====== How to use MPlayer on the Command-line ======
[[http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/slackware-documentation-project-4175422561/|As suggested by kikinovak as a slackdoc topic]].

===== What is mplayer? =====
Basically, mplayer is a command-line movie player packaged into most slackware installations; It happens to work like a champ with music files in addition to watching movies.
Because mplayer doesn't strictly require a desktop environment to be running while playing music, it is quite light and is ideal for wimpier machines such as netbooks.

===== How to invoke mplayer =====
Below are a couple of basic ways of calling mplayer.

<code>
$ mplayer ~/music/foo.mp3 # Tell mplayer to play your favourite song.
</code>

<code>
$ mplayer ~/music/*.mp3  # Tell mplayer to play all of your mp3 files under your music directory.
</code>

==== Useful shortcut keys ====
While running, mplayer can be controlled by additional keyboard input.

Some simple but memorable shortcuts:
  * spacebar - Toggles pause/play.
  * return - Next track.
  * ctrl+c - Escape/Quit.

=== Gotchas ===
Don't accidentally hit the arrow keys while mplayer is running; It will alter the audio playback speed (quite annoying).

==== Playlists ====
You can also tell mplayer to play tracks from a playlist.

First you need to create a playlist file.
<code>
$ find . -type f -iname *.mp3 > my_list.txt
</code>

And then you can take the playlist and feed it into mplayer.
<code>
$ mplayer -playlist my_list.txt
</code>

If you're feeling frisky, you can also tell mplayer to shuffle your playlist as well.
<code>
$ mplayer -shuffle -playlist my_list.txt
</code>

=== Example Playlist Demonstration ===

The below terminal output demonstrates mplayer playlists in action.

<code>
[ roach@sepsis:msk ]$ find SchoolyardHeroes/Abominations/ -type f -iname *.mp3 > abominations.txt     
[ roach@sepsis:msk ]$ mplayer -playlist abominations.txt 
MPlayer 20101218-4.5.1 (C) 2000-2010 MPlayer Team

Playing SchoolyardHeroes/Abominations/04 - Violence Is All The Rage.mp3.
Audio only file format detected.
Clip info:
 Title: Violence Is All The Rage
 Artist: Schoolyard Heroes
 Album: Abominations
 Year: 2007
 Comment: Amazon.com Song ID: 20884756
 Track: 4
 Genre: Unknown
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 44100 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 256.0 kbit/18.14% (ratio: 32000->176400)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [oss] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback...
A:  20.8 (20.8) of 189.0 (03:09.0)  0.3% 

</code>

Note: The above example's find command creates an unsorted playlist (which might not be what you're after).

[[http://zuttobenkyou.wordpress.com/2009/01/17/how-to-quickly-make-a-playlist-for-mplayer/|Here's a nifty article on creating sorted playlists and then some.]]

====== Sources ======
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  * Written by [[wiki:user:aschyiel | aschyiel]]

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{{tag>howtos software work_in_progress author_aschyiel}}