mplayer -vo vdpau -vc ffh264vdpau /path/to/file

or

mplayer -vo xvba -vc ffh264xvba /path/to/file

or

mplayer -vo xvba /path/to/file or mplayer -vc ffh264xvba /path/to/file

but sound launches for all four commands and I get this error message:

MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing /home/esla/Desktop/HNGV2.mkv.
[mkv] Track ID 1: video (V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC), -vid 0
[mkv] Track ID 2: audio (A_DTS) “english”, -aid 0, -alang eng
[mkv] Will play video track 1.
Detected file format: Matroska
VIDEO: [avc1] 1920×800 24bpp 23.976 fps 0.0 kbps ( 0.0 kbyte/s)
Load subtitles in /home/esla/Desktop/
Failed to open VDPAU backend libvdpau_nvidia.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[vdpau] Error when calling vdp_device_create_x11: 1
[ass] auto-open
==========================================================================
Forced video codec: ffh264xvba
Cannot find codec matching selected -vo and video format 0x31637661.
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg/libavcodec audio decoders
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 1536.0 kbit/100.00% (ratio: 192000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [ffdca] afm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg DTS)
==========================================================================
[AO OSS] audio_setup: Can’t open audio device /dev/dsp: No such file or directory
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Video: no video
Starting playback…
A: 4.4 (04.3) of 6109.7 ( 1:41:49.7) 1.4%

in this message we can see that mplayer still tries to open vdpau even though i used another command (surely one that doesn’t exist but watev’ ) and that the video tries to launch foreshadowing bad framerate by declaring a failing 23.976 fps but does not show the kilobytes per second and then crashes, it pursues it task by launching the sound which it does successfully, 1.4% is where i stopped the task.

but the framerate was horrible, i though I was missing your vdpau, wicth I’m not but wiki it and you find that vdpau is a nvidia hd driver, this computer has an ATI card, not my personal preference but it’s a friend’s computer I’m trying to get this to work on, so changing the graphics is out of the question. The ATI equivalent for NVIDIA vdpau seems to be xvba, i installed the driver using synaptic, but replacing the word vdpau by xvba in your comand line shows the same result as the one i posted above, so does putting only one of the two amends to how to play the file.

I also installed medibuntu repositories followed by ubuntu restricted extras pack (for witch i had to uninstall vlc and it’s lib codec) then, libdvdcss2 (via terminal, synaptic, softcent, and synaptic respectively)

I found an article that seems to be the way to configure your ATI graphics for HD usage:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-desktop-74/amd-hd-series-graphics-guide-optimizing-video-playback-for-mythtv-mplayer-and-others-786335/

I’m going to follow it’s instuctions and then repost.

MPlayer2 UNKNOWN (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
mplayer: could not connect to socket
mplayer: No such file or directory
Failed to open LIRC support. You will not be able to use your remote control.

Playing /home/esla/Desktop/The.
File not found: ‘/home/esla/Desktop/The’
Failed to open /home/esla/Desktop/The.

Playing Hangover.
File not found: ‘Hangover’
Failed to open Hangover.

Playing 2.mkv.
File not found: ‘2.mkv’
Failed to open 2.mkv.

Exiting… (End of file)