Compiling with full features requires development files for several external libraries. Below is a list of some important requirements. For more information see the output of './configure --help' for a list of options, or look at the list of enabled and disabled features printed after running './configure'. If you think you have support for some feature installed but configure fails to detect it, the file config.log may contain information about the reasons for the failure. Libraries specific to particular video output methods (you'll want at least one of VDPAU, GL or Xv): - libvdpau (for VDPAU output, best choice for NVIDIA cards) - libGL (OpenGL output) - libXv (XVideo output) general: - libasound (ALSA audio output) - various general X development libraries - libass (subtitle/OSD rendering) - Libav libraries (libavutil libavcodec libavformat libswscale) Most of the above libraries are available in suitable versions on normal Linux distributions. However FFmpeg is an exception (distro versions may be too old to work at all or work well). For that reason you may want to use the separately available build wrapper that first compiles FFmpeg libraries and libass, and then compiles the player statically linked against those.