SMPlayer, as always, comes in different release versions. Users can download a portable version, a web installer, or an offline installer. Existing users can simply copy or install the new version over the old one.

One of the big new changes in SMPlayer 0.7.0 is support for MPlayer 2, a fork of the original MPlayer project, which adds features to the video player that the original MPlayer does not support. This includes precise seeking, seeking while the video has been paused or ordered chapters support in mkv videos.

To integrate MPlayer 2 the following needs to be done. You first need to download the MPlayer 2 binary from the website linked above. Open the options menu in SMPlayer afterwards and select Preferences from the menu. You can alternatively use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-p to open the preferences directly.

Switch to the General > General tab if it is not displayed. Change the MPlayer executable path to the MPlayer 2 path to use it instead of the original MPlayer.

Another change is support for playing YouTube videos right from within the media player. Just paste in a YouTube video via the Open > Url menu to watch it right within the desktop video player. You can alternatively drag and drop video links right from a browser into the SMPlayer window to play the videos in there.

The developers have added a new favorites menu accessible right from the new heart icon placed in the player’s main toolbar. This opens a menu with direct access to favorite videos on the computer, and options to add or edit videos in the new favorites window.

The changes introduced in this version of SMPlayer all make sense. Especially support for MPLayer 2 can improve the video experience significantly.

MPlayer WW is another variant for Windows users. It features a slick interface, great customizability and good resource management. It reduces the resource usage in Windows for a 700 Megabyte video file by about 15 Megabytes of computer memory when compared to SMPlayer, and even more if the video file size increases.

A configuration window is displayed on the first start of the program. It displays hundreds of available settings, which may confuse inexperienced users. Lots of settings can be changed here, from keyboard shortcuts to the video and audio decoder order, subtitle handling, file associations, and direct audio and video settings.

mplayer

The preferences can be accessed in the player as well, which means it is possible make use of the default settings in the beginning, before making gradual changes to the player whenever necessary.

mplayer

The MPlayer WW interface is minimalistic by design, and exactly what most users need. The default skin displays controls at the bottom in a small bar. The controls include play, stop, and seek options, access to the playlist, a see bar, volume, equalizer and fullscreen. Additional skins are available that can be activated directly, including Windows Aero skins.

Additional options are available via hotkeys and the mouse. The mouse is configured to trigger various options, including the ability to change the volume, to go forward and backward, stop the video, or enable full screen mode.

MPlayer WW is a solid media player with lots of features and options. It offers everything users expect from media players, and then some to please professional users as well.

* Multithreaded H264、MPEG-2 Decoder (ffmpeg-mt).
* Support DirectShow Demuxer and Decoder.
* Fully compatible with CoreAVC Decoder.
* PMP Demuxer for PSP media file.
* Better compatibility with TS, TP, HDTV.
* Skin and Windows Native Theme Support.
* Support Winamp’s DSP plugins.
* Native Playlist and Video Equalizer Window.
* MEditor2 (MPlayer Preference) Graphic Setting Program.
* Direct3D and OpenGL Video Output.
* Auto Play Next file and so on (thinks for KK’s patch)

Windows users who want to try the media player can download it from the developer website over at mplayer-ww.com.

The first question that comes to mind is this: Why is there a font cache at all? It’s video, not some textual content that is displayed in the program window. The font cache apparently is used for subtitles and On Screen Displays (OSD). Both VLC Media Player and MPlayer (and variants like SMPlayer) make use of a font cache to display subtitles and OSD.

Both media players seem to create the font cache regardless of the fact if it is needed or not to view the video.

building font cache

In theory, the font cache is build once, and stored in a directory on the hard drive for faster access to the required data.

Font Cache Location

VLC stores the font cache in the AppData folder in Windows 7, more precisely under username > AppData > Roaming > vlc. The file uses a long cryptic file name and makes use of the extension cache-2. Windows XP users will find the font cache in Documents and Settings > username > Application Data > vlc.

font cache directory

The most common MPlayer font cache locations are username > fontconfig > cache for Windows 7 (and Vista probably as well), and Documents and Settings > XPMUser > fontconfig > cache for Windows XP.

The cache file is as cryptic as the VLC one, seems to use the same generator, but uses the cache-3 extension instead.

Troubleshooting Building Font Cache Issues

The most common problem related to the font cache is the repeated generation of the font cache, followed by crashes and hangs during the building of the cache.

VLC offers no option to disable font caching, at least not directly in the Windows client. Users who are experiencing issues with it should check the VLC directory under user to see if the font cache file is generated. If it is not it could be a rights issue or permission problem.

Deleting the contents of the cache directory to force the player to build the font cache again could resolve the issues as well. Several users have reported problems building the font cache if the AppData folder is stored on a network drive.

It is a bit different if MPlayer is concerned. SMPlayer for instance can pass parameters to MPlayer, and one of those parameters can be used to prevent the building of the font cache.

To test that press CTRL-P in SMPlayer to open the options. Switch to Advanced > Options for MPlayer and enter -nofontconfig in the Options field.

no font config

Some users may also need to change the subtitle display format. This is done by clicking on Subtitles > Font and colors. A click on Enable normal subtitles should resolve the issue.

A last resort is the use of a process monitor to see if a specific font cannot be loaded by the video player. Process Monitor is a free Microsoft tool that displays those information. The easiest way to use the program is to create a new filter for vlc.exe (or the name of the video player that is used on the PC) to see only the activity of that player.

Using portable media players

Another possibility is to make use of portable media players. This can be especially helpful in cases where the font cache file is not generated, or generated whenever a video is played.

The portable version of VLC is available here, a portable version of SMPlayer can be downloaded from the official project website.

Portable VLC will still generate a font cache, but it will be stored in the portable directory, not in AppData or another Windows system directory. This alone could resolve several of the issues users have with the building of the font cache.

The portable version of SMPlayer makes use of the -nofontconfig parameter so that the font cache is not build during usage.

Share your tips: Have you noticed the building font cache message in your video player? Let us know in the comments.

SMPlayer is an mplayer frontend that belongs to the second category of media players. The software comes with all codecs needed to play all popular and lots of lesser popular video and media files on the system.

Today version 0.6.9 of SMPlayer has been released by the developers. The release fixes a freezing problems under Linux, a bug that prevented the player from finding subtitles, the possibility to display the video resolution and frames per second in the status bar.

What can SMPlayer do besides play almost any video out of the box?

• Can play videos, DVDs, and VCDs
• Configurable subtitles. You can choose font and size, and even colors for the subtitles
• Audio track switching. You can choose the audio track you want to listen. Works with avi and mkv. And of course with DVDs.
• Seeking by mouse wheel. You can use your mouse wheel to go forward or backward in the video.
• Video equalizer, allows you to adjust the brightness, contrast, hue, saturation and gamma of the video image.
• Multiple speed playback. You can play at 2X, 4X… and even in slow motion.
• Filters. Several filters are available: deinterlace, postprocessing, denoise… and even a karaoke filter (voice removal).
• Audio and subtitles delay adjustment. Allows you to sync audio and subtitles.
• Advanced options, such as selecting a demuxer or video & audio codecs.
• Playlist. Allows you to enqueue several files to be played one after each other. Autorepeat and shuffle supported too.
• Preferences dialog. You can easily configure every option of SMPlayer by using a nice preferences dialog.
  Possibility to search automatically for subtitles in opensubtitles.org.
• Translations: currently SMPlayer is translated into more than 20 languages, including Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese….
• It’s multiplatform. Binaries available for Windows and Linux.

SMPlayer 0.6.9 can be downloaded from the project’s homepage for Windows and Linux.

Since it is based on MPlayer it can play pretty much any video format right out of the box without having to search for missing codecs on the Internet. It can play DVDs, supports various subtitle formats, provides multiple audio track access, playlist support and a lot more.

One of the more recent versions added support to search for subtitles in the Open Subtitles databases. Sure, there are other video players that offer a similar all-inclusive out of the box experience and it probably boils down to which was first installed on the computer system for those users.

Anyone else who is still using a video player that needs external codecs to play video formats should take a look at the latest version of SMPlayer as it makes that a thing of the past.

Most important changes in SMPlayer 0.6.7:

• Added experimental (and uncomplete) support for dvd menus. Requires a mplayer build compiled with dvdnav support. Please read dvdmenus.txt to know how to enable it.
• Now loading an external subtitle file doesn’t require to restart the mplayer process (except for idx/sub subtitles).
• (Playlist) When a file is added to the playlist, if it was already in the list, it’s moved to the end of the list.
• Options for mplayer: finally spaces in arguments between quotes are handled properly.
• Added two options (in the audio and subtitle menus) to allow the user to enter the audio and subtitle delay (in milliseconds).
• (ASS subtitles) The outline and shadow options now accept values with decimals.
• (ASS subtitles) Possibility to change the color of the border and shadow.
• Now the default value for the “correct pts” option is auto.
• (Windows) Now the screensaver is allowed to turn on if the file is paused or it’s an audio file.
• (Windows) The direct3d video output is now the default for Windows Vista.

Microsoft has changed their stance on providing additional codecs with an operating system in Windows 7. Windows 7 will ship with a few codecs preinstalled (Divx, H.264) which is great but not enough to play all multimedia files.

The Windows 7 Codec package has been created by the same author who publishes the Windows Vista Codec Package. It will automatically install a number of missing codecs in Windows 7 and uninstall several other codec packages that might be installed on the computer system to avoid compatibility issues.

There are obviously two alternatives to installing a codec package on a computer system. The first is to install codecs only if they are needed to playback a multimedia file. The other to install a software player that comes with binary codecs that can play virtually any file without having to be installed on the computer system at all. The SMPlayer comes to mind that can play virtually any multimedia files out of the box.

I had to install 7-zip to unpack the package, not sure if there are other packers that support the 7z format by now. That is a bit unfortunate and it would have been nice if another format would be available as well.

SMPlayer is ready to play any video file that you throw at it after uninstallation. Just start the player and load the video that you want. The portable and installation version of SMPlayer use virtually the same amount of computer memory when running.

SMPlayer Portable comes with several themes that can be applied. The differences between the portable and installation version are the following:

• The ini will be written in the SMPlayer folder
• Nothing is written to the Windows Registry
• Default Home folders are not created. Screenshot folder for instance would have to be created separately in the root directory and a path would have to be edited in SMplayer
• No File associations

The main use would be to put the portable version on a stick and use it on computers that do not allow installations and only come with Media Player installed.

I recently discovered that a so called additional codecs package for SMPlayer, and MPlayer obviously, is available and can be installed to support additional video and audio formats. These codecs will also be installed as so called binary codecs straight into the SMPlayer folder.

The major problem that I ran into was that I was not able to find a list of the codecs that are installed this way. The only possibility that I can think of right now is to search for the filenames in a search engine which will reveal their purpose. The codec package adds 63 new files to the codec directory. I probably would only install it if I would encounter a video that I could not play properly though.

SMPlayer is available for Windows and Linux in various languages including English and Spanish for instance. The download has a size of about 11 Megabytes which is not that much if you consider that you do not have to install additional codecs. All the usual features are supported as well including subtitle support, DVD / SVCD / VCD playback, audio track switching, video equalizers, fast forward, slow motion and lots of preferences.

It is for instance possible to use video playback without hardware acceleration to capture screenshots from the movie.

Read More:

SMPlayer Homepage

It is also possible to play DVDs and Internet streams with the video player that is available for Windows and Linux. Several ways of displaying subtitles and various subtitle formats are supported including srt, sub and DVD subtitles. I personally think that SMPlayer is a great alternative to the VLC player.

This could be useful for everyone who is having troubles with VLC for example. The only real difference that I was able to spot was that the SMPlayer is Open Source and that it remembers where the playback of the video stopped. Make sure you download the full SMPlayer plus the update.