I just want to reccomend this app. Its fully portable, only 2 files, about 3mb total, and plays more or less what vlc does and does a better job imo. MPUI is the 'mpc' like frontend for mplayer. I reccomend playing files by just dragging them on MPUI.exe or on the open window. Try it 
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MPUI + MPlayer. Portable and 'better' than VLC.
February 26, 2006 - 11:45pm
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MPUI + MPlayer. Portable and 'better' than VLC.
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Some files play better in VLC. Some play better in MPlayer. All seem to play better in Quicktime or Windows Media Player (which is unfortunate).
The codecs I mentioned are referenced right in the MPlayer docs: "MPlayer and libavcodec have builtin support for the most common audio and video formats, but some formats require external codecs. Examples include Real, Indeo and QuickTime audio formats. Support for Windows Media formats except WMV9 exists but still has some bugs, your mileage may vary. This step is not mandatory, but recommended for getting MPlayer to play a broader range of formats. Please note that most codecs only work on Intel x86 compatible PCs."
VLC includes most of the "extra" codecs that are in the Essentials pack for MPlayer built in. You can actually remove the VLC codecs you don't need. VLC with all codecs (in portable form) is 10MB. MPlayer's codecs are about 20MB but I haven't tried compressing them yet.
Mplayer has a commandline switch I can use to point it to its codecs in a portable scenario. I'll make a package of a Portable MPlayer (including MPUI) later this week and try some UPX compression on it. A quick test shows that I should be able to get it down to about 20.5MB from the 25MB it starts out as. I think I like its default interface better than VLCs, but I think I'll release them both and see what people like. Perhaps I'll release it with and without the codecs pack so people can decide what they need.
Suggestions and comments welcome...
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
On the download page for MPUI it explains that it comes in 'three flavors'. The one i reccomend is the first one it has MPUI.exe (250kb)and mplayer.exe (3mb). you only need these two files, i dont understand where you are getting ~20mb from?
I got it directly from the MPlayer documentation. That quote in my above post is right from the official MPlayer readme. The essential codec package for MPlayer is 20MB and that's what they're refering to in the readme.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
well i know in the last changelog it says:
"the MPlayer build delivered with the 4MB .zip file package is now a minimal, no-frills, custom-built one and includes the vo_directx 100% CPU usage fix"
might have something to do with it.
on the faq page:
"What's special about the MPlayer version that ships with MPUI?
The MPlayer build that can be downloaded along with MPUI is just a standard checkout from the CVS repository, compiled with MinGW. So it's very similar to the semi-official build from Sascha Sommer. The only (temporary!) diffence in the codebase is the 100% CPU fix mentioned above: It is not yet in the CVS tree, so it's missing in the official build, but present in the MPUI one.
Apart from this, the configuration of MPUI's MPlayer is minimized: By default, MPlayer includes features like reading and writing GIF, JPEG or PNG sequences, none of which is very useful in a normal media player. Thus, I disabled some of these features, saving roughly 500k of compressed binary size."
maybe the 20mb is the uncompessed codecs? and 3mb compressed binary?
[edit] i will email the dev this question.
also i saw someone ask why i suggested mpui under the vlc topic, my answer is i think it had the best interface (resembling Media PLayer Classic).
You'll find the 20MB codec package here (on the MPlayer download page):
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/dload.html
The quote about the codecs is from the readme (step 2) here:
http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/README
I like the MPUI interface as well as it resembles media player classic... an interface many are familiar with.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
First off, I tried using MPUI on my computer. ~3MB, and was able to play my AAC and MPEG4 files with no problem.
And I think that the codecs are to install on the computer so they can play the formats without using MPUI.
I know nothing about computers, so feel free to ignore me.
---
Portable Apps are cool. End of story.
First, MPUI is just an interface to MPlayer. MPUI is just the GUI. The meat of the app -- the part that plays media -- is MPlayer.
MPlayer includes a few codecs built-in. As MPlayer's devs say... the most "common" formats. For others (like Real, Quicktime, etc), you need to install the codecs. That codecs set I linked to above is ONLY for use with MPlayer. It won't work with any other media player.
Perhaps we could figure out what codecs would be best to support and only include those by default (thereby knocking down our install size). I think VLC has a good default set of codecs installed... and all in 10MB.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Regarding different GUIs for Mplayer, I think that Kliper is quite good alternative. It comes with additional codecs (Real Media, Quick Time, Windows Media), has support for subtitles, DVDs, playing of partially downloaded files. I compressed it with UPX and it is a little bit less than 10MB.
Home Page: http://www.kliper.xt.pl/
i am finding for a good GUI for Mplayer for so long.
i will try it.
I'm a huge fan of Mplayer and was wondering if you ever released a PortableApps version with or without the codec packs.
isn't it already portable as it is?
It would be better to integate it to portableapps suites. Just make a launcher for it and run using command line interface will do.
Download here:
http://mihd.net/okne1z
Just MPUI and MPlayer packaged up.
Run the file, this is not a SFX.
My Portable Apps-
zachshomepage.googlepages.com
I tried but it didn't work.
I got to a site with a download-button, I clicked on it and nothing happened.
"What about Love?" - "Overrated. Biochemically no different than eating large quantities of chocolate." - Al Pacino in The Devils Advocate
I'm not sure if that 25 mb package includes MEncoder which isn't necessary for playback. Also, I doubt that some of those extra codecs are necessary since MPlayer for Windows can fall back on DirectShow decoders that the computer already has. VLC and MPlayer both use libavcodec, so I don't see why VLC would be able to play something that MPUI wouldn't and I have yet to come across anything that VLC could play that MPUI couldn't. So that MPlayer binary that MPUI comes bundled with should do the job.
I can also testify to vlc handling various video files better than MPUI/Mplayer, especially corrupt ones. More rarely the opposite situation has occurred as well. I have not researched this, and don't know why it happens. I'm just saying that it does happen.
VLC is better at playing streaming content. That's the one thing about MPUI, it can't seem to handle any url with a protocol that isn't http. But besides that, MPUI is just a smaller more minimalistic version of VLC.