MPlayer

MPlayer was the best video player for a long time. Then a fork happened and many developers left for MPlayer2. That was in turn abandoned for mpv which is now the most updated and feature-rich branch. MPlayer is still updated and alive but updates are essentially just small fixes to make sure it still compiles against modern versions of ffmpeg.

MPlayer comes with a video conversion tool called mencoder. This has also not been more than barely maintained for decades.

The modern alternatives

• mpv is a better and more updated stand-alone player than mplayer (and mplayer2)
• SMPlayer is a better choice than GMPlayer if you want a video player with a graphical interface
• ffmpeg is a far better tool for converting audio or video than mencoder.

Links

• mplayer's website: http://www.mplayerhq.hu/
• mplayer and mencoder manual
• http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/man/en/mplayer.1.html

Topic: Media Players

Video players: SMPlayer | mpv | VLC | GNOME Videos

discontinued: Xine | GMPlayer | MPlayer

Stand-alone Audio players:

Filesystem-oriented: Audacious

Database-oriented: Elisa | Strawberry | Exaile | GNOME Music

Bankrupt and finished: Clementine | Amarok

Music Player Daemon audio player clients:

GUI: Cantata | GMPC | Xfmpc (Xfce)

ncurses: ncmpc - Command-line: mpc

Dead and berried: Sonata | KMP | Glurp