14 DAY TRIAL // You know, I was just thinking the other day about MPlayer 1.0 final and whether (when it will be released) it will have a different (better) GUI. Will it support more of the new technologies regarding video and audio streams? Well, the answer is about to be revealed, as last night, MPlayer 1.0 RC2 was released and it comes with a lot of new features, such as Real RTSP authentication support, improved QuickTime support, TV streaming and Intel Mac improved support. Also, HDTV stream will work better now, thanks to the support for VC-1 in MPEG-TS and MPEG-PS. But there's some bad news too, for the Blu-ray and HD-DVD fans this time, as MPlayer can not playback any of them yet; however, it can play EVO files after they've been decrypted. Let's have an in-depth look at the new decoders, codecs, demuxers, filters and drivers that come with this version of MPlayer:
New decoders:
￭ Intel Music Coder audio decoding via lavc ￭ Monkey Audio audio decoding via lavc ￭ Fraps v2/v4 video decoding via lavc ￭ libmpeg2 updated to 0.4.1 ￭ fixed resolution switching with libmpeg2 ￭ handle resolution switching for Real codecs ￭ FFMpeg video decoder can now handle aspect ratio changes ￭ AMR now handled via libamr wrapper ￭ SIMD optimizations for mp3lib under AMD64
New video game codecs:
￭ 4XM audio ￭ Electronic Arts ADPCM audio ￭ Delphine CIN audio and video ￭ Interplay DPCM audio ￭ Sierra VMD video ￭ Tiertex SEQ video ￭ Westwood IMA ADPCM audio ￭ XAN wc3 video ￭ Id CIN video ￭ Interplay video ￭ XAN ADPCM audio ￭ Westwood SND1 audio ￭ Feeble Files DXA video ￭ THP audio and video ￭ Renderware TeXture Dictionary video ￭ Bethesda Software VID video via lavc ￭ XAN wc4 video via binary DLL
New demuxers:
￭ support for VC-1 in MPEG-TS and MPEG-PS files (BD,HD)-DVD ￭ support for EVO demuxing ￭ support -noidx with libavformat demuxer ￭ support for channel navigation with PVR input ￭ text subtitles should now work with libavformat demuxer ￭ cleaned up TiVo demuxer ￭ Implemented switch_video and switch_program consistently with switch_audio (default keys are "_" and TAB, respectively). For the time being program switching is only available in TS streams handled by demux_ts.c (not libavformat), while video switching is also handled by demux_lavf.c and demux_avi.c. ￭ audio and video switching for the AVI demuxer (video switching untested) ￭ GIF demuxer improvements, should work with all GIFs now
Streaming:
￭ authentication for Real RTSP streams ￭ near-precise seeking in dvd:// and dvdnav:// (dvdnav:// requires libdvdnav from mphq) ￭ speed selection when playing dvd:// streams, to make drive quieter ￭ support SVQ3 and H.264 in X-QT over RTSP, now RTSP Apple keynotes work (live555) ￭ SMIL playlist over Real RTSP ￭ support H.263-2000 over RTSP (live555) ￭ fix AAC-LATM over RTSP (live555) ￭ support AMR over RTSP (live555) ￭ support H.264 over RTSP (live555) ￭ "device" and "adevice" suboptions now work for the *BSD BT848 TV driver ￭ dvdnav:// now depends on MPlayer's fork of libdvdnav ￭ teletext support for tv:// (v4l and v4l2 only) ￭ radio support for *BSD BT848 ￭ channel scanner for tv:// ￭ fine tuning for tv:// ￭ driver autodetection for tv:// ￭ libnemesi RTSP/RTP support ￭ EOF detection for RTSP (live555)
FFmpeg/libavcodec improvements:
￭ Intel Music coder audio decoder ￭ Fraps v2/v4 video decoder ￭ H.264 decoding speedup ￭ Slice-based parallel H.264 decoding (-lavdopts fast:threads=N) ￭ native NUT demuxer updated to spec ￭ native NUT muxer ￭ NUT muxing and demuxing support via libnut ￭ WMA encoder ￭ fix MJPEG-B on big-endian systems ￭ lowres support for some H.264 files ￭ DTS/DCA audio decoder ￭ Atrac 3 audio decoder ￭ MPEG-1/2 speedups ￭ RoQ muxer, video and audio encoder ￭ QTRLE encoder ￭ AC-3 decoder ￭ Matroska muxer ￭ Monkey's Audio demuxer and decoder ￭ Flac encoder and decoder speedups ￭ AMV demuxer and audio/video decoder
libmpeg2 improvements:
￭ iWMMXt-accelerated DCT and motion compensation for ARM processors
New filters:
￭ obsolete fame filter removed ￭ vf_geq speed-ups ￭ vf_yadif green frame fixed ￭ fix af_pan when switching audio streams ￭ add audio left/right balance feature to af_pan
MEncoder improvements:
￭ write to output streams (currently only file:// and smb://) ￭ support -ffourcc with -of lavf ￭ removed B-frame warning message ￭ fixed bugs that would corrupt headers in the video stream when using telecining and not patch the TFF flag correctly
New drivers:
￭ ALSA audio output now sets the non-audio bit for AC3 pass-through even if the user-specified default device name tries to clear it ￭ fixed internal VIDIX in Solaris/x86, also auto-enabled ￭ rework of internal VIDIX, now a fully static library with built-in drivers ￭ updated VIDIX ATI drivers ￭ Sun XVR-100 video output driver
Other improvements:
￭ monitorpixelaspect=1 is now default. Set monitoraspect=4/3 to get the old behavior (if you have non-square pixels). ￭ libdvdcss mac updated to Subversion HEAD, now same as upstream version ￭ libmpdvdkit split into libdvdread and libdvdcss ￭ obsolete Xvid 3 support removed ￭ long-deprecated -vop option removed ￭ video stream switching ￭ dvdnav:// honor -alang and -slang ￭ support for doubleclick as input event ￭ -really-quiet works as expected now ￭ select libavformat demuxer (-lavfdopts format=) ￭ internal minilzo removed in favor of FFmpeg implementation, use liblzo2 for encoding ￭ change GUI dependency from libpng to libavcodec ￭ ability to change subtitle size during playback ￭ ability to turn loop on/off during playback ￭ Apple Remote support ￭ libdvdread updated to 0.9.7 ￭ many compiler warning fixes
New ports:
￭ Complete Intel Mac support ￭ Hitachi SuperH (SH3) support ￭ Blackfin optimizations
New documentation:
￭ console messages and XML documentation converted to UTF-8 ￭ Russian documentation translation finished ￭ Russian man page translation finished ￭ Chinese man page translation finished ￭ Chinese documentation translation started ￭ Documented get/set/step properties in DOCS/tech/slave.txt
You can download MPlayer 1.0 RC2 now from Softpedia.