2.5. Codec installation
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## 2.5. Codec installation

### 2.5.1. Xvid

Xvid is a free software MPEG-4 ASP compliant video codec. Note that Xvid is not necessary to decode Xvid-encoded video. `libavcodec` is used by default as it offers better speed.

Installing `Xvid`

Like most open source software, it is available in two flavors: official releases and the CVS version. The CVS version is usually stable enough to use, as most of the time it features fixes for bugs that exist in releases. Here is what to do to make `Xvid` CVS work with MEncoder:

1.     cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid login

2.     cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.xvid.org:/xvid co xvidcore

3.     cd xvidcore/build/generic

4.     ./bootstrap.sh && ./configure

   You may have to add some options (examine the output of ./configure --help).

5.     make && make install

6. Recompile MPlayer.

### 2.5.2. `x264`

`x264` is a library for creating H.264 video. MPlayer sources are updated whenever an `x264` API change occurs, so it is always suggested to use MPlayer from Subversion.

If you have a GIT client installed, the latest x264 sources can be gotten with this command:

    git clone git://git.videolan.org/x264.git

Then build and install in the standard way:

    ./configure && make && make install

Now rerun `./configure` for MPlayer to pick up `x264` support.

### 2.5.3. AAC

An open source AAC decoder called FAAD2 is available from http://www.audiocoding.com/downloads.html. MPlayer includes a copy of it in its source tree. If you want to use the external library instead, install it and pass `--enable-faad-external` to `./configure`.

FAAD2 binaries are not available from audiocoding.com, but you can (apt-)get Debian packages from Christian Marillat, Mandrake/Mandriva RPMs from the P.L.F and Fedora/CentOS/RHEL RPMs from RPMFusion.

If you choose to build from source, you do not need all of FAAD2 to decode AAC files, libfaad is enough. Build it like this:

    cd faad2/
    sh bootstrap
    ./configure
    cd libfaad
    make
    make install

### 2.5.4. AMR

MPlayer can use the OpenCORE AMR libraries through FFmpeg. Download the libraries for AMR-NB and AMR-WB from the opencore-amr project and install them according to the instructions on that page.

### 2.5.5. XMMS

MPlayer can use XMMS input plugins to play many file formats. There are plugins for SNES game tunes, SID tunes (from Commodore 64), many Amiga formats, .xm, .it, VQF, Musepack, Bonk, shorten and many others. You can find them at the XMMS input plugin page.

For this feature you need to have XMMS and compile MPlayer with `./configure --enable-xmms`.

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