Playing Videos on AmigaOS4.1 using MPlayer-GUI by default

One of my pet annoyances is a legacy AmigaOS3.x thing that all video files are still expected to be opened by Multiview by default under AmigaOS4.1. Multiview doesn't play most of these types of videos at all, or not well...there is a way to fix it to use MPlayer GUI all the time, and that is what I want to show you how to do!

I am aware you can do other functionality in DOpus 5.9 or DOpus 4 to change default viewers (it has it's own method), but this article focuses on how to change it for AmigaOS4.1.

So, to start with, in the System Drive, go to the Prefs drawer:

The drawer we need is Env-Archive, which is not visible by default, so right click in the Prefs drawer and Show All Files. Then you should see the Env-Archive drawer as below:
 

Inside the Env-Archive drawer we then need to find the drawer called Sys, as below:

Inside the Sys folder is a lot of Default icons (amongst other things) for various types of files and devices under AmigaOS4.1:

In our case, we want to view the Information (right Click > Information) for the def_video icon.

In the icon information window that comes up, switch to the Icon Tab as below:

Here you can see that Multiview is set as the default.

I really like using MPlayer GUI (by Deniil 715) to control MPlayer on my X1000. You can download it from os4depot here if you don't already have it installed. I am also assuming you have Live For It MPlayer installed already too, which you can also download from os4depot here.

What I want is for all videos to open up and play automatically in MPlayer-GUI.

To do this, to start with we need to change the Default Tool field for this Def_video icon to use MPlayer-GUI, as shown below:

 

You should also repeat these steps for def_asf, def_avi and def_wmv icons in the Sys drawer too.

Update 16/1/2015: MPlayer-GUI v1.53 is available on os4depot.net now.

Next I run the MPlayer-GUI program. I switch to the GUI tab, and select the options to:

* Iconify MPlayer-GUI when playing (not ticked in screenshot sorry!)
* Auto play on drag n drop, shift click and CLI start
* Do not start a new MPlayer-GUI when starting with arguments.

In the Video tab, I also have Composition turned on for Video output since I am running the Radeon HD v2.4 driver that supports it (available for purchase from AMIStore).

I also turn on the -cache option in the Extras tab, and add extra stuff into the Additional parameters field for optimisation as shown below:

For those unfamiliar with the keyboard options to use full screen, fast forward/rewind videos in MPlayer, the Keys tab in MPlayer-GUI shows these for quick easy reference.

So now I click on Save prefs and Quit MPlayer-GUI.

To test these changes, I pick a MP4 video in my Work:Videos drawer, and double click it:

It then launches MPlayer-GUI, which runs the video to MPlayer and minimises MPlayer-GUI to the Workbench:

I then tested an AVI video, which tests the changes made to the def_avi icon default tool, and it works perfectly as well:

I hope this tip is useful to people who want to be able to double click videos to view them in MPlayer-GUI (Mplayer) using AmigaOS4.1!