mpv (media player)

mpv is free and open-source media player software based on MPlayer, mplayer2 and FFmpeg. It runs on several operating systems, including the Unix-like operating systems (Linux, BSD-based, macOS) and the non-Unix Microsoft Windows, along with having an Android port called mpv-android.[6] It is cross-platform, running on ARM, PowerPC, x86/IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS architecture.[4]

mpv
mpv 0.32 on Linux, playing Spring (2019 film)
Original author(s)MPlayer and mplayer2 developers
Developer(s)Community
Initial releaseAugust 7, 2013 (2013-08-07)[1]
Stable release0.33.0 (November 22, 2020 (2020-11-22)[2]) [±]
Repository
Written inC, Objective-C, Lua[3]
Engine
  • FFmpeg
Operating systemBSD-based, Linux, macOS, Windows
PlatformARM, PowerPC, x86 / IA-32, x86-64, and MIPS architecture[4]
SizeSource code: 2.9 MB (tar.gz)
TypeMedia player
LicenseGPLv2+, parts under LGPLv2.1+, some optional parts under GPLv3[5]
Websitempv.io

History

mpv was forked in 2012 from mplayer2, which was forked in 2010 from MPlayer.[7] The motive for the fork was to encourage developer activity by removing unmaintainable code and dropping support for very old systems. As a result, the project had a large influx of contributions.[8]

Since June 2015, the project's source code is in the process of being relicensed from GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2) or later to GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPLv2.1) or later to allow using mpv as a library in more applications.[9]

Changes from MPlayer

mpv had several notable changes[10] since it was forked from MPlayer, the most user-visible being the addition of an on-screen-controller (OSC) minimal GUI integrated with mpv to offer basic mouse-controllability. This was intended to make interaction easier for new users and to enable precise and direct seeking.

  • Improved client API
    Beyond working as a stand-alone media player, mpv is designed to be used directly by other applications through a library interface called libmpv. This required making all mpv code thread safe. An example of an application which uses libmpv is Plex.[15] This form of player control, along with a JSON IPC mechanism, replaces MPlayer's "slave mode".
  • Encoding subsystem
    mpv includes a new video encoding mode that can be used to save files being played under different formats. This allows mpv to work as a transcoder, supporting many video formats.[16] This feature serves as a direct replacement for the MEncoder component of MPlayer, which was a separate program rather than being built into the player.
  • Lua scripting
    mpv's behavior and functions are customizable via use of small programs written in the Lua scripting language, which can be used for tasks like cropping video, providing a graphical user interface (GUI) or automatically adjusting the display's refresh rate.[17]

removed functions
  • all support for VCD discs

Interface and graphical front-ends

Like the original MPlayer, mpv is still primarily a command-line application although it has a more advanced user interface than MPlayer that can use not only the keyboard but also the mouse for mpv’s on screen controller (OSC). However, this OSC is still not a full-featured GUI, and there are a number of front-ends available, which use GUI widgets for Qt, GTK, or some other widget toolkit to give mpv a more complete graphical interface.

The following are all open source front-ends of mpv (based on "libmpv" or the command-line version of mpv) which try to provide more features and more user-friendly interface than mpv, and/or better integration with various operating systems or desktop environments.[18]

  • Baka MPlayer - media player on Windows, Linux, and macOS although macOS version requires the user to compile from source, with Qt5 widgets, written in C++. Its main goal is uncluttered, simple design. Its development stalled in January 2017 in favor of another mpv frontend by the same developers, Mochi Player, which is not quite finished yet.
  • Deepin Movie - for Linux - Written by and default video player for the Chinese Deepin distro and desktop environment with Qt5 widgets, written in C++.
GNOME MPV (Celluloid) 0.18 with its preferences
  • IINA - macOS 10.10+ media player with native macOS Cocoa interface, written in Swift. It is a full-featured native macOS graphical interface for mpv that makes use of new features in the most recent versions of macOS. mpv config file and script system are also integrated.
  • Media Player Classic Qute Theater (mpc-qt) - Linux and Windows media player with Qt5 widgets, written in C++. Its goal is to reproduce and ultimately improve upon the functionality of Media Player Classic Home Cinema (mpc-hc), a Windows-only program, as a cross-platform mpv-based multimedia player that also works on Unix-like operating systems like Linux.
  • mpv for Android - Android media player with native Android interface, written in Kotlin. Its goal is to be a fully functional, full-featured port of mpv (which primarily targets desktop operating systems) to the mobile operating system Android.
  • OvoPlayer - Linux and Windows music player that supports many backends, based on LCL widgetsets, written in Pascal. Its goal is to be a flexible audio player that supports as many audio engine backends like mpv as possible.
  • Sugoi Player - media player on Windows (that might work on Linux and macOS but those are untested) forked from Baka MPlayer, with Qt5 widgets, written in C++. It aims to improve upon and continue development of an mpv frontend based on Baka MPlayer, since Baka MPlayer’s development stalled in January 2017.
  • xt7-player-mpv - Linux media player with Qt5 or Qt4 widgets, written in Gambas 3 (a dialect of BASIC). Its goal is usability, and a variety of extra features like YouTube and SHOUTcast integration, media tagging, library and playlist management, as well as adding more features beyond that.

See also

References
  1. wm4 (2013-08-07). "Release 0.1". MPV.
  2. "Release v0.33.0". mpv-player/mpv (source code repository). GitHub.
  3. "mpv-player", Analysis Summary, Open Hub, archived from the original on 2017-08-02, retrieved 2016-08-11
  4. Debian - Details of package mpv
  5. "Copyright". mpv. Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  6. "mpv-android - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-03-28.
  7. "MPV, A New Fork Of MPlayer/MPlayer2". Phoronix. Retrieved 2015-01-28.
  8. "Contributors to mpv-player/mpv". Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  9. wm4. "LGPL relicensing (#2033)". mpv-player/mpv (source code repository). GitHub. Archived from the original on 2017-09-14. Retrieved 2017-09-14. ... GPL-incompatible dependencies such as OpenSSL are a big issue for library users, even if the library user is ok with the GPL. ...
  10. "list of changes from MPlayer". Retrieved 2018-04-05.
  11. "youtube-dl: Supported sites". Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  12. Sneddon, Joey (2017-09-13). "MPV 0.27 Released with Minor Fixes, New OpenGL Options". OMG! Ubuntu!. Ohso Ltd. Retrieved 2017-02-13.
  13. Larabel, Michael (2017-12-25). "MPV Player 0.28 Adds Initial Vulkan Support". Phoronix. Phoronix Media. Archived from the original on 2017-12-26. Retrieved 2017-12-26.
  14. "mpv manual (opengl video output driver section)". Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  15. "Introducing the Plex Media Player". Retrieved 2015-03-21.
  16. "mpv manual (encoding section)". Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  17. "User Scripts - mpv-player/mpv Wiki". Retrieved 2016-03-21.
  18. "Applications using mpv". Retrieved 2020-12-28.
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