Some time back, I was trying to find out all the codecs that are installed for my mplayer. These could be the ones that came with mplayer or the ones that I downloaded from the site and installed in the various directories.

I could not find a direct way to do this, until I found this:

mplayer -ac help -vc help

And here is the output of the command:

MPlayer SVN-r33996-4.6.1 (C) 2000-2011 MPlayer Team
Available audio codecs:
ac:     afm:      status:   info:  [lib/dll]
wma9dmo     dmo       working   Windows Media Audio 9 DMO  [wma9dmod.dll]
wmadmo      dmo       working   Windows Media Audio DMO  [wmadmod.dll]
wma9spdmo   dmo       working   Windows Media Audio 9 Speech DMO  [wmspdmod.dll]
wma9spdshow dshow     working   Windows Media Audio 9 Speech DShow  [wmavds32.ax
]
ffqdm2      ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg QDM2 audio  [qdm2]
qdmc        qtaudio   working   QuickTime QDMC/QDM2 audio  [QuickTime.qts]
ffqclp      ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg QCLP audio  [qcelp]
qclp        qtaudio   working   QuickTime QCLP audio  [QuickTime.qts]
qtmace3     qtaudio   working   QuickTime MACE3 audio  [QuickTime.qts]
qtmace6     qtaudio   working   QuickTime MACE6 audio  [QuickTime.qts]
zygoaudio   qtaudio   working   Zygo audio  [ZyGoAudioS.qtx]
ffra144     ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg RealAudio 1.0  [real_144]
.....
Available video codecs:   
vc:     vfm:      status:   info:  [lib/dll]
ffanm       ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Deluxe Paint Animation  [anm]
ffbinkvideo ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Bink Video  [binkvideo]
ffcdgraphics ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg CD-Graphics  [cdgraphics]
ffmvi1      ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Motion Pixels  [motionpixels]
ffmdec      ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Sony PlayStation MDEC (Motion DECoder)  [mdec]
ffsiff      ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Beam Software SIFF  [vb][/vb]
ffmimic     ffmpeg    working   FFmpeg Mimic video  [mimic]
.......

And if you wanted to see only the audio codecs:

mplayer -ac help

or just the video codecs:

mplayer -vc help

Related articles

• FFMPEG solutions – Convert with best queries (armatearjun.wordpress.com)
• How to convert .MOV files to .MP4 in OS X (simplehelp.net)
• HowTo: Rotate a video using ffmpeg (phayz.wordpress.com)

Related Articles:

• 2010/09/02   Speed up mkat with no md5sum for the files.
• 2010/06/06   Play media files in fedora.
• 2010/05/19   Auto Adjust Photo color and contrast in Windows, Mac and Linux.
• 2010/04/28   Panini – pano viewer.. new way to look at your photo.
• 2009/10/03   Play video in Fedora.