Today, I am writing about one of the most beloved command line video player called mplayer.In this post we will learn how to install mplayer in Ubuntu Desktop system. I have been personally using this awesome video player since 2008.
Why Mplayer is awesome ?
Because I have been using this video player since very long time, I believe I am now able to give this answer in one sentence.
The mplayer is awesome because it supports many codecs,file formats and have many great features.
How we met with Mplayer?
I still remember the days when I quickly grab the RHEL 5 DVD and installed RHEL 5 in my system after its release announcement. There was some video tutorial CD which I wanted to play in VLC media player.The videos were not playing because of codecs issue. Then after doing some searching, I read about mplayer in internet and decided to try this command line video player. Voila! it worked.
Since then, I always install mplayer in my linux desktop machine because it supports lot of video file formats, codecs and have many features.
Install Mplayer in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (20.04,18.04,16.04, 14.04,12.04) LTS Desktop
I always use Ubuntu LTS version because it is stable and has long term support. You can try the following method of installation in other Ubuntu Desktop version also.
To install Mplayer in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS & 14.04 LTS
It is quite simple, mplayer is available in Ubuntu repo hence use this command.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mplayer
To install mplayer in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and above LTS version
These steps are applicable in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS Desktop.
Although in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS you can also use apt-get command yet we prefer for apt command. The command will help to install but apt is advanced version of apt-get having many new features.
sudo apt update
sudo apt install mplayer
How to use Mplayer in command line
This is quite easy to play any audio/video file through mplayer. You only have to follow this command syntax in terminal.
mplayer
For eg. we want to play the video file called chrome-ytube.mp4 then in command you should write as
mplayer ~/Videos/chrome-ytube.mp4
Mplayer with GUI (SMplayer)
Many users also want to enjoy mplayer with GUI as it is quite easy and handy.Before I will tell you about mplayer-gui package installation method, please do remember mplayer-gui has bug. Till the date I am writing this post, the bug was still not fixed with available ubuntu package. I will strongly recommend you to read about this bug, some users also shared their workaround in bug page also.
To enjoy the mplayer in graphical user interface, we will suggest you to install free and open source software called SMPlayer for it. SMPlayer uses the mplayer as playback engine.
To get more details on SMPlayer, visit the SMPlayer webpage hosted in Sourceforge.
Install SMPlayer
Very easy to install SMPlayer in Ubuntu Desktop.
sudo apt update sudo apt install smplayer
In Dash Home write SMPlayer, it will show its icon.Click on SMplayer icon,it will open the console.
It will open the SMplayer which is in Graphical Mode.
