HOWTO: Installing Official MPlayer RPM packages for Fedora Core

MPlayer is a movie player for Linux (runs on many other Unices, and non-x86 CPUs, see the documentation). It plays most MPEG, VOB, AVI, OGG/OGM, VIVO, ASF/WMA/WMV, QT/MOV/MP4, FLI, RM, NuppelVideo, YUV4MPEG, FILM, RoQ, PVA files, supported by many native, XAnim, and Win32 DLL codecs. You can watch VideoCD, SVCD, DVD, 3ivx, DivX 3/4/5 and even WMV movies, too (without the avifile library).

In this article, I'll cover installing the Official MPlayer RPM packages available from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/homepage/design7/dload.html for Fedora Core 1 as an example but the site also provides pre-compiled MPlayer RPM packages for FC1 and FC2.

Before install MPlayer RPM packages from the US Mirror Site http://luna.cs.ccsu.edu/dominik/mplayer/, you should really check the requirements to make your system is ready for installing MPlayer RPM packages.

For an easy check up, I've written a very simple script to query a list of prerequisites for MPlayer.

[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ ls mplayer-check.sh
mplayer-check.sh
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ sh mplayer-check.sh
Checking Pre-requisite RPMS for MPlayer...
SDL-1.2.5-9
XFree86-libs-4.3.0-55
audiofile-0.2.3-7
fontconfig-2.2.1-6.1
freetype-2.1.4-5
glib-1.2.10-11
gtk+-1.2.10-28.1
package lame-libs is not installed
libgcc-3.3.2-1
libjpeg-6b-29
libogg-1.0-5
libpng-1.2.5-7
libtermcap-2.0.8-36
libvorbis-1.0-8
zlib-1.2.0.7-2
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$

Notice in this example, lame-libs is not installed in this FC1 System and it's required for MPlayer RPM packages. Fortunately, the site provides pre-compiled lame-libs package from http://luna.cs.ccsu.edu/dominik/apt/. Download lame-libs-3.96-1.i386.rpm for FC1 and install it.

[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ ls lame-libs*.rpm
lame-libs-3.96-1.i386.rpm
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ sudo rpm -Uvh lame-libs-3.96-1.i386.rpm
warning: lame-libs-3.96-1.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 75aa026a
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:lame-libs              ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$

Now your system is ready for installing MPlayer RPM packages. First download following Essential packages for FC1 :
- mplayer-common-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm
- mplayer-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm

Next, download Optional packages for FC1 :
- mplayer-gui-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm
- mplayer-codecs-essential-20040704-1.i386.rpm
- mplayer-skin-default-1.4-1.noarch.rpm

Here is how you can install MPlayer RPM packages all at once:

[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ ll mplayer-*.rpm
-rw-r--r--  1 tchung tchung 2049007 Sep 26 19:17 mplayer-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--  1 tchung tchung 2695634 Sep 26 19:18 mplayer-codecs-win32-qt-20040704-1.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--  1 tchung tchung 1895402 Sep 26 19:17 mplayer-common-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--  1 tchung tchung 2225903 Sep 26 19:17 mplayer-gui-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm
-rw-r--r--  1 tchung tchung  221165 Sep 26 19:19 mplayer-skin-default-1.4-1.noarch.rpm
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$ sudo rpm -Uvh mplayer-*.rpm
warning: mplayer-1.0pre5-2.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 75aa026a
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:mplayer-common         ########################################### [ 20%]
   2:mplayer                ########################################### [ 40%]
   3:mplayer-gui            ########################################### [ 60%]
   4:mplayer-codecs-win32-qt########################################### [ 80%]
   5:mplayer-skin-default   ########################################### [100%]
[tchung@localhost mplayer]$

Congratulation, you have successfully installed the Official MPlayer RPM packages for your Fedora Core system!

You may now install mplayerplug-in for your Mozilla or Firefox.