mplayer -lavdopts threads=n moviefile

Instead of constantly typing that command, you can also add it to the invaluable mplayer config file located at ~/.mplayer/config:

[default]
lavdopts=threads=2

Obviously I’m not one of the happy few that have a graphics card with support for hardware accelerated video playback (vdpau for nvidia). When playing a 1080p high definition movie without vdpau and with the singlethreaded mplayer, the movie becomes pretty much unwatcheable: video stuttering, audio running behind on video or vica versa, fastforwarding crashes mplayer, … It’s odd that in a world full of multicore processors, a multithreaded video player isn’t a commodity and probably never will be. Nonetheless I believe there is actually a market for this. After all, not everyone has a fairly recent graphics card (less than 3 yeard old).

With the multithreaded mplayer all of that changes. I am in the possession of an AMD Athlon64 X2 3800+, the first dual core cpu series of AMD, and playback of a 1080p movie with a video bitrate of 15.5Mbps is smooth. It doesn’t even use the 2 cores to their full potential. It appears I only needed a little more but o so necessary cpu power to play it. Until I buy a recent graphics card, hopefully in the very near future, this will certainly do the trick.

Hower, AUR has its limitations. For one, its sole function is to host pkgbuilds. So when you want to install something from AUR, you still have to go through the compile & build process. Depending on the software, this can be very cumbersome and time consuming. Instead you more likely want to install a package that has already been build, much like the regular Arch Linux repositories such as [core], [extra] and [community]. This is where the Unofficial User Repositories come in play. A user can easily set up its own repository with the repo-add script that comes with the package manager pacman. Generally, the user still needs to be very cautious with installing unofficial packages because of the potential dangers it may pose such as malicious software. It is recommended to verify the source of these packages or inspect the packages before installing.

Personally, there a few programs I frequently update myself, i.e. more frequently than then the official repositories, because of new functionality or bug fixes. Therefore I decided to share my efforts and make them available in my own unnoficial user repository. The repository can be accessed at http://www.nepherte.be/repo. To use my repository, add the following lines in /etc/pacman.conf:

[nepherte]
Server = http://www.nepherte.be/repo

The packages are for 64bit systems only as I don’t have a 32bit version of Arch installed. All packages are built in a clean chroot environment to avoid library linking problems. If you are interested in the pkgbuilds, you can find them  on my svn repo. To access my svn repo, you will have to authenticate yourself with username guest and password guest.

The packages I currently maintain are:

• x264
• ffmpeg
• mplayer
• netembryo

The first three are rebuilt on a monthly base at the very least and whenever there is audio involved, pulseaudio is supported. More packages will be added in the future.