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, fbdev, AAlib, libcaca, DirectFB,
Quartz, Mac OS X CoreVideo, but you can also use GGI, SDL (and all their drivers),
VESA (on every VESA-compatible card, even without X11), some low-level
card-specific drivers (for Matrox, 3dfx and ATI) and some hardware MPEG decoder
boards, such as the Siemens DVB, Hauppauge PVR (IVTV), DXR2 and DXR3/:Hollywood+.
Most of them support software or hardware scaling, so you can enjoy movies in
fullscreen mode.
MPlayer has an onscreen display (OSD) for status information, nice big
antialiased shaded subtitles and visual feedback for keyboard controls.
European/:ISO8859-1,2 (Hungarian, English, Czech, etc), Cyrillic and Korean
fonts are supported along with 12 subtitle formats (MicroDVD, SubRip, OGM,
SubViewer, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, AQTitle, JACOsub, PJS and our own: MPsub) and
DVD subtitles (SPU streams, VOBsub and Closed Captions).
mencoder
(MPlayer's Movie Encoder) is a simple movie encoder, designed to encode
MPlayer-playable movies (see above) to other MPlayer-playable formats (see
below).
It encodes to MPEG-4 (DivX/XviD), one of the libavcodec codecs and
PCM/:MP3/:VBRMP3 audio in 1, 2 or 3 passes.
Furthermore it has stream copying abilities, a powerful filter system (crop,
expand, flip, postprocess, rotate, scale, noise, RGB/:YUV conversion) and
more.
gmplayer
is MPlayer with a graphical user interface.
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
s
Seek backward/:forward 10 seconds.
s
Seek forward/:backward 1 minute.
s
Seek forward/:backward 10 minutes.
s
Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.
s
Halve/double current playback speed.
s
Reset playback speed to normal.
s
Go backward/:forward in the playlist.
s
Go forward in the playlist, even over the end.
s
next/:previous playtree entry in the parent list
s
next/:previous alternative source.
s
Pause (pressing again unpauses).
s
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).
Toggle frame dropping states: none / skip display / skip decoding
(see -framedrop and -hardframedrop).
s
Toggle subtitle visibility.
s
Cycle through the available subtitles.
s
Step forward/backward in the subtitle list.
s
Toggle displaying "forced subtitles".
s
Toggle subtitle alignment: top / middle / bottom.
s
Adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
s
Move subtitles up/down.
s
Set start or end of an EDL skip and write it out to the given file.
s
Take a screenshot.
s
Start/stop taking screenshots.
s
Show filename on the OSD.
s
Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter.
(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).)
s
Adjust contrast.
s
Adjust brightness.
s
Adjust hue.
s
Adjust saturation.
(The following keys are valid only when using the quartz or macosx
video output driver.)
s
Resize movie window to half its original size.
s
Resize movie window to its original size.
s
Resize movie window to double its original size.
s
Toggle fullscreen (also see -fs).
s
Set movie window alpha.
(The following keys are valid only when using the sdl
video output driver.)
s
Cycle through available fullscreen modes.
s
Restore original mode.
(The following keys are valid if you have a keyboard
with multimedia keys.)
s
Pause.
s
Stop playing and quit.
s
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.)
s
Start playing.
s
Stop playing.
s
Load file.
s
Load subtitle.
s
Open skin browser.
s
Open playlist.
s
Open preferences.
(The following keys are only valid if you compiled with TV or DVB input
support and will take precedence over the keys defined above.)
s
Select previous/:next channel.
s
Change norm.
s
Change channel list.
(The following keys are only valid if you compiled with dvdnav
support: they are used to navigate the menus)
s
Select button up.
s
Select button down.
s
Select button left.
s
Select button right.
s
Return to main menu.
s
Return to nearest menu (the order of preference is: chapter->title->root).
Every 'flag' option has a 'noflag' counterpart, e.g. the opposite of the
-fs option is -nofs.
If an option is marked as (XXX only), it will only work in combination with
the XXX option or if XXX is compiled in.
NOTE:
The suboption parser (used for example for -ao pcm suboptions) supports
a special kind of string-escaping intended for use with external GUIs.
It has the following format:
%n%string_of_length_n
EXAMPLES:
mplayer -ao pcm:file=%10%C:test.wav test.avi
Or in a script:
mplayer -ao pcm:file=%`expr length "$NAME"`%"$NAME" test.avi
CONFIGURATION FILES
You can put all of the options in configuration files which will be read
every time MPlayer/MEncoder is run.
The system-wide configuration file 'mplayer.conf' is in your configuration
directory (e.g. /etc/:mplayer or /usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer), the user
specific one is '~/:.mplayer/:config'.
The configuration file for MEncoder is 'mencoder.conf' in your configuration
directory (e.g. /etc/:mplayer or /usr/:local/:etc/:mplayer), the
user specific one is '~/:.mplayer/:mencoder.conf.
User specific options override system-wide options 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 directory as the file to
be played, as long as you give the -use-filedir-conf option (either on the
command line or in your global config file).
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
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-profile]'.
All following options will be part of the profile.
A description (shown by -profile help) can be defined with the profile-desc
option.
To end the profile, start another one or use the profile name 'default'
to continue with normal options.
-codecs-file <filename> (also see -afm, -ac, -vfm, -vc)
Override the standard search path and use the specified file
instead of the builtin codecs.conf.
-include <configuration file>
Specify configuration file to be parsed after the default ones.
-list-options
Prints all available options.
-msgcharset <charset>
Convert console messages to the specified character set (default: autodetect).
Text will be in the encoding specified with the --charset configure option.
Set this to "noconv" to disable conversion (for e.g. iconv problems).
NOTE:
The option takes effect after command line parsing has finished.
The MPLAYER_CHARSET environment variable can help you get rid of
the first lines of garbled output.
-msglevel <all=<level>:<module>=<level>:...>
Control verbosity directly for each module.
The 'all' module changes the verbosity of all the modules not
explicitly specified on the command line.
See '-msglevel help' for a list of all modules.
NOTE:
Messages printed before the command line is parsed can be controlled only
by the MPLAYER_VERBOSE environment variable, which applies to all modules.
Available levels:
s
complete silence
s
fatal messages only
s
error messages
s
warning messages
s
short hints
s
informational messages
s
status messages (those hidden by -quiet)
s
verbose messages
s
debug level 2
s
debug level 3
s
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|realtime
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.
-show-profile <profile>
Show the description and content of a profile.
-use-filedir-conf
Look for a file-specific configuration file in the same directory as
the file that is being played.
WARNING:
may be dangerous if playing from untrusted media.
-v
Increment verbosity level, one level for each -v
found on the command line.
PLAYER OPTIONS (MPLAYER ONLY)
-autoq <quality> (use with -vf [s]pp)
Dynamically changes the level of postprocessing depending on the available spare
CPU time.
The number you specify will be the maximum level used.
Usually you can use some big number.
You have to use -vf [s]pp without parameters in order for this to work.
-autosync <factor>
Gradually adjusts the A/V sync based on audio delay measurements.
Specifying -autosync 0, the default, will cause frame timing to be based
entirely on audio delay measurements.
Specifying -autosync 1 will do the same, but will subtly change the A/V
correction algorithm.
An uneven video framerate in a movie which plays fine with -nosound can
often be helped by setting this to an integer value greater than 1.
The higher the value, the closer the timing will be to -nosound.
Try -autosync 30 to smooth out problems with sound drivers which do
not implement a perfect audio delay measurement.
With this value, if large A/V sync offsets occur, they will only take about
1 or 2 seconds to settle out.
This delay in reaction time to sudden A/V offsets should be the only
side-effect of turning this option on, for all sound drivers.
-benchmark
Prints some statistics on CPU usage and dropped frames at the end of playback.
Use in combination with -nosound and -vo null for benchmarking only the
video codec.
NOTE:
With this option MPlayer will also ignore frame duration when playing
only video (you can think of that as infinite fps).
-colorkey <number>
Changes the colorkey to an RGB value of your choice.
0x000000 is black and 0xffffff is white.
Only supported by the cvidix, fbdev, svga, vesa, winvidix, xmga, xvidix,
xover, xv (see -vo xv:ck), xvmc (see -vo xv:ck) and directx video output
drivers.
-nocolorkey
Disables colorkeying.
Only supported by the cvidix, fbdev, svga, vesa, winvidix, xmga, xvidix,
xover, xv (see -vo xv:ck), xvmc (see -vo xv:ck) and directx video output
drivers.
-crash-debug (DEBUG CODE)
Automatically attaches gdb upon crash or SIGTRAP.
Support must be compiled in by configuring with --enable-crash-debug.
-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.
Currently the following drivers are fixed-vo compliant: 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.
-(no)gui
Enable or disable the GUI interface (default depends on binary name).
Only works as the first argument on the command line.
Does not work as a config-file option.
-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 parameters in an easily parseable format.
Also prints more detailed information about subtitle and audio
track languages and IDs.
In some cases you can get more information by using -msglevel identify=6.
For example, for a DVD it will list the time length of each title, as well
as a disk ID.
The wrapper script TOOLS/:midentify suppresses the other MPlayer output and
(hopefully) shellescapes the filenames.
-idle (also see -slave)
Makes MPlayer wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to play.
Mostly useful in slave mode where MPlayer can be controlled
through input commands.
-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:
s
Specify input configuration file other than the default
~/:.mplayer/:input.conf.
~/:.mplayer/:<filename> is assumed if no full path is given.
s
Delay in milliseconds before we start to autorepeat a key (0 to disable).
s
Number of key presses to generate per second on autorepeat.
s
Prints all keys that can be bound to commands.
s
Prints all commands that can be bound to keys.
s
Specifies the joystick device to use (default: /dev/:input/:js0).
s
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: 10).
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 similar 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 introduced,
set it to 2 for Linux or 1024 for Windows.
-lircconf <filename> (LIRC only)
Specifies a configuration file for LIRC (default: ~/.lircrc).
-list-properties
Print a list of the available properties.
-loop <number>
Loops movie playback <number> times.
0 means forever.
-menu (OSD menu only)
Turn on OSD menu support.
-menu-cfg <filename> (OSD menu only)
Use an alternative menu.conf.
-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 derivatives of X11 are supported).
Necessary to select the buttons in DVD menus.
-noconsolecontrols
Prevent MPlayer from reading key events from standard input.
Useful when reading data from standard input.
This is automatically enabled when - is found on the command line.
There are situations where you have to set it manually, e.g.
if you open /dev/:stdin (or the equivalent on your system), use stdin
in a playlist or intend to read from stdin later on via the loadfile or
loadlist slave commands.
-nojoystick
Turns off joystick support.
-nolirc
Turns off LIRC support.
-nomouseinput (X11 only)
Disable mouse button press/:release input (mozplayerxp's context menu relies
on this option).
-rtc (RTC only)
Turns on usage of the Linux RTC (realtime clock - /dev/:rtc) as timing
mechanism.
This wakes up the process every 1/1024 seconds to check the current time.
Useless with modern Linux kernels configured for desktop use as they already
wake up the process with similar accuracy when using normal timed sleep.
-playing-msg <string>
Print out a string before starting playback.
The following expansions are supported:
s
Expand to the value of the property NAME.
s
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/:local/:share/:mplayer/:skins/: and ~/.mplayer/:skins/.
EXAMPLE:
s
Tries /usr/:local/:share/:mplayer/: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 intercepting keyboard events, MPlayer will read commands separated
by a newline (\n) from stdin.
NOTE:
See -input cmdlist for a list of slave commands and DOCS/tech/slave.txt
for their description.
-softsleep
Time frames by repeatedly checking the current time instead of asking the
kernel to wake up MPlayer at the correct time.
Useful if your kernel timing is imprecise and you cannot use the RTC either.
Comes at the price of higher CPU consumption.
-sstep <sec>
Skip <sec> seconds after every frame.
The normal framerate of the movie is kept, so playback is accelerated.
Since MPlayer can only seek to the next keyframe this may be inexact.
DEMUXER/STREAM OPTIONS
-a52drc <level>
Select the Dynamic Range Compression level for AC3 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 AC3 stream contains the required range
compression information.
-aid <ID> (also see -alang)
Select audio channel (MPEG: 0-31, AVI/:OGM: 1-99, ASF/:RM: 0-127,
VOB(AC3): 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 language codes.
DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter language codes, Matroska 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:
s
Chooses the Hungarian language track on a DVD and falls back on English if
Hungarian is not available.
s
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 -audio-demuxer help.
For backward compatibility it also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in
libmpdemux/:demuxer.h.
-audio-demuxer audio or -audio-demuxer 17 forces MP3.
-audiofile <filename>
Play audio from an external file (WAV, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis) while viewing a
movie.
-audiofile-cache <kBytes>
Enables caching for the stream used by -audiofile, using the specified
amount of memory.
-bandwidth <value> (network only)
Specify the maximum bandwidth for network streaming (for servers that are
able to send content in different bitrates).
Useful if you want to watch live streamed media behind a slow connection.
With Real RTSP streaming, it is also used to set the maximum delivery
bandwidth allowing faster cache filling and stream dumping.
-cache <kBytes>
This option specifies how much memory (in kBytes) to use when precaching a
file or URL.
Especially useful on slow media.
-nocache
Turns off caching.
-cache-min <percentage>
Playback will start when the cache has been filled up to <percentage>
of the total.
-cache-seek-min <percentage>
If a seek is to be made to a position within <percentage> of the cache size
from the current position, MPlayer will wait for the cache to be filled to
this position rather than performing a stream seek (default: 50).
-cdda <option1:option2> (CDDA only)
This option can be used to tune the CD Audio reading feature of MPlayer.
Available options are:
s
Set CD spin speed.
s
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
s
Use specified generic SCSI device.
s
Set atomic read size.
s
Force minimum overlap search during verification to <value> sectors.
s
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.
s
Add <value> sectors to the values reported when addressing tracks.
May be negative.
s
(Never) accept imperfect data reconstruction.
-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 AC3 audio (like DVDs).
In that case liba52 does the decoding by default and correctly downmixes the
audio into the requested number of channels.
To directly control the number of output channels independently of how many
channels are decoded, use the channels filter.
NOTE:
This option is honored by codecs (AC3 only), filters (surround) and audio
output drivers (OSS at least).
Specify which chapter to start playing at.
Optionally specify which chapter to end playing at (default: 1).
-cookies (network only)
Send cookies when making HTTP requests.
-cookies-file <filename> (network only)
Read HTTP cookies from <filename> (default: ~/.mozilla/ and ~/.netscape/)
and skip reading from default locations.
The file is assumed to be in Netscape format.
-delay <sec>
audio delay in seconds (positive or negative float value)
NOTE:
When used with MEncoder, this is not guaranteed to work correctly
with -ovc copy; use -audio-delay instead.
-ignore-start
Ignore the specified starting time for streams in AVI files.
In MPlayer, this nullifies stream delays in files encoded with
the -audio-delay option.
During encoding, this option prevents MEncoder from transferring
original stream start times to the new file; the -audio-delay option is
not affected.
Note that MEncoder sometimes adjusts stream starting times
automatically to compensate for anticipated decoding delays, so don't
use this option for encoding without testing it first.
-demuxer <[+]name>
Force demuxer type.
Use a '+' before the name to force it, this will skip some checks!
Give the demuxer name as printed by -demuxer help.
For backward compatibility it also accepts the demuxer ID as defined in
libmpdemux/:demuxer.h.
-demuxer audio or -demuxer 17 forces MP3.
-dumpaudio (MPlayer only)
Dumps raw compressed audio stream to ./stream.dump (useful with MPEG/:AC3).
If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream
on the command line only the last one will work.
-dumpfile <filename> (MPlayer only)
Specify which file MPlayer should dump to.
Should be used together with -dumpaudio / -dumpvideo / -dumpstream.
-dumpstream (MPlayer only)
Dumps the raw stream to ./stream.dump.
Useful when ripping from DVD or network.
If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream
on the command line only the last one will work.
-dumpvideo (MPlayer only)
Dump raw compressed video stream to ./stream.dump (not very usable).
If you give more than one of -dumpaudio, -dumpvideo, -dumpstream
on the command line only the last one will work.
-dvbin <options> (DVB only)
Pass the following parameters to the DVB input module, in order to override
the default ones:
s
Specifies using card number 1-4 (default: 1).
s
Instructs MPlayer to read the channels list from <filename>.
Default is ~/.mplayer/:channels.conf.{sat,ter,cbl,atsc} (based on your card type)
or ~/.mplayer/:channels.conf as a last resort.
s
Maximum number of seconds to wait when trying 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).
-dvdangle <angle ID> (DVD only)
Some DVD discs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles.
Here you can tell MPlayer which angles to use (default: 1).
-edl <filename>
Enables edit decision list (EDL) actions during playback.
Video will be skipped over and audio will be muted and unmuted according to
the entries in the given file.
See http://www.mplayerhq.hu/:DOCS/:HTML/:en/:edl.html for details
on how to use this.
-endpos <[[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]|size[b|kb|mb]> (also see -ss and -sb)
Stop at given time or byte position.
NOTE:
Byte position 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:
s
Stop at 56 seconds.
s
Stop at 1 hour 10 minutes.
s
Stop at 1 minute 6 seconds.
s
Encode only 100 MB.
-forceidx
Force index rebuilding.
Useful for files with broken index (A/V desync, etc).
This will enable seeking in files where seeking was not possible.
You can fix the index permanently with MEncoder (see the documentation).
NOTE:
This option only works if the underlying media supports seeking
(i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).
-fps <float value>
Override video framerate.
Useful if the original value is wrong or missing.
-frames <number>
Play/:convert only first <number> frames, then quit.
-hr-mp3-seek (MP3 only)
Hi-res MP3 seeking.
Enabled when playing from an external MP3 file, as we need to seek
to the very exact position to keep A/V sync.
Can be slow especially when seeking backwards since it has to rewind
to the beginning to find an exact frame position.
-idx (also see -forceidx)
Rebuilds index of files if no index was found, allowing seeking.
Useful with broken/:incomplete downloads, or badly created files.
NOTE:
This option only works if the underlying media supports seeking
(i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).
-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:
s
input file width (default: autodetect)
s
input file height (default: autodetect)
s
output fps (default: 25)
s
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 default, when the file type (demuxer) cannot be detected reliably
(the file has no header or it is not reliable enough), the filename
extension is used to select the demuxer.
Always falls back on content-based demuxer selection.
-passwd <password> (also see -user) (network only)
Specify password for HTTP authentication.
-prefer-ipv4 (network only)
Use IPv4 on network connections.
Falls back on IPv6 automatically.
-prefer-ipv6 (IPv6 network only)
Use IPv6 on network connections.
Falls back on IPv4 automatically.
-pvr <option1:option2:...> (PVR only)
This option tunes various encoding properties of the PVR capture module.
It has to be used with any hardware MPEG encoder based card supported by the
V4L2 driver.
The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150/250/350/500 and all IVTV based
cards are known as PVR capture cards.
Be aware that only Linux 2.6.18 kernel
and above is able to handle MPEG stream through V4L2 layer.
For hardware capture of an MPEG stream and watching it with
MPlayer/MEncoder, use 'pvr://' as a movie URL.
Specify peak video bitrate encoding in Mbps
(only useful for VBR encoding, default: 9.6).
s
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
-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 AC3 streams use -rawaudio format=0x2000 -demuxer rawaudio.
Available options are:
s
number of channels
s
rate in samples per second
s
sample size in bytes
s
bitrate for rawaudio files
s
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:
s
rate in frames per second (default: 25.0)
s
set standard image size
s
image width in pixels
s
image height in pixels
s
set colorspace
s
colorspace (fourcc) in hex
s
frame size in Bytes
EXAMPLE:
s
Play the famous "foreman" sample video.
s
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 behind a router and want to forward
the RTSP stream from the server to a specific client.
-rtsp-destination
Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to force the destination IP address to be bound.
This option may be useful with some RTSP server which do not
send RTP packets to the right interface.
If the connection to the RTSP server fails, use -v to see
which IP address MPlayer tries to bind to and try to force
it to one assigned to your computer instead.
-rtsp-stream-over-tcp (LIVE555 only)
Used with 'rtsp://' URLs to specify that the resulting incoming RTP and RTCP
packets be streamed over TCP (using the same TCP connection as RTSP).
This option may be useful if you have a broken internet connection that does
not pass incoming UDP packets (see http://www.live555.com/:mplayer/).
-saveidx <filename>
Force index rebuilding and dump the index to <filename>.
Currently this only works with AVI files.
NOTE:
This option is obsolete now that MPlayer has OpenDML support.
-sb <byte position> (also see -ss)
Seek to byte position.
Useful for playback from CD-ROM images or VOB files with junk at the beginning.
-speed <0.01-100>
Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given as parameter.
Not guaranteed to work correctly with -oac copy.
-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 audio filter will be inserted
into the audio filter layer to compensate for the difference.
The type of resampling can be controlled by the -af-adv option.
The default is fast resampling that may cause distortion.
-ss <time> (also see -sb)
Seek to given time position.
EXAMPLE:
s
Seeks to 56 seconds.
s
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 with this option which
program (if present) you want to play.
Can be used with -vid and -aid.
-radio <option1:option2:...> (radio only)
These options set various parameters of the radio capture module.
For listening to radio with MPlayer use 'radio://<frequency>'
(if channels option is not given) or 'radio://<channel_number>'
(if channels option is given) as a movie URL.
To start the grabbing subsystem, use 'radio://<frequency or channel>/capture'.
If the capture keyword is not given you can listen to radio
using the line-in cable only.
Using capture to listen is not recommended due to synchronization
problems, which makes this process uncomfortable.
Available options are:
s
Radio device to use (default: /dev/radio0).
s
Radio driver to use (default: v4l2 if available, otherwise v4l).
Currently, v4l and v4l2 drivers are supported.
s
sound volume for radio device (default 100)
s
Set channel list.
Use _ for spaces in names (or play with quoting ;-).
The channel 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, number in movie URL will be treated as channel position in
channel list.
EXAMPLE:radio://1,radio://104.4, radio_set_channel 1
s
Name of device to capture sound from.
Without such a name capture will be disabled,
even if the capture keyword appears in the URL.
For ALSA devices use it in the form hw=<card>.<device>.
If the device name contains a '=', the module will use
ALSA to capture, otherwise OSS.
s
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,...).
s
Number of audio channels to capture.
-tv <option1:option2:...> (TV/:PVR only)
This option tunes various properties of the TV capture module.
For watching TV with MPlayer, use 'tv://' or 'tv://<channel_number>'
or even 'tv://<channel_name> (see option channels for channel_name below)
as a movie URL.
Available options are:
s
no sound
s
available: dummy, v4l, v4l2, bsdbt848
s
Specify TV device (default: /dev/:video0).
s
Specify input (default: 0 (TV), see console output for available inputs).
s
Specify the frequency to set the tuner to (e.g. 511.250).
Not compatible with the channels parameter.
s
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.
s
output window width
s
output window height
s
framerate at which to capture video (frames per second)
s
maximum size of the capture buffer in megabytes (default: dynamical)
s
For bsdbt848 and v4l, PAL, SECAM, NTSC are available.
For v4l2, see the console output for a list of all available norms,
also see the normid option below.
s
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 available TV norms.
Set names for channels.
Use _ for spaces in names (or play with quoting ;-).
The channel names will then be written using OSD, and the slave commands
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
s
Set the image equalizer on the card.
s
Set audio capture bitrate.
s
Capture audio even if there are no audio sources reported by v4l.
s
Capture from ALSA.
s
Choose an audio mode:
0: mono
1: stereo
2: language 1
3: language 2
s
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.
s
Set an audio device.
<value> should be /dev/:xxx for OSS and a hardware ID for ALSA.
You must replace any ':' by a '.' in the hardware ID for ALSA.
s
Choose an audio output of the capture card, if it has more than one.
s
s
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.
s
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.
s
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 decimation value (see below).
s
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
s
Choose the quality of the JPEG compression
(< 60 recommended for full size).
-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 <sub-options> (DEBUG CODE)
Force audio parameters for the VIVO demuxer (for debugging purposes).
OSD/SUBTITLE OPTIONS
NOTE:
Also see -vf expand.
-ass (FreeType only)
Turn on SSA/ASS subtitle rendering.
With this option, libass will be used for SSA/ASS
external subtitles and Matroska tracks.
You may also want to use -embeddedfonts.
-ass-border-color <value>
Sets the border (outline) color for text subtitles.
The color format is RRGGBBAA.
-ass-bottom-margin <value>
Adds a black band at the bottom of the frame.
The SSA/ASS renderer can place subtitles there (with -ass-use-margins).
-ass-color <value>
Sets the color for text subtitles.
The color format is RRGGBBAA.
-ass-font-scale <value>
Set the scale coefficient to be used for fonts in the SSA/ASS renderer.
-ass-force-style <[Style.]Param=Value[,...]>
Override some style parameters.
EXAMPLE:
-ass-force-style FontName=Arial,Default.Bold=1
-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).
-(no)ass-use-margins
Enables/disables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they
are available (default: no).
-dumpjacosub (MPlayer only)
Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based
JACOsub subtitle format.
Creates a dumpsub.js file in the current directory.
-dumpmicrodvdsub (MPlayer only)
Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the
MicroDVD subtitle format.
Creates a dumpsub.sub file in the current directory.
-dumpmpsub (MPlayer only)
Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to MPlayer's
subtitle format, MPsub.
Creates a dump.mpsub file in the current directory.
-dumpsami (MPlayer only)
Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based
SAMI subtitle format.
Creates a dumpsub.smi file in the current directory.
-dumpsrtsub (MPlayer only)
Convert the given subtitle (specified with the -sub option) to the time-based
SubViewer (SRT) subtitle format.
Creates a dumpsub.srt file in the current directory.
NOTE:
Some broken hardware players choke on SRT subtitle files with Unix
line endings.
If you are unlucky enough to have such a box, pass your subtitle
files through unix2dos or a similar program to replace Unix line
endings with DOS/Windows line endings.
-dumpsub (MPlayer only) (BETA CODE)
Dumps the subtitle substream from VOB streams.
Also see the -dump*sub and -vobsubout* options.
-embeddedfonts (FreeType only)
Enables extraction of Matroska embedded fonts.
These fonts can be used for SSA/ASS subtitle
rendering (-ass option).
-ffactor <number> (OSD only)
Resample the font alphamap.
Can be:
s
plain white fonts
s
very narrow black outline (default)
s
narrow black outline
s
bold black outline
-flip-hebrew (FriBiDi only)
Turns on flipping subtitles using FriBiDi.
-noflip-hebrew-commas
Change FriBiDi's assumptions about the placements of commas in subtitles.
Use this if commas in subtitles are shown at the start of a sentence
instead of at the end.
-font <path to font.desc file> (OSD only)
Search for the OSD/:SUB fonts in an alternative directory (default for normal
fonts: ~/:.mplayer/: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 (default: 1000).
-osdlevel <0-3> (MPlayer only)
Specifies which mode the OSD should start in.
s
subtitles only
s
volume + seek (default)
s
volume + seek + timer + percentage
s
volume + seek + timer + percentage + total time
-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 select one of the subtitles on a DVD, also try -vobsubid.
-slang <language code[,language code,...]> (also see -sid)
Specify a priority list of subtitle languages to use.
Different container formats employ different language codes.
DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter language codes, Matroska uses ISO 639-2
three letter language codes while OGM uses a free-form identifier.
MPlayer prints the available languages when run in verbose (-v) mode.
EXAMPLE:
s
Chooses the Hungarian subtitle track on a DVD and falls back on English if
Hungarian is not available.
s
Plays a Matroska file with Japanese subtitles.
-spuaa <mode> (OSD only)
Antialiasing/:scaling mode for DVD/:VOBsub.
A value of 16 may be added to <mode> in order to force scaling even
when original and scaled frame size already match.
This can be employed to e.g. smooth subtitles with gaussian blur.
Available modes are:
s
none (fastest, very ugly)
s
approximate (broken?)
s
full (slow)
s
bilinear (default, fast and not too bad)
s
uses swscaler gaussian blur (looks very good)
-spualign <-1-2> (OSD only)
Specify how SPU (DVD/:VOBsub) subtitles should be aligned.
s
original position
s
Align at top (original behavior, default).
s
Align at center.
s
Align at bottom.
-spugauss <0.0-3.0> (OSD only)
Variance parameter of gaussian used by -spuaa 4.
Higher means more blur (default: 1.0).
-sub <subtitlefile1,subtitlefile2,...>
Use/:display these subtitle files.
Only one file can be displayed at the same time.
-sub-bg-alpha <0-255>
Specify the alpha channel value for subtitles and OSD backgrounds.
Big values mean more transparency.
0 means completely transparent.
-sub-bg-color <0-255>
Specify the color value for subtitles and OSD backgrounds.
Currently subtitles are grayscale so this value is equivalent to the
intensity of the color.
255 means white and 0 black.
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
libmpdemux/:demuxer.h.
-sub-fuzziness <mode>
Adjust matching fuzziness when searching for subtitles:
s
exact match
s
Load all subs containing movie name.
s
Load all subs in the current directory.
-sub-no-text-pp
Disables any kind of text post processing done after loading the subtitles.
Used for debug purposes.
-subalign <0-2> (OSD only)
Specify which edge of the subtitles should be aligned at the height
given by -subpos.
s
Align subtitle top edge (original behavior).
s
Align subtitle center.
s
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 subtitles have not been spotted on DVDs from other regions so far.
-subcp <codepage> (iconv only)
If your system supports iconv(3), you can use this option to
specify the subtitle codepage.
You can specify your language using a two letter language code to
make ENCA detect the codepage automatically.
If unsure, enter anything and watch mplayer -v output for available
languages.
Fallback codepage specifies the codepage to use, when autodetection fails.
EXAMPLE:
s
Guess the encoding, assuming the subtitles are Czech, fall back on
latin 2, if the detection fails.
s
Guess the encoding for Polish, fall back on cp1250.
-subdelay <sec>
Delays subtitles by <sec> seconds.
Can be negative.
-subfile <filename> (BETA CODE)
Currently useless.
Same as -audiofile, but for subtitle streams (OggDS?).
-subfont-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:
s
no autoscale
s
proportional to movie height
s
proportional to movie width
s
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).
-subfont-osd-scale <0-100> (FreeType only)
Sets the autoscale coefficient of the OSD elements (default: 6).
-subfont-outline <0-8> (FreeType only)
Sets the font outline thickness (default: 2).
-subfont-text-scale <0-100> (FreeType only)
Sets the subtitle text autoscale coefficient as percentage of the
screen size (default: 5).
-subfps <rate>
Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: movie fps).
NOTE:
Only for frame-based subtitle files, i.e. MicroDVD format.
-subpos <0-100> (useful with -vf expand) (OSD only)
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> (OSD only)
Specify the maximum width of subtitles on the screen.
Useful for TV-out.
The value is the width of the subtitle in % of the screen width.
-noterm-osd
Disable the display of OSD messages on the console when no video output is
available.
-term-osd-esc <escape sequence>
Specify the escape sequence to use before writing an OSD message on the
console.
The escape sequence should move the pointer to the beginning of the line
used for the OSD and clear it (default: ^[[A\r^[[K).
-unicode
Tells MPlayer to handle the subtitle file as unicode.
-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. without
the '.idx', '.ifo' or '.sub'.
-format <format> (also see the format audio filter)
Select the sample format used for output from the audio filter
layer to the sound card.
The values that <format> can adopt are listed below in the
description of the format audio filter.
-mixer <device>
Use a mixer device different from the default /dev/:mixer.
For ALSA this is the mixer name.
-mixer-channel <mixer line>[,mixer index] (-ao oss and -ao alsa only)
This option will tell MPlayer to use a different channel for controlling
volume than the default PCM.
Options for OSS include
vol, pcm, line.
For a complete list of options look for SOUND_DEVICE_NAMES in
/usr/:include/:linux/:soundcard.h.
For ALSA you can use the names e.g. alsamixer displays, like
Master, Line, PCM. NOTE:
ALSA mixer channel names followed by a number must be specified in the
<name,number> format, i.e. a channel labeled 'PCM 1' in alsamixer must
be converted to
PCM,1.
-softvol
Force the use of the software mixer, instead of using the sound card
mixer.
-softvol-max <10.0-10000.0>
Set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 110).
A value of 200 will allow you to adjust the volume up to a maximum of
double the current level.
With values below 100 the initial volume (which is 100%) will be above
the maximum, which e.g. the OSD cannot display correctly.
-volstep <0-100>
Set the step size of mixer volume changes in percent of the whole range
(default: 3).
AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)
Audio output drivers are interfaces to different audio output facilities.
The syntax is:
Specify a priority list of audio output drivers to be used.
If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on drivers not
contained in the list.
Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE:
See -ao help for a list of compiled-in audio output drivers.
EXAMPLE:
s
Try the ALSA driver, then the OSS driver, then others.
s
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
s
Sets noblock-mode.
s
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 really know how to set it correctly.
alsa5
ALSA 0.5 audio output driver
oss
OSS audio output driver
s
Sets the audio output device (default: /dev/:dsp).
s
Sets the audio mixer device (default: /dev/:mixer).
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
s
Explicitly choose the ESD server to use (default: localhost).
jack
audio output through JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit)
s
Connects to the ports with the given name (default: physical ports).
s
Client name that is passed to JACK (default: MPlayer [<PID>]).
Useful if you want to have certain connections established automatically.
s
Estimate the audio delay, supposed to make the video playback smoother
(default: enabled).
nas
audio output through NAS
macosx (Mac OS X only)
native Mac OS X audio output driver
sgi (SGI only)
native SGI audio output driver
s
Explicitly choose the output device/:interface to use
(default: system-wide default).
For example, 'Analog Out' or 'Digital Out'.
sun (Sun only)
native Sun audio output driver
s
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
s
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
ivtv (IVTV only)
IVTV specific MPEG audio output driver.
Works with -ac hwmpa only.
mpegpes (DVB only)
Audio output driver for DVB cards that writes the output to an MPEG-PES
file if no DVB card is installed.
s
DVB card to use if more than one card is present.
s
output filename
null
Produces no audio output but maintains video playback speed.
Use -nosound for benchmarking.
pcm
raw PCM/wave file writer audio output
s
Include or do not include the wave header (default: included).
When not included, raw PCM will be generated.
s
Write the sound to <filename> instead of the default
audiodump.wav.
If nowaveheader is specified, the default is audiodump.pcm.
s
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 supported by the fbdev, dga, svga, vesa video output drivers.
-border
Play movie with window border and decorations.
Since this is on by default, use -noborder to disable the standard window
decorations.
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 output driver.
Fullscreen playback (centers movie, and paints black bands around it).
Not supported by all video output drivers.
-fsmode-dontuse <0-31> (OBSOLETE, use the -fs option)
Try this option if you still experience fullscreen problems.
-fstype <type1,type2,...> (X11 only)
Specify a priority list of fullscreen modes to be used.
You can negate the modes by prefixing them with '-'.
If you experience problems like the fullscreen window being covered
by other windows try using a different order.
NOTE:
See -fstype help for a full list of available modes.
The available types are:
s
Use the _NETWM_STATE_ABOVE hint if available.
s
Use the _NETWM_STATE_BELOW hint if available.
s
Use the _NETWM_STATE_FULLSCREEN hint if available.
s
Use the _WIN_LAYER hint with the default layer.
s
Use the _WIN_LAYER hint with the given layer number.
s
Force NETWM style.
s
Do not set fullscreen window layer.
s
Use _NETWM_STATE_STAYS_ON_TOP hint if available.
EXAMPLE:
s
Default order, will be used as a fallback if incorrect or
unsupported modes are specified.
s
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 direction.
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, xmga, xv, xvmc, xvidix,
gl, gl2, directx and tdfxfb video output drivers.
EXAMPLE:
s
Places the window at x=50, y=40.
s
Places the window in the middle of the screen.
s
Places the window at the middle of the right edge of the screen.
s
Places the window at the bottom right corner 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 only)
Specify the horizontal frequency range of the monitor.
-monitor-vfreq <range[,range,...]> (-vo fbdev and vesa only)
Specify the vertical frequency range of the monitor.
-monitoraspect <ratio> (also see -aspect)
Set the aspect ratio of your monitor or TV screen.
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: disabled).
Overrides the -monitoraspect setting.
A value of 0 disables, 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 storing two frames in memory, and
displaying one while decoding another.
It can affect OSD negatively, but often removes OSD flickering.
-nograbpointer
Do not grab the mouse pointer after a video mode change (-vm).
Useful for multihead setups.
-nokeepaspect
Do not keep window aspect ratio when resizing windows.
Only works with the x11, xv, xmga, xvidix, directx video output drivers.
Furthermore under X11 your window manager has to honor window aspect hints.
-ontop
Makes the player window stay on top of other windows.
Supported by video output drivers which use X11, except SDL,
as well as directx, 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.
-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 option.
-rootwin
Play movie in the root window (desktop background).
Desktop background images may cover the movie window, though.
Only works with the x11, xv, xmga, xvidix, quartz, macosx and directx video output drivers.
-saturation <-100-100>
Adjust the saturation of the video signal (default: 0).
You can get grayscale output with this option.
Not supported by all video output drivers.
-screenh <pixels>
Specify the vertical screen resolution for video output drivers which
do not know the screen resolution like fbdev, x11 and TVout.
-screenw <pixels>
Specify the horizontal screen resolution for video output drivers which
do not know the screen resolution 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 -refreshrate options can be used to set
the new display mode.
-vsync
Enables VBI for the vesa, dfbmga and svga video output drivers.
-wid <window ID> (also see -guiwid) (X11, OpenGL and DirectX only)
This tells MPlayer to attach to an existing window.
Useful to embed MPlayer in a browser (e.g. the plugger extension).
-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, -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 performance, this can be combined with '-lavdopts gray'.
Select a part of the input image to display, multiple occurrences
of this option switch on cinerama mode.
In cinerama mode the movie is distributed over more than one TV
(or beamer) to create a larger image.
Options appearing after the n-th -zrcrop apply to the n-th MJPEG card, each
card should at least have a -zrdev in addition to the -zrcrop.
For examples, see the output of -zrhelp and the Zr section of the
documentation.
-zrdev <device> (-vo zr only)
Specify the device special file that belongs to your MJPEG card, by default
the zr video output driver takes the first v4l device it can find.
-zrfd (-vo zr only)
Force decimation: Decimation, as specified by -zrhdec and -zrvdec, only
happens if the hardware scaler can stretch the image to its original size.
Use this option to force decimation.
-zrhdec <1|2|4> (-vo zr only)
Horizontal decimation: Ask the driver to send only every 2nd or 4th
line/:pixel of the input image to the MJPEG card and use the scaler
of the MJPEG card to stretch the image to its original size.
-zrhelp (-vo zr only)
Display a list of all -zr* options, their default values and a
cinerama mode example.
-zrnorm <norm> (-vo zr only)
Specify the TV norm as PAL or NTSC (default: no change).
-zrquality <1-20> (-vo zr only)
A number from 1 (best) to 20 (worst) representing the JPEG encoding quality.
-zrvdec <1|2|4> (-vo zr only)
Vertical decimation: Ask the driver to send only every 2nd or 4th
line/:pixel of the input image to the MJPEG card and use the scaler
of the MJPEG card to stretch the image to its original size.
-zrxdoff <x display offset> (-vo zr only)
If the movie is smaller than the TV screen, this option specifies the x
offset from the upper-left corner of the TV screen (default: centered).
-zrydoff <y display offset> (-vo zr only)
If the movie is smaller than the TV screen, this option specifies the y
offset from the upper-left corner of the TV screen (default: centered).
VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS (MPLAYER ONLY)
Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facilities.
The syntax is:
Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.
If the list has a trailing ',' MPlayer will fall back on drivers not
contained in the list.
Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
NOTE:
See -vo help for a list of compiled-in video output drivers.
EXAMPLE:
s
Try the Matrox X11 driver, then the Xv driver, then others.
s
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.
s
Select a specific XVideo port.
s
Select the source from which the colorkey is taken (default: cur).
s
The default takes the colorkey currently set in Xv.
s
Use but do not set the colorkey from MPlayer (use -colorkey option to change
it).
s
Same as use but also sets the supplied colorkey.
s
Sets the colorkey drawing method (default: man).
s
Draw the colorkey manually (reduces flicker in some cases).
s
Set the colorkey as window background.
s
Let Xv draw the colorkey.
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.
s
Select the driver to use as source to overlay on top of X11.
xvmc (X11 with -vc ffmpeg12mc only)
Video output driver that uses the XvMC (X Video Motion Compensation)
extension of XFree86 4.x to speed up MPEG-1/2 and VCR2 decoding.
s
Select a specific XVideo port.
s
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).
s
Very simple deinterlacer.
Might not look better than -vf tfields=1,
but it is the only deinterlacer for xvmc (default: nobobdeint).
s
Queue frames for display to allow more parallel work of the video hardware.
May add a small (not noticeable) constant A/V desync (default: noqueue).
s
Use sleep function while waiting for rendering to finish
(not recommended on Linux) (default: nosleep).
s
Same as -vo xv:ck (see -vo xv).
s
Same as -vo xv:ck-method (see -vo xv).
dga (X11 only)
Play video through the XFree86 Direct Graphics Access 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.
s
Explicitly choose the SDL driver to use.
s
Use XVideo through the sdl video output driver (default: forcexv).
s
Use hardware accelerated scaler (default: hwaccel).
vidix
VIDIX (VIDeo Interface for *niX) is an interface to the
video acceleration features of different graphics cards.
Very fast video output driver on cards that support it.
s
Explicitly choose the VIDIX subdevice driver to use.
Available subdevice drivers are cyberblade_vid.so, mach64_vid.so,
mga_crtc2_vid.so, mga_vid.so, nvidia_vid.so, pm3_vid.so,
radeon_vid.so, rage128_vid.so, sis_vid.so and unichrome_vid.so.
xvidix (X11 only)
X11 frontend for VIDIX
s
same as vidix
cvidix
Generic and platform independent VIDIX frontend, can even run in a
text console with nVidia cards.
s
same as vidix
winvidix (Windows only)
Windows frontend for VIDIX
s
same as vidix
directx (Windows only)
Video output driver that uses the DirectX interface.
s
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 format=yuy2.
s
Choose the display device to use in fullscreen.
s
Specify the fullscreen resolution (useful on slow systems).
macosx (Mac OS X 10.4 or 10.3.9 with QuickTime 7)
Mac OS X CoreVideo video output driver
s
Choose the display device to use in fullscreen.
fbdev (Linux only)
Uses the kernel framebuffer to play video.
s
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,
alternative implementation.
s
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.
s
Turns on DGA mode.
s
Turns off DGA mode.
s
Activate the NeoMagic TV out and set it to PAL norm.
s
Activate the NeoMagic TV out and set it to NTSC norm.
s
Use the VIDIX driver.
s
Activate the Linux Video Overlay on top of VESA mode.
svga
Play video using the SVGA library.
s
Specify video mode to use.
The mode can be given in a <width>x<height>x<colors> format,
e.g. 640x480x16M or be a graphics mode number, e.g. 84.
s
Draw OSD into black bands below the movie (slower).
s
Use only native drawing functions.
This avoids direct rendering, OSD and hardware acceleration.
s
Force frame switch on vertical retrace.
Usable only with -double.
It has the same effect as the -vsync option.
s
Try to select a video mode with square pixels.
s
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 implementation,
since for higher resolutions this provides 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.
s
Enables support for more (RGB and BGR) color formats (default: enabled).
Needs OpenGL version >= 1.2.
s
Number of lines copied to texture in one piece (default: 4).
0 for whole image.
NOTE:
If YUV colorspace is used (see yuv suboption), special rules apply:
If the decoder uses slice rendering (see -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 rendering, the default is 16.
s
Enable or disable support for OSD rendering via OpenGL (default: enabled).
This option is for testing; to disable the OSD use -osdlevel 0 instead.
s
Changes the way the OSD behaves when the size of the
window changes (default: disabled).
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.
s
Color for OSD (default: 0xffffff, corresponds to white).
s
Enable or disable aspect scaling and pan-and-scan support (default: enabled).
Disabling might increase speed.
s
Select usage of rectangular textures which saves video RAM, but often is
slower (default: 0).
0: Use power-of-two textures (default).
1: Use the GL_ARB_texture_rectangle extension.
2: Use the GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two extension.
In some cases only supported in software and thus very slow.
s
Call glFinish() before swapping buffers.
Slower but in some cases more correct output (default: disabled).
s
Minimum interval between two buffer swaps, counted in
displayed frames (default: 1).
1 is equivalent to enabling VSYNC, 0 to 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?) implementations this only works in fullscreen mode.
s
Select the type of YUV to RGB conversion.
0: Use software conversion (default).
Compatible with all OpenGL versions.
Provides brightness, contrast and saturation control.
1: Use register combiners.
This uses an nVidia-specific extension (GL_NV_register_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_fragment_program extension and at least three texture units.
Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control.
Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue.
Method 4 is usually faster.
4: Use a fragment program with additional lookup.
Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at least four texture units.
Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control.
Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue.
5: Use ATI-specific method (for older cards).
This uses an ATI-specific extension (GL_ATI_fragment_shader - not
GL_ARB_fragment_shader!).
At least three texture units are needed.
Provides 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_program extension and at least four texture units.
Extremely slow (software emulation) on some (all?) ATI cards since it uses
a texture with border pixels.
Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control.
Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue.
Speed depends more on GPU memory bandwidth than other methods.
s
Select the scaling function to use for luminance scaling.
Only valid for yuv modes 2, 3, 4 and 6.
0: Use simple linear filtering (default).
1: Use bicubic filtering (better quality).
Needs one additional texture unit.
Older cards will not be able to handle this for chroma at least in fullscreen mode.
s
Select the scaling function to use for chrominance scaling.
For details see lscale.
s
Load a custom fragment program from <filename>.
See TOOLS/edgedect.fp for an example.
s
Load a custom "gamma ramp" texture from <filename>.
This can be used in combination with yuv=4 or with the customprog option.
s
If enabled (default) use GL_LINEAR interpolation, otherwise use GL_NEAREST
for customtex texture.
s
If enabled, use texture_rectangle for customtex texture.
Default is disabled.
gl2
OpenGL video output driver, second generation.
Supports OSD and videos larger than the maximum texture size.
s
same as gl (default: enabled)
s
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 values 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.
caca
Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.
bl
Video playback using the Blinkenlights UDP protocol.
This driver is highly hardware specific.
s
Explicitly choose the Blinkenlights subdevice driver to use.
It is something like arcade:host=localhost:2323 or
hdl:file=name1,file=name2.
You must specify a subdevice.
ggi
GGI graphics system video output driver
s
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.
s
Use the DirectFB instead of the MPlayer keyboard code (default: enabled).
s
Double and triple buffering give best results 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 retrace.
Single buffering should be avoided (default: single).
s
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 enable this option if you have tearing issues or unsmooth
motions watching interlaced film material.
s
Will force layer with ID N for playback (default: -1 - auto).
s
Specify a parameter list for DirectFB.
dfbmga
Matrox G400/:G450/:G550 specific video output driver that uses the
DirectFB library to make use of special hardware features.
Enables CRTC2 (second head), displaying video independently of the first head.
s
same as directfb (default: disabled)
s
same as directfb (default: triple)
s
same as directfb
s
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 primary head.
s
Make use of the Matrox sub picture layer to display the OSD (default: enabled).
s
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.
s
Will set the TV norm of the Matrox card without the need
for modifying /etc/:directfbrc (default: disabled).
Valid norms are pal = PAL, ntsc = NTSC.
Special norm is auto (auto-adjust using PAL/:NTSC) because it decides
which norm to use by looking 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.
s
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 window.
s
Explicitly choose the Matrox device name to use (default: /dev/:mga_vid).
syncfb
Video output driver for the SyncFB kernel module, which provides
special hardware features of Matrox Gxxx cards like hardware
deinterlacing, scaling and synchronizing your video output to
the vertical retrace of your monitor.
3dfx (Linux only)
3dfx specific video output driver.
This driver directly uses the 3dfx hardware on top of X11.
Only 16 bpp are supported.
FIXME: It' ok the difference between 3dfx, tdfxfb and tdfx_vid?
tdfxfb (Linux only)
This driver employs the tdfx framebuffer driver to play movies with
YUV acceleration on 3dfx cards.
FIXME: It' ok the difference between 3dfx, tdfxfb and tdfx_vid?
s
Explicitly choose the fbdev device name to use (default: /dev/:fb0).
tdfx_vid (Linux only)
3dfx specific video output driver.
This driver directly uses the tdfx_vid kernel module.
FIXME: It' ok the difference between 3dfx, tdfxfb and tdfx_vid?
s
Explicitly choose the device name to use (default: /dev/:tdfx_vid).
dxr2 (also see -dxr2) (DXR2 only)
Creative DXR2 specific video output driver.
s
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.
s
Activates the overlay instead of TVOut.
s
Turns on prebuffering.
s
Will turn on the new sync-engine.
s
Specifies the TV norm.
0: Does not change current norm (default).
1: Auto-adjust using PAL/:NTSC.
2: Auto-adjust using PAL/:PAL-60.
3: PAL
4: PAL-60
5: NTSC
s
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.
s
Explicitly choose the MPEG decoder device name to use (default: /dev/video16).
s
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 installed.
s
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).
s
output filename (default: ./grab.mpg)
zr (also see -zr* and -zrhelp)
Video output driver for a number of MJPEG capture/:playback cards.
zr2 (also see the zrmjpeg video filter)
Video output driver for a number of MJPEG capture/:playback cards,
second generation.
s
Specifies the video device to use.
s
Specifies the video norm to use (default: auto).
s
(De)Activate prebuffering, not yet supported.
md5sum
Calculate MD5 sums of each frame and write them to a file.
Supports RGB24 and YV12 colorspaces.
Useful for debugging.
s
Specify the output filename (default: ./md5sums).
yuv4mpeg
Transforms the video stream into a sequence of uncompressed YUV 4:2:0
images and stores it in a file (default: ./stream.yuv).
The format is the same as the one employed by mjpegtools, so this is
useful if you want to process the video with the mjpegtools suite.
It supports the YV12, RGB (24 bpp) and BGR (24 bpp) format.
You can combine it with the -fixed-vo option to concatenate files
with the same dimensions and fps value.
s
Write the output as interlaced frames, top field first.
s
Write the output as interlaced frames, bottom field first.
s
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.
s
Float value to specify framerate (default: 5.0).
s
Specify the output filename (default: ./out.gif).
NOTE:
You must specify the framerate before the filename or the framerate will
be part of the filename.
Output each frame into a JPEG file in the current directory.
Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.
s
Specify standard or progressive JPEG (default: noprogressive).
s
Specify use of baseline or not (default: baseline).
s
optimization factor (default: 100)
s
smooth factor (default: 0)
s
quality factor (default: 75)
s
Specify the directory to save the JPEG files to (default: ./).
s
Create numbered subdirectories with the specified prefix to
save the files in instead of the current directory.
s
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).
s
Write PPM files (default).
s
Write PGM files.
s
Write PGMYUV files.
PGMYUV is like PGM, but it also contains the U and V plane, appended at the
bottom of the picture.
s
Write PNM files in raw mode (default).
s
Write PNM files in ASCII mode.
s
Specify the directory to save the PNM files to (default: ./).
s
Create numbered subdirectories with the specified prefix to
save the files in instead of the current directory.
s
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 formats are supported.
s
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.
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:
s
Force the l3codeca.acm MP3 codec.
s
Try libmad first, then fall back on others.
s
Try hardware AC3 passthrough, software AC3, then others.
s
Try hardware DTS passthrough, then fall back on others.
s
Skip FFmpeg's MP3 decoder.
-af-adv <force=(0-7):list=(filters)> (also see -af)
Specify advanced audio filter options:
s
Forces the insertion of audio filters to one of the following:
0: Use completely automatic filter insertion.
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 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.
s
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:
s
Try FFmpeg's libavcodec codecs first.
s
Try Win32 codecs first.
-aspect <ratio> (also see -zoom)
Override movie aspect ratio, in case aspect information 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.
-flip
Flip image upside-down.
-lavdopts <option1:option2:...> (DEBUG CODE)
Specify libavcodec decoding parameters.
Separate multiple options with a colon.
1: Use strong deblock filter for damaged MBs.
2: iterative motion vector (MV) search (slow)
3: all (default)
s
Set error resilience strategy.
0: disabled
1: careful (Should work with broken encoders.)
2: normal (default) (Works with compliant encoders.)
3: aggressive (More checks, but might cause problems even for valid bitstreams.)
4: very aggressive
s
Enable optimizations which do not comply to the specification and might
potentially cause problems, like simpler dequantization, assuming use
of the default quantization matrix, assuming YUV 4:2:0 and skipping a few
checks to detect damaged bitstreams.
s
grayscale only decoding (a bit faster than with color)
s
For best decoding quality use the same IDCT algorithm for decoding and encoding.
This may come at a price in accuracy, though.
s
Decode at lower resolutions.
Low resolution 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.
If <w> is specified lowres decoding will be used only if the width of the
video is major than or equal to <w>.
s
Skip the given number of macroblock rows at the bottom.
s
Skip the given number of macroblock rows at the top.
s
Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during 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 deblocking 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 following:
none: Never skip.
default: Skip useless processing steps (e.g. 0 size packets in AVI).
nonref: Skip frames that are not referenced (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.
s
Skips the IDCT step.
This degrades quality a lot of in almost all cases
(see skiploopfilter for available skip values).
s
Skips decoding of frames completely.
Big speedup, but jerky motion and sometimes bad artifacts
(see skiploopfilter for available skip values).
s
number of threads to use for decoding (default: 1)
s
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 B-frames.
s
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 benchmarking.
-novideo
Do not play/:encode video.
In many cases this will not work, use -vc null -vo null instead.
-pp <quality> (also see -vf pp)
Set the DLL postprocess level.
This option is no longer usable with -vf pp.
It only works with Win32 DirectShow DLLs with internal postprocessing routines.
The valid range of -pp values varies by codec, it is mostly
0-6, where 0=disable, 6=slowest/:best.
-pphelp (also see -vf pp)
Show a summary about the available postprocess filters and their usage.
-ssf <mode>
Specifies software scaler parameters.
EXAMPLE:
-vf scale -ssf lgb=3.0
s
gaussian blur filter (luma)
s
gaussian blur filter (chroma)
s
sharpen filter (luma)
s
sharpen filter (chroma)
s
chroma horizontal shifting
s
chroma vertical shifting
-stereo <mode>
Select type of MP2/:MP3 stereo output.
s
stereo
s
left channel
s
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:
s
fast bilinear
s
bilinear
s
bicubic (good quality) (default)
s
experimental
s
nearest neighbor (bad quality)
s
area
s
luma bicubic / chroma bilinear
s
gauss
s
sincR
s
lanczos
s
natural bicubic spline
NOTE:
Some -sws options are tunable.
The description of the scale video filter has further information.
-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:
s
Force Win32/:VfW DivX codec, no fallback.
s
Skip Win32 DivX codecs.
s
Try libavcodec's MPEG-1/2 codec, then libmpeg2, 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:
s
Try the libavcodec, then Directshow, then VfW codecs and fall back
on others, if they do not work.
s
Try XAnim codecs first.
-x <x> (also see -zoom) (MPlayer only)
Scale image to width <x> (if software/:hardware scaling is available).
Disables aspect calculations.
-xvidopts <option1:option2:...>
Specify additional parameters when decoding with XviD.
NOTE:
Since libavcodec is faster than XviD you might want to use the libavcodec
postprocessing filter (-vf pp) and decoder (-vfm ffmpeg) instead.
XviD's internal postprocessing filters:
s
chroma deblock filter
s
luma deblock filter
s
luma deringing filter
s
chroma deringing filter
s
Adds artificial film grain to the video.
May increase perceived quality, while lowering true quality.
rendering methods:
s
Activate direct rendering method 2.
s
Deactivate direct rendering method 2.
-xy <value> (also see -zoom)
s
Scale image by factor <value>.
s
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 calculations.
-zoom
Allow software scaling, where available.
This will allow scaling with output drivers (like x11, fbdev) that
do not support hardware scaling where MPlayer disables scaling by
default for performance reasons.
AUDIO FILTERS
Audio filters allow you to modify the audio stream and its properties.
The syntax is:
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 only capable of max 44.1kHz.
This filter is automatically enabled if necessary.
It only supports 16-bit integer and float in native-endian format as input.
NOTE:
With MEncoder, you need to also use -srate <srate>.
s
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 omitted the filter is automatically unloaded.
A high sample frequency normally improves the audio quality,
especially when used in combination with other filters.
s
Allow (1) or disallow (0) the output frequency to differ slightly
from the frequency given by <srate> (default: 1).
Can be used if the startup of the playback is extremely slow.
s
Selects which resampling method to use.
0: linear interpolation (fast, poor quality especially when upsampling)
1: polyphase filterbank and integer processing
2: polyphase filterbank and floating point processing (slow, best quality)
EXAMPLE:
s
would set the output frequency of the resample filter to 44100Hz using
exact output frequency scaling and linear interpolation.
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>.
s
the output sample rate
s
length of the filter with respect to the lower sampling rate (default: 16)
s
if 1 then filters will be linearly interpolated between polyphase entries
s
log2 of the number of polyphase entries
(..., 10->1024, 11->2048, 12->4096, ...)
(default: 10->1024)
s
cutoff frequency (0.0-1.0), default set depending upon filter length
sweep[=speed]
Produces a sine sweep.
s
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 audio equipment.
It probably only works on mono input.
s
The frequency of the sine which should be removed (in Hz) (default: 50)
s
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 multichannel audio to
2 channel output for headphones, preserving the spatiality of the sound.
s
s
s
s
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:
s
s
s
s
s
s
s
s
s
s
s
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 before it reaches this filter.
s
floating point numbers representing the gain in dB
for each frequency band (-12-12)
EXAMPLE:
s
Would amplify the sound in the upper and lower frequency region
while canceling it almost completely around 1kHz.
Can be used for adding, removing, routing and copying audio channels.
If only <nch> is given the default routing is used, it works as
follows: If the number of output channels is bigger than the number of
input channels empty channels are inserted (except mixing from mono to
stereo, then the mono channel is repeated in both of the output
channels).
If the number of output channels is smaller than the number
of input channels the exceeding channels are truncated.
s
number of output channels (1-6)
s
number of routes (1-6)
s
Pairs of numbers between 0 and 5 that define where to route each channel.
EXAMPLE:
s
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 channels was played back, channels
2 and 3 would contain silence but 0 and 1 would still be swapped.
s
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 contain silence.
format[=format] (also see -format)
Convert between different sample formats.
Automatically enabled when needed by the sound card or another filter.
s
Sets the desired format.
The general form is 'sbe', where 's' denotes the sign (either 's' for signed
or 'u' for unsigned), 'b' denotes the number of bits per sample (16, 24 or 32)
and 'e' denotes the endianness ('le' means little-endian, 'be' big-endian
and 'ne' the endianness of the computer 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,
floatle, floatbe, floatne, mulaw, alaw, mpeg2, ac3 and imaadpcm.
volume[=v[:sc]]
Implements software volume control.
Use this filter with caution since it can reduce the signal
to noise ratio of the sound.
In most cases it is best to set the level for the PCM sound to max,
leave this filter out and control the output level to your
speakers with the master volume control of the mixer.
In case your sound card has a digital PCM mixer instead of an analog
one, and you hear distortion, use the MASTER mixer instead.
If there is an external amplifier connected to the computer (this
is almost always the case), the noise level can be minimized by
adjusting the master level and the volume knob on the amplifier
until the hissing noise in the background is gone.
This filter has a second feature: It measures the overall maximum
sound level and prints out that level when MPlayer exits.
This volume estimate can be used for setting the sound level in
MEncoder such that the maximum dynamic range is utilized.
NOTE:
This filter is not reentrant and can therefore only be enabled
once for every audio stream.
s
Sets the desired gain in dB for all channels in the stream
from -200dB to +60dB, where -200dB mutes the sound
completely and +60dB equals a gain of 1000 (default: 0).
s
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:
s
Would amplify the sound by 10.1dB and hard-clip if the
sound level is too high.
Mixes channels arbitrarily.
Basically a combination of the volume and the channels filter
that can be used to down-mix many channels to only a few,
e.g. stereo to mono or vary the "width" of the center
speaker in a surround sound system.
This filter is hard to use, and will require some tinkering
before the desired result is obtained.
The number of options for this filter depends on
the number of output channels.
An example how to downmix a six-channel file to two channels with
this filter can be found in the examples section near the end.
s
number of output channels (1-6)
s
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 numbers that act on the second input channel
etc.
If you do not specify any numbers for some input channels, 0 is assumed.
EXAMPLE:
s
Would down-mix from stereo to mono.
s
Would give 3 channel output leaving channels 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.
s
cutoff frequency in Hz for the low-pass filter (20Hz to 300Hz) (default: 60Hz)
For the best result try setting the cutoff frequency as low as possible.
This will improve the stereo or surround sound experience.
s
Determines the channel number in which to insert the sub-channel audio.
Channel number can be between 0 and 5 (default: 5).
Observe that the number of channels will automatically
be increased to <ch> if necessary.
EXAMPLE:
s
Would add a sub-woofer channel with a cutoff 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 implement a
high-pass filter for proper extraction yet, but averages and
halves the channels instead.
s
Determines the channel number in which to insert the center channel.
Channel number can be between 0 and 5 (default: 5).
Observe that the number of channels will automatically
be increased to <ch> if necessary.
surround[=delay]
Decoder for matrix encoded surround sound like Dolby Surround.
Many files with 2 channel audio actually contain matrixed surround sound.
Requires a sound card supporting at least 4 channels.
s
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 speakers and d2 is the distance
from the listening 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:
s
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 useful if you have more than 2 loudspeakers.
s
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 meters 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:
s
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 using memory mapping (mmap()).
Memory mapped areas contain a header:
int nch /*number of channels*/
int size /*buffer size*/
unsigned long long counter /*Used to keep sync, updated every
time new data is exported.*/
The rest is payload (non-interleaved) 16 bit data.
s
file to map data to (default: ~/.mplayer/:mplayer-af_export)
s
number of samples per channel (default: 512)
EXAMPLE:
s
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.
s
Sets the difference coefficient (default: 2.5).
0.0 means mono sound (average of both channels), with 1.0 sound will be
unchanged, with -1.0 left and right channels will be swapped.
volnorm[=method:target]
Maximizes the volume without distorting the sound.
s
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.
s
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 Plugin API) plugin.
This filter is reentrant, so multiple LADSPA plugins can be used at once.
s
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.
s
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 filters within the specified
library, which eliminates the use of 'listplugins' from the LADSPA SDK.
s
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 controls
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:
Setup a chain of video filters, to be applied in
reverse
order.
Deprecated in favor of -vf.
Many parameters are optional and set to default values if omitted.
To explicitly use a default value set a parameter to '-1'.
Parameters w:h means width x height in pixels, x:y means x;y position counted
from the upper left corner of the bigger image.
NOTE:
To get a full list of available video filters, see -vf help.
Video filters are managed in lists.
There are a few commands to manage the filter list.
-vf-add <filter1[,filter2,...]>
Appends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
-vf-pre <filter1[,filter2,...]>
Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
-vf-del <index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the filters at the given indexes.
Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the
list (-1 is the last).
-vf-clr
Completely empties the filter list.
With filters that support it, you can access parameters by their name.
-vf <filter>=help
Prints the parameter names and parameter value ranges for a particular
filter.
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.
s
Cropped width and height, defaults to original width and height.
s
Position of the cropped picture, defaults to center.
cropdetect[=limit:round]
Calculates necessary cropping parameters and prints the recommended parameters
to stdout.
s
Threshold, which can be optionally specified from nothing (0) to
everything (255) (default: 24).
s
Value which the width/:height should be divisible 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.
s
width and height (default: -1, maximum possible width where boundaries
are still visible.)
s
top left corner position (default: -1, uppermost leftmost)
expand[=w:h:x:y:o:a:r]
Expands (not scales) movie resolution to the given value and places the
unscaled original at coordinates x, y.
Can be used for placing subtitles/:OSD in the resulting black bands.
s
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.
s
position of original image on the expanded image (default: center)
s
OSD/:subtitle rendering
0: disable (default)
1: enable
s
Expands to fit an aspect instead of a resolution (default: 0).
EXAMPLE:
expand=800::::4/3
Expands to 800x600, unless the source is higher resolution, in which
case it expands to fill a 4/3 aspect.
s
Rounds up to make both width and height divisible 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.
s
Rotate by 90 degrees clockwise and flip (default).
Scales the image with the software scaler (slow) and performs a YUV<->RGB
colorspace conversion (also see -sws).
s
scaled width/:height (default: original width/:height)
NOTE:
If -zoom is used, and underlying filters (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 dimension and the prescaled aspect ratio.
-3: Calculate w/h using the other dimension and the original aspect ratio.
-(n+8): Like -n above, but rounding the dimension to the closest multiple of 16.
s
Toggle interlaced scaling.
0: off (default)
1: on
s
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.
s
Set some scaling parameters depending on the type of scaler selected
with -sws.
0: Allow upscaling (default).
1: Disallow upscaling if one dimension exceeds its original value.
2: Disallow upscaling if both dimensions exceed their original values.
s
Accurate rounding for the vertical scaler, which may be faster
or slower than the default 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 arbitrary point in the
filter chain.
Aspect can be given as a fraction (4/3) or floating point number
(1.33).
Alternatively, you may specify the exact display width and height
desired.
Note that this filter does
not
do any scaling itself; it just affects
what later scalers (software or hardware) will do when auto-scaling to
correct aspect.
s
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 dimension and the original display
aspect ratio.
-3: Calculate w/h using the other dimension 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.
s
Modifies width and height according to original aspect ratios.
-1: Ignore original aspect ratio (default).
0: Keep display aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> as maximum
resolution.
1: Keep display aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> 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.
s
Rounds up to make both width and height divisible by <r> (default: 1).
yuy2
Forces software YV12/:I420/:422P to YUY2 conversion.
Useful for video cards/:drivers with slow YV12 but fast YUY2 support.
yvu9
Forces software YVU9 to YV12 colorspace conversion.
Deprecated in favor of the software scaler.
yuvcsp
Clamps YUV color values to the CCIR 601 range without doing real conversion.
rgb2bgr[=swap]
RGB 24/32 <-> BGR 24/32 colorspace conversion.
s
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 without doing any conversion.
Use together with the scale filter for a real conversion.
NOTE:
For a list of available formats see format=fmt=help.
s
format name like rgb15, bgr24, yv12, etc (default: yuy2)
noformat[=fourcc]
Restricts the colorspace for the next filter without doing any conversion.
Unlike the format filter, this will allow any colorspace
except
the one you specify.
NOTE:
For a list of available formats see noformat=fmt=help.
s
format name like rgb15, bgr24, yv12, etc (default: yv12)
pp[=filter1[:option1[:option2...]]/[-]filter2...] (also see -pphelp)
Enables the specified chain of postprocessing subfilters.
Subfilters must be separated by '/' and can be disabled by
prepending a '-'.
Each subfilter and some options have a short and a long name that can be
used interchangeably, i.e. dr/dering are the same.
All subfilters share common options to determine their scope:
s
Automatically switch the subfilter off if the CPU is too slow.
s
Do chrominance filtering, too (default).
s
Do luminance filtering only (no chrominance).
s
Do chrominance filtering only (no luminance).
NOTE:
-pphelp shows a list of available subfilters.
Available subfilters are
s
horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where higher values mean
more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where lower values mean
more deblocking (default: 39).
s
vertical deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where higher values mean
more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where lower values mean
more deblocking (default: 39).
s
accurate horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where higher values mean
more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where lower values mean
more deblocking (default: 39).
s
accurate vertical deblocking filter
<difference>: Difference factor where higher values mean
more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>: Flatness threshold where lower values mean
more deblocking (default: 39).
The horizontal and vertical deblocking filters share the
difference and flatness values so you cannot set
different horizontal and vertical thresholds.
Linear blend deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block
by filtering all lines with a (1 2 1) filter.
s
Linear interpolating deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block
by linearly interpolating every second line.
s
Cubic interpolating deinterlacing filter deinterlaces the given block
by cubically interpolating every second line.
s
Median deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block
by applying a median filter to every second line.
s
FFmpeg deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block
by filtering every second line with a (-1 4 2 4 -1) filter.
s
Vertically applied FIR lowpass deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces
the given block by filtering all lines with a (-1 2 6 2 -1) filter.
s
Overrides the quantizer table from the input with the constant
quantizer you specify.
<quantizer>: quantizer to use
s
default pp filter combination (hb:a,vb:a,dr:a)
s
fast pp filter combination (h1:a,v1:a,dr:a)
s
high quality pp filter combination (ha:a:128:7,va:a,dr:a)
EXAMPLE:
s
horizontal and vertical deblocking, deringing and automatic
brightness/:contrast
s
default filters without brightness/:contrast correction
s
Enable default filters & temporal denoiser.
s
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.
s
0-6 (default: 3)
s
Force quantization parameter (default: 0, use QP from video).
s
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 compresses and
decompresses the image at several (or - in the case of quality
level 8 - all) shifts and averages the results.
The way this differs from the behavior of spp is that uspp actually
encodes & decodes each case with libavcodec Snow, whereas spp uses
a simplified intra only 8x8 DCT similar to MJPEG.
s
0-8 (default: 3)
s
Force quantization parameter (default: 0, use QP from video).
fspp[=quality[:qp[:strength[:bframes]]]]
faster version of the simple postprocessing filter
s
4-5 (equivalent to spp; default: 4)
s
Force quantization parameter (default: 0, use QP from video).
s
Filter strength, lower values mean more details but also more artifacts,
while higher values make the image smoother but also blurrier (default:
0 - PSNR optimal).
s
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 after IDCT.
s
Force quantization parameter (default: 0, use QP from video).
s
0: hard thresholding
1: soft thresholding (better deringing, but blurrier)
2: medium thresholding (default, good results)
qp=equation
quantization parameter (QP) change filter
s
some equation like "2+2*sin(PI*qp)"
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 libavcodec for use with DVB/:DXR3/:IVTV.
Faster and of better quality than -vf fame.
s
1-31: fixed qscale
32-: fixed bitrate in kbits
s
force output fps (float value) (default: 0, autodetect based on height)
fame
Fast software YV12 to MPEG-1 conversion with libfame for use with DVB/:DXR3/:IVTV.
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.
s
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.
EXAMPLE:
s
FIXME: Explain what this does.
noise[=luma[u][t|a][h][p]:chroma[u][t|a][h][p]]
Adds noise.
s
luma noise
s
chroma noise
s
uniform noise (gaussian otherwise)
s
temporal noise (noise pattern changes between frames)
s
averaged temporal noise (smoother, but a lot slower)
s
high quality (slightly better looking, slightly slower)
s
mix random noise with a (semi)regular pattern
denoise3d[=luma:chroma:time]
This filter aims to reduce image noise producing smooth images and making still
images really still (This should enhance compressibility.).
s
spatial luma strength (default: 4)
s
spatial chroma strength (default: 3)
s
temporal strength (default: 6)
hqdn3d[=luma:chroma:time]
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 controls in hardware.
Might also be useful with MEncoder, either for fixing poorly captured
movies, or for slightly reducing contrast to mask artifacts and get by
with lower bitrates.
Alternative software equalizer that uses lookup tables (very slow),
allowing gamma correction in addition to simple brightness
and contrast adjustment.
Note that it uses the same MMX optimized code as -vf eq if all
gamma values are 1.0.
The parameters are given as floating point values.
s
initial gamma value (default: 1.0)
s
initial contrast, where negative values result in a
negative image (default: 1.0)
s
initial brightness (default: 0.0)
s
initial saturation (default: 1.0)
s
gamma value for the red component (default: 1.0)
s
gamma value for the green component (default: 1.0)
s
gamma value for the blue component (default: 1.0)
s
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 value 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.
s
initial hue (default: 0.0)
s
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 display devices when hardware downscaling
is poor quality or is not available.
Can also be used as a primitive luma-only deinterlacer with very low CPU
usage.
s
By default, halfpack averages pairs of lines when downsampling.
Any value different from 0 or 1 gives the default (averaging) behavior.
0: Only use even lines when downsampling.
1: Only use odd lines when downsampling.
ilpack[=mode]
When interlaced video is stored in YUV 4:2:0 formats, chroma
interlacing does not line up properly due to vertical downsampling of
the chroma channels.
This filter packs the planar 4:2:0 data into YUY2 (4:2:2) format with
the chroma lines in their proper locations, so that in any given
scanline, the luma and chroma data both come from the same field.
s
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
encoded in the output.
This uses slightly more space, but is necessary for output to MPEG
files or if you plan to demux and remux the video stream after
encoding.
Should be placed at or near the end of the filter chain unless you
have a good reason to do otherwise.
softskip
Only useful with MEncoder.
Softskip moves the frame skipping (dropping) step of encoding from
before the filter chain to some point during the filter chain.
This allows filters which need to see all frames (inverse telecine,
temporal denoising, etc.) to function properly.
Should be placed after the filters which need to see all frames and
before any subsequent filters that are CPU-intensive.
decimate[=max:hi:lo:frac]
Drops frames that do not differ greatly from the previous frame in
order to reduce framerate.
The main use of this filter is for very-low-bitrate encoding (e.g.
streaming over dialup modem), but it could in theory be used for
fixing movies that were inverse-telecined incorrectly.
s
Sets the maximum number of consecutive frames which can be
dropped (if positive), or the minimum interval between
dropped frames (if negative).
s
A frame is a candidate for dropping if no 8x8 region differs by more
than a threshold of <hi>, and if not more than <frac> portion (1
meaning the whole image) differs by more than a threshold of <lo>.
Values of <hi> and <lo> 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.
s
relative difference between neighboring pixels (default: 0.1)
s
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.
Deinterlaces parts of a video if a configurable threshold is exceeded.
s
threshold (default: 10)
s
0: Ignore pixels exceeding the threshold (default).
1: Paint pixels exceeding the threshold white.
width and height of the matrix, odd sized in both directions
(min = 3x3, max = 13x11 or 11x13, usually something between 3x3 and 7x7)
s
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 filter your interlaced DVD and play it on a TV without breaking the
interlacing.
While deinterlacing (with the postprocessing filter) removes interlacing
permanently (by smoothing, averaging, etc) deinterleaving splits the frame into
2 fields (so called half pictures), so you can process (filter) them
independently and then re-interleave them.
s
deinterleave (placing one above the other)
s
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
disadvantage is that it does not always work.
Especially if combined with other filters it may produce randomly messed
up images, so be happy if it works but do not complain if it does not for
your combination of filters.
s
Deinterleave fields, placing them side by side.
s
Interleave fields again (reversing the effect of fil=d).
field[=n]
Extracts a single field from an interlaced image using stride arithmetic
to avoid wasting CPU time.
The optional argument n specifies whether to extract the even or the odd
field (depending on whether n is even or odd).
detc[=var1=value1:var2=value2:...]
Attempts to reverse the 'telecine' process to recover a clean,
non-interlaced stream at film framerate.
This was the first and most primitive inverse telecine filter to be
added to MPlayer/:MEncoder.
It works by latching onto the telecine 3:2 pattern and following it as
long as possible.
This makes it suitable for perfectly-telecined material, even in the
presence of a fair degree of noise, but it will fail in the presence
of complex post-telecine edits.
Development on this filter is no longer taking place, as ivtc, pullup,
and filmdint are better for most applications.
The following arguments (see syntax above) may be used to control
detc's behavior:
s
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.
s
Analysis mode.
0: Fixed pattern with initial frame number specified by <fr>.
1: aggressive search for telecine pattern (default)
s
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 sequence'.
The number specified here is the type for the imaginary previous
frame before the movie starts.
s
Threshold values to be used in certain modes.
ivtc[=1]
Experimental 'stateless' inverse telecine filter.
Rather than trying to lock on to a pattern like the detc filter does,
ivtc makes its decisions independently for each frame.
This will give much better results for material that has undergone
heavy editing after telecine was applied, but as a result it is not as
forgiving of noisy input, for example TV capture.
The optional parameter (ivtc=1) corresponds to the dr=1 option for the
detc filter, and should be used with MEncoder but not with MPlayer.
As with detc, you must specify the correct output framerate (-ofps
24000/1001) when using MEncoder.
Further development on ivtc has stopped, as the pullup and filmdint
filters appear to be much more accurate.
pullup[=jl:jr:jt:jb:sb:mp]
Third-generation pulldown reversal (inverse telecine) filter,
capable of handling mixed hard-telecine, 24000/1001 fps progressive, and 30000/1001
fps progressive content.
The pullup filter is designed to be much more robust than detc or
ivtc, by taking advantage of future context in making its decisions.
Like ivtc, pullup is stateless in the sense that it does not lock onto
a pattern to follow, but it instead looks forward to the following
fields in order to identify matches and rebuild progressive frames.
It is still under development, but believed to be quite accurate.
The jl, jr, jt, and jb 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.
Setting the sb (strict breaks) 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 processing of video where there is slight blurring
between the fields, but may also cause there to be interlaced frames
in the output.
The mp (metric plane) option may be set to 1 or 2 to use a chroma
plane instead of the luma plane for doing pullup's computations.
This may improve accuracy on very clean source material, but more
likely will decrease accuracy, especially if there is chroma noise
(rainbow 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 incorrect output and will usually crash,
due to design limitations in the codec/:filter layer.
filmdint[=options]
Inverse telecine filter, similar to the pullup filter above.
It is designed to handle any pulldown pattern, including mixed soft and
hard telecine and limited support for movies that are slowed down or sped
up from their original framerate for TV.
Only the luma plane is used to find the frame breaks.
If a field has no match, it is deinterlaced with simple linear
approximation.
If the source is MPEG-2, this must be the first filter to allow
access to the field-flags set by the MPEG-2 decoder.
Depending on the source MPEG, you may be fine ignoring this advice, as
long as you do not see lots of "Bottom-first field" warnings.
With no options it does normal inverse telecine, and should be used
together with mencoder -fps 30000/1001 -ofps 24000/1001.
When this filter is used with mplayer, it will result in an uneven
framerate during playback, but it is still generally better than using
pp=lb or no deinterlacing at all.
Multiple options can be specified separated by /.
s
Just like the crop filter, but faster, and works on mixed hard and soft
telecined content as well as when y is not a multiple of 4.
If x or y would require cropping fractional pixels from the chroma
planes, the crop area is extended.
This usually means that x and y must be even.
s
For each ifps input frames the filter will output ofps frames.
The ratio of ifps/:ofps 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.
s
If n is nonzero, the chroma plane is copied unchanged.
This is useful for YV12 sampled TV, which discards one of the chroma
fields.
s
On x86, if n=1, use MMX2 optimized functions, if n=2, use 3DNow!
optimized functions, otherwise, use plain C.
If this option is not specified, MMX2 and 3DNow! are auto-detected, use
this option to override auto-detection.
s
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
REPEAT_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 calculations 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 vertical
detail as interlaced content.
s
If n is nonzero, print the detailed metrics for each frame.
Useful for debugging.
s
Deinterlace threshold.
Used during de-interlacing of unmatched frames.
Larger value means less deinterlacing, use n=256 to completely turn off
deinterlacing.
Default is n=8.
s
Threshold for comparing a top and bottom fields.
Defaults to 128.
s
Threshold to detect temporal change of a field.
Default is 128.
s
Sum of Absolute Difference threshold, default 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 duplicated.
This filter is intended to find and drop those duplicates and restore the
original film framerate.
When using this filter, you must specify -ofps that is 4/5 of
the fps of the input file and place the softskip later in the
filter chain to make sure that divtc sees all the frames.
Two different modes are available:
One pass mode is the default and is straightforward to use,
but has the disadvantage that any changes in the telecine
phase (lost frames or bad edits) cause momentary judder
until the filter can resync again.
Two pass mode avoids this by analyzing the whole video
beforehand so it will have forward knowledge about the
phase changes and can resync at the exact spot.
These passes do
not
correspond to pass one and two of the encoding process.
You must run an extra pass using divtc pass one before the
actual encoding throwing the resulting video away.
Use -nosound -ovc raw -o /dev/null to avoid
wasting CPU power for this pass.
You may add something like crop=2:2:0:0 after divtc
to speed things up even more.
Then use divtc pass two for the actual encoding.
If you use multiple encoder passes, use divtc
pass two for all of them.
The options are:
s
Use two pass mode.
s
Set the two pass log filename (default: "framediff.log").
s
Set the minimum strength the telecine pattern must have for the filter to
believe in it (default: 0.5).
This is used to avoid recognizing false pattern from the parts of the video
that are very dark or very still.
s
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 improves 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 future
and past.
s
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.
s
Set the deghosting threshold (0-255 for one pass mode, -255-255 for two pass
mode, default 0).
If nonzero, deghosting mode is used.
This is for video that has been deinterlaced by blending the fields
together instead of dropping one of the fields.
Deghosting amplifies any compression artifacts in the blended frames, so the
parameter 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 negative 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 parameter.
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
opposite field order to the film-to-video transfer.
The options are:
s
Capture field order top-first, transfer bottom-first.
Filter will delay the bottom field.
s
Capture bottom-first, transfer top-first.
Filter will delay the top field.
s
Capture and transfer with the same field order.
This mode only exists for the documentation of the other options to refer to,
but if you actually select it, the filter will faithfully do nothing ;-)
s
Capture field order determined automatically by field flags, transfer opposite.
Filter 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.
s
Capture unknown or varying, transfer opposite.
Filter selects among t and b on a frame by frame basis by analyzing the
images and selecting the alternative that produces best match between the
fields.
s
Capture top-first, transfer unknown or varying.
Filter selects among t and p using image analysis.
s
Capture bottom-first, transfer unknown or varying.
Filter selects among b and p using image analysis.
s
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.
s
Both capture and transfer unknown or varying.
Filter selects among t, b and p using image analysis only.
s
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 -fps 30000/1001 -ofps 30000/1001 -vf telecine'.
Both fps options are essential!
(A/V sync will break if they are wrong.)
The optional start parameter tells the filter where in the telecine
pattern to start (0-3).
tinterlace[=mode]
Temporal field interlacing - merge pairs of frames into an interlaced
frame, halving the framerate.
Even frames are moved into the upper field, odd frames to the lower field.
This can be used to fully reverse the effect of the tfields filter (in mode 0).
Available modes are:
s
Move odd frames into the upper field, even into the lower field, generating
a full-height frame at half framerate.
s
Only output odd frames, even frames are dropped; height unchanged.
s
Only output even frames, odd frames are dropped; height unchanged.
s
Expand each frame to full height, but pad alternate lines with black;
framerate unchanged.
s
Interleave even lines from even frames with odd lines from odd frames.
Generates full-height frame 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!
s
0: Leave fields unchanged (will jump/:flicker).
1: Interpolate missing lines. (The algorithm used might not be so good.)
2: Translate fields by 1/4 pixel with linear interpolation (no jump).
4: Translate fields by 1/4 pixel with 4tap filter (higher quality) (default).
s
-1: auto (default)
Only works if the decoder exports the appropriate information and
no other filters which discard that information come before tfields
in the filter chain, otherwise it falls back to 0 (top field first).
0: top field first
1: bottom field first
yadif=[mode[:field_dominance]]
Yet another deinterlacing filter
s
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.
s
Operates like tfields.
mcdeint=[mode[:parity[:qp]]]
Motion compensating deinterlacer.
It needs one field per frame as input and must thus be used together
with tfields=1 or yadif=1/3 or equivalent.
s
0: fast
1: medium
2: slow, iterative motion estimation
3: extra slow, like 2 plus multiple reference frames
s
0 or 1 selects which field to use (note: no autodetection yet!).
s
Higher values should result in a smoother motion vector
field but less optimal individual vectors.
boxblur=radius:power[:radius:power]
box blur
s
blur filter strength
s
number of filter applications
sab=radius:pf:colorDiff[:radius:pf:colorDiff]
shape adaptive blur
s
blur filter strength (~0.1-4.0) (slower if larger)
s
prefilter strength (~0.1-2.0)
s
maximum difference between pixels to still be considered (~0.1-100.0)
blur filter strength (~0.1-5.0) (slower if larger)
s
blur (0.0-1.0) or sharpen (-1.0-0.0)
s
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 perpendicular to the screen.
s
coordinates of the top left, top right, bottom left, bottom right corners
s
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.
Extracts both stereo fields and places them side by side, resizing
them to maintain the original movie aspect.
s
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.
s
Set the default value of the 'hidden' flag (0=visible, 1=hidden).
s
Set the default value of the 'opaque' flag (0=transparent, 1=opaque).
s
path/:filename for the FIFO (named pipe connecting 'mplayer -vf bmovl' to the
controlling application)
FIFO commands are:
s
followed by width*height*4 Bytes of raw RGBA32 data.
s
followed by width*height*4 Bytes of raw ABGR32 data.
s
followed by width*height*3 Bytes of raw RGB24 data.
s
followed by width*height*3 Bytes of raw BGR24 data.
s
Change alpha transparency of the specified area.
s
Clear area.
s
Disable all alpha transparency.
Send "ALPHA 0 0 0 0 0" to enable it again.
s
Hide bitmap.
s
Show bitmap.
Arguments are:
s
image/area size
s
Start blitting at position x/y.
s
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.
s
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).
When a keyframe is found, an 'I!' string followed by a newline character is
printed, leaving the current line of MPlayer/:MEncoder output on the screen,
because it contains the time (in seconds) and frame number of the keyframe
(You can use this information to split the AVI.).
If you call the filter with a numeric parameter 'step' then only one in
every 'step' frames is rendered.
If you put an 'i' (lowercase) before the number then an 'I!' is printed
(like the I parameter).
If you give only the i then nothing is done to the frames, only I! is
printed.
tile=xtiles:ytiles:output:start:delta
Tile a series of images into a single, bigger image.
If you omit a parameter or use a value less than 0, then the default
value is used.
You can also stop when you are satisfied (... -vf tile=10:5 ...).
It is probably a good idea to put the scale filter before the tile :-)
The parameters are:
s
number of tiles on the x axis (default: 5)
s
number of tiles on the y axis (default: 5)
s
Render the tile when 'output' number of frames are reached, where 'output'
should be a number less than xtile * ytile.
Missing 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.
s
outer border thickness in pixels (default: 2)
s
inner border thickness in pixels (default: 4)
delogo[=x:y:w:h:t]
Suppresses a TV station logo by a simple interpolation of the
surrounding pixels.
Just set a rectangle covering the logo and watch it disappear (and
sometimes something even uglier appear - your mileage may vary).
s
top left corner of the logo
s
width and height of the cleared rectangle
s
Thickness of the fuzzy edge of the rectangle (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 parameters.
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.
s
[path] + filename of the filter image.
zrmjpeg[=options]
Software YV12 to MJPEG encoder for use with the zr2 video
output device.
s
These options set the maximum width and height the zr card
can handle (the MPlayer filter layer currently cannot query those).
s
Use these options to set maxwidth and maxheight automatically to the
values known for card/:mode combo.
For example, valid options are: dc10-PAL and buz-NTSC (default: dc10+PAL)
s
Select color or black and white encoding.
Black and white encoding is faster.
Color is the default.
s
Horizontal decimation 1, 2 or 4.
s
Vertical decimation 1, 2 or 4.
s
Set JPEG compression quality [BEST] 1 - 20 [VERY BAD].
s
By default, decimation is only performed if the Zoran hardware
can upscale the resulting MJPEG images to the original size.
The 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 keypresses.
See the slave mode documentation and the INTERACTIVE CONTROL
section for details.
Files named 'shotNNNN.png' will be saved in the working directory,
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.
blackframe[=amount:threshold]
Detect frames that are (almost) completely black.
Can be useful to detect chapter transitions or commercials.
Output lines consist of the frame number of the detected frame, the
percentage of blackness, the frame type and the frame number of the last
encountered keyframe.
s
Percentage of the pixels that have to be below the threshold (default: 98).
s
Threshold below which a pixel value is considered 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 accordingly.
Positive values delay the audio, and negative values delay the video.
Note that this is the exact opposite of the -delay option.
For example, if a video plays correctly with -delay 0.2, you can
fix the video with MEncoder by using -audio-delay -0.2.
Currently, this option only works with the default muxer (-of avi).
If you are using a different muxer, then you must use -delay instead.
-audio-density <1-50>
Number of audio chunks per second (default is 2 for 0.5s long audio chunks).
NOTE:
CBR only, VBR ignores this as it puts each packet in a new chunk.
-audio-preload <0.0-2.0>
Sets up the audio buffering time interval (default: 0.5s).
-fafmttag <format>
Can be used to override the audio format tag of the output file.
EXAMPLE:
s
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:
s
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 ratio with '-ovc copy'.
-frameno-file <filename> (DEPRECATED)
Specify the name of the audio file with framenumber mappings created in
the first (audio only) pass of a special three pass encoding mode.
NOTE:
Using this mode will most likely give you A-V desync.
Do not use it.
It is kept for backwards compatibility only and will possibly
be removed in a future version.
-hr-edl-seek
Use a more precise, but much slower method for skipping areas.
Areas marked for skipping are not seeked over, instead all
frames are decoded, but only the necessary frames are encoded.
This allows starting at non-keyframe boundaries.
NOTE:
Not guaranteed to work right with '-ovc copy'.
-info <option1:option2:...> (AVI only)
Specify the info header of the resulting AVI file.
Available options are:
s
Show this description.
s
title of the work
s
artist or author of the work
s
original work category
s
contents of the work
s
copyright information
s
original format of the digitized material
s
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 rendered
when hardcoding subtitles onto a movie.
-noencodedups
Do not attempt to encode duplicate frames in duplicate; always output
zero-byte frames to indicate duplicates.
Zero-byte frames will be written anyway unless a filter or encoder
capable of doing duplicate encoding is loaded.
Currently the only such filter is harddup.
-noodml (-of avi only)
Do not write OpenDML index for AVI files >1GB.
-noskip
Do not skip frames.
-o <filename>
Outputs to the given filename.
If you want a default output filename, you can put this option in the
MEncoder config file.
-oac <codec name>
Encode with the given audio codec (no default set).
NOTE:
Use -oac help to get a list of available audio codecs.
EXAMPLE:
s
no encoding, just streamcopy
s
Encode to uncompressed PCM.
s
Encode to MP3 (using LAME).
s
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 container formats.
EXAMPLE:
s
Encode to AVI.
s
Encode to MPEG (also see -mpegopts).
s
Encode with libavformat muxers (also see -lavfopts).
s
raw video stream (no muxing - one video stream only)
s
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:
s
no encoding, just streamcopy
s
Encode to an arbitrary uncompressed format (use '-vf format' to select).
s
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 subtitles.
This overrides what is read from the DVD or the .ifo file.
-vobsuboutindex <index>
Specify the index of the subtitles in the output files (default: 0).
CODEC SPECIFIC ENCODING OPTIONS (MENCODER ONLY)
You can specify codec specific encoding parameters using the following
syntax:
-<codec>opts <option1[=value],option2,...>
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
s
cbr
s
mt
s
rh (default)
s
abr
s
mtrh
abr
average bitrate
cbr
constant bitrate
Also forces CBR mode encoding on subsequent ABR presets modes.
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.
Frequencies 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.
Frequencies 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
s
Print additional options and information about presets settings.
s
VBR encoding, good quality, 150-180 kbps bitrate range
s
VBR encoding, high quality, 170-210 kbps bitrate range
s
VBR encoding, very high quality, 200-240 kbps bitrate range
suitable for most people and most music types and already quite high quality
s
Encode with ABR presets at a 192 kbps forced constant bitrate.
s
Encode with ABR presets at a 172 kbps average bitrate.
s
for people with extremely good hearing and similar equipment
toolame and twolame (-toolameopts and -twolameopts respectively)
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 otherwise)
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 exclusive with br)
object=<1-4>
object type complexity
s
MAIN (default)
s
LOW
s
SSR
s
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 required or you will not be able to
remux the audio stream later on.
lavc (-lavcopts)
Many libavcodec (lavc for short) options are tersely documented.
Read the source for full details.
EXAMPLE:
s
acodec=<value>
audio codec (default: mp2)
s
MPEG Layer 2
s
MPEG Layer 3
s
AC3
s
IMA Adaptive PCM (4bits per sample, 4:1 compression)
s
Experimental lossy/lossless codec
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).
Additionally bit_exact disables several optimizations and thus
should only be used for regression tests, which need binary
identical files even if the encoder 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).
s
Motion JPEG
s
Lossless JPEG
s
H.261
s
H.263
s
H.263+
s
MPEG-4 (DivX 4/5)
s
DivX 3
s
MS MPEG4v2
s
Windows Media Video, version 1 (AKA WMV7)
s
Windows Media Video, version 2 (AKA WMV8)
s
an old RealVideo codec
s
MPEG-1 video
s
MPEG-2 video
s
HuffYUV
s
nonstandard 20% smaller HuffYUV using YV12
s
ASUS Video v1
s
ASUS Video v2
s
FFmpeg's lossless video codec
s
Sorenson H.263 used in Flash Video
s
Sony Digital Video
s
Apple Sorenson Video 1
s
FFmpeg's experimental wavelet-based codec
vqmin=<1-31>
minimum quantizer (pass 1/2)
s
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).
s
Recommended for normal mpeg4/:mpeg1video encoding (default).
s
Recommended for h263(p)/:msmpeg4.
The reason 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 Lagrange multiplier for ratecontrol, you probably want it to be
equal to or lower than vqmin (default: 2.0).
lmax=<0.01-255.0>
maximum 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: 0).
In case of snow codec, value 0 means lossless encoding.
Since the other codecs do not support this, vqscale=0 will be ignored and
variable quantizers are used, which is the default.
1 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:
s
no B-frames (default)
s
sane range for MPEG-4
vme=<0-5>
motion estimation method.
Available methods are:
s
none (very low quality)
s
full (slow, currently unmaintained and disabled)
s
log (low quality, currently unmaintained and disabled)
s
phods (low quality, currently unmaintained and disabled)
s
EPZS: size=1 diamond, size can be adjusted with the *dia options
(default)
s
X1 (experimental, currently aliased to EPZS)
s
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 (unlimited))
mbd=<0-2>
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.
s
Use mbcmp (default).
s
Select the MB mode which needs the fewest bits (=vhq).
s
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 (default: 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 detection with this option.
-1000000000 means there is a scene change detected at every frame,
1000000000 means no scene changes are detected (default: 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 increasing 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:
s
Always use the maximum number of B-frames (default).
s
Avoid B-frames in high motion scenes.
See the b_sensitivity option to tune this strategy.
s
Places B-frames more or less optimally to yield maximum quality (slower).
You may want to reduce the speed impact of this option by tuning the
option brd_scale.
b_sensitivity=<any integer greater than 0>
Adjusts how sensitively vb_strategy=1 detects motion and avoids using
B-frames (default: 40).
Lower sensitivities will result in more B-frames.
Using 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 below the default; 10 is a reasonable value in most
cases.
brd_scale=<0-10>
Downscales frames for dynamic B-frame decision (default: 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 dimensions of the fully downscaled frame must be even numbers, so
brd_scale=1 requires the original dimensions to be multiples of four,
brd_scale=2 requires 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.
s
Disabled (default).
s
Use a wider search (larger values are slower).
vpass=<1-3>
Activates internal two (or more) pass mode, only specify if you wish to
use two (or more) pass encoding.
s
first pass (also see turbo)
s
second pass
s
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 statistics, then overwrites them.
You might want to backup divx2pass.log before doing this if there is
any possibility that you will have to cancel MEncoder.
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 options.
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:
s
Saves statistics.
s
Encodes with an optimal Huffman table based upon statistics
from the first pass.
turbo (two pass only)
Dramatically speeds up pass one using faster algorithms 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:
s
autoaspect
Same as the aspect option, but automatically computes aspect, taking
into account all the adjustments (crop/:expand/:scale/:etc.) made in the
filter chain.
Does not incur a performance penalty, so you can safely leave it
always on.
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 ratecontrol-affecting options will have no effect
if vrc_strategy is not set to 0.
s
Use internal lavc ratecontrol (default).
s
Use XviD ratecontrol (experimental; requires 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)
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 different quantizers for
I/P- and B-frames you can use:
lmin= <ip_quant>:lmax= <ip_quant>: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).
s
Quantizer blur disabled.
s
Average the quantizer over all previous frames.
vqblur=<0.0-99.0> (pass two)
Quantizer gaussian blur (default: 0.5), larger values 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 vqcomp=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)
s
constant bitrate
s
constant quality
s
approximately the equation of the old ratecontrol code
s
with qcomp 0.5 or something like that (default)
infix operators:
s
variables:
s
texture complexity
s
intra, non-intra texture complexity
s
average texture complexity
s
average intra texture complexity in I-frames
s
average intra texture complexity in P-frames
s
average non-intra texture complexity in P-frames
s
average non-intra texture complexity in B-frames
s
bits used for motion vectors
s
maximum length of motion vector in log2 scale
s
number of intra macroblocks / number of macroblocks
s
spatial complexity
s
temporal complexity
s
qcomp from the command line
s
Is 1 if picture type is I/P/B else 0.
s
See your favorite math book.
functions:
s
maximum / minimum
s
is 1 if a>b, 0 otherwise
s
is 1 if a<b, 0 otherwise
s
is 1 if a==b, 0 otherwise
s
vrc_override=<options>
User specified quality for specific parts (ending, credits, ...) (pass 1/2).
The options are <start-frame>, <end-frame>, <quality>[/<start-frame>,
<end-frame>, <quality>[/...]]:
s
quantizer
s
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).
s
Use clipping.
s
Use a nice differentiable function (default).
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):
s
disabled (default)
s
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):
s
disabled (default)
s
JVT recommendation
vstrict=<-2|-1|0|1>
strict standard compliance
s
disabled
s
Only recommended if you want to feed the output into the
MPEG-4 reference decoder.
s
Allow libavcodec specific extensions (default).
s
Enables experimental codecs and features which may not be playable
with future MPlayer versions (snow, ffvhuff, ffv1).
vdpart
Data partitioning.
Adds 2 Bytes per video packet, improves error-resistance when transferring over
unreliable channels (e.g. streaming over the internet).
Each video packet will be encoded in 3 separate partitions:
s
movement
s
low res picture
s
details
MV & DC are most important, loosing them looks far worse than loosing
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.
s
disabled (default)
s
good choice
ss
slice structured mode for H.263+
gray
grayscale only encoding (faster)
vfdct=<0-10>
DCT algorithm
s
Automatically select a good one (default).
s
fast integer
s
accurate integer
s
MMX
s
mlib
s
AltiVec
s
floating point AAN
idct=<0-99>
IDCT algorithm
NOTE:
To the best of our knowledge all these IDCTs do pass the IEEE1180 tests.
s
Automatically select a good one (default).
s
JPEG reference integer
s
simple
s
simplemmx
s
libmpeg2mmx (inaccurate, do not use for encoding with keyint >100)
s
ps2
s
mlib
s
arm
s
AltiVec
s
sh4
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 monitors but may look horrible
on other monitors.
s
disabled (default)
s
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 monitors but may look horrible
on other monitors / TV / TFT.
s
disabled (default)
s
sane range
tcplx_mask=<0.0-1.0>
Temporal complexity masking (default: 0.0 (disabled)).
Imagine a scene with a bird flying across the whole scene; tcplx_mask
will raise the quantizers 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, provided 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; scplx_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).
s
disabled (default)
s
sane range
NOTE:
This setting does not have the same effect as using a custom matrix that
would compress high frequencies 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 average per-MB quantizer may no
longer match the requested 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 exclusive with qpel).
alt
Use alternative scantable.
top=<-1-1>
s
automatic
s
bottom field first
s
top field first
format=<value>
s
default
s
for ffv1
s
for HuffYUV, lossless JPEG and ffv1
s
for lossless JPEG and ffv1
s
for lossless JPEG and ffv1
pred
(for HuffYUV)
s
left prediction
s
plane/:gradient prediction
s
median prediction
pred
(for lossless JPEG)
s
left prediction
s
top prediction
s
topleft prediction
s
plane/:gradient prediction
s
mean prediction
coder
(for ffv1)
s
vlc coding (Golomb-Rice)
s
arithmetic coding (CABAC)
context
(for ffv1)
s
small context model
s
large context model
(for ffvhuff)
s
predetermined Huffman tables (builtin or two pass)
s
adaptive Huffman tables
qpel
Use quarter pel motion compensation (mutually exclusive with ilme).
HINT:
This seems only useful for high bitrate encodings.
mbcmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for the macroblock decision, only used if mbd=0.
s
sum of absolute differences, fast (default)
s
sum of squared errors
s
sum of absolute Hadamard transformed differences
s
sum of absolute DCT transformed differences
s
sum of squared quantization errors (avoid, low quality)
s
number of bits needed for the block
s
rate distortion optimal, slow
s
0
s
sum of absolute vertical differences
s
sum of squared vertical differences
s
noise preserving sum of squared differences
s
5/3 wavelet, only used in snow
s
9/7 wavelet, only used in snow
s
Also use chroma, currently does not work (correctly) with B-frames.
ildctcmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for interlaced DCT decision
(see mbcmp for available comparison functions).
precmp=<0-2000>
Sets the comparison function for motion estimation pre pass
(see mbcmp for available comparison functions) (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 estimation
(see mbcmp for available comparison functions) (default: 0).
nssew=<0-1000000>
This setting controls NSSE weight, where larger weights will result in
more noise.
0 NSSE is identical 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: 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 diamond 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 quality.
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.
s
shape adaptive (fast) diamond with size 3
s
shape adaptive (fast) diamond with size 2
s
slightly special: Can be slower and/or better than dia=-2.
s
normal size=1 diamond (default) =EPZS type diamond
0
000
0
s
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 (Assuming that there would be no rounding
errors introduced by the IDCT, which is obviously not the case.).
It simply finds a block for the minimum of error and lambda*bits.
s
quantization parameter (QP) dependent constant
s
amount of bits needed to encode the block
s
sum of squared errors of the quantization
cbp
Rate distorted optimal coded block pattern.
Will select the coded block pattern which minimizes distortion + lambda*rate.
This can only be used together 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 motion vector and further motion estimation is skipped (default:
256).
Lowering mv0_threshold to 0 can give a slight (0.01dB) PSNR increase and
possibly make the encoded video look slightly better; raising
mv0_threshold past 320 results in diminished 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 enabled.
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
s
(default)
s
Will use 2a+1 x 2a+1 macroblock square of motion vector predictors from the
previous frame.
preme=<0-2>
motion estimation pre-pass
s
disabled
s
only after I-frames (default)
s
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 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 arbitrarily long MVs.
ibias=<-256-256>
intra quantizer bias (256 equals 1.0, MPEG style quantizer default: 96,
H.263 style quantizer default: 0)
NOTE:
The H.263 MMX quantizer cannot handle positive biases (set vfdct=1 or 2),
the MPEG MMX quantizer 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 default: -64)
NOTE:
The H.263 MMX quantizer cannot handle positive biases (set vfdct=1 or 2),
the MPEG MMX quantizer 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 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.
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 similar-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 quantization (optimal for constant weight) will be used as
startpoint for the iterative search.
s
disabled (default)
s
Only lower the absolute value of coefficients.
s
Only change coefficients before the last non-zero coefficient + 1.
s
Try all.
inter_matrix=<comma separated matrix>
Use custom inter matrix.
It needs a comma separated string of 64 integers.
intra_matrix=<comma separated matrix>
Use custom intra matrix.
It needs a comma separated 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_threshold=1000000000).
vglobal=<0-3>
Control writing global video headers.
s
Codec decides where to write global headers (default).
s
Write global headers only in extradata (needed for .mp4/MOV/NUT).
s
Write global headers only in front of keyframes.
s
Combine 1 and 2.
aglobal=<0-3>
Same as vglobal for audio headers.
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 compressed 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.
pass=<1|2>
Specify the pass in two pass mode.
turbo (two pass only)
Dramatically speeds up pass one using faster algorithms 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 <value> 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>[/<zone1>[/...]] (CBR or two pass mode)
User specified quality for specific parts (ending, credits, ...).
Each zone is <start-frame>,<mode>,<value> where <mode> may be
s
Constant quantizer override, where value=<2.0-31.0>
represents the quantizer value.
s
Ratecontrol weight override, where value=<0.01-2.00>
represents the quality correction in %.
EXAMPLE:
s
Encodes all frames starting with frame 90000 at constant quantizer 20.
s
Encode frames 0-10000 at 10% bitrate, encode frames 90000
up to the end at constant quantizer 20.
Note that the second zone is needed to delimit the first zone, as
without it everything up until frame 89999 would be encoded at 10%
bitrate.
me_quality=<0-6>
This option controls the motion estimation subsystem.
The higher the value, the more precise the estimation should be (default: 6).
The more precise 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.
(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>:<height>:1.
4mv
Use 4 motion vectors per macroblock.
This might give better compression, but slows down encoding.
WARNING:
As of XviD-1.0.x, this option is no longer available separately, and its
functionality is included in the me_quality option.
When me_quality > 4, 4mv is activated.
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 period for which it guarantees a given
amount of bits (minus a small variation).
This settings expresses the "number of frames" for which XviD averages
bitrate and tries to achieve CBR.
rc_buffer=<value>
size of the rate control buffer
quant_range=<1-31>-<1-31>[/<1-31>-<1-31>]
CBR mode: min & max quantizer for all frames (default: 2-31)
two pass mode: min & max quantizer for I/P-frames (default: 2-31/:2-31)
WARNING:
As of XviD-1.0.x, this option is replaced by the
[min|max]_[i|p|b]quant options.
min_key_interval=<value> (two pass only)
minimum interval between keyframes (default: 0)
max_key_interval=<value>
maximum interval between keyframes (default: 10*fps)
mpeg_quant
Use MPEG quantizers instead of H.263.
For high bitrates, you will find that MPEG quantization preserves more detail.
For low bitrates, the smoothing of H.263 will give you less block noise.
When using custom matrices, MPEG must be used.
WARNING:
As of XviD-1.0.x, this option is replaced by the quant_type option.
mod_quant
Decide whether to use MPEG or H.263 quantizers on a frame-by-frame basis
(two pass mode only).
WARNING:
This will generate an illegal bitstream, and most likely not be decodable
by any MPEG-4 decoder besides libavcodec or XviD.
WARNING:
As of XviD-1.0.x, this option is no longer available.
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 normal
(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 differently
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 determines the bitrate reduction they get.
The last I-frame will get treated normally
(default: 30).
divx5bvop
Generate DivX5 compatible B-frames (default: on).
This seems to be mandatory only for old versions of DivX's decoder.
WARNING:
As of XviD-1.0.x, this option is replaced by the closed_gop option.
(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.
debug
Save per-frame statistics in ./xvid.dbg. (This is not the two pass control
file.)
The following options are only available with the latest stable
releases of XviD 1.0.x (api4).
(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 decoders might be confused.
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 value, the higher the probability of B-frames being used
(default: 0).
Do not forget that B-frames usually have a higher quantizer, and therefore
aggressive production of B-frames may cause worse visual 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).
frame_drop_ratio=<0-100> (max_bframes=0 only)
This setting allows the creation of variable framerate video streams.
The value of the setting specifies a threshold under which, if the
difference 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.
WARNING:
Playing with this setting may result in a jerky video, so use it at your
own risks!
(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 sharper 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 without this option and see whether it
is worth activating.
(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 quantization method that
saves bits by modifying quantized 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 lesser cost than with VHQ (default: on).
(no)cartoon
Activate this if your encoded sequence is an anime/:cartoon.
It modifies some XviD internal thresholds so XviD takes better decisions on
frame types and motion vectors for flat looking cartoons.
quant_type=<h263|mpeg>
Sets the type of quantizer to use.
For high bitrates, you will find that MPEG quantization preserves more detail.
For low bitrates, the smoothing of H.263 will give you less block noise.
When using custom matrices, MPEG quantization
must
be used.
(no)chroma_me
The usual motion estimation algorithm uses only the luminance information to
find the best motion vector.
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 improve quality at the cost of encoding speed.
It reduces PSNR by nature, as the mathematical deviation 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.
(no)hq_ac
Activates high-quality prediction of AC coefficients for intra frames from
neighbor blocks (default: 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 slowest:
s
off
s
mode decision (inter/:intra MB) (default)
s
limited search
s
medium search
s
wide search
(no)lumi_mask
Adaptive quantization allows the macroblock quantizers to vary inside
each frame.
This 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
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
subjective quality and possibly reducing PSNR.
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)
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)
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.
curve_compression_high=<0-100>
This setting allows XviD to take a certain percentage 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 percentage 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 bitrate 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, creating artifacts (default: 5).
NOTE:
This setting impacts quality a lot, play with it carefully!
max_overflow_improvement=<0-100>
During the frame bit allocation, overflow control may increase the frame
size.
This parameter specifies the maximum percentage by which the overflow
control is allowed to increase the frame size, compared 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 specifies the maximum percentage by which the overflow
control is allowed to decrease the frame size, compared 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 container overhead.
This small but (mostly) constant overhead can cause the target file size
to be exceeded.
XviD allows users to set the amount of overhead per frame the
container generates (give only an average per frame).
0 has a special meaning, it lets XviD use its own default values
(default: 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.
s
no restrictions (default)
s
simple profile at level 0
s
simple profile at level 1
s
simple profile at level 2
s
simple profile at level 3
s
advanced simple profile at level 0
s
advanced simple profile at level 1
s
advanced simple profile at level 2
s
advanced simple profile at level 3
s
advanced simple profile at level 4
s
advanced simple profile at level 5
s
DXN handheld profile
s
DXN portable NTSC profile
s
DXN portable PAL profile
s
DXN home theater NTSC profile
s
DXN home theater PAL profile
s
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 extended
one, giving the opportunity to specify a specific pixel aspect
ratio.
5 standard modes can be specified:
s
It is the usual PAR for PC content.
Pixels are a square unit.
s
PAL standard 4:3 PAR.
Pixels are rectangles.
s
same as above
s
same as above
s
same as above (Do not forget to give the exact ratio.)
s
Allows you to specify your own pixel aspect ratio with par_width and
par_height.
NOTE:
In general, setting aspect and autoaspect options is enough.
par_width=<1-255> (par=ext only)
Specifies the width of the custom pixel aspect ratio.
par_height=<1-255> (par=ext only)
Specifies the height of the custom pixel aspect ratio.
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 aspect parameter can be given as a ratio or a floating point number.
(no)autoaspect
Same as the aspect option, but automatically computes aspect, taking
into account all the adjustments (crop/:expand/:scale/:etc.) made in the
filter 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.
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 CVS version of XviD.
threads=<0-n>
Create n threads to run the motion estimation (default: 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/:second (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.
qp=<0-51>
This selects the quantizer to use for P-frames.
I- and B-frames are offset from this value by ip_factor and pb_factor, respectively.
20-40 is a useful range (default: 26).
Lower values result in better fidelity, but higher bitrates.
0 is lossless.
Note that quantization in H.264 works differently from MPEG-1/2/4:
H.264's quantization parameter (QP) is on a logarithmic 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=<1-50>
Enables constant quality mode, and selects the quality.
The scale is similar to QP.
Like the bitrate-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 always encode in 2 or 3-pass mode as it leads to a
better bit distribution and improves overall quality.
s
first pass
s
second pass (of two pass encoding)
s
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' statistics to work from.
You can use all encoding options, 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.
s
disabled (default)
s
Reduce subq, frameref and disable some inter-macroblock partition analysis
modes.
s
Reduce subq and frameref to 1, use a diamond 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 compared 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 quality, 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 necessarily 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 referring 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 recommended 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 reference 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 reference frames.
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 predicting other frames.
For example, consider 3 consecutive 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 improved compression, at almost no
speed cost.
However, this is an experimental option: it is not fully tuned and
may not always help.
Requires bframes >= 2.
Disadvantage: increases decoding delay 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 details.
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.
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 Coding) (default: on).
Slightly slows down encoding and decoding, but should save 10-15% bitrate.
Unless 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 incremented/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
(default: 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_bufsize (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 value makes the bitrate more constant,
while a higher value makes the quantization parameter more constant.
cplx_blur=<0-999> (two pass only)
Temporal blur of the estimated frame complexity, before curve compression
(default: 20).
Lower values 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 fluctuating quantizer.
qblur=<0-99> (two pass only)
Temporal blur of the quantization parameter, after curve compression
(default: 0.5).
Lower values allow the quantizer value to jump around more,
higher values force it to vary more smoothly.
zones=<zone0>[/<zone1>[/...]]
User specified quality for specific parts (ending, credits, ...).
Each zone is <start-frame>,<end-frame>,<option> where option may be
s
quantizer
s
bitrate multiplier
NOTE:
The quantizer option is not strictly enforced.
It affects only the planning stage of ratecontrol, and is still subject
to overflow compensation and qp_min/qp_max.
direct_pred=<name>
Determines the type of motion prediction used for direct macroblocks
in B-frames.
s
Direct macroblocks are not used.
s
Motion vectors are extrapolated from neighboring blocks.
(default)
s
Motion vectors are interpolated from the following P-frame.
s
The codec selects between spatial and temporal 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 position
of the B-frame relative to the references.
Requires bframes > 1.
partitions=<list>
Enable some optional macroblock types (default: p8x8,b8x8,i8x8,i4x4).
s
Enable types p16x8, p8x16, p8x8.
s
Enable types p8x4, p4x8, p4x4.
p4x4 is recommended only with subq >= 5, and only at low resolutions.
s
Enable types b16x8, b8x16, b8x8.
s
Enable type i8x8.
i8x8 has no effect unless 8x8dct is enabled.
s
Enable type i4x4.
s
Enable all of the above types.
s
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 describe 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.
s
diamond search, radius 1 (fast)
s
hexagon search, radius 2 (default)
s
uneven multi-hexagon search (slow)
s
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.
s
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).
s
Runs halfpixel precision motion estimation on all candidate macroblock types.
Then selects the best type.
Then refines the motion of that type to fast quarterpixel precision.
s
As 2, but uses a slower quarterpixel refinement.
s
Runs fast quarterpixel precision motion estimation on all candidate
macroblock types.
Then selects the best type.
Then finishes the quarterpixel refinement for that type.
s
Runs best quality quarterpixel precision motion estimation on all
candidate macroblock types, before selecting the best type (default).
s
Enables rate-distortion optimization of macroblock types in
I- and P-frames.
s
Enables rate-distortion optimization of motion vectors and intra modes. (best)
In the above, "all candidates" does not exactly mean all enabled types:
4x4, 4x8, 8x4 are tried only if 8x8 is better than 16x16.
(no)chroma_me
Takes into account chroma information during subpixel motion search
(default: enabled).
Requires subq>=5.
(no)mixed_refs
Allows each 8x8 or 16x8 motion partition to independently select a
reference frame.
Without this option, a whole macroblock must use the same reference.
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
s
disabled (default)
s
enabled only for the final encode
s
enabled during all mode decisions (slow, requires subq>=6)
deadzone_inter=<0-32>
Set the size of the inter luma quantization deadzone for non-trellis
quantization (default: 21).
deadzone_intra=<0-32>
Set the size of the intra luma quantization deadzone for non-trellis
quantization (default: 11).
(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 raising overall subjective quality.
If you are compressing non-anime content with a high target bitrate, 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> (default: 0).
cqm=<flat|jvt|<filename>>
Either uses a predefined custom quantization matrix or loads a JM format
matrix file.
s
Use the predefined flat 16 matrix (default).
s
Use the predefined JVT matrix.
s
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 recommended 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=<1-4>
Split each frame into slices and encode them in parallel (default: 1).
Also allows multithreaded decoding if the decoder supports it (lavc does not).
This has a slight penalty to compression.
Requires that libx264 was compiled with pthread support; if not, this
option will produce a warning and enables slices but not multithreading.
(no)global_header
Causes SPS and PPS to appear only once, at the beginning of the bitstream
(default: disabled).
Some players, such as the Sony PSP, require the use of 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.
s
none
s
Print errors only.
s
warnings
s
PSNR and other analysis statistics when the encode finishes (default)
s
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 compressed 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:
s
intra block
s
inter block
s
skip block
s
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 encoding and visualizing
each frame, waiting for the user to press a key, at which point the next
frame 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 encode.
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:
s
format=<mpeg1 | mpeg2 | xvcd | xsvcd | dvd>
stream format (default: mpeg2)
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.
init_vpts=<100-700>
initial video pts, in milliseconds (default: 200)
init_apts=<100-700>
initial audio pts, in milliseconds (default: 200)
vdelay=<1-32760>
Initial video delay time, in milliseconds (default: 0),
use it if you want to delay video with respect to audio.
drop
When used with init_adelay 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.
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 or 30 fps.
It only works with MPEG-2 video when the output framerate,
converted with -ofps, is either 24000/1001 or 24 fps.
Any other framerate 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,
converted with -ofps, is either 24000/1001 or 24 fps.
Any other framerate is incompatible with this option.
FFmpeg libavformat demuxers (-lavfdopts)
probesize=<value>
Maximum amount of data to probe during the detection 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 allowed 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
(default: autodetect from output file extension).
MEncoder cannot assign correct timestamps when there are
B-frames in the video stream, resulting in broken encodes.
muxrate=<rate>
Nominal bitrate of the multiplex, in bits per second;
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] implementations 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 timestamp (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.
MPLAYER_VERBOSE (also see -v and -msglevel)
Set the initial verbosity level across all message modules
(default: 0).
Negative values result in fewer messages while positive
values result in more.
libaf:
LADSPA_PATH
If LADSPA_PATH is set, it searches for the specified file.
If it is not set, you must supply a fully specified pathname.
FIXME: This is also mentioned in the ladspa section.
libmpdvdkit2:
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 manufacturing date.
If DVDCSS_CACHE is not set or is empty, 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.
s
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.
s
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
temporary data.
s
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 crypto attack to guess the title key.
On rare cases this may fail because there is not enough encrypted data
on the disc to perform 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.
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.
s
Outputs no messages at all.
s
Outputs error messages to stderr.
s
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>:<someport>, <somehost>:<instancenumber>
or [unix]:<instancenumber>.
The NAS base port is 8000 and <instancenumber> is added to that.
EXAMPLES:
s
Connect to NAS server on somehost using default port and transport.
s
Connect to NAS server on somehost listening on TCP port 8000.
s
Connect to NAS server instance 0 on localhost using unix domain sockets.
DISPLAY
FIXME: Document this.
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.
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
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.mplayerhq.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 contributors.
MPlayer is (C) 2000-2006 The MPlayer Team
This man page was written mainly by Gabucino, Jonas Jermann and Diego Biurrun.
It is maintained by Diego Biurrun.
Please send mails about it to the MPlayer-DOCS mailing list.
Translation specific mails belong on the MPlayer-translations mailing list.
