File Release Notes and Changelog
Release Name: 0.5.3
Notes: KPlayer is a KDE media player based on MPlayer, www.mplayerhq.hu. With KPlayer you can easily play a wide variety of video and audio files and streams using a rich and friendly interface compliant with KDE standards. Features include - video, audio and subtitle playback from file, URL, DVD, VCD, audio CD, TV, DVB, etc., as well as KDE I/O Slaves; - volume, contrast, brightness, hue and saturation controls; - zooming, full screen and fixed aspect options; - status and progress display and seeking; - playlist; - configuration dialog and file specific options; - KPart for integration with Konqueror, KMLDonkey, etc. Requirements ------------ A recent MPlayer KPlayer uses the famous MPlayer as the backend for playing audio and video files and streams. This ensures the maximum variety of supported types of files and encodings. You need to have MPlayer version 0.90 or later. Of the stable MPlayer releases 0.90 was the least buggy, but it has security issues. The same issues were present in recent unstable releases up to and including 1.0-pre3, so if you are concerned about security (as you should be), your choice would be MPlayer 1.0-pre4 or later. However, 1.0-pre4 introduced a fresh set of bugs, in particular in remote URL handling and FTP support. If there are good binary packages for your distribution, use those. For example on Debian unstable you would do echo 'deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list apt-get update apt-get install mplayer-k7 Substitute unstable for stable or testing as required, and k7 for 386, 586, 686 or k6, according to your processor type. As always compiling from source is an option. If you got an mplayer.conf in /etc/mplayer or a ~/.mplayer/config, check them to make sure that they do not have a line like "gui=yes". Kill it dead if you find it. Use 'gmplayer' if you ever decide to use MPlayer's own GUI (not recommended). It is perfectly fine if you want to remove the MPlayer config files entirely. However, they may be useful as an alternative way of specifying options that KPlayer does not yet support directly. X11 and XVideo X11 is required. Recommended versions are XFree86 4.2.x and 4.3.x, as well as X Server versions released by X.org. XVideo extension is recommended. You can check your /etc/X11/xorg.conf or /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 file for a line that reads Load "extmod" This is the line that loads XVideo extension, so make sure it is not disabled. Also check /var/log/XFree86.0.log to make sure that XVideo is loaded without error. Qt and KDE KPlayer 0.5.x supports KDE 3.3, 3.2 and 3.1, so you need to either run a relatively recent KDE (recommended) or at least have KDE libraries and the corresponding Qt libraries on your system. Installation ------------ Binary packages --------------- Look in http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=71710 for Debian and SuSE binary packages. On Debian you can instead use the Marillat repository: echo 'deb ftp://ftp.nerim.net/debian-marillat/ unstable main' >> /etc/apt/sources.list apt-get update apt-get install kplayer Visit the KPlayer home page for links to binary packages for other distros: http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/ Compiling from source tarball or CVS ------------------------------------ Extract the tarball tar -xjf kplayer-0.5.3.tar.bz2 cd kplayer-0.5.3 Or download code from CVS cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/kplayer login cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/kplayer co kplayer cd kplayer Create configure script make -f Makefile.dist Configure ./configure --prefix=`kde-config --prefix` Compile make Install su -c 'make install' Run kplayer If configure fails ------------------ Install the correct version of the software configure is complaining about. Look in the config.log for more information on what went wrong. Configuration ------------- KPlayer's initial settings have been tuned to the optimal values so that the program should be fully usable out of the box. In fact, version 0.2 did not have a configuration dialog and was quite useful nevertheless. For advanced users the configuration dialog offers a lot of different settings affecting both the KPlayer user interface and MPlayer options. If you mess KPlayer up by playing with them, the Defaults button is there to help you out. However, if KPlayer does not work for you in the first place, please first test MPlayer itself from the command line to see if it needs any command line options to work on your system. Then you can set those options in the KPlayer configuration dialog. Before you put anything into the Additional Command Line Arguments box, please first look around the dialog to make sure the option you need is not yet supported directly. For example, the only time you'll ever need to put -ao, -ac, -vo or -vc in there is when you want to list more than one output or codec separated by a comma. In that case please first set the respective option on the Audio or Video page to 'auto'. Warning about -vo sdl and -vo svga: if you set these anywhere other than the Video page in the KPlayer config dialog, you will likely have to either wait for your file to finish playing or kill your X session. If you really have to, you can edit or remove the input.conf file in share/apps/kplayer, but that is not recommended, nor are -vo sdl and -vo svga for that matter. File properties --------------- Starting from KPlayer 0.5 each file and URL has its own set of properties. They include information that KPlayer found out about the file, like time length, video size, frame rate, bitrates, and so on, as well as various options you can set, like name, video aspect, subtitles, and many more. Most properties can be set through the File Properties dialog. The Properties dialog for the currently loaded file or URL can be opened from the File menu, or using a button on the main toolbar, or from the right click popup menu. You can also open Properties dialog for an entry from your playlist by right clicking on it in the Playlist Editor, or by using the command on the Playlist menu. An easier way to set file properties is by holding the Shift key when changing a setting. For example, if you hold Shift and select Soft Frame Drop from the Player menu, KPlayer will remember that setting for the current URL, and use it the next time you play it. After it is done playing the current URL, it will revert the Frame Drop setting to the default, the one that was in effect before you changed it with Shift. On the other hand, if you change Frame Drop without holding Shift, the new setting will become the default, and will be used for all URLs that do not have it set explicitly. Playing DVDs, VCDs, audio CDs, TV --------------------------------- As advertised on MPlayer manpage, DVDs can be played by passing a URL like dvd://1 to MPlayer. "1" in this case is the track number you want to watch. So put that in the Open URL dialog inside KPlayer. Similarly, a URL like vcd://1 can be used to play a track from video CD. Use the cdda: prefix to play a track from audio CD, and tv: to play from TV. Full screen mode ---------------- To return from the full screen mode to the normal mode just hit Ctrl+F or right click anywhere in the video area and choose Full Screen from the menu. You can also hit the Esc key, which will stop playback and end the full screen mode. Known problems -------------- When you maximize KPlayer window, then go to full screen mode, then back to maximized state, and then restore the window to normal state, the final size may not be the same as the original size. Also sometimes the window will be larger than its original size after coming back from full screen mode. This is believed to be a KWin problem. Seeking does not work well on some media types, in particular DVDs, VCDs and some Real Media and Windows Media files. In those cases you can try using the Forward/Backward commands instead of clicking on the slider itself or dragging the slider thumb. Also the detected length may not be correct in some cases, especially on DVDs, VCDs and variable bitrate files. Some files are not seekable at all. This is an MPlayer problem. Reporting bugs -------------- It is importand that you follow the steps described in Reporting KPlayer Bugs Micro-HOWTO http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/manual/howto-bug-reporting.html All bugs should be reported through the SourceForge bug tracking system http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=71710&atid=532182 Similarly, feature requests, patches and support requests should be sent through SourceForge, it will make sure I will not forget about them. Online manual ------------- http://kplayer.sourceforge.net/manual/
Changes: 0.5.3 release 2005-01-09 - Fixed startup crash when Remember Size and/or Remember Aspect options were selected - New Portugese and Swedish translations of the user interface - Danish, French and Italian user interface translations updated - Danish, Portugese and Swedish translations of the user manual - Minor improvements and bug fixes 0.5.2 release 2004-10-05 - User manual - Whats this hints - Improved mouse wheel support - Minor improvements and bug fixes - New Hungarian and Polish translations 0.5.1 release 2004-07-05 - GCC 3.4 and Qt 3.1 compilation fixes 0.5 release 2004-07-02 - File specific options aka File Properties - Playing from I/O Slaves - Media file meta information in Konqueror - mms:, pnm: and rtsp: URLs in Konqueror - Zooming with mouse wheel - Smooth seeking when dragging progress slider - Many minor improvements and bug fixes - New Czech, Finnish and Simplified Chinese translations - Most existing translations updated 0.4 release 2003-11-05 - Playlist - KPart for integration with KMLDonkey, Konqueror, etc. - Seven language translations - Many minor improvements and bug fixes 0.3.1 release 2003-08-06 - Bug fixes Playing from dvd://, vcd://, tv:// etc. URLs Playing URLs with embedded HTTP authentication Length detection and progress display with main branch MPlayer 0.3 release 2003-08-01 - Configuration dialog with many options - Drag and drop support - Message log - Key bindings dialog - More subtitle commands and options - MPlayer error detection - Bug fixes Opening remote URLs from Konqueror Handling special characters in file names Video aspect detection MPlayer shutdown Disabling screensaver while playing video Numerous other improvements and bug fixes 0.2 release 2003-03-26 - Options to maintain video aspect ratio - Zooming - Contrast, brightness, hue and saturation controls - Subtitle loading - Frame dropping options - Persitence of options between sessions - Option to use popup sliders instead of toolbars - Only one instance allowed to run - Many fixes and improvements in several areas including full screen, time length detection, status display 0.1 release 2003-02-01 - Invoke mplayer process, handle slave mode input and output - Play movies in embedded window - Open File, Open URL, Play, Pause, Stop, Forward, Fast Forward, Backward, Fast Backward, Start, Volume Up, Volume Down, Mute, Full Screen, Toggle Menubar, Toggle Toolbars, Toggle Statusbar, About, Quit functions - Progress slider, seek function, Volume slider - Main toolbar, Progress toolbar, Volume toolbar - Autosize window to the movie size - Context menu - Shortcut keys - Main window title - Status information showing mplayer state and progress - Recent file list (non-persistent for now) 2002-11-16 KPlayer project started, first code written
