mpv is

free and open-source Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a Software license, license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term ...

media player software based on

MPlayer MPlayer is a free and open-source media player software application. It is available for Linux, OS X and Microsoft Windows. Versions for OS/2, Syllable Desktop, Syllable, AmigaOS, MorphOS and AROS Research Operating System are also available. A ...

, mplayer2 and

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing vide ...

. It runs on several

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s, including

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X, *nix or *NIX) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Uni ...

operating systems (

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, BSD-based,

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

) and

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, along with having an Android

port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...

called mpv-android. It is

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

, running on ARM, MIPS,

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RISC-V RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five") is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on established reduced instruction set computer (RISC) principles. The project commenced in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley. It transfer ...

, s390x,

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

IA-32 IA-32 (short for "Intel Architecture, 32-bit", commonly called ''i386'') is the 32-bit version of the x86 instruction set architecture, designed by Intel and first implemented in the i386, 80386 microprocessor in 1985. IA-32 is the first incarn ...

x86-64 x86-64 (also known as x64, x86_64, AMD64, and Intel 64) is a 64-bit extension of the x86 instruction set architecture, instruction set. It was announced in 1999 and first available in the AMD Opteron family in 2003. It introduces two new ope ...

, and some other by 3rd party.Debian - Details of package mpv
/ref>

History

mpv was forked by Vincent Lang, also known as wm4, in 2012 from mplayer2, which was forked in 2010 from

. 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. Since June 2015, the project's

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

is being relicensed from

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

version 2 or later (GPLv2+) to

GNU Lesser General Public License The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...

version 2.1 or later (LGPLv2.1+) to allow using mpv as a

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

in more applications.

Changes from MPlayer

mpv has had several notable changes since it was forked from MPlayer; the most obvious at first glance is the addition of a minimal on-screen controller (OSC) to offer basic mouse interactions. This was intended to make interaction easier for new users and to enable precise and direct seeking. *Video websites: By using yt-dlp, mpv natively supports playback of

high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ( ...

(HD) content and audio on YouTube and over 1000 other supported sites. This allows mpv to replace site-specific video players based on

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

. *High quality video output: mpv includes a custom video output driver based on

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

as well as the Vulkan API, which supports over 100 options for controlling playback quality, including the use of advanced upscaling filters, color management, and customizable pixel shaders. *Audio scaling algorithm: The player is equipped with a scaletempo2 parameter for speed changing at constant pitch, for which it uses the ''Waveform Similarity Overlap-and-add (WSOLA)'' algorithm, citing more smoothness than the original ''scaletempo'' used in the original ''mplayer'', and ''rubberband''. *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. Plex is an example of an application that makes use of this functionality. As a result, all mpv code is required to be

thread safe In multi-threaded computer programming, a function is thread-safe when it can be invoked or accessed concurrently by multiple threads without causing unexpected behavior, race conditions, or data corruption. As in the multi-threaded context where ...

. 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. 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 A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

(GUI) or automatically adjusting the display's refresh rate.

Removed functions

* all support for

VCD Video CD (abbreviated as VCD, and also known as Compact Disc Digital Video), (not to be confused with CD Video which is a type of LaserDisc, Laserdisc) is a home video format and the first format for distributing films on standard optical di ...

discs

Interface and graphical front-ends

Like the original

, mpv is still primarily a command-line application. However, it also has a basic on-screen controller (OSC) to permit limited mouse control; this OSC is still not a full-featured GUI, and there are a number of graphical front-ends available, which use GUI widgets for Qt,

GTK GTK (formerly GIMP ToolKit and GTK+) is a free software cross-platform widget toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs). It is licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, allowing both Free software, free and ...

, or other toolkits to provide a more complete UI. The following are some

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

front-ends of mpv (based on "libmpv" or the command-line version of mpv) which try to provide more features and a more

user-friendly Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a softw ...

interface than mpv, and/or better integration with various

s or

desktop environment In computing, a desktop environment (DE) is an implementation of the desktop metaphor made of a bundle of programs running on top of a computer operating system that share a common graphical user interface (GUI), sometimes described as a graphi ...

s. * Baka MPlayer - media player on

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

, and

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 yet complete. * C-Play - is a video/media player developed for cluster environments where you need multiple computers and/or displays to run your video/image content on. The displays could be flat or curved, and the video content 180 fulldome / fisheye, 360 equirectangular or equiangular cubemap or regular flat content, as well as stereoscopic (Side-by-side or Top-Bottom). Installers and testing is primarily performed for

, but the code is cross-platform, written in C++ with Qt6/Qt5 QML UI. * Deepin Movie - for

- Written by and default video player for the Chinese Deepin distro and desktop environment. * Celluloid (formerly GNOME MPV) - for

- based on

. Its goal is to be a simple GTK-based graphical interface for mpv that meets the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines. * Haruna Media Player - for Linux, Windows - based on Qt/ QML. A

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

media player project with YouTube support and customizable shortcuts. * IINA -

10.10+ media player with native macOS Cocoa interface. 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. * ImPlay -

Cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

media player with an interface built with the imgui interface library, it includes a context menu and command palette to interact with the player. * Kawaii-Player -

and

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

- media player and media server with Qt5 widgets. Its goal is to not just be a multimedia player but also an audio/video library manager and portable media server and torrent streaming server/player. * Media Player Classic Qute Theater (mpc-qt) -

and

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

operating systems like Linux. * mpv.net -

media player with native Windows interface. Its goal is to provide the standard mpv OSC interface on Windows along with a customizable Windows context menu, C# scripting, and a Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) for addons. * OvoPlayer -

and

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. * SMPlayer - full-featured, cross-platform and skinable with advanced features and

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

and

Chromecast Chromecast is a discontinued line of digital media players developed by Google. The devices, designed as small dongles, can play Internet-streaming media, streamed audio-visual content on a high-definition television or home audio system. The u ...

support that can use MPlayer or mpv. Available for

and

, and written in C++ with Qt4/Qt5. * Sugoi Player - media player on

(that might work on

and

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 -

media player with Qt5 or Qt4 widgets, written in Gambas 3 (a dialect of

BASIC Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * Basic (film), ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film ...

). Its goal is usability, and a variety of extra features like

and SHOUTcast integration, media tagging, library and playlist management, as well as adding more features beyond that.

References

External links