MKV/OGM/etc Support in Mac OS X Leopard (and others before it)
Posted by Jaymz,
December 3rd, 2007 in Mac, Software, Tech
Update: It looks like there’s some issues getting this working properly under Tiger. I’ll try a fresh install of OS X 10.4 on my Mac mini/MacBook sometime this week, and see how things go.
Following in the tradition of the most visited, and linked to article on this site (despite the fact that it’s kinda crufty and old, now), I’ve decided to discuss everyone’s favourite non-endorsed media formats under what is arguably my most used platform of choice, when I’m not gaming or at work - Mac OS X.
As I’ve stated in the past, the two biggest hurdles with OS X for me has been gaming, and media playback. I’d be happy to run everything else in Parallels, but playing games and watching rather large H.264 MKV’s is difficult enough for some PC’s, without adding the strain of emulated virtualization on top of things.
There’s also the issue with third party video cards, and the Mac Pro - which has stopped me from getting one, despite lusting after it ever since the initial announcement of the thing in 2006, but that’s a hardware issue - not a software one. Today, I talk about one of these software barriers kinda almost sorta being overcome in the media section, with Mohammad Haque’s latest SVN of MPlayer OSX, which now earns Jaymz’s official title of “Media player under OS X which sucks the least”.
So.. what makes MPlayer OSX so damned good, in light of more recent media playback developments, such as the Perian component for Quicktime, and the tried and true VLC? I like to summarize it as the good, the bad and the ugly.
- The Good - MPlayer OS X. Just fucking works. Ok, so you need to add a certain line to the extra parameters to make everything sweet, and also require X11 to be installed, but damnit.. I double click MKV’s from anywhere, and that’s what I get now.
- The Bad - Perian. Okay, so when it works, it can be just as good - but there’s a delay with subtitles, forcing you to immediately hit pause while Quicktime Player streams in the entire file, just so it can add pretty subtitles over it. Unfortunately, Quicktime still shits itself on certain MPEG4 videos, some audio tracks don’t work, or require strange shit like Xiph and the AC3 Filter which you have to Google for, and it’s biggest flaw of all? It’s still the Quicktime Player. (Update 13/02: Perian 1.1 is out, and it appears to resolve a few audio issues, and the Matroska subtitle streaming issue as well).
- The Ugly - VLC. Don’t go there, girlfriend. Crashing and seperate window-ism aside, the subtitle rendering speaks for itself - that is, when you can read it.
So, now that we have all that out of the way.. how do you go about making with the sweet, sweet, subtitled goodness? First of all, you’re going to need to knock a few requirements out of the road. If you haven’t got X11 installed, then do so now. You’ll find it under the extras of your Mac’s software discs, or if you upgraded to Leopard, you should be able to install it from that disc, too.
You then go to Mohammad Hague’s SVN builds, download the latest one (for me, this was the 29/Nov/07 build), and install like you would any other Mac OS X app. From here, you open up the App, go into the MPlayer OSX menu, select Preferences… and click on the Miscellaneous tab. Under the Advanced Settings: section, you add the following line to Additional Parameters:
- -ass -embeddedfonts -fontconfig
As a side tip, you may want to force subtitles to always on (at least, the first subtitle track), and instruct MKV files to load the Japanese language for your preferred choice of audio. To do this, you change the above line to:
- -ass -embeddedfonts -fontconfig -sid 0 -alang jpn
Okay, so those settings aren’t all that intuitive, but goddamnit - you only need to do this once, and it just works from thereon in. You should now find that when you double click on an MKV file in the Finder, it’ll work right off the bat. No waiting for the fucker to load in Perian, and no pausing the video while you set the subtitle and audio tracks each time because VLC is too fucking stupid to remember. To coin a phrase, It Just Goddamn Works™. Exactly what the Mac platform is all about, my friends.
Now only if we could do something about the gaming…
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Hello and welcome to Respect Sakura, yet another shitty blog under the premise of being an animu blog, when it's really just about Jaymz's tech leanings, spending habits and crack-inspired ramblings on topics noone cares about. Oh, and that other guy posts stuff sometimes, too.
Please be warned that this site may contain strong language, adult themes, and sexual discussion about characters that may appear underage but are really over 18, and anything that may look or sound illegal really isn't, you just imagined it because your mind is sick and twisted, and it ain't my fault so don't you dare blame that shit on me son.
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I find the fact that you have to use an OS X port of a Linux media player in order to have the sort of video and subtitle support that Windows has had for years now quite amusing.
“So.. what makes MPlayer OSX so damned good”
Absolutely nothing at all. Last time I used MPlayer OSX, it was the most horrible abortion of a media player (short of VLC of course) that I’d ever used. Even with your double-click solution, there’s bound to be something that won’t play properly. And that ain’t exactly the point-and-click solution you get under Windows with CCCP, either. ;) If someone made a Media Player Classic ffdshow equivalent for the Mac, I might be tempted to buy a Mac Pro or Macbook. But there isn’t, which makes playback of anything other than Quicktime a royal pain in the arse.
Yes, the last time I used MPlayer OSX it, to quote Yahtzee, sucked a big fat cocksicle.
However, this MPlayer OSX is very much different to the MPlayer OSX of yore (aka 2005 and before it), in the fact that it’s using the latest MPlayer code, has been completely rewritten, and does not, in fact, lick balls. In fact, it does the very opposite of licking balls.
As far as an ffdshow solution goes, there’s Perian - which is based off ffmpeg - the great grandpappy of ffdshow. It’s great enough for most DivX/XviDs, but any H.264 playback has its control wrested from it by Apple’s shittastic H.264 decoder, which is only good for playing back movie trailers from the Quicktime site.
MPlayer works flawlessly with this. It also works flawlessly with everything I’ve thrown at it so far, and believe me, I have a fuckload of things to throw at it.
It’s fast, works with almost everything I have, and like all good media players, is restrained to a single window. How could I not love it, and want to kiss it?
Nice to know that.
I’ve been using the official build of MPlayer OS X with no X11 and only the extra line (-ass -correct-pts -embeddedfonts), which works just fine. Tried your approach, but got a load of errors, from not having X11 no doubt. Guess I’ll stick with what I have.
Now, is there any way to get DTS audio to play in MPlayer? It’s one of the reasons I keep going back to VLC. The hideous fonts!
1.0rc2 should have added support for DTS/DCA, but I haven’t anything with DTS audio in it to test, unfortunately.
As far as your method for MPlayer hotness goes, it runs good for me, only my Macbook now has this weird bug where it’s showing the correct size, colours, etc, for the fonts - but the face is different. However it does this for my method on the Macbook as well, so it’s most likely just “one of those things”.
That said, for Minami-ke, it doesn’t display the font face correctly under MPC or VSFilter on Windows, either. Maybe the whole ASS subtitling system is picky about machines it runs on.
Yeah, believe me, I wish I could get this all to work. I can’t seem to do get MPlayer to properly even play files now, instead I keep getting an error. VLC doesn’t play them either and I’ve never used Perian so…I’m at a loss of what to do to get these videos to play with subtitles.
Well, thanks, this did the trick for me! I was having major trouble there, and I really wanted to see “Voices of a Distant Star”.
Ralene: Try removing all the additional lines from MPlayer OS X’s advanced configuration and see if that works, initially.
Also, you need X11 to be installed. If you’re using Leopard, it installs it by default. Otherwise, grab your software install CDs/DVDs, or your OS CD and try it again.
As a last resort, grab Perian and give that a shot. If you’re playing MKV’s, you’ll need to pause the playback until you see the whole file stream in.
If all of these fail, then it’s gotta be something wrong with the file.
I wish it would work, but it’s not.
I may just have to reset my system or see what else I can do.
Just because it keeps popping up, here’s the error message that I keep getting in MPlayer.
2007-12-23 21:14:40.736 MPlayer OSX[1048] ===================== MPlayer OSX Started =====================
2007-12-23 21:14:41.019 defaults[1049]
Domain (hu.mplayerhq.mplayerosx) not found.
Defaults have not been changed.
2007-12-23 21:14:41.021 MPlayer OSX[1048] User Default Deleted
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Path to MPlayer: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: /Users/Home/Desktop/[Formula]_Shugo_Chara!_-_11_[0ED92B01].mkv
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -monitoraspect
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: 1.600000
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -vo
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -slave
2007-12-23 21:14:55.235 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -identify
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
Reason: image not found
2007-12-23 21:14:55.373 MPlayer OSX[1048] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 5
2007-12-23 21:15:49.748 MPlayer OSX[1048] Path to MPlayer: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: /Users/Home/Desktop/[Formula]_Shugo_Chara!_-_11_[0ED92B01].mkv
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -monitoraspect
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: 1.600000
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -vo
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -ass
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -embeddedfonts
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -fontconfig
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -sid
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: 0
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -alang
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: jpn
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -slave
2007-12-23 21:15:49.749 MPlayer OSX[1048] Arg: -identify
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
Reason: image not found
2007-12-23 21:15:49.908 MPlayer OSX[1048] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 5
If any of that makes any sense, just post and let me know how I can be of any help.
Here’s the culprit:
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
It looks like you’re missing X11. You’re going to need to install it via the optional installer on your Leopard/Tiger/Original Software Installer discs. Regardless of which OS, it should be a matter of slapping the first disc in, locating the Optional Installer icon (not the Mac OS X installer icon - that’ll zap the whole system), and ensuring that X11 is ticked.
Then after this, you install MPlayer OSX again, and give it another whirl.
Alternatively, if you’re still using 10.3.9, you can grab it here. However, that won’t work if you’re on 10.4 or 10.5 - you’ll need the software install CDs.
Thanks, it’s playing subtitles now, just with a different font. Is there a way to get rid of any of this coding “Try removing all the additional lines from MPlayer OS X’s advanced configuration and see if that works, initially.” <- everytime I try to remove it and go back to the default, it doesn’t seem to work.
I did this earlier in Terminal, following these instructions. http://rgfansub.wordpress.com/playback/#mac_option2
Would there be a way to reverse what I did so the original subtitle fonts will work?
Again, thank you so much for your help, I really do appreciate it!
To zap all of Mplayer’s settings, you first need to delete the preference file located here.
Then, you delete the .mplayer folder you created, by going into Terminal and typing the following:
rm -rf .mplayer
Finally, the fontconfig option requires X11 to be installed. You check that by going into Utilities, under Applications and verifying this app exists. Otherwise, pull your old software CDs out.
Last, but not least, I’ve only personally confirmed this to work under OS X 10.4, or 10.5. It may not work under 10.3.9.
Yep, I did all of that, X11 is installed as well (installed it yesterday from the CDs), just trying to find a font I can use for the subtitles, since it still won’t use the subtitle fonts within the .ass file (in the .mkv anime files).
So, instead of working around it, I’ll just admit that I don’t know what it is and find a pretty font to use.
this is what i keep getting back, plz help-
mplayer_intel.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2008-01-01 10:10:26.313 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: /Users/markcupp/Movies/movies and such/[KAA]_Abenobashi_Mahou_Shoutengai_01-13.DVD(Complete)/Abenobashi_Mahou_Shoutengai_01.DVD(H264.AAC)[KAA][7EC1C214].mkv
2008-01-01 10:10:26.314 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -monitoraspect
2008-01-01 10:10:26.314 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: 1.6000
2008-01-01 10:10:26.315 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -vo
2008-01-01 10:10:26.315 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2008-01-01 10:10:26.315 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -ass
2008-01-01 10:10:26.316 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -embeddedfonts
2008-01-01 10:10:26.316 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -fontconfig
2008-01-01 10:10:26.317 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -slave
2008-01-01 10:10:26.318 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Arg: -identify
2008-01-01 10:10:26.350 MPlayer OSX[424:20b] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 1
How do I undo what you wrote here? I’m using running mac OSX 10.4.11 PPC. I installed MPlayer and initially it played the video, but without the subtitles. I tried to get it to display the subtitles, but couldn’t get it to work. That’s when I stumbled onto your website and tried doing what you published above. Now the video won’t even play. Is there anyway to undo what was done?
I’ve guidelines above on how to nuke MPlayer’s configuration and start again. But basically, most issues can be remedied by following these guidelines:
cd ~
rm -rf .mplayer
Again, that should look something like this.
Again, I can confirm this works for me under OS X 10.5 and 10.5.1, on my Intel based iMac and on my Core Duo based 1st gen Macbook. Depending on how things go, I may rewrite this article to add pretty pictures and outline the steps and requirements more.
Another thing to add - MPlayer OSX doesn’t like to be copied. I get the abnormal playback error, if I just drag the app from one computer to another (ie, from my iMac to my Macbook, or restoring just the App from a backup or an archive & install of OS X). You’re best off reinstalling it from scratch, from the .DMG file.
(tl;dr 1. MPlayer does not replace Perian, 2. MPlayer -fontconfig does not work.)
Suggesting anyone to use Perian on Leopard is pointless right now. It works fine for AVI, but many MKV files won’t play at all (anything with AAC or AC3 audio basically, roughly 60% of my incoming files) and additionally you get a black screen in Front Row as soon as the first subtitle appears. With this inability to show subtitles except under QuickTime Player, there is no point in using Perian until Apple fix the problem (the latest QuickTime update is responsible, and Leopard forced this update on us.) If you’re going to use a standalone player then there are several better alternatives, and even if you wanted to use a QuickTime-based player, NicePlayer is far better.
Sadly MPlayer will never be a true workaround for this problem with QuickTime, as having MPlayer installed does nothing to fix Front Row. Although someone could make a good media centre UI on Mac which does use MPlayer, all the current ones appear to use QuickTime, and thus offer little more on top of the bundled Front Row. (Don’t go suggesting Freevo, I’ve been down that road one too many times and until someone has a fully working one bundled as an .app I’m not touching it again. The only thing worse is MythTV, seriously.)
As for my MPlayer install:
The -fontconfig option results in a playback error. I do have X11 installed as Leopard installs it by default. The MPlayer OS X log doesn’t give any useful output when I bring it up either, so there are no hints as to why it doesn’t work.
If you remove -fontconfig, it works fine again. You just don’t get the embedded fonts.
In many ways this is better as some fansub groups insist on putting in “trendy” fonts which are impossible to read. Seems like the best thing to do would be to find a series which has a really nice and readable font (e.g. SS-Eclipse’s Hayate), yank that font out of the MKV file and install it into the OS. Then configure MPlayer to use that font always and remove the -fontconfig and -embeddedfonts options. There are flags to override all style parameters in fact, which might be good to thwart groups with a poor sense of style (which is about 30% of current fansubbers I use, which are generally better than the average group.)
I can’t quite figure it out. There’s the old “works fine for me” adage, but I have had headaches with MPlayer OS X in the past, and truthfully it’s not the most ideal solution - it’s just the solution that works best for me at present.
I want to love Perian. I really do. It does a fantastic job on all my XviD encoded stuff. Naturally, my biggest problem with it is the streaming MKV issue, and as you pointed out, the wonderful Apple bug that causes certain audio formats to not work, and subtitle rendering to just go pitch black in Front Row. However, it’s a bug that Apple aren’t likely to fix any time soon, as it’s not affecting them, and the Perian devs are having a difficult time getting Apple to even acknowledge it.
In any case, I’m going to flatten and reinstall my Macbook, and I’ll see if I can’t experiment and figure out why I can get it working and others can’t, and see if I can’t make something a little easier to follow.
I’ve often wondered if MPlayer’s pass-through mode could be used to make a new codec to support “everything.” I’ve occasionally had ffmpeg use MPlayer as an input filter when doing transcoding work (actually mplayer, not mencoder, because mencoder’s subtitle rendering is out of sync since about a year ago and still out of sync in RC2.) It seems like a similar strategy could be used to make a QuickTime codec, having MPlayer write the raw video and audio to named pipes or file descriptors and having the codec “decode” the raw video frames. If I had an idea on how to actually write this, I would try. ffmpeg certainly knows how to do it.
With this approach the subtitle rendering would be done at the MPlayer stage so it would work in FrontRow. I suppose a similar approach could be done without MPlayer if Perian did the text rendering onto the video itself instead of using a layer (the layer rendering is apparently what is broken in Front Row and QuickView, it’s probably something to do with the alpha blending of the layers.)
However, QuickTime will always have the problem where files need to read from start to finish, causing issues with MKV files with the subtitles at the end (some of my MKV files have the subtitles at the start, and I wish more groups would do this.) For me this is an annoyance but a minor one since at least after the wait I was at least able to watch the video. And on gigabit ethernet the load time isn’t enormously slow anyway (on 100Mbit it did hurt, took a couple of minutes for some files and movie length things you had to start loading and get popcorn done in the waiting period.)
Additionally it seems to be impossible to replace Apple’s support for MP4 files, so many MP4 files still won’t play (I have heaps of these, actually about 80% of my MP4 files won’t play in QuickTime despite MP4 allegedly being QuickTime’s “supported” format. I’ve reported this to Apple but their response is “do you have a non-copyrighted video which exhibits the same problem?” as if this bears some impact on their ability and/or need to fix the bug.
I really think the ideal solution is a Front Row clone which spawns MPlayer. Then we have the ability to do things without a hefty keyboard at the couch, and can still play anything MPlayer can play.
Yes. Hell yes. While I’d just settle for Apple Remote support in MPlayer OS X, this would be far better. The reason I harp on so goddamn much about MPlayer, is simply due to it being the most compatible by far. If this method worked, I’d actually use Front Row.
Okay, I promised some pretty pictures and guidelines on how to set the thing up, but decided against it and went one step better - and damn well recorded it on my Macbook.
Again, this is with Mohammad Haque’s SVN build, from Nov 29, 2007. The URL for it is:
http://www.haque.net/software/mplayer/mplayerosx/builds/
The actual video of me correctly setting up and confirmed working MKV-ness is here (7MB Download):
http://www.respectsakura.org/stuff/itworksgoddamnit.mov
Basically, this was done off a fresh default install of Leopard 10.5.1 (meaning X11 went with it), with a security update, Quicktime 7.3.1 update, and a Macbook software 1.1 update installed. There’s no Perian on the Macbook yet, and the only other thing I did was install iShowU and synchronize bookmarks and mail accounts on the thing (but not preferences - they’re all default, especially in regards to MPlayer OSX). I don’t think reinstalling is necessary, but I can show that a relatively clean build of OS X can play these files as intended in MPlayer OS X with the settings above.
I can even give it a shot under Tiger, if people are desperate enough. :pt:
Hi again Jaymz. Awesome tutorial, if I may say so as well!
Still having issues in Tiger after uninstalling, removing files, and the like multiple times. Maybe it’s just about time to install Leopard and go with a fresh build of everything; I’m sure that if it’s not my system being odd, maybe I just have way too much junk in the different plugin folders, etc.
Well, since I got a nice Apple giftcard for the holidays, I may just spend it on the new operating system and let them see what issues they can fix on my Macbook (considering that the thing’s less than 5 months old and had issues on it since Day 1, with unix file viruses, uncharging batteries, unworking wireless, etc.) It’s a good thing I like Mac’s so much…otherwise it’d be giving me more issues than my old Windows laptop did. (And that’s saying quite a lot!)
Anyways, any other ideas before I decide to make the plunge to Leopard? I might try downloading that iShowU program and showing you my install and system from start to finish, as well to try to figure out where I’m going wrong. Maybe that’s a good idea to try first. XD
I strongly recommend an upgrade to Leopard, purely due to how awesome it is at rudimentary things, like connecting to shared PCs/Macs, grammar checking in addition to the existing spell checking in Cocoa apps (like Adium), Spaces - the first multiple desktop manager I actually use, Spotlight behaving more like Quicksilver, Time Machine, and maybe when those QuickTime bugs that plague Perian are resolved, Front Row for being so damn cool… but as I’ve said time and time again, that the reason the move from Tiger to Leopard was so enjoyable, in contrast to the move from XP to Vista, isn’t because of what’s different - it’s what’s stayed the same.
But enough fanboyism, I can’t really think of anything else that could be affecting it. Again, I haven’t run a custom MPlayer build like this since long before Leopard, so maybe this specific one is Leopard only?
Migrating to a new OS is a fairly harrowing experience, even in Mac-land. Especially if you’re going the :pt: route. Unfortunately, though.. I’ve got nothing on what else could be causing issues.
Oh, and just for more Leopard reassurance - my 1st gen Macbook had a few issues here and there as well, especially to do with wireless and the occasional kernel panic. I flattened and reinstalled several times over, but it didn’t do anything for me. Oddly enough, those same issues haven’t crept up in Leopard. Can’t say it’d do the same for you, but you never know. :v:
Anything that has a -ass parameter is alright by me!
Jaymz: I was trying M Player OS X for the first time today. Worked perfectly on my Leopard PowerBook but blew up on my Tiger Mac Mini. Hmm…. The log error was descriptive - it suggested that X11 was missing. Sure enough it was, so I installed X11 from my Tiger discs and tried again. Still the same error! WTF! I did a little bit of digging - comparing my PowerBook to my Mini:
I noticed that on my Leopard PowerBook G4 when I do an “ls -l” on the /usr directory (notice the link from X11R6 to X11):
ls -l
total 8
drwxr-xr-x 9 root wheel 306 Nov 19 01:21 X11
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 3 Nov 19 01:21 X11R6 -> X11
drwxr-xr-x 743 root wheel 25262 Nov 19 21:36 bin
drwxr-xr-x 320 root wheel 10880 Dec 23 16:51 lib
drwxr-xr-x 85 root wheel 2890 Nov 19 08:31 libexec
drwxr-xr-x 4 root wheel 136 Oct 17 14:05 local
drwxr-xr-x 236 root wheel 8024 Dec 23 16:51 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 54 root wheel 1836 Nov 19 01:07 share
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Nov 19 00:44 standalone
On my Tiger Intel Mac Mini there is no “/usr/X11″ directory, only a “/usr/X11R6″ directory!
ls -l /usr
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 8 root wheel 272 Jan 12 15:10 X11R6
drwxr-xr-x 625 root wheel 21250 Jan 12 15:10 bin
drwxr-xr-x 216 root wheel 7344 Jan 12 15:10 lib
drwxr-xr-x 70 root wheel 2380 Nov 23 21:23 libexec
drwxr-xr-x 6 root admin 204 Nov 6 15:46 local
drwxr-xr-x 202 root wheel 6868 Dec 25 13:32 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 40 root wheel 1360 Nov 23 21:23 share
drwxr-xr-x 5 root wheel 170 Oct 18 2006 standalone
This might explain why MPlayer OS X on my Tiger Mac Mini bombs with a similar error to those experienced by others:
2008-01-12 15:35:18.453 MPlayer OSX[2515] ===================== MPlayer OSX Started =====================
2008-01-12 15:35:18.803 MPlayer OSX[2515] User Default Deleted
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Path to MPlayer: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: /Volumes/MyBook1/Movies/a-f/A History Of Violence.avi
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: -monitoraspect
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: 1.777778
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: -vo
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: -slave
2008-01-12 15:35:33.037 MPlayer OSX[2515] Arg: -identify
dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/X11/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib
Referenced from: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
Reason: image not found
2008-01-12 15:35:33.231 MPlayer OSX[2515] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 5
A quick update for you, Jaymz.
I think that Ra might be onto something with the issues in Tiger vs. Leopard. I finally took the plunge and bought Leopard with my Christmas gift card and after installing it today…found that it works perfectly after installing the particular build that you mentioned and fixing the 1 preference for subtitles.
I haven’t had any other issues (besides reinstalling my older software) and everything seems to be coming together quite nicely otherwise; so thank you so much for all of your help and assistance; it’s been wonderful to have and talk with you (and I hope to keep stopping by as well)!
it worked, this mplayer, thanks Jaymz!!!!
I’m getting the same errors as Ra, on Tiger, even after installing x11. What can I do?
ahh, I ended up just downloading the latest Perian and it works just fine.
Eh, it works fine and then…after having to reinstall Leopard for the 3rd time now….it breaks again.
I’m about ready to shoot something after all of these problems and I’m beginning to think that it’s not me but something wrong with my computer. >)<
Anyways, here are the errors I’ve been running into.
1. The subtitle issues again. .mvk and the like, plus (when I try to delete the old mplayer settings, they don’t even show up in the preferences section of the computer.
And, when I re-enter in the builds (have tried both the Nov and Dec builds; I’m beginning to think that it’s the problem of the new Apple 10.5.2 update) these are the errors I’ve gotten.
MPlayer interrupted by signal 10 in module: init_video_filters
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn’t happen.
It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
gcc version. If you think it’s MPlayer’s fault, please read
DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can’t and
won’t help unless you provide this information when reporting a possible bug.
uninit: shmdt failed
uninit: shmctl failed
2008-02-16 12:46:34.484 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 1
2008-02-16 12:47:01.313 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Path to MPlayer: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2008-02-16 12:47:01.314 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: /Users/Ralene/Downloads/[Formula]_Shugo_Chara!_-_16_[EE08234E].mkv
2008-02-16 12:47:01.314 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: -monitoraspect
2008-02-16 12:47:01.315 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: 1.600000
2008-02-16 12:47:01.315 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: -vo
2008-02-16 12:47:01.316 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2008-02-16 12:47:01.317 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: -slave
2008-02-16 12:47:01.317 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Arg: -identify
2008-02-16 12:47:01.385 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] *** Assertion failure in -[NSTextFieldCell _objectValue:forString:errorDescription:], /SourceCache/AppKit/AppKit-949.27/AppKit.subproj/NSCell.m:1338
2008-02-16 12:47:01.386 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: ‘Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil’ invoked observer method: ‘*** -[PlayerController statusUpdate:]’ observer: 0×167da0 notification name: ‘MIStateUpdatedNotification’
New_Face failed. Maybe the font path is wrong.
Please supply the text font file (~/.mplayer/subfont.ttf).
subtitle font: load_sub_face failed.
2008-02-16 12:47:40.694 MPlayer OSX[455:20b] ===================== MPlayer OSX Terminated =====================
2008-02-16 12:47:49.239 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] ===================== MPlayer OSX Started =====================
2008-02-16 12:47:58.548 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Path to MPlayer: /Applications/MPlayer OSX.app/Contents/Resources/External_Binaries/mplayer.app/Contents/MacOS/mplayer
2008-02-16 12:47:58.549 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: /Users/Ralene/Downloads/[Formula]_Shugo_Chara!_-_16_[EE08234E].mkv
2008-02-16 12:47:58.549 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -monitoraspect
2008-02-16 12:47:58.550 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: 1.600000
2008-02-16 12:47:58.550 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -vo
2008-02-16 12:47:58.550 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: macosx:shared_buffer
2008-02-16 12:47:58.551 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -ass
2008-02-16 12:47:58.551 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -embeddedfonts
2008-02-16 12:47:58.552 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -fontconfig
2008-02-16 12:47:58.552 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -slave
2008-02-16 12:47:58.553 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Arg: -identify
2008-02-16 12:47:58.613 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] *** Assertion failure in -[NSTextFieldCell _objectValue:forString:errorDescription:], /SourceCache/AppKit/AppKit-949.27/AppKit.subproj/NSCell.m:1338
2008-02-16 12:47:58.614 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Exception raised during posting of notification. Ignored. exception: ‘Invalid parameter not satisfying: aString != nil’ invoked observer method: ‘*** -[PlayerController statusUpdate:]’ observer: 0×167da0 notification name: ‘MIStateUpdatedNotification’
MPlayer interrupted by signal 10 in module: init_video_filters
- MPlayer crashed. This shouldn’t happen.
It can be a bug in the MPlayer code _or_ in your drivers _or_ in your
gcc version. If you think it’s MPlayer’s fault, please read
DOCS/HTML/en/bugreports.html and follow the instructions there. We can’t and
won’t help unless you provide this information when reporting a possible bug.
uninit: shmdt failed
uninit: shmctl failed
2008-02-16 12:47:58.679 MPlayer OSX[466:20b] Abnormal playback error. mplayer returned error code: 1
Anyways, if you’ve got any ideas feel free to contact me here or by email and let me know, k Jaymz? You’ve been so helpful along the way so hopefully we can solve this problem together!
Okay.. just for clarification, does it do this on every file or just a certain few? Is it this exact error every time, or does it behave differently?
First thing you could try, is to see how Perian handles it. They’ve managed to fix a few issues in Perian now, brought on by the updated Quicktime. However, a few bugs still remain, and I still prefer Mplayer OSX to it. If Perian turns out to be a better solution for you, it might be worthwhile to stick with that.
The other great news on the OS X Media front, is that XBMC is being ported to the Mac. It’s still fairly early yet, and there’s a few things I’d like to see fixed before using it on my Mac mini (like better subtitle font/style support, Apple Remote support, etc), but all in all, it’s coming along great so far.
Yeah, I just put Perian on and tried things in Quicktime, which looks like it’ll be my new Mac OS player for now. Not really sure why MPlayer stopped working and giving me that error (and yeah, that’s the error I get everytime now) but, it seems to have cleared up for now.
Sorry for the above rather large post but seems I’m good to go with Quicktime/Perian for now.
No need for apology - I’m a sucker for trying to fix things. It’s why I still do what I do at work, and not trying to get into something more sensible from a career perspective, like management or becoming a consultant.
In any case, if you’re still having issues - fire me off an e-mail or IM me and I’ll see if I can’t sort things out.
I just installed mplayer on my MacBook (10.4), in the hope that it would handle subtitles better than VLC. Sadly, I have found the same problem as above: the -fontconfig option, which appears to be the key to making subtitles work, is also the key to making it not play mkv files.
Yeah, it doesn’t seem to work at all under Tiger right now with the builds I recommend. I have had this work on the past with custom builds from this AnimeSuki forum thread, so that might be a good place to start.
Hey Jaymz, Thanks for the tutorial :)
I still have one problem: I am trying to play this OGM file, but my only problem is that “-alang jpn” is not working… It plays in English all the same (and I know it has a Japanese audio track in the file, thanks to VLC). With MPlayer however I can’t seem to find a way to manually switch between the audio tracks, am I just being dumb?
thanks for any help !
OGM’s are problematic in that they either don’t seem to have language descriptions for the audio tracks, or the encoders just never seem to use them.
How you’re supposed to do it, is by hitting # (shift 3 on US keyboards), and it’s supposed to change the audio track. This has never worked for me, so the painful way to do it is to add “-aid 1” to MPlayer before playing tracks like that, and remember to remove it as it usually stops other files from playing correctly.
OH lifesaver !
# (alt-3 on a British Keyboard ;) ) didn’t work.. but -aid did not fail!
thanks for the quick help too :)
dude, totally kick ass. i have been smashing bottles against my head for hours trying to get some goddamn subtitles to work on Basilisk, and i come across your page, and problem solved. fucking awesome. fuck vlc, fuck it in its stupid ass.
man thanks alot i stumbled on this and all i can say is it just works now! thanks bro
Better solution: use MPlayer OSX Extended. Statically compiled with an updated cocoa-native interface. It just works. http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/
No iteration of Mplayer will do either DTS or Dolby Digital sound… VLC will. It does cause the occasional kernel panic on Macs, but it is the only player that does Hi=Def video AND sound correctly. Plex and all the rest are studdery, or just don’t work.
Here’s hoping that the next version of Quicktime fixes these problems, and in particular Snow Leopard.