Mplayer on Gentoo with VDPAU

As you might already know, MPlayer now supports VDPAU for Nvidia cards. If like me, you are impatient to see this coming to your fav’ distribution, you can use this ebuild and the source file : mplayer-1.0_rc2_p29024.tar.bz2(put this under /usr/portage/distfiles/). Then copy the ebuild under /usr/portage/media-video/ then cd into that directory and do : ebuild mplayer-1.0_rc2_p29024.ebuild digest. Then just emerge -av mplayer. For now, you can also do : echo “=media-video/mplayer-1.0_rc2_p29024” >> /etc/portage/package.keywords for the time being (of course, this will not be needed once the version is updated by Gentoo).

update; Gentoo released a masked ebuild (1.0_rc2_p20090322) which adds just this, enjoy 🙂

9 thoughts on “Mplayer on Gentoo with VDPAU

  1. C’est génial de voir les fichiers 1080p h264 jouer parfois avec 2-4% de CPU utilisé.

  2. It looks like there is a new ebuild in portage. I’m emerging right now, but what I did was unmask it via /etc/portage/package.keywords and added vdpau and video_card_nvidia to my make.conf

    I’ll post back if I encounter any problems.

  3. Yes indeed, just noticed eix telling me : ~1.0_rc2_p20090322 so odds are that it contains the necessary stuff, i’ll wait for your feedback 🙂

  4. Partial success. As a user I could not get mplayer to access /dev/nvidiactl. Changing the permissions worked but still could not get video output using -vo vdpau. As root the video will run, but I had to force the video codec by passing -vc ffh264vdpau for a 1080p .mkv. Finally, the video was jittery. Possibly the file itself, I’ll have ot explore that. Also noticed I don’t have direct rendoring in nvidia-settings. Don’t think that’s it though. Final notes, CPU usage for mPlayer went from 100% (unable to play 1080p) to ~7% max. Im going to play with it a little more later when I have the time. Let me know how it works for you.

  5. nice! you can also edit your .mplayer/config to read:

    vo=vdpau,xv
    vc=ffh264vdpau,ffvc1vdpau,ffmpeg12vdpau,ffwmv3vdpau,coreavc,

  6. Final Update: It looks like the previously tried .mkv file had something wrong with it. I tried a 1080p .mkv sample of some film and it seemed to play smooth. Good luck and hope it works out for you too 🙂

  7. Thanks, it does work indeed 🙂

    VDec: vo config request – 1280 x 536 (preferred colorspace: H.264 VDPAU acceleration)

  8. Hey FRLinux,

    i tried to compile mplayer with vdpau i used the 20090322 version. But i got the problem that i can’t see vdpau in the list mplayer -vo help.

    Maybe you got a hint for me.

  9. There is no help for it but it does exist. If you add the configuration settings as I discussed, that should work.

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