Since I didn’t have any luck playing videos on the RPi using mplayer I found omxplayer after some search. It has the ability to use the RPi’s GPU thus taking some load of the CPU.


UPDATE 2013-04-01: omxplayer is now included in the Raspbian (Debian Wheezy) repositories and can be simply installed by one line.

sudo apt-get install omxplayer

Check another article on how to install Raspbian.


OMXPlayer binary (.deb) downloads can be found here: http://omxplayer.sconde.net/

Install dependencies

apt-get install libpcre3 fonts-freefont-ttf fbset libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libva-dev libva-x11-1 libva1

Install omxplayer

wget http://omxplayer.sconde.net/builds/omxplayer_0.2.4~git20121205~ec7ac68f_armhf.deb
dpkg -i omxplayer_0.2.4~git20121205~ec7ac68f_armhf.deb

Play video

omxplayer -o hdmi video.mp4

Note: If there is no sound when playing through the HDMI interface make sure your /boot/config.txt file has the following line (and it’s not commented out).

hdmi_drive = 2

OMXPlayer Key bindings

Key Action
1 Increase Speed
2 Decrease Speed
j Previous Audio stream
k Next Audio stream
i Previous Chapter
o Next Chapter
n Previous Subtitle stream
m Next Subtitle stream
s Toggle subtitles
q Exit OMXPlayer
Space or p Pause/Resume
Decrease Volume
+ Increase Volume
Left Seek -30
Right Seek +30
Down Seek -600
Up Seek +600

Leo Gaggl

ict business owner specialising in mobile learning systems. interests: sustainability, internet of things, ict for development, open innovation, agriculture

This Post Has One Comment

  1. Marv

    Your installation process worked great for me. I could immediately play .mp4 and .mov videos just fine. Now I’ll have to get a license to play MPEG-2 and VC-1 formats. Thanks for posting your procedure!

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