2.2. Codecs
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## 2.2. Codecs

- `libavcodec`: This codec package is capable of decoding H.263/MJPEG/RV10/DivX3/DivX4/DivX5/MP41/MP42/WMV1/WMV2/SVQ1/SVQ3 encoded video streams and WMA (Windows Media Audio) v1/v2 audio streams, on multiple platforms. It is also known to be the fastest for this task. See FFmpeg section for details. Features:

  - gain decoding of videos mentioned above, on non-x86 machines
  - encoding with most of the mentioned codecs
  - this codec is the fastest codec available for DivX/3/4/5 and other MPEG-4 types. Recommended!

- Win32 codecs: If you plan to use MPlayer on x86 architecture, you will possibly need them. Download a codec package from our codecs page and put the codecs in `/usr/local/lib/codecs` BEFORE compiling MPlayer, otherwise no Win32 support will be compiled!

  ### Note

  The avifile project has similar codecs package, but it differs from ours, so if you want to use all supported codecs, then use our package (do not worry, avifile works with it without problems).

  Features:

  - you need this if you want to play or encode for example movies recorded with various hardware compressors, like tuner cards, digital cameras (example: DV, ATI VCR, MJPEG)
  - needed if you want to play WMV9/WMA9 movies.
  - Not needed for old ASF's with MP41 or MP42 video (though VoxWare audio is frequent for these files - it's done by the Win32 codec), or WMV7. Also not needed for WMA (Windows Media Audio), `libavcodec` has open source decoder for that.

- QuickTime codecs: on x86 platforms these codecs can be used to decode RPZA, and other QuickTime video, and QDesign audio streams. Installation instructions can be found in the Sorenson video codec section.

- DivX4/DivX5: information about this codec is available in the DivX4/DivX5 section. You possibly don't want this codec as `libavcodec` (see above) is much faster and has better quality than this, for both decoding and encoding. Features:

  - one pass or two pass encoding with MEncoder
  - can play old DivX3 movies much faster than the Win32 DLL but slower than `libavcodec`!
  - it's closed-source, and only a x86 version is available.

- XviD: Open source encoding alternative to DivX4Linux. Features:

  - one pass or two pass encoding with MEncoder
  - it's open-source, so it's multiplatform.
  - it's about 2 times faster than divX4 when encoding - about the same quality

- The XAnim codecs are the best (full screen, hardware YUV zoom) for decoding 3ivx and Indeo 3/4/5 movies, and some old formats. And they are multiplatform, so this is the only way to play Indeo on non-x86 platforms (well, apart from using XAnim:). But for example Cinepak movies are best played with MPlayer's own Cinepak decoder!

- For Ogg Vorbis audio decoding you need to install `libvorbis` properly. You can get binary packages and source code from the Ogg Vorbis site.

- MPlayer can use the libraries of RealPlayer 8 or RealONE to play files with RealVideo 3.0 and 4.0 video, and Sipro/Cook audio. See the RealMedia file format section for installation instructions and more information.

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