2faber: First ensure that both mplayer and abc.avi files are in the current directory, run 'ls' to get the list of files there. Also it might be a problem with missing executable attribute (depending on the way you extracted mplayer binary, if you precisely followed the instructions, you should not have any problems). It mplayer binary does not have executable attribute, it can be fixed by running 'chmod +x mplayer'.

Well, I guess packaging mplayer into a .deb packet is unavoidable. But as a gentoo linux user, I will have to finally learn this alien system