Getting Arabic subtitles to work on Ubuntu(MPlayer)

This guide will help you get Arabic subtitles working with MPlayer and the current latest Ubuntu release(Gutsy Gibbon)

1. Install SMPlayer
   First install the recently released GUI for MPlayer, SMPlayer.

Code:

sudo apt-get install smplayer

2. Optionally remove the default GUI and its skins
   This step is optional, you can skip it

Code:

sudo apt-get install mplayer-nogui

sudo apt-get remove mplayer-skins

3. Install libfribidi v0.20-1
   To display Arabic properly you need to obtain a recent version of libfribidi, I have only tried 0.20-1 and it worked(and I guess later versions will work too), I'm not sure if anything earlier will work, the currently available version in Ubuntu repositories(0.10.7-4build1) doesn't work.
   
   You can obtain 0.20-1 from Ubuntu forums and install it by running the file then clicking the Install Package button.
4. Setup SMPlayer to display subtitles in Arabic
   Run SMPlayer from the Main Menu

Code:

Applications > Sound & Video > SMPlayer

Then press Ctrl+P to open preferences.
In Preferences go to Subtitles page then choose a font that has Arabic support, select System font and press Choose button.

For compatibility I recommend Sans serif since it's available on all systems, but for better looking Arabic I recommend Arial.

In Default subtitle encoding section, you have to try 3 options, it depends on the subtitles you have, try the following in order

1. Enter CP1256(not in the list)
2. Select UTF-8 from the list
3. Select Unicode from the list

Try each of them then close the Preferences dialog then check whether Arabic subtitles are displayed properly or not
To make subtitles larger increase the Scale option in the Size section on the same page

5. Now you can enjoy watching any videos/movies with Arabic subtitles.