_strategy=<0-2> (pass one only)
strategy to choose between I/P/B-frames:
0 Always use the maximum number of B-frames
(default).
1 Avoid B-frames in high motion scenes. See
the b_sensitivity option to tune this
strategy.
2 Places B-frames more or less optimally to
yield maximum quality (slower). You may
want to reduce the speed impact of this op-
tion by tuning the option brd_scale.
b_sensitivity=<any integer greater than 0>
Adjusts how sensitively vb_strategy=1 detects mo-
tion and avoids using B-frames (default: 40). Low-
er sensitivities will result in more B-frames. Us-
ing more B-frames usually improves PSNR, but too
many B-frames can hurt quality in high-motion
scenes. Unless there is an extremely high amount
of motion, b_sensitivity can safely be lowered be-
low the default; 10 is a reasonable value in most
cases.
brd_scale=<0-10>
Downscales frames for dynamic B-frame decision (de-
fault: 0). Each time brd_scale is increased by
one, the frame dimensions are divided by two, which
improves speed by a factor of four. Both dimen-
sions of the fully downscaled frame must be even
numbers, so brd_scale=1 requires the original di-
mensions to be multiples of four, brd_scale=2 re-
quires multiples of eight, etc. In other words,
the dimensions of the original frame must both be
divisible by 2^(brd_scale+1) with no remainder.
bidir_refine=<0-4>
Refine the two motion vectors used in bidirectional
macroblocks, rather than re-using vectors from the
forward and backward searches. This option has no
effect without B-frames.
0 Disabled (default).
1-4 Use a wider search (larger values are slow-
er).
vpass=<1-3>
Activates internal two (or more) pass mode, only
specify if you wish to use two (or more) pass en-
coding.
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1 first pass (also see turbo)
2 second pass
3 Nth pass (second and subsequent passes of
N-pass encoding)
Here is how it works, and how to use it:
The first pass (vpass=1) writes the statistics
file. You might want to deactivate some CPU-hungry
options, like "turbo" mode does.
In two pass mode, the second pass (vpass=2) reads
the statistics file and bases ratecontrol decisions
on it.
In N-pass mode, the second pass (vpass=3, that is
not a typo) does both: It first reads the statis-
tics, then overwrites them. You might want to
backup divx2pass.log before doing this if there is
any possibility that you will have to cancel MEn-
coder. You can use all encoding options, except
very CPU-hungry options like "qns".
You can run this same pass over and over to refine
the encode. Each subsequent pass will use the
statistics from the previous pass to improve. The
final pass can include any CPU-hungry encoding op-
tions.
If you want a 2 pass encode, use first vpass=1, and
then vpass=2.
If you want a 3 or more pass encode, use vpass=1
for the first pass and then vpass=3 and then
vpass=3 again and again until you are satisfied
with the encode.
huffyuv:
pass 1
Saves statistics.
pass 2
Encodes with an optimal Huffman table based
upon statistics from the first pass.
turbo (two pass only)
Dramatically speeds up pass one using faster algo-
rithms and disabling CPU-intensive options. This
will probably reduce global PSNR a little bit
(around 0.01dB) and change individual frame type
and PSNR a little bit more (up to 0.03dB).
aspect=<x/y>
Store movie aspect internally, just like with MPEG
files. Much nicer than rescaling, because quality
is not decreased. Only MPlayer will play these
files correctly, other players will display them
with wrong aspect. The aspect parameter can be
given as a ratio or a floating point number.
EXAMPLE:
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aspect=16/9 or aspect=1.78
autoaspect
Same as the aspect option, but automatically com-
putes aspect, taking into account all the adjust-
ments (crop/:expand/:scale/:etc.) made in the fil-
ter chain. Does not incur a performance penalty,
so you can safely leave it always on.
vbitrate=<value>
Specify bitrate (pass 1/2) (default: 800).
WARNING: 1kbit = 1000 bits
4-16000
(in kbit)
16001-24000000
(in bit)
vratetol=<value>
approximated file size tolerance in kbit.
1000-100000 is a sane range. (warning: 1kbit =
1000 bits) (default: 8000)
NOTE: vratetol should not be too large during the
second pass or there might be problems if
vrc_(min|max)rate is used.
vrc_maxrate=<value>
maximum bitrate in kbit/:sec (pass 1/2) (default:
0, unlimited)
vrc_minrate=<value>
minimum bitrate in kbit/:sec (pass 1/2) (default:
0, unlimited)
vrc_buf_size=<value>
buffer size in kbit (pass 1/2). For MPEG-1/2 this
also sets the vbv buffer size, use 327 for VCD, 917
for SVCD and 1835 for DVD.
vrc_buf_aggressivity
currently useless
vrc_strategy
Ratecontrol method. Note that some of the ratecon-
trol-affecting options will have no effect if
vrc_strategy is not set to 0.
0 Use internal lavc ratecontrol (default).
1 Use Xvid ratecontrol (experimental; re-
quires MEncoder to be compiled with support
for Xvid 1.1 or higher).
vb_qfactor=<-31.0-31.0>
quantizer factor between B- and non-B-frames (pass
1/2) (default: 1.25)
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vi_qfactor=<-31.0-31.0>
quantizer factor between I- and non-I-frames (pass
1/2) (default: 0.8)
vb_qoffset=<-31.0-31.0>
quantizer offset between B- and non-B-frames (pass
1/2) (default: 1.25)
vi_qoffset=<-31.0-31.0>
(pass 1/2) (default: 0.0)
if v{b|i}_qfactor > 0
I/B-frame quantizer = P-frame quantizer *
v{b|i}_qfactor + v{b|i}_qoffset
else
do normal ratecontrol (do not lock to next P-frame
quantizer) and set q= -q * v{b|i}_qfactor +
v{b|i}_qoffset
HINT: To do constant quantizer encoding with dif-
ferent quantizers for I/P- and B-frames you can
use: lmin= <ip_quant>:lmax= :vb_qfactor=
<b_quant/:ip_quant>.
vqblur=<0.0-1.0> (pass one)
Quantizer blur (default: 0.5), larger values will
average the quantizer more over time (slower
change).
0.0 Quantizer blur disabled.
1.0 Average the quantizer over all previous
frames.
vqblur=<0.0-99.0> (pass two)
Quantizer gaussian blur (default: 0.5), larger val-
ues will average the quantizer more over time
(slower change).
vqcomp=<0.0-1.0>
Quantizer compression, vrc_eq depends upon this
(pass 1/2) (default: 0.5). For instance, assuming
the default rate control equation is used, if vq-
comp=1.0, the ratecontrol allocates to each frame
the number of bits needed to encode them all at the
same QP. If vqcomp=0.0, the ratecontrol allocates
the same number of bits to each frame, i.e. strict
CBR. NOTE: Those are extreme settings and should
never be used. Perceptual quality will be optimal
somewhere in between these two extremes.
vrc_eq=<equation>
main ratecontrol equation (pass 1/2)
1
constant bitrate
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tex
constant quality
1+(tex/:avgTex-1)*qComp
approximately the equation of the old rate-
control code
tex^qComp
with qcomp 0.5 or something like that (de-
fault)
infix operators:
+,-,*,/,^
variables:
tex
texture complexity
iTex,pTex
intra, non-intra texture complexity
avgTex
average texture complexity
avgIITex
average intra texture complexity in I-
frames
avgPITex
average intra texture complexity in P-
frames
avgPPTex
average non-intra texture complexity in P-
frames
avgBPTex
average non-intra texture complexity in B-
frames
mv
bits used for motion vectors
fCode
maximum length of motion vector in log2
scale
iCount
number of intra macroblocks / number of
macroblocks
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var
spatial complexity
mcVar
temporal complexity
qComp
qcomp from the command line
isI, isP, isB
Is 1 if picture type is I/P/B else 0.
Pi,E
See your favorite math book.
functions:
max(a,b),min(a,b)
maximum / minimum
gt(a,b)
is 1 if a>b, 0 otherwise
lt(a,b)
is 1 if a<b, 0 otherwise
eq(a,b)
is 1 if a==b, 0 otherwise
sin, cos, tan, sinh, cosh, tanh, exp, log, abs
vrc_override=<options>
User specified quality for specific parts (ending,
credits, ...) (pass 1/2). The options are <start-
frame>, <end-frame>, [/,
<end-frame>, [/...]]:
quality (2-31)
quantizer
quality (-500-0)
quality correction in %
vrc_init_cplx=<0-1000>
initial complexity (pass 1)
vrc_init_occupancy=<0.0-1.0>
initial buffer occupancy, as a fraction of
vrc_buf_size (default: 0.9)
vqsquish=<0|1>
Specify how to keep the quantizer between qmin and
qmax (pass 1/2).
0 Use clipping.
1 Use a nice differentiable function (de-
fault).
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vlelim=<-1000-1000>
Sets single coefficient elimination threshold for
luminance. Negative values will also consider the
DC coefficient (should be at least -4 or lower for
encoding at quant=1):
0 disabled (default)
-4 JVT recommendation
vcelim=<-1000-1000>
Sets single coefficient elimination threshold for
chrominance. Negative values will also consider
the DC coefficient (should be at least -4 or lower
for encoding at quant=1):
0 disabled (default)
7 JVT recommendation
vstrict=<-2|-1|0|1>
strict standard compliance
0 disabled
1 Only recommended if you want to feed the
output into the MPEG-4 reference decoder.
-1 Allow libavcodec specific extensions (de-
fault).
-2 Enables experimental codecs and features
which may not be playable with future
MPlayer versions (snow).
vdpart
Data partitioning. Adds 2 Bytes per video packet,
improves error-resistance when transferring over
unreliable channels (e.g. streaming over the inter-
net). Each video packet will be encoded in 3 sepa-
rate partitions:
1. MVs
movement
2. DC coefficients
low res picture
3. AC coefficients
details
MV & DC are most important, losing them looks far
worse than losing the AC and the 1. & 2. partition.
(MV & DC) are far smaller than the 3. partition
(AC) meaning that errors will hit the AC partition
much more often than the MV & DC partitions. Thus,
the picture will look better with partitioning than
without, as without partitioning an error will
trash AC/:DC/:MV equally.
vpsize=<0-10000> (also see vdpart)
Video packet size, improves error-resistance.
0
disabled (default)
100-1000
good choice
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ss
slice structured mode for H.263+
gray
grayscale only encoding (faster)
vfdct=<0-10>
DCT algorithm
0 Automatically select a good one (default).
1 fast integer
2 accurate integer
3 MMX
4 mlib
5 AltiVec
6 floating point AAN
idct=<0-99>
IDCT algorithm
NOTE: To the best of our knowledge all these IDCTs
do pass the IEEE1180 tests.
0 Automatically select a good one (default).
1 JPEG reference integer
2 simple
3 simplemmx
4 libmpeg2mmx (inaccurate, do not use for en-
coding with keyint >100)
5 ps2
6 mlib
7 arm
8 AltiVec
9 sh4
10 simplearm
11 H.264
12 VP3
13 IPP
14 xvidmmx
15 CAVS
16 simplearmv5te
17 simplearmv6
lumi_mask=<0.0-1.0>
Luminance masking is a 'psychosensory' setting that
is supposed to make use of the fact that the human
eye tends to notice fewer details in very bright
parts of the picture. Luminance masking compresses
bright areas stronger than medium ones, so it will
save bits that can be spent again on other frames,
raising overall subjective quality, while possibly
reducing PSNR.
WARNING: Be careful, overly large values can cause
disastrous things.
WARNING: Large values might look good on some moni-
tors but may look horrible on other monitors.
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0.0
disabled (default)
0.0-0.3
sane range
dark_mask=<0.0-1.0>
Darkness masking is a 'psychosensory' setting that
is supposed to make use of the fact that the human
eye tends to notice fewer details in very dark
parts of the picture. Darkness masking compresses
dark areas stronger than medium ones, so it will
save bits that can be spent again on other frames,
raising overall subjective quality, while possibly
reducing PSNR.
WARNING: Be careful, overly large values can cause
disastrous things.
WARNING: Large values might look good on some moni-
tors but may look horrible on other monitors / TV /
TFT.
0.0
disabled (default)
0.0-0.3
sane range
tcplx_mask=<0.0-1.0>
Temporal complexity masking (default: 0.0 (dis-
abled)). Imagine a scene with a bird flying across
the whole scene; tcplx_mask will raise the quantiz-
ers of the bird's macroblocks (thus decreasing
their quality), as the human eye usually does not
have time to see all the bird's details. Be warned
that if the masked object stops (e.g. the bird
lands) it is likely to look horrible for a short
period of time, until the encoder figures out that
the object is not moving and needs refined blocks.
The saved bits will be spent on other parts of the
video, which may increase subjective quality, pro-
vided that tcplx_mask is carefully chosen.
scplx_mask=<0.0-1.0>
Spatial complexity masking. Larger values help
against blockiness, if no deblocking filter is used
for decoding, which is maybe not a good idea.
Imagine a scene with grass (which usually has great
spatial complexity), a blue sky and a house; sc-
plx_mask will raise the quantizers of the grass'
macroblocks, thus decreasing its quality, in order
to spend more bits on the sky and the house.
HINT: Crop any black borders completely as they
will reduce the quality of the macroblocks (also
applies without scplx_mask).
0.0
disabled (default)
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0.0-0.5
sane range
NOTE: This setting does not have the same effect as
using a custom matrix that would compress high fre-
quencies harder, as scplx_mask will reduce the
quality of P blocks even if only DC is changing.
The result of scplx_mask will probably not look as
good.
p_mask=<0.0-1.0> (also see vi_qfactor)
Reduces the quality of inter blocks. This is
equivalent to increasing the quality of intra
blocks, because the same average bitrate will be
distributed by the rate controller to the whole
video sequence (default: 0.0 (disabled)).
p_mask=1.0 doubles the bits allocated to each intra
block.
border_mask=<0.0-1.0>
border-processing for MPEG-style encoders. Border
processing increases the quantizer for macroblocks
which are less than 1/5th of the frame width/height
away from the frame border, since they are often
visually less important.
naq
Normalize adaptive quantization (experimental).
When using adaptive quantization (*_mask), the av-
erage per-MB quantizer may no longer match the re-
quested frame-level quantizer. Naq will attempt to
adjust the per-MB quantizers to maintain the proper
average.
ildct
Use interlaced DCT.
ilme
Use interlaced motion estimation (mutually exclu-
sive with qpel).
alt
Use alternative scantable.
top=<-1-1>
-1 automatic
0 bottom field first
1 top field first
format=<value>
YV12
default
444P
for ffv1
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422P
for HuffYUV, lossless JPEG, dv and ffv1
411P
for lossless JPEG, dv and ffv1
YVU9
for lossless JPEG, ffv1 and svq1
BGR32
for lossless JPEG and ffv1
pred
(for HuffYUV)
0 left prediction
1 plane/:gradient prediction
2 median prediction
pred
(for lossless JPEG)
0 left prediction
1 top prediction
2 topleft prediction
3 plane/:gradient prediction
6 mean prediction
coder
(for ffv1)
0 vlc coding (Golomb-Rice)
1 arithmetic coding (CABAC)
context
(for ffv1)
0 small context model
1 large context model
(for ffvhuff)
0 predetermined Huffman tables (builtin or
two pass)
1 adaptive Huffman tables
qpel
Use quarter pel motion compensation (mutually ex-
clusive with ilme).
HINT: This seems only useful for high bitrate en-
codings.
mbcmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for the macroblock de-
cision, has only an effect if mbd=0.
0 (SAD)
sum of absolute differences, fast (default)
1 (SSE)
sum of squared errors
2 (SATD)
sum of absolute Hadamard transformed dif-
ferences
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3 (DCT)
sum of absolute DCT transformed differences
4 (PSNR)
sum of squared quantization errors (avoid,
low quality)
5 (BIT)
number of bits needed for the block
6 (RD)
rate distortion optimal, slow
7 (ZERO)
0
8 (VSAD)
sum of absolute vertical differences
9 (VSSE)
sum of squared vertical differences
10 (NSSE)
noise preserving sum of squared differences
11 (W53)
5/3 wavelet, only used in snow
12 (W97)
9/7 wavelet, only used in snow
+256
Also use chroma, currently does not work
(correctly) with B-frames.
ildctcmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for interlaced DCT de-
cision (see mbcmp for available comparison func-
tions).
precmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for motion estimation
pre pass (see mbcmp for available comparison func-
tions) (default: 0).
cmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for full pel motion
estimation (see mbcmp for available comparison
functions) (default: 0).
subcmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for sub pel motion es-
timation (see mbcmp for available comparison func-
tions) (default: 0).
skipcmp=<0-2000>
FIXME: Document this.
nssew=<0-1000000>
This setting controls NSSE weight, where larger
weights will result in more noise. 0 NSSE is iden-
tical to SSE You may find this useful if you prefer
to keep some noise in your encoded video rather
than filtering it away before encoding (default:
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8).
predia=<-99-6>
diamond type and size for motion estimation pre-
pass
dia=<-99-6>
Diamond type & size for motion estimation. Motion
search is an iterative process. Using a small dia-
mond does not limit the search to finding only
small motion vectors. It is just somewhat more
likely to stop before finding the very best motion
vector, especially when noise is involved. Bigger
diamonds allow a wider search for the best motion
vector, thus are slower but result in better quali-
ty.
Big normal diamonds are better quality than shape-
adaptive diamonds.
Shape-adaptive diamonds are a good tradeoff between
speed and quality.
NOTE: The sizes of the normal diamonds and shape
adaptive ones do not have the same meaning.
-3 shape adaptive (fast) diamond with size 3
-2 shape adaptive (fast) diamond with size 2
-1 uneven multi-hexagon search (slow)
1 normal size=1 diamond (default) =EPZS type
diamond
0
000
0
2 normal size=2 diamond
0
000
00000
000
0
trell
Trellis searched quantization. This will find the
optimal encoding for each 8x8 block. Trellis
searched quantization is quite simply an optimal
quantization in the PSNR versus bitrate sense (As-
suming that there would be no rounding errors in-
troduced by the IDCT, which is obviously not the
case.). It simply finds a block for the minimum of
error and lambda*bits.
lambda
quantization parameter (QP) dependent con-
stant
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bits
amount of bits needed to encode the block
error
sum of squared errors of the quantization
cbp
Rate distorted optimal coded block pattern. Will
select the coded block pattern which minimizes dis-
tortion + lambda*rate. This can only be used to-
gether with trellis quantization.
mv0
Try to encode each MB with MV=<0,0> and choose the
better one. This has no effect if mbd=0.
mv0_threshold=<any non-negative integer>
When surrounding motion vectors are <0,0> and the
motion estimation score of the current block is
less than mv0_threshold, <0,0> is used for the mo-
tion vector and further motion estimation is
skipped (default: 256). Lowering mv0_threshold to
0 can give a slight (0.01dB) PSNR increase and pos-
sibly make the encoded video look slightly better;
raising mv0_threshold past 320 results in dimin-
ished PSNR and visual quality. Higher values speed
up encoding very slightly (usually less than 1%,
depending on the other options used).
NOTE: This option does not require mv0 to be en-
abled.
qprd (mbd=2 only)
rate distorted optimal quantization parameter (QP)
for the given lambda of each macroblock
last_pred=<0-99>
amount of motion predictors from the previous frame
0 (default)
a Will use 2a+1 x 2a+1 macroblock square of
motion vector predictors from the previous
frame.
preme=<0-2>
motion estimation pre-pass
0 disabled
1 only after I-frames (default)
2 always
subq=<1-8>
subpel refinement quality (for qpel) (default: 8
(high quality))
NOTE: This has a significant effect on speed.
refs=<1-8>
number of reference frames to consider for motion
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compensation (Snow only) (default: 1)
psnr
print the PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) for the
whole video after encoding and store the per frame
PSNR in a file with a name like 'psnr_hhmmss.log'.
Returned values are in dB (decibel), the higher the
better.
mpeg_quant
Use MPEG quantizers instead of H.263.
aic
Enable AC prediction for MPEG-4 or advanced intra
prediction for H.263+. This will improve quality
very slightly (around 0.02 dB PSNR) and slow down
encoding very slightly (about 1%).
NOTE: vqmin should be 8 or larger for H.263+ AIC.
aiv
alternative inter vlc for H.263+
umv
unlimited MVs (H.263+ only) Allows encoding of ar-
bitrarily long MVs.
ibias=<-256-256>
intra quantizer bias (256 equals 1.0, MPEG style
quantizer default: 96, H.263 style quantizer de-
fault: 0)
NOTE: The H.263 MMX quantizer cannot handle posi-
tive biases (set vfdct=1 or 2), the MPEG MMX quan-
tizer cannot handle negative biases (set vfdct=1 or
2).
pbias=<-256-256>
inter quantizer bias (256 equals 1.0, MPEG style
quantizer default: 0, H.263 style quantizer de-
fault: -64)
NOTE: The H.263 MMX quantizer cannot handle posi-
tive biases (set vfdct=1 or 2), the MPEG MMX quan-
tizer cannot handle negative biases (set vfdct=1 or
2).
HINT: A more positive bias (-32 - -16 instead of
-64) seems to improve the PSNR.
nr=<0-100000>
Noise reduction, 0 means disabled. 0-600 is a use-
ful range for typical content, but you may want to
turn it up a bit more for very noisy content (de-
fault: 0). Given its small impact on speed, you
might want to prefer to use this over filtering
noise away with video filters like denoise3d or
hqdn3d.
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qns=<0-3>
Quantizer noise shaping. Rather than choosing
quantization to most closely match the source video
in the PSNR sense, it chooses quantization such
that noise (usually ringing) will be masked by sim-
ilar-frequency content in the image. Larger values
are slower but may not result in better quality.
This can and should be used together with trellis
quantization, in which case the trellis quantiza-
tion (optimal for constant weight) will be used as
startpoint for the iterative search.
0 disabled (default)
1 Only lower the absolute value of coeffi-
cients.
2 Only change coefficients before the last
non-zero coefficient + 1.
3 Try all.
inter_matrix=<comma separated matrix>
Use custom inter matrix. It needs a comma separat-
ed string of 64 integers.
intra_matrix=<comma separated matrix>
Use custom intra matrix. It needs a comma separat-
ed string of 64 integers.
vqmod_amp
experimental quantizer modulation
vqmod_freq
experimental quantizer modulation
dc
intra DC precision in bits (default: 8). If you
specify vcodec=mpeg2video this value can be 8, 9,
10 or 11.
cgop (also see sc_threshold)
Close all GOPs. Currently it only works if scene
change detection is disabled (sc_thresh-
old=1000000000).
(no)lowdelay
Sets the low delay flag for MPEG-1/2 (disables B-
frames).
vglobal=<0-3>
Control writing global video headers.
0 Codec decides where to write global headers
(default).
1 Write global headers only in extradata
(needed for .mp4/MOV/NUT).
2 Write global headers only in front of
keyframes.
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3 Combine 1 and 2.
aglobal=<0-3>
Same as vglobal for audio headers.
level=<value>
Set CodecContext Level. Use 31 or 41 to play video
on a Playstation 3.
skip_exp=<0-1000000>
FIXME: Document this.
skip_factor=<0-1000000>
FIXME: Document this.
skip_threshold=<0-1000000>
FIXME: Document this.
nuv (-nuvopts)
Nuppel video is based on RTJPEG and LZO. By default
frames are first encoded with RTJPEG and then compressed
with LZO, but it is possible to disable either or both of
the two passes. As a result, you can in fact output raw
i420, LZO compressed i420, RTJPEG, or the default LZO com-
pressed RTJPEG.
NOTE: The nuvrec documentation contains some advice and
examples about the settings to use for the most common TV
encodings.
c=<0-20>
chrominance threshold (default: 1)
l=<0-20>
luminance threshold (default: 1)
lzo
Enable LZO compression (default).
nolzo
Disable LZO compression.
q=<3-255>
quality level (default: 255)
raw
Disable RTJPEG encoding.
rtjpeg
Enable RTJPEG encoding (default).
xvidenc (-xvidencopts)
There are three modes available: constant bitrate (CBR),
fixed quantizer and two pass.
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pass=<1|2>
Specify the pass in two pass mode.
turbo (two pass only)
Dramatically speeds up pass one using faster algo-
rithms and disabling CPU-intensive options. This
will probably reduce global PSNR a little bit and
change individual frame type and PSNR a little bit
more.
bitrate=<value> (CBR or two pass mode)
Sets the bitrate to be used in kbits/:second if
<16000 or in bits/:second if >16000. If is
negative, Xvid will use its absolute value as the
target size (in kBytes) of the video and compute
the associated bitrate automagically (default: 687
kbits/s).
fixed_quant=<1-31>
Switch to fixed quantizer mode and specify the
quantizer to be used.
zones=<zone0>[/[/...]] (CBR or two pass mode)
User specified quality for specific parts (ending,
credits, ...). Each zone is <start-
frame>,<mode>, where may be
q Constant quantizer override, where val-
ue=<2.0-31.0> represents the quantizer val-
ue.
w Ratecontrol weight override, where val-
ue=<0.01-2.00> represents the quality cor-
rection in %.
EXAMPLE:
zones=90000,q,20
Encodes all frames starting with frame
90000 at constant quantizer 20.
zones=0,w,0.1/10001,w,1.0/90000,q,20
Encode frames 0-10000 at 10% bitrate, en-
code frames 90000 up to the end at constant
quantizer 20. Note that the second zone is
needed to delimit the first zone, as with-
out it everything up until frame 89999
would be encoded at 10% bitrate.
me_quality=<0-6>
This option controls the motion estimation subsys-
tem. The higher the value, the more precise the
estimation should be (default: 6). The more pre-
cise the motion estimation is, the more bits can be
saved. Precision is gained at the expense of CPU
time so decrease this setting if you need realtime
encoding.
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(no)qpel
MPEG-4 uses a half pixel precision for its motion
search by default. The standard proposes a mode
where encoders are allowed to use quarter pixel
precision. This option usually results in a sharp-
er image. Unfortunately it has a great impact on
bitrate and sometimes the higher bitrate use will
prevent it from giving a better image quality at a
fixed bitrate. It is better to test with and with-
out this option and see whether it is worth acti-
vating.
(no)gmc
Enable Global Motion Compensation, which makes Xvid
generate special frames (GMC-frames) which are well
suited for Pan/:Zoom/:Rotating images. Whether or
not the use of this option will save bits is highly
dependent on the source material.
(no)trellis
Trellis Quantization is a kind of adaptive quanti-
zation method that saves bits by modifying quan-
tized coefficients to make them more compressible
by the entropy encoder. Its impact on quality is
good, and if VHQ uses too much CPU for you, this
setting can be a good alternative to save a few
bits (and gain quality at fixed bitrate) at a less-
er cost than with VHQ (default: on).
(no)cartoon
Activate this if your encoded sequence is an ani-
me/:cartoon. It modifies some Xvid internal
thresholds so Xvid takes better decisions on frame
types and motion vectors for flat looking cartoons.
(no)chroma_me
The usual motion estimation algorithm uses only the
luminance information to find the best motion vec-
tor. However for some video material, using the
chroma planes can help find better vectors. This
setting toggles the use of chroma planes for motion
estimation (default: on).
(no)chroma_opt
Enable a chroma optimizer prefilter. It will do
some extra magic on color information to minimize
the stepped-stairs effect on edges. It will im-
prove quality at the cost of encoding speed. It
reduces PSNR by nature, as the mathematical devia-
tion to the original picture will get bigger, but
the subjective image quality will raise. Since it
works with color information, you might want to
turn it off when encoding in grayscale.
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(no)hq_ac
Activates high-quality prediction of AC coeffi-
cients for intra frames from neighbor blocks (de-
fault: on).
vhq=<0-4>
The motion search algorithm is based on a search in
the usual color domain and tries to find a motion
vector that minimizes the difference between the
reference frame and the encoded frame. With this
setting activated, Xvid will also use the frequency
domain (DCT) to search for a motion vector that
minimizes not only the spatial difference but also
the encoding length of the block. Fastest to slow-
est:
0 off
1 mode decision (inter/:intra MB) (default)
2 limited search
3 medium search
4 wide search
(no)lumi_mask
Adaptive quantization allows the macroblock quan-
tizers to vary inside each frame. This is a 'psy-
chosensory' setting that is supposed to make use of
the fact that the human eye tends to notice fewer
details in very bright and very dark parts of the
picture. It compresses those areas more strongly
than medium ones, which will save bits that can be
spent again on other frames, raising overall sub-
jective quality and possibly reducing PSNR.
(no)grayscale
Make Xvid discard chroma planes so the encoded
video is grayscale only. Note that this does not
speed up encoding, it just prevents chroma data
from being written in the last stage of encoding.
(no)interlacing
Encode the fields of interlaced video material.
Turn this option on for interlaced content.
NOTE: Should you rescale the video, you would need
an interlace-aware resizer, which you can activate
with -vf scale=<width>::1.
min_iquant=<0-31>
minimum I-frame quantizer (default: 2)
max_iquant=<0-31>
maximum I-frame quantizer (default: 31)
min_pquant=<0-31>
minimum P-frame quantizer (default: 2)
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max_pquant=<0-31>
maximum P-frame quantizer (default: 31)
min_bquant=<0-31>
minimum B-frame quantizer (default: 2)
max_bquant=<0-31>
maximum B-frame quantizer (default: 31)
min_key_interval=<value> (two pass only)
minimum interval between keyframes (default: 0)
max_key_interval=<value>
maximum interval between keyframes (default:
10*fps)
quant_type=<h263|mpeg>
Sets the type of quantizer to use. For high bi-
trates, you will find that MPEG quantization pre-
serves more detail. For low bitrates, the smooth-
ing of H.263 will give you less block noise. When
using custom matrices, MPEG quantization must be
used.
quant_intra_matrix=<filename>
Load a custom intra matrix file. You can build
such a file with xvid4conf's matrix editor.
quant_inter_matrix=<filename>
Load a custom inter matrix file. You can build
such a file with xvid4conf's matrix editor.
keyframe_boost=<0-1000> (two pass mode only)
Shift some bits from the pool for other frame types
to intra frames, thus improving keyframe quality.
This amount is an extra percentage, so a value of
10 will give your keyframes 10% more bits than nor-
mal (default: 0).
kfthreshold=<value> (two pass mode only)
Works together with kfreduction. Determines the
minimum distance below which you consider that two
frames are considered consecutive and treated dif-
ferently according to kfreduction (default: 10).
kfreduction=<0-100> (two pass mode only)
The above two settings can be used to adjust the
size of keyframes that you consider too close to
the first (in a row). kfthreshold sets the range
in which keyframes are reduced, and kfreduction de-
termines the bitrate reduction they get. The last
I-frame will get treated normally (default: 30).
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max_bframes=<0-4>
Maximum number of B-frames to put between I/P-
frames (default: 2).
bquant_ratio=<0-1000>
quantizer ratio between B- and non-B-frames,
150=1.50 (default: 150)
bquant_offset=<-1000-1000>
quantizer offset between B- and non-B-frames,
100=1.00 (default: 100)
bf_threshold=<-255-255>
This setting allows you to specify what priority to
place on the use of B-frames. The higher the val-
ue, the higher the probability of B-frames being
used (default: 0). Do not forget that B-frames
usually have a higher quantizer, and therefore ag-
gressive production of B-frames may cause worse vi-
sual quality.
(no)closed_gop
This option tells Xvid to close every GOP (Group Of
Pictures bounded by two I-frames), which makes GOPs
independent from each other. This just implies
that the last frame of the GOP is either a P-frame
or a N-frame but not a B-frame. It is usually a
good idea to turn this option on (default: on).
(no)packed
This option is meant to solve frame-order issues
when encoding to container formats like AVI that
cannot cope with out-of-order frames. In practice,
most decoders (both software and hardware) are able
to deal with frame-order themselves, and may get
confused when this option is turned on, so you can
safely leave if off, unless you really know what
you are doing.
WARNING: This will generate an illegal bitstream,
and will not be decodable by ISO-MPEG-4 decoders
except DivX/:libavcodec/:Xvid.
WARNING: This will also store a fake DivX version
in the file so the bug autodetection of some de-
coders might be confused.
frame_drop_ratio=<0-100> (max_bframes=0 only)
This setting allows the creation of variable fram-
erate video streams. The value of the setting
specifies a threshold under which, if the differ-
ence of the following frame to the previous frame
is below or equal to this threshold, a frame gets
not coded (a so called n-vop is placed in the
stream). On playback, when reaching an n-vop the
previous frame will be displayed.
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WARNING: Playing with this setting may result in a
jerky video, so use it at your own risks!
rc_reaction_delay_factor=<value>
This parameter controls the number of frames the
CBR rate controller will wait before reacting to
bitrate changes and compensating for them to obtain
a constant bitrate over an averaging range of
frames.
rc_averaging_period=<value>
Real CBR is hard to achieve. Depending on the
video material, bitrate can be variable, and hard
to predict. Therefore Xvid uses an averaging peri-
od for which it guarantees a given amount of bits
(minus a small variation). This settings expresses
the "number of frames" for which Xvid averages bi-
trate and tries to achieve CBR.
rc_buffer=<value>
size of the rate control buffer
curve_compression_high=<0-100>
This setting allows Xvid to take a certain percent-
age of bits away from high bitrate scenes and give
them back to the bit reservoir. You could also use
this if you have a clip with so many bits allocated
to high-bitrate scenes that the low(er)-bitrate
scenes start to look bad (default: 0).
curve_compression_low=<0-100>
This setting allows Xvid to give a certain percent-
age of extra bits to the low bitrate scenes, taking
a few bits from the entire clip. This might come
in handy if you have a few low-bitrate scenes that
are still blocky (default: 0).
overflow_control_strength=<0-100>
During pass one of two pass encoding, a scaled bi-
trate curve is computed. The difference between
that expected curve and the result obtained during
encoding is called overflow. Obviously, the two
pass rate controller tries to compensate for that
overflow, distributing it over the next frames.
This setting controls how much of the overflow is
distributed every time there is a new frame. Low
values allow lazy overflow control, big rate bursts
are compensated for more slowly (could lead to lack
of precision for small clips). Higher values will
make changes in bit redistribution more abrupt,
possibly too abrupt if you set it too high, creat-
ing artifacts (default: 5).
NOTE: This setting impacts quality a lot, play with
it carefully!
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max_overflow_improvement=<0-100>
During the frame bit allocation, overflow control
may increase the frame size. This parameter speci-
fies the maximum percentage by which the overflow
control is allowed to increase the frame size, com-
pared to the ideal curve allocation (default: 5).
max_overflow_degradation=<0-100>
During the frame bit allocation, overflow control
may decrease the frame size. This parameter speci-
fies the maximum percentage by which the overflow
control is allowed to decrease the frame size, com-
pared to the ideal curve allocation (default: 5).
container_frame_overhead=<0...>
Specifies a frame average overhead per frame, in
bytes. Most of the time users express their target
bitrate for video w/o taking care of the video con-
tainer overhead. This small but (mostly) constant
overhead can cause the target file size to be ex-
ceeded. Xvid allows users to set the amount of
overhead per frame the container generates (give
only an average per frame). 0 has a special mean-
ing, it lets Xvid use its own default values (de-
fault: 24 - AVI average overhead).
profile=<profile_name>
Restricts options and VBV (peak bitrate over a
short period) according to the Simple, Advanced
Simple and DivX profiles. The resulting videos
should be playable on standalone players adhering
to these profile specifications.
unrestricted
no restrictions (default)
sp0
simple profile at level 0
sp1
simple profile at level 1
sp2
simple profile at level 2
sp3
simple profile at level 3
asp0
advanced simple profile at level 0
asp1
advanced simple profile at level 1
asp2
advanced simple profile at level 2
asp3
advanced simple profile at level 3
asp4
advanced simple profile at level 4
asp5
advanced simple profile at level 5
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dxnhandheld
DXN handheld profile
dxnportntsc
DXN portable NTSC profile
dxnportpal
DXN portable PAL profile
dxnhtntsc
DXN home theater NTSC profile
dxnhtpal
DXN home theater PAL profile
dxnhdtv
DXN HDTV profile
NOTE: These profiles should be used in conjunction
with an appropriate -ffourcc. Generally DX50 is
applicable, as some players do not recognize Xvid
but most recognize DivX.
par=<mode>
Specifies the Pixel Aspect Ratio mode (not to be
confused with DAR, the Display Aspect Ratio). PAR
is the ratio of the width and height of a single
pixel. So both are related like this: DAR = PAR *
(width/height).
MPEG-4 defines 5 pixel aspect ratios and one ex-
tended one, giving the opportunity to specify a
specific pixel aspect ratio. 5 standard modes can
be specified:
vga11
It is the usual PAR for PC content. Pixels
are a square unit.
pal43
PAL standard 4:3 PAR. Pixels are rectan-
gles.
pal169
same as above
ntsc43
same as above
ntsc169
same as above (Do not forget to give the
exact ratio.)
ext
Allows you to specify your own pixel aspect
ratio with par_width and par_height.
NOTE: In general, setting aspect and autoaspect op-
tions is enough.
par_width=<1-255> (par=ext only)
Specifies the width of the custom pixel aspect ra-
tio.
par_height=<1-255> (par=ext only)
Specifies the height of the custom pixel aspect ra-
tio.
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aspect=<x/y | f (float value)>
Store movie aspect internally, just like MPEG
files. Much nicer solution than rescaling, because
quality is not decreased. MPlayer and a few others
players will play these files correctly, others
will display them with the wrong aspect. The as-
pect parameter can be given as a ratio or a float-
ing point number.
(no)autoaspect
Same as the aspect option, but automatically com-
putes aspect, taking into account all the adjust-
ments (crop/:expand/:scale/:etc.) made in the fil-
ter chain.
psnr
Print the PSNR (peak signal to noise ratio) for the
whole video after encoding and store the per frame
PSNR in a file with a name like 'psnr_hhmmss.log'
in the current directory. Returned values are in
dB (decibel), the higher the better.
debug
Save per-frame statistics in ./xvid.dbg. (This is
not the two pass control file.)
The following option is only available in Xvid 1.1.x.
bvhq=<0|1>
This setting allows vector candidates for B-frames
to be used for the encoding chosen using a rate
distortion optimized operator, which is what is
done for P-frames by the vhq option. This produces
nicer-looking B-frames while incurring almost no
performance penalty (default: 1).
The following option is only available in the 1.2.x ver-
sion of Xvid.
threads=<0-n>
Create n threads to run the motion estimation (de-
fault: 0). The maximum number of threads that can
be used is the picture height divided by 16.
x264enc (-x264encopts)
bitrate=<value>
Sets the average bitrate to be used in kbits/:sec-
ond (default: off). Since local bitrate may vary,
this average may be inaccurate for very short
videos (see ratetol). Constant bitrate can be
achieved by combining this with vbv_maxrate, at
significant reduction in quality.
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qp=<0-51>
This selects the quantizer to use for P-frames. I-
and B-frames are offset from this value by ip_fac-
tor and pb_factor, respectively. 20-40 is a useful
range. Lower values result in better fidelity, but
higher bitrates. 0 is lossless. Note that quanti-
zation in H.264 works differently from MPEG-1/2/4:
H.264's quantization parameter (QP) is on a loga-
rithmic scale. The mapping is approximately H264QP
= 12 + 6*log2(MPEGQP). For example, MPEG at QP=2
is equivalent to H.264 at QP=18.
crf=<1.0-50.0>
Enables constant quality mode, and selects the
quality. The scale is similar to QP. Like the bi-
trate-based modes, this allows each frame to use a
different QP based on the frame's complexity.
pass=<1-3>
Enable 2 or 3-pass mode. It is recommended to al-
ways encode in 2 or 3-pass mode as it leads to a
better bit distribution and improves overall quali-
ty.
1 first pass
2 second pass (of two pass encoding)
3 Nth pass (second and third passes of three
pass encoding)
Here is how it works, and how to use it:
The first pass (pass=1) collects statistics on the
video and writes them to a file. You might want to
deactivate some CPU-hungry options, apart from the
ones that are on by default.
In two pass mode, the second pass (pass=2) reads
the statistics file and bases ratecontrol decisions
on it.
In three pass mode, the second pass (pass=3, that
is not a typo) does both: It first reads the
statistics, then overwrites them. You can use all
encoding options, except very CPU-hungry options.
The third pass (pass=3) is the same as the second
pass, except that it has the second pass' statis-
tics to work from. You can use all encoding op-
tions, including CPU-hungry ones.
The first pass may use either average bitrate or
constant quantizer. ABR is recommended, since it
does not require guessing a quantizer. Subsequent
passes are ABR, and must specify bitrate.
turbo=<0-2>
Fast first pass mode. During the first pass of a
two or more pass encode it is possible to gain
speed by disabling some options with negligible or
even no impact on the final pass output quality.
0 disabled (default)
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1 Reduce subq, frameref and disable some in-
ter-macroblock partition analysis modes.
2 Reduce subq and frameref to 1, use a dia-
mond ME search and disable all partition
analysis modes.
Level 1 can increase first pass speed up to 2x with
no change in the global PSNR of the final pass com-
pared to a full quality first pass.
Level 2 can increase first pass speed up to 4x with
about +/- 0.05dB change in the global PSNR of the
final pass compared to a full quality first pass.
keyint=<value>
Sets maximum interval between IDR-frames (default:
250). Larger values save bits, thus improve quali-
ty, at the cost of seeking precision. Unlike
MPEG-1/2/4, H.264 does not suffer from DCT drift
with large values of keyint.
keyint_min=<1-keyint/2>
Sets minimum interval between IDR-frames (default:
25). If scenecuts appear within this interval,
they are still encoded as I-frames, but do not
start a new GOP. In H.264, I-frames do not neces-
sarily bound a closed GOP because it is allowable
for a P-frame to be predicted from more frames than
just the one frame before it (also see frameref).
Therefore, I-frames are not necessarily seekable.
IDR-frames restrict subsequent P-frames from refer-
ring to any frame prior to the IDR-frame.
scenecut=<-1-100>
Controls how aggressively to insert extra I-frames
(default: 40). With small values of scenecut, the
codec often has to force an I-frame when it would
exceed keyint. Good values of scenecut may find a
better location for the I-frame. Large values use
more I-frames than necessary, thus wasting bits.
-1 disables scene-cut detection, so I-frames are
inserted only once every other keyint frames, even
if a scene-cut occurs earlier. This is not recom-
mended and wastes bitrate as scenecuts encoded as
P-frames are just as big as I-frames, but do not
reset the "keyint counter".
frameref=<1-16>
Number of previous frames used as predictors in B-
and P-frames (default: 1). This is effective in
anime, but in live-action material the improvements
usually drop off very rapidly above 6 or so refer-
ence frames. This has no effect on decoding speed,
but does increase the memory needed for decoding.
Some decoders can only handle a maximum of 15 ref-
erence frames.
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bframes=<0-16>
maximum number of consecutive B-frames between I-
and P-frames (default: 0)
(no)b_adapt
Automatically decides when to use B-frames and how
many, up to the maximum specified above (default:
on). If this option is disabled, then the maximum
number of B-frames is used.
b_bias=<-100-100>
Controls the decision performed by b_adapt. A
higher b_bias produces more B-frames (default: 0).
(no)b_pyramid
Allows B-frames to be used as references for pre-
dicting other frames. For example, consider 3 con-
secutive B-frames: I0 B1 B2 B3 P4. Without this
option, B-frames follow the same pattern as
MPEG-[124]. So they are coded in the order I0 P4
B1 B2 B3, and all the B-frames are predicted from
I0 and P4. With this option, they are coded as I0
P4 B2 B1 B3. B2 is the same as above, but B1 is
predicted from I0 and B2, and B3 is predicted from
B2 and P4. This usually results in slightly im-
proved compression, at almost no speed cost. How-
ever, this is an experimental option: it is not
fully tuned and may not always help. Requires
bframes >= 2. Disadvantage: increases decoding de-
lay to 2 frames.
(no)deblock
Use deblocking filter (default: on). As it takes
very little time compared to its quality gain, it
is not recommended to disable it.
deblock=<-6-6>,<-6-6>
The first parameter is AlphaC0 (default: 0). This
adjusts thresholds for the H.264 in-loop deblocking
filter. First, this parameter adjusts the maximum
amount of change that the filter is allowed to
cause on any one pixel. Secondly, this parameter
affects the threshold for difference across the
edge being filtered. A positive value reduces
blocking artifacts more, but will also smear de-
tails.
The second parameter is Beta (default: 0). This
affects the detail threshold. Very detailed blocks
are not filtered, since the smoothing caused by the
filter would be more noticeable than the original
blocking.
The default behavior of the filter almost always
achieves optimal quality, so it is best to either
leave it alone, or make only small adjustments.
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However, if your source material already has some
blocking or noise which you would like to remove,
it may be a good idea to turn it up a little bit.
(no)cabac
Use CABAC (Context-Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Cod-
ing) (default: on). Slightly slows down encoding
and decoding, but should save 10-15% bitrate. Un-
less you are looking for decoding speed, you should
not disable it.
qp_min=<1-51> (ABR or two pass)
Minimum quantizer, 10-30 seems to be a useful range
(default: 10).
qp_max=<1-51> (ABR or two pass)
maximum quantizer (default: 51)
qp_step=<1-50> (ABR or two pass)
maximum value by which the quantizer may be incre-
mented/decremented between frames (default: 4)
ratetol=<0.1-100.0> (ABR or two pass)
allowed variance in average bitrate (no particular
units) (default: 1.0)
vbv_maxrate=<value> (ABR or two pass)
maximum local bitrate, in kbits/:second (default:
disabled)
vbv_bufsize=<value> (ABR or two pass)
averaging period for vbv_maxrate, in kbits (de-
fault: none, must be specified if vbv_maxrate is
enabled)
vbv_init=<0.0-1.0> (ABR or two pass)
initial buffer occupancy, as a fraction of vbv_buf-
size (default: 0.9)
ip_factor=<value>
quantizer factor between I- and P-frames (default:
1.4)
pb_factor=<value>
quantizer factor between P- and B-frames (default:
1.3)
qcomp=<0-1> (ABR or two pass)
quantizer compression (default: 0.6). A lower val-
ue makes the bitrate more constant, while a higher
value makes the quantization parameter more con-
stant.
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cplx_blur=<0-999> (two pass only)
Temporal blur of the estimated frame complexity,
before curve compression (default: 20). Lower val-
ues allow the quantizer value to jump around more,
higher values force it to vary more smoothly.
cplx_blur ensures that each I-frame has quality
comparable to the following P-frames, and ensures
that alternating high and low complexity frames
(e.g. low fps animation) do not waste bits on fluc-
tuating quantizer.
qblur=<0-99> (two pass only)
Temporal blur of the quantization parameter, after
curve compression (default: 0.5). Lower values al-
low the quantizer value to jump around more, higher
values force it to vary more smoothly.
zones=<zone0>[/[/...]]
User specified quality for specific parts (ending,
credits, ...). Each zone is <start-frame>, where option may be
q=<0-51>
quantizer
b=<0.01-100.0>
bitrate multiplier
NOTE: The quantizer option is not strictly en-
forced. It affects only the planning stage of
ratecontrol, and is still subject to overflow com-
pensation and qp_min/qp_max.
direct_pred=<name>
Determines the type of motion prediction used for
direct macroblocks in B-frames.
none Direct macroblocks are not used.
spatial
Motion vectors are extrapolated from neigh-
boring blocks. (default)
temporal
Motion vectors are interpolated from the
following P-frame.
auto The codec selects between spatial and tem-
poral for each frame.
Spatial and temporal are approximately the same
speed and PSNR, the choice between them depends on
the video content. Auto is slightly better, but
slower. Auto is most effective when combined with
multipass. direct_pred=none is both slower and
lower quality.
(no)weight_b
Use weighted prediction in B-frames. Without this
option, bidirectionally predicted macroblocks give
equal weight to each reference frame. With this
option, the weights are determined by the temporal
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position of the B-frame relative to the references.
Requires bframes > 1.
partitions=<list>
Enable some optional macroblock types (default:
p8x8,b8x8,i8x8,i4x4).
p8x8 Enable types p16x8, p8x16, p8x8.
p4x4 Enable types p8x4, p4x8, p4x4. p4x4 is
recommended only with subq >= 5, and only
at low resolutions.
b8x8 Enable types b16x8, b8x16, b8x8.
i8x8 Enable type i8x8. i8x8 has no effect un-
less 8x8dct is enabled.
i4x4 Enable type i4x4.
all Enable all of the above types.
none Disable all of the above types.
Regardless of this option, macroblock types p16x16,
b16x16, and i16x16 are always enabled.
The idea is to find the type and size that best de-
scribe a certain area of the picture. For example,
a global pan is better represented by 16x16 blocks,
while small moving objects are better represented
by smaller blocks.
(no)8x8dct
Adaptive spatial transform size: allows macroblocks
to choose between 4x4 and 8x8 DCT. Also allows the
i8x8 macroblock type. Without this option, only
4x4 DCT is used.
me=<name>
Select fullpixel motion estimation algorithm.
dia diamond search, radius 1 (fast)
hex hexagon search, radius 2 (default)
umh uneven multi-hexagon search (slow)
esa exhaustive search (very slow, and no better
than umh)
me_range=<4-64>
radius of exhaustive or multi-hexagon motion search
(default: 16)
subq=<1-7>
Adjust subpel refinement quality. This parameter
controls quality versus speed tradeoffs involved in
the motion estimation decision process. subq=5 can
compress up to 10% better than subq=1.
1 Runs fullpixel precision motion estimation
on all candidate macroblock types. Then
selects the best type. Then refines the
motion of that type to fast quarterpixel
precision (fastest).
2 Runs halfpixel precision motion estimation
on all candidate macroblock types. Then
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selects the best type. Then refines the
motion of that type to fast quarterpixel
precision.
3 As 2, but uses a slower quarterpixel re-
finement.
4 Runs fast quarterpixel precision motion es-
timation on all candidate macroblock types.
Then selects the best type. Then finishes
the quarterpixel refinement for that type.
5 Runs best quality quarterpixel precision
motion estimation on all candidate mac-
roblock types, before selecting the best
type (default).
6 Enables rate-distortion optimization of
macroblock types in I- and P-frames.
7 Enables rate-distortion optimization of mo-
tion vectors and intra modes. (best)
In the above, "all candidates" does not exactly
mean all enabled types: 4x4, 4x8, 8x4 are tried on-
ly if 8x8 is better than 16x16.
(no)chroma_me
Takes into account chroma information during sub-
pixel motion search (default: enabled). Requires
subq>=5.
(no)mixed_refs
Allows each 8x8 or 16x8 motion partition to inde-
pendently select a reference frame. Without this
option, a whole macroblock must use the same refer-
ence. Requires frameref>1.
(no)brdo
Enables rate-distortion optimization of macroblock
types in B-frames. Requires subq>=6.
(no)bime
Refine the two motion vectors used in bidirectional
macroblocks, rather than re-using vectors from the
forward and backward searches. This option has no
effect without B-frames.
trellis=<0-2>
rate-distortion optimal quantization
0 disabled (default)
1 enabled only for the final encode
2 enabled during all mode decisions (slow,
requires subq>=6)
deadzone_inter=<0-32>
Set the size of the inter luma quantization dead-
zone for non-trellis quantization (default: 21).
Lower values help to preserve fine details and film
grain (typically useful for high bitrate/quality
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encode), while higher values help filter out these
details to save bits that can be spent again on
other macroblocks and frames (typically useful for
bitrate-starved encodes). It is recommended that
you start by tweaking deadzone_intra before chang-
ing this parameter.
deadzone_intra=<0-32>
Set the size of the intra luma quantization dead-
zone for non-trellis quantization (default: 11).
This option has the same effect as deadzone_inter
except that it affects intra frames. It is recom-
mended that you start by tweaking this parameter
before changing deadzone_inter.
(no)fast_pskip
Performs early skip detection in P-frames (default:
enabled). This usually improves speed at no cost,
but it can sometimes produce artifacts in areas
with no details, like sky.
(no)dct_decimate
Eliminate dct blocks in P-frames containing only a
small single coefficient (default: enabled). This
will remove some details, so it will save bits that
can be spent again on other frames, hopefully rais-
ing overall subjective quality. If you are com-
pressing non-anime content with a high target bi-
trate, you may want to disable this to preserve as
much detail as possible.
nr=<0-100000>
Noise reduction, 0 means disabled. 100-1000 is a
useful range for typical content, but you may want
to turn it up a bit more for very noisy content
(default: 0). Given its small impact on speed, you
might want to prefer to use this over filtering
noise away with video filters like denoise3d or
hqdn3d.
chroma_qp_offset=<-12-12>
Use a different quantizer for chroma as compared to
luma. Useful values are in the range <-2-2> (de-
fault: 0).
cqm=<flat|jvt|
Either uses a predefined custom quantization matrix
or loads a JM format matrix file.
flat
Use the predefined flat 16 matrix (de-
fault).
jvt
Use the predefined JVT matrix.
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<filename>
Use the provided JM format matrix file.
NOTE: Windows CMD.EXE users may experience problems
with parsing the command line if they attempt to
use all the CQM lists. This is due to a command
line length limitation. In this case it is recom-
mended the lists be put into a JM format CQM file
and loaded as specified above.
cqm4iy=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 4x4 intra luminance matrix, given as a list
of 16 comma separated values in the 1-255 range.
cqm4ic=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 4x4 intra chrominance matrix, given as a
list of 16 comma separated values in the 1-255
range.
cqm4py=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 4x4 inter luminance matrix, given as a list
of 16 comma separated values in the 1-255 range.
cqm4pc=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 4x4 inter chrominance matrix, given as a
list of 16 comma separated values in the 1-255
range.
cqm8iy=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 8x8 intra luminance matrix, given as a list
of 64 comma separated values in the 1-255 range.
cqm8py=<list> (also see cqm)
Custom 8x8 inter luminance matrix, given as a list
of 64 comma separated values in the 1-255 range.
level_idc=<10-51>
Set the bitstream's level as defined by annex A of
the H.264 standard (default: 51 - Level 5.1). This
is used for telling the decoder what capabilities
it needs to support. Use this parameter only if
you know what it means, and you have a need to set
it.
threads=<0-16>
Spawn threads to encode in parallel on multiple
CPUs (default: 1). This has a slight penalty to
compression quality. 0 or 'auto' tells x264 to de-
tect how many CPUs you have and pick an appropriate
number of threads.
(no)global_header
Causes SPS and PPS to appear only once, at the be-
ginning of the bitstream (default: disabled). Some
players, such as the Sony PSP, require the use of
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this option. The default behavior causes SPS and
PPS to repeat prior to each IDR frame.
(no)interlaced
Treat the video content as interlaced.
log=<-1-3>
Adjust the amount of logging info printed to the
screen.
-1 none
0 Print errors only.
1 warnings
2 PSNR and other analysis statistics when the
encode finishes (default)
3 PSNR, QP, frametype, size, and other
statistics for every frame
(no)psnr
Print signal-to-noise ratio statistics.
NOTE: The 'Y', 'U', 'V', and 'Avg' PSNR fields in
the summary are not mathematically sound (they are
simply the average of per-frame PSNRs). They are
kept only for comparison to the JM reference codec.
For all other purposes, please use either the
'Global' PSNR, or the per-frame PSNRs printed by
log=3.
(no)ssim
Print the Structural Similarity Metric results.
This is an alternative to PSNR, and may be better
correlated with the perceived quality of the com-
pressed video.
(no)visualize
Enable x264 visualizations during encoding. If the
x264 on your system supports it, a new window will
be opened during the encoding process, in which
x264 will attempt to present an overview of how
each frame gets encoded. Each block type on the
visualized movie will be colored as follows:
red/pink
intra block
blue
inter block
green
skip block
yellow
B-block
This feature can be considered experimental and
subject to change. In particular, it depends on
x264 being compiled with visualizations enabled.
Note that as of writing this, x264 pauses after en-
coding and visualizing each frame, waiting for the
user to press a key, at which point the next frame
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will be encoded.
xvfw (-xvfwopts)
Encoding with Video for Windows codecs is mostly obsolete
unless you wish to encode to some obscure fringe codec.
codec=<name>
The name of the binary codec file with which to en-
code.
compdata=<file>
The name of the codec settings file (like first-
pass.mcf) created by vfw2menc.
MPEG muxer (-mpegopts)
The MPEG muxer can generate 5 types of streams, each of
which has reasonable default parameters that the user can
override. Generally, when generating MPEG files, it is
advisable to disable MEncoder's frame-skip code (see
-noskip, -mc as well as the harddup and softskip video
filters).
EXAMPLE:
format=mpeg2:tsaf:vbitrate=8000
format=<mpeg1 | mpeg2 | xvcd | xsvcd | dvd | pes1 | pes2>
stream format (default: mpeg2). pes1 and pes2 are
very broken formats (no pack header and no
padding), but VDR uses them; do not choose them un-
less you know exactly what you are doing.
size=<up to 65535>
Pack size in bytes, do not change unless you know
exactly what you are doing (default: 2048).
muxrate=<int>
Nominal muxrate in kbit/s used in the pack headers
(default: 1800 kb/s). Will be updated as necessary
in the case of 'format=mpeg1' or 'mpeg2'.
tsaf
Sets timestamps on all frames, if possible; recom-
mended when format=dvd. If dvdauthor complains
with a message like "..audio sector out of
range...", you probably did not enable this option.
interleaving2
Uses a better algorithm to interleave audio and
video packets, based on the principle that the mux-
er will always try to fill the stream with the
largest percentage of free space.
vdelay=<1-32760>
Initial video delay time, in milliseconds (default:
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0), use it if you want to delay video with respect
to audio. It doesn't work with :drop.
adelay=<1-32760>
Initial audio delay time, in milliseconds (default:
0), use it if you want to delay audio with respect
to video.
drop
When used with vdelay the muxer drops the part of
audio that was anticipated.
vwidth, vheight=<1-4095>
Set the video width and height when video is
MPEG-1/2.
vpswidth, vpsheight=<1-4095>
Set pan and scan video width and height when video
is MPEG-2.
vaspect=<1 | 4/3 | 16/9 | 221/100>
Sets the display aspect ratio for MPEG-2 video. Do
not use it on MPEG-1 or the resulting aspect ratio
will be completely wrong.
vbitrate=<int>
Sets the video bitrate in kbit/s for MPEG-1/2
video.
vframerate=<24000/1001 | 24 | 25 | 30000/1001 | 30 |
50 | 60000/1001 | 60 >
Sets the framerate for MPEG-1/2 video. This option
will be ignored if used with the telecine option.
telecine
Enables 3:2 pulldown soft telecine mode: The muxer
will make the video stream look like it was encoded
at 30000/1001 fps. It only works with MPEG-2 video
when the output framerate is 24000/1001 fps, con-
vert it with -ofps if necessary. Any other framer-
ate is incompatible with this option.
film2pal
Enables FILM to PAL and NTSC to PAL soft telecine
mode: The muxer will make the video stream look
like it was encoded at 25 fps. It only works with
MPEG-2 video when the output framerate is
24000/1001 fps, convert it with -ofps if necessary.
Any other framerate is incompatible with this op-
tion.
tele_src and tele_dest
Enables arbitrary telecining using Donand Graft's
DGPulldown code. You need to specify the original
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and the desired framerate; the muxer will make the
video stream look like it was encoded at the de-
sired framerate. It only works with MPEG-2 video
when the input framerate is smaller than the output
framerate and the framerate increase is <= 1.5.
EXAMPLE:
tele_src=25,tele_dest=30000/1001
PAL to NTSC telecining
vbuf_size=<40-1194>
Sets the size of the video decoder's buffer, ex-
pressed in kilobytes. Specify it only if the bi-
trate of the video stream is too high for the cho-
sen format and if you know perfectly well what you
are doing. A too high value may lead to an un-
playable movie, depending on the player's capabili-
ties. When muxing HDTV video a value of 400 should
suffice.
abuf_size=<4-64>
Sets the size of the audio decoder's buffer, ex-
pressed in kilobytes. The same principle as for
vbuf_size applies.
FFmpeg libavformat demuxers (-lavfdopts)
analyzeduration=<value>
Maximum length in seconds to analyze the stream
properties.
format=<value>
Force a specific libavformat demuxer.
probesize=<value>
Maximum amount of data to probe during the detec-
tion phase. In the case of MPEG-TS this value
identifies the maximum number of TS packets to
scan.
FFmpeg libavformat muxers (-lavfopts) (also see -of lavf)
delay=<value>
Currently only meaningful for MPEG[12]: Maximum al-
lowed distance, in seconds, between the reference
timer of the output stream (SCR) and the decoding
timestamp (DTS) for any stream present (demux to
decode delay). Default is 0.7 (as mandated by the
standards defined by MPEG). Higher values require
larger buffers and must not be used.
format=<container_format>
Override which container format to mux into (de-
fault: autodetect from output file extension).
mpg
MPEG-1 systems and MPEG-2 PS
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asf
Advanced Streaming Format
avi
Audio Video Interleave file
wav
Waveform Audio
swf
Macromedia Flash
flv
Macromedia Flash video files
rm
RealAudio and RealVideo
au
SUN AU format
nut
NUT open container format (experimental)
mov
QuickTime
mp4
MPEG-4 format
dv
Sony Digital Video container
muxrate=<rate>
Nominal bitrate of the multiplex, in bits per sec-
ond; currently it is meaningful only for MPEG[12].
Sometimes raising it is necessary in order to avoid
"buffer underflows".
packetsize=<size>
Size, expressed in bytes, of the unitary packet for
the chosen format. When muxing to MPEG[12] imple-
mentations the default values are: 2324 for [S]VCD,
2048 for all others formats.
preload=<distance>
Currently only meaningful for MPEG[12]: Initial
distance, in seconds, between the reference timer
of the output stream (SCR) and the decoding times-
tamp (DTS) for any stream present (demux to decode
delay).
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
There are a number of environment variables that can be
used to control the behavior of MPlayer and MEncoder.
MPLAYER_CHARSET (also see -msgcharset)
Convert console messages to the specified charset
(default: autodetect). A value of "noconv" means
no conversion.
MPLAYER_HOME
Directory where MPlayer looks for user settings.
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MPLAYER_VERBOSE (also see -v and -msglevel)
Set the initial verbosity level across all message
modules (default: 0). The resulting verbosity cor-
responds to that of -msglevel 5 plus the value of
MPLAYER_VERBOSE.
libaf:
LADSPA_PATH
If LADSPA_PATH is set, it searches for the speci-
fied file. If it is not set, you must supply a
fully specified pathname. FIXME: This is also men-
tioned in the ladspa section.
libdvdcss:
DVDCSS_CACHE
Specify a directory in which to store title key
values. This will speed up descrambling of DVDs
which are in the cache. The DVDCSS_CACHE directory
is created if it does not exist, and a subdirectory
is created named after the DVD's title or manufac-
turing date. If DVDCSS_CACHE is not set or is emp-
ty, libdvdcss will use the default value which is
"${HOME}/.dvdcss/" under Unix and "C:\Documents and
Settings\$USER\Application Data\dvdcss\" under
Win32. The special value "off" disables caching.
DVDCSS_METHOD
Sets the authentication and decryption method that
libdvdcss will use to read scrambled discs. Can be
one of title, key or disc.
key
is the default method. libdvdcss will use
a set of calculated player keys to try and
get the disc key. This can fail if the
drive does not recognize any of the player
keys.
disc
is a fallback method when key has failed.
Instead of using player keys, libdvdcss
will crack the disc key using a brute force
algorithm. This process is CPU intensive
and requires 64 MB of memory to store tem-
porary data.
title
is the fallback when all other methods have
failed. It does not rely on a key exchange
with the DVD drive, but rather uses a cryp-
to attack to guess the title key. On rare
cases this may fail because there is not
enough encrypted data on the disc to per-
form a statistical attack, but in the other
hand it is the only way to decrypt a DVD
stored on a hard disc, or a DVD with the
wrong region on an RPC2 drive.
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DVDCSS_RAW_DEVICE
Specify the raw device to use. Exact usage will
depend on your operating system, the Linux utility
to set up raw devices is raw(8) for instance.
Please note that on most operating systems, using a
raw device requires highly aligned buffers: Linux
requires a 2048 bytes alignment (which is the size
of a DVD sector).
DVDCSS_VERBOSE
Sets the libdvdcss verbosity level.
0 Outputs no messages at all.
1 Outputs error messages to stderr.
2 Outputs error messages and debug messages
to stderr.
DVDREAD_NOKEYS
Skip retrieving all keys on startup. Currently
disabled.
HOME FIXME: Document this.
libao2:
AO_SUN_DISABLE_SAMPLE_TIMING
FIXME: Document this.
AUDIODEV
FIXME: Document this.
AUDIOSERVER
Specifies the Network Audio System server to which
the nas audio output driver should connect and the
transport that should be used. If unset DISPLAY is
used instead. The transport can be one of tcp and
unix. Syntax is tcp/<somehost>:, or [unix]:.
The NAS base port is 8000 and <instancenumber> is
added to that.
EXAMPLES:
AUDIOSERVER=somehost:0
Connect to NAS server on somehost using de-
fault port and transport.
AUDIOSERVER=tcp/somehost:8000
Connect to NAS server on somehost listening
on TCP port 8000.
AUDIOSERVER=(unix)?:0
Connect to NAS server instance 0 on local-
host using unix domain sockets.
DISPLAY
FIXME: Document this.
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vidix:
VIDIX_CRT
FIXME: Document this.
osdep:
TERM FIXME: Document this.
libvo:
DISPLAY
FIXME: Document this.
FRAMEBUFFER
FIXME: Document this.
HOME FIXME: Document this.
libmpdemux:
HOME FIXME: Document this.
HOMEPATH
FIXME: Document this.
http_proxy
FIXME: Document this.
LOGNAME
FIXME: Document this.
USERPROFILE
FIXME: Document this.
libmpcodecs:
XANIM_MOD_DIR
FIXME: Document this.
GUI:
CHARSET
FIXME: Document this.
DISPLAY
FIXME: Document this.
HOME FIXME: Document this.
libavformat:
AUDIO_FLIP_LEFT
FIXME: Document this.
BKTR_DEV
FIXME: Document this.
BKTR_FORMAT
FIXME: Document this.
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BKTR_FREQUENCY
FIXME: Document this.
http_proxy
FIXME: Document this.
no_proxy
FIXME: Document this.
FILES
/usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer/:mplayer.conf
MPlayer system-wide settings
/usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer/:mencoder.conf
MEncoder system-wide settings
~/.mplayer/:config
MPlayer user settings
~/.mplayer/:mencoder.conf
MEncoder user settings
~/.mplayer/:input.conf
input bindings (see '-input keylist' for the full
list)
~/.mplayer/:gui.conf
GUI configuration file
~/.mplayer/:gui.pl
GUI playlist
~/.mplayer/:font/
font directory (There must be a font.desc file and
files with .RAW extension.)
~/.mplayer/:DVDkeys/
cached CSS keys
Assuming that /path/:to/:movie.avi is played, MPlayer
searches for sub files
in this order:
/path/:to/:movie.sub
~/.mplayer/:sub/:movie.sub
EXAMPLES OF MPLAYER USAGE
Quickstart DVD playing:
mplayer dvd://1
Play in Japanese with English subtitles:
mplayer dvd://1 -alang ja -slang en
Play only chapters 5, 6, 7:
mplayer dvd://1 -chapter 5-7
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Play only titles 5, 6, 7:
mplayer dvd://5-7
Play a multiangle DVD:
mplayer dvd://1 -dvdangle 2
Play from a different DVD device:
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /dev/:dvd2
Play DVD video from a directory with VOB files:
mplayer dvd://1 -dvd-device /path/:to/:directory/
Copy a DVD title to hard disk, saving to file title1.vob :
mplayer dvd://1 -dumpstream -dumpfile title1.vob
Stream from HTTP:
mplayer http://mplayer.hq/example.avi
Stream using RTSP:
mplayer rtsp://server.example.com/streamName
Convert subtitles to MPsub format:
mplayer dummy.avi -sub source.sub -dumpmpsub
Convert subtitles to MPsub format without watching the
movie:
mplayer /dev/:zero -rawvideo pal:fps=xx -demuxer rawvideo -vc null -vo null -noframedrop -benchmark -sub source.sub -dumpmpsub
input from standard V4L:
mplayer tv:// -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480:outfmt=i420 -vc rawi420 -vo xv
Playback on Zoran cards (old style, deprecated):
mplayer -vo zr -vf scale=352:288 file.avi
Playback on Zoran cards (new style):
mplayer -vo zr2 -vf scale=352:288,zrmjpeg file.avi
Play a 6-channel AAC file with only two speakers:
mplayer -rawaudio format=0xff -demuxer rawaudio -af pan=2:.32:.32:.39:.06:.06:.39:.17:-.17:-.17:.17:.33:.33 adts_he-aac160_51.aac
You might want to play a bit with the pan values (e.g mul-
tiply with a value) to increase volume or avoid clipping.
checkerboard invert with geq filter:
mplayer -vf geq='128+(p(XY)-128)*(0.5-gt(mod(X/SW128)64))*(0.5-gt(mod(Y/SH128)64))*4'
EXAMPLES OF MENCODER USAGE
Encode DVD title #2, only selected chapters:
mencoder dvd://2 -chapter 10-15 -o title2.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
Encode DVD title #2, resizing to 640x480:
mencoder dvd://2 -vf scale=640:480 -o title2.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
Encode DVD title #2, resizing to 512xHHH (keep aspect ra-
tio):
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 169
MPlayer(1) The Movie Player MPlayer(1)
mencoder dvd://2 -vf scale -zoom -xy 512 -o title2.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
The same, but with bitrate set to 1800kbit and optimized
macroblocks:
mencoder dvd://2 -o title2.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:mbd=1:vbitrate=1800
The same, but with MJPEG compression:
mencoder dvd://2 -o title2.avi -oac copy -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mjpeg:mbd=1:vbitrate=1800
Encode all *.jpg files in the current directory:
mencoder "mf://*.jpg" -mf fps=25 -o output.avi -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4
Encode from a tuner (specify a format with -vf format):
mencoder -tv driver=v4l:width=640:height=480 tv:// -o tv.avi -ovc raw
Encode from a pipe:
rar p test-SVCD.rar | mencoder -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800 -ofps 24 -
BUGS
Don't panic. If you find one, report it to us, but please
make sure you have read all of the documentation first.
Also look out for smileys. :) Many bugs are the result of
incorrect setup or parameter usage. The bug reporting
section of the documentation (http://www.mplayer-
hq.hu/:DOCS/:HTML/:en/:bugreports.html) explains how to
create useful bug reports.
AUTHORS
MPlayer was initially written by Arpad Gereoffy. See the
AUTHORS file for a list of some of the many other contrib-
utors.
MPlayer is (C) 2000-2007 The MPlayer Team
This man page was written mainly by Gabucino, Jonas Jer-
mann and Diego Biurrun. It is maintained by Diego Biur-
run. Please send mails about it to the MPlayer-DOCS mail-
ing list. Translation specific mails belong on the MPlay-
er-translations mailing list.
The MPlayer Project 2007-06-01 170
Converted to .HTM on: Monday 24/03/2008
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