MPV(1) multimedia MPV(1)
NAME
mpv - a media player
SYNOPSIS
mpv [options] [file|URL|PLAYLIST|-]
mpv [options] files
DESCRIPTION
mpv is a media player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide
variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle
types. Special input URL types are available to read input from a vari-
ety of sources other than disk files. Depending on platform, a variety
of different video and audio output methods are supported.
Usage examples to get you started quickly can be found at the end of
this man page.
INTERACTIVE CONTROL
mpv has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows
you to control mpv using keyboard, mouse, or remote control (there is no
LIRC support - configure remotes as input devices instead).
See the --input- options for ways to customize it.
The following listings are not necessarily complete. See etc/input.conf
in the mpv source files for a list of default bindings. User input.conf
files and Lua scripts can define additional key bindings.
See COMMAND INTERFACE and Key names sections for more details on config-
uring keybindings.
See also --input-test for interactive binding details by key, and the
stats built-in script for key bindings list (including print to termi-
nal). By default, the ? key toggles the display of this list.
Keyboard Control
LEFT and RIGHT
Seek backward/forward 5 seconds. Shift+arrow does a 1 second ex-
act seek (see --hr-seek).
UP and DOWN
Seek forward/backward 1 minute. Shift+arrow does a 5 second exact
seek (see --hr-seek).
Ctrl+LEFT and Ctrl+RIGHT
Seek to the previous/next subtitle. Subject to some restrictions
and might not always work; see sub-seek command.
Ctrl+Shift+LEFT and Ctrl+Shift+RIGHT
Adjust subtitle delay so that the previous or next subtitle is
displayed now. This is especially useful to sync subtitles to au-
dio.
[ and ]
Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.
{ and }
Halve/double current playback speed.
BACKSPACE
Reset playback speed to normal.
Shift+BACKSPACE
Undo the last seek. This works only if the playlist entry was not
changed. Hitting it a second time will go back to the original
position. See revert-seek command for details.
Shift+Ctrl+BACKSPACE
Mark the current position. This will then be used by Shift+BACK-
SPACE as revert position (once you seek back, the marker will be
reset). You can use this to seek around in the file and then re-
turn to the exact position where you left off.
< and >
Go backward/forward in the playlist.
ENTER Go forward in the playlist.
Shift+HOME and Shift+END
Go to the first/last playlist entry.
p and SPACE
Pause (pressing again unpauses).
. Step forward. Pressing once will pause, every consecutive press
will play one frame and then go into pause mode again.
, Step backward. Pressing once will pause, every consecutive press
will play one frame in reverse and then go into pause mode again.
q Stop playing and quit.
Q Like q, but store the current playback position. Playing the same
file later will resume at the old playback position if possible.
See RESUMING PLAYBACK.
/ and *
Decrease/increase volume.
KP_DIVIDE and KP_MULTIPLY
Decrease/increase volume.
9 and 0
Decrease/increase volume.
m Mute sound.
_ Cycle through the available video tracks.
# Cycle through the available audio tracks.
E Cycle through the available Editions.
f Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).
ESC Exit fullscreen mode.
T Toggle stay-on-top (see also --ontop).
w and W
Decrease/increase pan-and-scan range. The e key does the same as
W currently, but use is discouraged. See --panscan for more in-
formation.
o and P
Show progression bar, elapsed time and total duration on the OSD.
O Toggle OSD states between normal and playback time/duration.
v Toggle subtitle visibility.
j and J
Cycle through the available subtitles.
z and Z
Adjust subtitle delay by -/+ 0.1 seconds. The x key does the same
as Z currently, but use is discouraged.
l Set/clear A-B loop points. See ab-loop command for details.
L Toggle infinite looping.
Ctrl++ and Ctrl+-
Adjust audio delay (A/V sync) by +/- 0.1 seconds.
Ctrl+KP_ADD and Ctrl+KP_SUBTRACT
Adjust audio delay (A/V sync) by +/- 0.1 seconds.
G and F
Adjust subtitle font size by +/- 10%.
u Switch between applying only --sub-ass-* overrides (default) to
SSA/ASS subtitles, and overriding them almost completely with the
normal subtitle style. See --sub-ass-override for more info.
V Cycle through which video data gets used for ASS rendering. See
--sub-ass-use-video-data for more info.
r and R
Move subtitles up/down. The t key does the same as R currently,
but use is discouraged.
s Take a screenshot.
S Take a screenshot, without subtitles. (Whether this works depends
on VO driver support.)
Ctrl+s Take a screenshot, as the window shows it (with subtitles, OSD,
and scaled video).
HOME Seek to the beginning of the file.
PGUP and PGDWN
Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter. In most
cases, "previous" will actually go to the beginning of the cur-
rent chapter; see --chapter-seek-threshold.
Shift+PGUP and Shift+PGDWN
Seek backward or forward by 10 minutes. (This used to be mapped
to PGUP/PGDWN without Shift.)
b Activate/deactivate debanding.
d Cycle the deinterlacing filter.
A Cycle aspect ratio override.
Ctrl+h Toggle hardware video decoding on/off.
Alt+LEFT, Alt+RIGHT, Alt+UP, Alt+DOWN
Move the video rectangle (panning).
Alt++ and Alt+-
Change video zoom.
Alt+KP_ADD and Alt+KP_SUBTRACT
Change video zoom.
Alt+BACKSPACE
Reset the pan/zoom settings.
F8 Show the playlist and the current position in it.
F9 Show the list of audio and subtitle streams.
Ctrl+v Append the file or URL in the clipboard to the playlist. If noth-
ing is currently playing, it is played immediately. Only works on
platforms that support the clipboard property.
i and I
Show/toggle an overlay displaying statistics about the currently
playing file such as codec, framerate, number of dropped frames
and so on. See STATS for more information.
? Toggle an overlay displaying the active key bindings. See STATS
for more information.
DEL Cycle OSC visibility between never / auto (mouse-move) / always
` Show the console. (ESC closes it again. See CONSOLE.)
(The following keys are valid only when using a video output that sup-
ports the corresponding adjustment.)
1 and 2
Adjust contrast.
3 and 4
Adjust brightness.
5 and 6
Adjust gamma.
7 and 8
Adjust saturation.
Alt+0 (and Command+0 on macOS)
Resize video window to half its original size.
Alt+1 (and Command+1 on macOS)
Resize video window to its original size.
Alt+2 (and Command+2 on macOS)
Resize video window to double its original size.
Command + f (macOS only)
Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).
(The following keybindings open a menu in the console that lets you
choose from a list of items by typing part of the desired item, by
clicking the desired item, or by navigating them with keybindings: Down
and Ctrl+n go down, Up and Ctrl+p go up, Page down and Ctrl+f scroll
down one page, and Page up and Ctrl+b scroll up one page.)
In track menus, selecting the current tracks disables it.
g-p Select a playlist entry.
g-s Select a subtitle track.
g-S Select a secondary subtitle track.
g-a Select an audio track.
g-v Select a video track.
g-t Select a track of any type.
g-c Select a chapter.
g-e Select an MKV edition or DVD/Blu-ray title.
g-l Select a subtitle line to seek to. This currently requires ffmpeg
in PATH, or in the same folder as mpv on Windows.
g-d Select an audio device.
g-h Select a file from the watch history. Requires --save-watch-his-
tory.
g-w Select a file from watch later config files (see RESUMING PLAY-
BACK) to resume playing. Requires --write-file-
name-in-watch-later-config.
g-b Select a defined input binding.
g-r Show the values of all properties.
g-m, MENU, Ctrl+p
Show a menu with miscellaneous entries.
See SELECT for more information.
(The following keys are valid if you have a keyboard with multimedia
keys.)
PAUSE Pause.
STOP Stop playing and quit.
PREVIOUS and NEXT
Seek backward/forward 1 minute.
ZOOMIN and ZOOMOUT
Change video zoom.
If you miss some older key bindings, look at etc/restore-old-bind-
ings.conf in the mpv git repository.
Mouse Control
Ctrl+left click
Pan while holding the button, keeping the clicked part of the
video under the cursor.
Left double click
Toggle fullscreen on/off.
Right click
Toggle pause on/off.
Forward/Back button
Skip to next/previous entry in playlist.
Wheel up/down
Decrease/increase volume.
Wheel left/right
Seek forward/backward 10 seconds.
Ctrl+Wheel up/down
Change video zoom keeping the part of the video hovered by the
cursor under it.
Context Menu
WARNING:
This feature is experimental. It may not work with all VOs. A libass
based fallback may be implemented in the future.
Context Menu is a menu that pops up on the video window on user interac-
tion (mouse right click, etc.).
To use this feature, you need to fill the menu-data property with menu
definition data, and add a keybinding to run the context-menu command,
which can be done with a user script.
USAGE
Command line arguments starting with - are interpreted as options,
everything else as filenames or URLs. All options except flag options
(or choice options which include yes) require a parameter in the form
--option=value.
One exception is the lone - (without anything else), which means media
data will be read from stdin. Also, -- (without anything else) will make
the player interpret all following arguments as filenames, even if they
start with -. (To play a file named -, you need to use ./-.)
Every flag option has a no-flag counterpart, e.g. the opposite of the
--fs option is --no-fs. --fs=yes is same as --fs, --fs=no is the same as
--no-fs.
If an option is marked as (XXX only), it will only work in combination
with the XXX option or if XXX is compiled in.
Legacy option syntax
The --option=value syntax is not strictly enforced, and the alternative
legacy syntax -option value and -option=value will also work. This is
mostly for compatibility with MPlayer. Using these should be avoided.
Their semantics can change any time in the future.
For example, the alternative syntax will consider an argument following
the option a filename. mpv -fs no will attempt to play a file named no,
because --fs is a flag option that requires no parameter. If an option
changes and its parameter becomes optional, then a command line using
the alternative syntax will break.
Until mpv 0.31.0, there was no difference whether an option started with
-- or a single -. Newer mpv releases strictly expect that you pass the
option value after a =. For example, before mpv --log-file f.txt would
write a log to f.txt, but now this command line fails, as --log-file ex-
pects an option value, and f.txt is simply considered a normal file to
be played (as in mpv f.txt).
The future plan is that -option value will not work anymore, and options
with a single - behave the same as -- options.
Escaping spaces and other special characters
Keep in mind that the shell will partially parse and mangle the argu-
ments you pass to mpv. For example, you might need to quote or escape
options and filenames:
mpv "filename with spaces.mkv" --title="window title"
It gets more complicated if the suboption parser is involved. The subop-
tion parser puts several options into a single string, and passes them
to a component at once, instead of using multiple options on the level
of the command line.
The suboption parser can quote strings with " and [...]. Additionally,
there is a special form of quoting with %n% described below.
For example, assume the hypothetical foo filter can take multiple op-
tions:
mpv test.mkv --vf=foo:option1=value1:option2:option3=value3,bar
This passes option1 and option3 to the foo filter, with option2 as flag
(implicitly option2=yes), and adds a bar filter after that. If an option
contains spaces or characters like , or :, you need to quote them:
mpv '--vf=foo:option1="option value with spaces",bar'
Shells may actually strip some quotes from the string passed to the com-
mandline, so the example quotes the string twice, ensuring that mpv re-
ceives the " quotes.
The [...] form of quotes wraps everything between [ and ]. It's useful
with shells that don't interpret these characters in the middle of an
argument (like bash). These quotes are balanced (since mpv 0.9.0): the [
and ] nest, and the quote terminates on the last ] that has no matching
[ within the string. (For example, [a[b]c] results in a[b]c.)
The fixed-length quoting syntax is intended for use with external
scripts and programs.
It is started with % and has the following format:
%n%string_of_length_n
Examples
mpv '--vf=foo:option1=%11%quoted text' test.avi
Or in a script:
mpv --vf=foo:option1=%`expr length "$NAME"`%"$NAME" test.avi
Note: where applicable with JSON-IPC, %n% is the length in UTF-8 bytes,
after decoding the JSON data.
Suboptions passed to the client API are also subject to escaping. Using
mpv_set_option_string() is exactly like passing --name=data to the com-
mand line (but without shell processing of the string). Some options
support passing values in a more structured way instead of flat strings,
and can avoid the suboption parsing mess. For example, --vf supports
MPV_FORMAT_NODE, which lets you pass suboptions as a nested data struc-
ture of maps and arrays.
Paths
Some care must be taken when passing arbitrary paths and filenames to
mpv. For example, paths starting with - will be interpreted as options.
Likewise, if a path contains the sequence ://, the string before that
might be interpreted as protocol prefix, even though :// can be part of
a legal UNIX path. To avoid problems with arbitrary paths, you should be
sure that absolute paths passed to mpv start with /, and prefix relative
paths with ./.
Using the file:// pseudo-protocol is discouraged, because it involves
strange URL unescaping rules.
The name - itself is interpreted as stdin, and will cause mpv to disable
console controls. (Which makes it suitable for playing data piped to
stdin.)
The special argument -- can be used to stop mpv from interpreting the
following arguments as options.
For paths passed to mpv suboptions (options that have multiple : and
,-separated values), the situation is further complicated by the need to
escape special characters. To work around this, the path can instead be
wrapped in the "fixed-length" syntax, e.g. %n%string_of_length_n (see
above).
When using the libmpv API, you should strictly avoid using mpv_com-
mand_string for invoking the loadfile command, and instead prefer e.g.
mpv_command to avoid the need for filename escaping.
The same applies when you're using the scripting API, where you should
avoid using mp.command, and instead prefer using "separate parameter"
APIs, such as mp.commandv and mp.command_native.
Some mpv options will interpret special meanings for paths starting with
~, making it easy to dynamically find special directories, such as re-
ferring to the current user's home directory or the mpv configuration
directory.
When using the special ~ prefix, there must always be a trailing / after
the special path prefix. In other words, ~ doesn't work, but ~/ will
work.
The following special paths/keywords are currently recognized:
WARNING:
Beware that if --no-config is used, all of the "config direc-
tory"-based paths (~~/, ~~home/ and ~~global/) will be empty strings.
This means that ~~home/ would expand to an empty string, and that
sub-paths such as ~~home/foo/bar" would expand to a relative path
(foo/bar), which may not be what you expected.
Furthermore, any commands that search in config directories will fail
to find anything, since there won't be any directories to search in.
Be sure that your scripts can handle these "no config" scenarios.
┌──────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Name │ Meaning │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~/ │ The current user's home │
│ │ directory (equivalent to │
│ │ ~/ and $HOME/ in terminal │
│ │ environments). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~/ │ If the sub-path exists in │
│ │ any of mpv's config direc- │
│ │ tories, then the path of │
│ │ the existing file/dir is │
│ │ returned. Otherwise this │
│ │ is equivalent to ~~home/. │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~home/ │ mpv's config dir (for ex- │
│ │ ample ~/.config/mpv/). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~global/ │ The global config path │
│ │ (such as /etc/mpv), if │
│ │ available (not on win32). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~osxbundle/ │ The macOS bundle resource │
│ │ path (macOS only). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~desktop/ │ The path to the desktop │
│ │ (win32, macOS). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~exe_dir/ │ The path to the directory │
│ │ containing mpv.exe (for │
│ │ config file purposes, │
│ │ $MPV_HOME will override │
│ │ this) (win32 only). │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~cache/ │ The path to application │
│ │ cache data │
│ │ (~/.cache/mpv/). On some │
│ │ platforms, this will be │
│ │ the same as ~~home/. │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~state/ │ The path to application │
│ │ state data (~/.lo- │
│ │ cal/state/mpv/). On some │
│ │ platforms, this will be │
│ │ the same as ~~home/. │
├──────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ~~old_home/ │ Do not use. │
└──────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
Per-File Options
When playing multiple files, any option given on the command line usu-
ally affects all files. Example:
mpv --a file1.mkv --b file2.mkv --c
┌───────────┬────────────────┐
│ File │ Active options │
├───────────┼────────────────┤
│ file1.mkv │ --a --b --c │
├───────────┼────────────────┤
│ file2.mkv │ --a --b --c │
└───────────┴────────────────┘
(This is different from MPlayer and mplayer2.)
Also, if any option is changed at runtime (via input commands), they are
not reset when a new file is played.
Sometimes, it is useful to change options per-file. This can be achieved
by adding the special per-file markers --{ and --}. (Note that you must
escape these on some shells.) Example:
mpv --a file1.mkv --b --\{ --c file2.mkv --d file3.mkv --e --\} file4.mkv --f
┌───────────┬─────────────────────────┐
│ File │ Active options │
├───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ file1.mkv │ --a --b --f │
├───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ file2.mkv │ --a --b --f --c --d --e │
├───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ file3.mkv │ --a --b --f --c --d --e │
├───────────┼─────────────────────────┤
│ file4.mkv │ --a --b --f │
└───────────┴─────────────────────────┘
Additionally, any file-local option changed at runtime is reset when the
current file stops playing. If option --c is changed during playback of
file2.mkv, it is reset when advancing to file3.mkv. This only affects
file-local options. The option --a is never reset here.
List Options
Some options which store lists of option values can have action suf-
fixes. For example, the --display-tags option takes a ,-separated list
of tags, but the option also allows you to append a single tag with
--display-tags-append, and the tag name can for example contain a lit-
eral , without the need for escaping.
String list and path list options
String lists are separated by ,. The strings are not parsed or inter-
preted by the option system itself. However, most path or file list op-
tions use : (Unix) or ; (Windows) as separator, instead of ,.
They support the following operations:
┌─────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Suffix │ Meaning │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -set │ Set a list of items (using │
│ │ the list separator, es- │
│ │ caped with backslash) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -append │ Append single item (does │
│ │ not interpret escapes) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -add │ Append 1 or more items │
│ │ (same syntax as -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -pre │ Prepend 1 or more items │
│ │ (same syntax as -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -clr │ Clear the option (remove │
│ │ all items) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -del │ Delete 1 or more items if │
│ │ present (same syntax as │
│ │ -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -remove │ Delete item if present │
│ │ (does not interpret es- │
│ │ capes) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -toggle │ Append an item, or remove │
│ │ it if it already exists │
│ │ (no escapes) │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────┘
-append is meant as a simple way to append a single item without having
to escape the argument (you may still need to escape on the shell
level).
Key/value list options
A key/value list is a list of key/value string pairs. In programming
languages, this type of data structure is often called a map or a dic-
tionary. The order normally does not matter, although in some cases the
order might matter.
They support the following operations:
┌─────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Suffix │ Meaning │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -set │ Set a list of items (using │
│ │ , as separator) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -append │ Append a single item (es- │
│ │ capes for the key, no es- │
│ │ capes for the value) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -add │ Append 1 or more items │
│ │ (same syntax as -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -clr │ Clear the option (remove │
│ │ all items) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -del │ Delete 1 or more keys if │
│ │ present (same syntax as │
│ │ -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -remove │ Delete item by key if │
│ │ present (does not inter- │
│ │ pret escapes) │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────┘
Keys are unique within the list. If an already present key is set, the
existing key is removed before the new value is appended.
If you want to pass a value without interpreting it for escapes or ,, it
is recommended to use the -append variant. When using libmpv, prefer us-
ing MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP; when using a scripting backend or the JSON IPC,
use an appropriate structured data type.
Prior to mpv 0.33, : was also recognized as separator by -set.
Object settings list options
This is a very complex option type for some options, such as --af and
--vf. They often require complicated escaping. See VIDEO FILTERS for
details.
They support the following operations:
┌─────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ Suffix │ Meaning │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -set │ Set a list of items (using │
│ │ , as separator) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -append │ Append single item │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -add │ Append 1 or more items │
│ │ (same syntax as -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -pre │ Prepend 1 or more items │
│ │ (same syntax as -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -clr │ Clear the option (remove │
│ │ all items) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -remove │ Delete 1 or items if │
│ │ present (same syntax as │
│ │ -set) │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -toggle │ Append an item, or remove │
│ │ it if it already exists │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ -help │ Pseudo operation that │
│ │ prints a help text to the │
│ │ terminal │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────┘
General
Without suffix, the operation used is normally -set.
Some operations like -add and -pre specify multiple items, but be aware
that you may need to escape the arguments. -append accepts a single, un-
escaped item only (so the , separator will not be interpreted and is
passed on as part of the value).
Some options (like --sub-file, --audio-file, --glsl-shader) are aliases
for the proper option with -append action. For example, --sub-file is an
alias for --sub-files-append.
Options of this type can be changed at runtime using the change-list
command, which takes the suffix (without the -) as separate operation
parameter.
An object settings list can hold up to 100 elements.
CONFIGURATION FILES
Location and Syntax
You can put all of the options in configuration files which will be read
every time mpv is run. The system-wide configuration file 'mpv.conf' is
in your configuration directory (e.g. /etc/mpv or /usr/local/etc/mpv),
the user-specific one is ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf. For details and plat-
form specifics (in particular Windows paths) see the FILES section.
User-specific options override system-wide options and options given on
the command line override both. The syntax of the configuration files is
option=value. Everything after a # is considered a comment. Options that
work without values can be enabled by setting them to yes and disabled
by setting them to no, and if the value is omitted, yes is implied. Even
suboptions can be specified in this way.
Example configuration file
# Don't allow new windows to be larger than the screen.
autofit-larger=100%x100%
# Enable hardware decoding if available, =yes is implied.
hwdec
# Spaces don't have to be escaped.
osd-playing-msg=File: ${filename}
Escaping special characters
This is done like with command line options. A config entry can be
quoted with ", ', as well as with the fixed-length syntax (%n%) men-
tioned before. This is like passing the exact contents of the quoted
string as a command line option. C-style escapes are currently _not_ in-
terpreted on this level, although some options do this manually (this is
a mess and should probably be changed at some point). The shell is not
involved here, so option values only need to be quoted to escape # any-
where in the value, ", ' or % at the beginning of the value, and leading
and trailing whitespace.
Putting Command Line Options into the Configuration File
Almost all command line options can be put into the configuration file.
Here is a small guide:
┌───────────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ Option │ Configuration file entry │
├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ --flag │ flag │
├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ -opt val │ opt=val │
├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ --opt=val │ opt=val │
├───────────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ -opt "has spaces" │ opt=has spaces │
└───────────────────┴──────────────────────────┘
File-specific Configuration Files
You can also write file-specific configuration files. If you wish to
have a configuration file for a file called 'video.avi', create a file
named 'video.avi.conf' with the file-specific options in it and put it
in ~/.config/mpv/. You can also put the configuration file in the same
directory as the file to be played. Both require you to set the
--use-filedir-conf option (either on the command line or in your global
config file). If a file-specific configuration file is found in the same
directory, no file-specific configuration is loaded from ~/.config/mpv.
In addition, the --use-filedir-conf option enables directory-specific
configuration files. For this, mpv first tries to load a mpv.conf from
the same directory as the file played and then tries to load any
file-specific configuration.
Profiles
To ease working with different configurations, profiles can be defined
in the configuration files. A profile starts with its name in square
brackets, e.g. [my-profile]. All following options will be part of the
profile. A description (shown by --profile=help) can be defined with the
profile-desc option. To end the profile, start another one or use the
profile name default to continue with normal options.
You can list profiles with --profile=help, and show the contents of a
profile with --show-profile=<name> (replace <name> with the profile
name). You can apply profiles on start with the --profile=<name> option,
or at runtime with the apply-profile <name> command.
Example mpv config file with profiles
# normal top-level option
fullscreen=yes
# a profile that can be enabled with --profile=big-cache
[big-cache]
cache=yes
demuxer-max-bytes=512MiB
demuxer-readahead-secs=20
[network]
profile-desc="profile for content over network"
force-window=immediate
# you can also include other profiles
profile=big-cache
[reduce-judder]
video-sync=display-resample
interpolation=yes
# using a profile again extends it
[network]
demuxer-max-back-bytes=512MiB
# reference a builtin profile
profile=fast
Runtime profiles
Profiles can be set at runtime with apply-profile command. Since this
operation is "destructive" (every item in a profile is simply set as an
option, overwriting the previous value), you can't just enable and dis-
able profiles again.
As a partial remedy, there is a way to make profiles save old option
values before overwriting them with the profile values, and then restor-
ing the old values at a later point using apply-profile <profile-name>
restore.
This can be enabled with the profile-restore option, which takes one of
the following options:
default
Does nothing, and nothing can be restored (default).
copy When applying a profile, copy the old values of all profile
options to a backup before setting them from the profile.
These options are reset to their old values using the backup
when restoring.
Every profile has its own list of backed up values. If the
backup already exists (e.g. if apply-profile name was called
more than once in a row), the existing backup is no changed.
The restore operation will remove the backup.
It's important to know that restoring does not "undo" setting
an option, but simply copies the old option value. Consider
for example vf-add, appends an entry to vf. This mechanism
will simply copy the entire vf list, and does _not_ execute
the inverse of vf-add (that would be vf-remove) on restoring.
Note that if a profile contains recursive profiles (via the
profile option), the options in these recursive profiles are
treated as if they were part of this profile. The referenced
profile's backup list is not used when creating or using the
backup. Restoring a profile does not restore referenced pro-
files, only the options of referenced profiles (as if they
were part of the main profile).
copy-equal
Similar to copy, but restore an option only if it has the same
value as the value effectively set by the profile. This tries
to deal with the situation when the user does not want the op-
tion to be reset after interactively changing it.
Example
[something]
profile-restore=copy-equal
vf-add=rotate=PI/2 # rotate by 90 degrees
Then running these commands will result in behavior as commented:
set vf vflip
apply-profile something
vf add hflip
apply-profile something
# vf == vflip,rotate=PI/2,hflip,rotate=PI/2
apply-profile something restore
# vf == vflip
Conditional auto profiles
Profiles which have the profile-cond option set are applied automati-
cally if the associated condition matches (unless auto profiles are dis-
abled). The option takes a string, which is interpreted as Lua expres-
sion. If the expression evaluates as truthy, the profile is applied. If
the expression errors or evaluates as falsy, the profile is not applied.
This Lua code execution is not sandboxed.
Any variables in condition expressions can reference properties. If an
identifier is not already defined by Lua or mpv, it is interpreted as
property. For example, pause would return the current pause status. You
cannot reference properties with - this way since that would denote a
subtraction, but if the variable name contains any _ characters, they
are turned into -. For example, playback_time would return the property
playback-time.
A more robust way to access properties is using p.property_name or
get("property-name", default_value). The automatic variable to property
magic will break if a new identifier with the same name is introduced
(for example, if a function named pause() were added, pause would return
a function value instead of the value of the pause property).
Note that if a property is not available, it will return nil, which can
cause errors if used in expressions. These are logged in verbose mode,
and the expression is considered to be false.
Whenever a property referenced by a profile condition changes, the con-
dition is re-evaluated. If the return value of the condition changes
from falsy or error to truthy, the profile is applied.
This mechanism tries to "unapply" profiles once the condition changes
from truthy to falsy or error. If you want to use this, you need to set
profile-restore for the profile. Another possibility it to create an-
other profile with an inverse condition to undo the other profile.
Recursive profiles can be used. But it is discouraged to reference other
conditional profiles in a conditional profile, since this can lead to
tricky and unintuitive behavior.
Example
Make only HD video look funny:
[something]
profile-desc=HD video sucks
profile-cond=width >= 1280
hue=-50
Make only videos containing "youtube" or "youtu.be" in their path
brighter:
[youtube]
profile-cond=path:find('youtu%.?be')
gamma=20
If you want the profile to be reverted if the condition goes to false
again, you can set profile-restore:
[something]
profile-desc=Mess up video when entering fullscreen
profile-cond=fullscreen
profile-restore=copy
vf-add=rotate=PI/2 # rotate by 90 degrees
This appends the rotate filter to the video filter chain when enter-
ing fullscreen. When leaving fullscreen, the vf option is set to the
value it had before entering fullscreen. Note that this would also
remove any other filters that were added during fullscreen mode by
the user. Avoiding this is trickier, and could for example be solved
by adding a second profile with an inverse condition and operation:
[something]
profile-cond=fullscreen
vf-add=@rot:rotate=PI/2
[something-inv]
profile-cond=not fullscreen
vf-remove=@rot
WARNING:
Every time an involved property changes, the condition is evaluated
again. If your condition uses p.playback_time for example, the con-
dition is re-evaluated approximately on every video frame. This is
probably slow.
This feature is managed by an internal Lua script. Conditions are exe-
cuted as Lua code within this script. Its environment contains at least
the following things:
(function environment table)
Every Lua function has an environment table. This is used for
identifier access. There is no named Lua symbol for it; it is im-
plicit.
The environment does "magic" accesses to mpv properties. If an
identifier is not already defined in _G, it retrieves the mpv
property of the same name. Any occurrences of _ in the name are
replaced with - before reading the property. The returned value
is as retrieved by mp.get_property_native(name). Internally, a
cache of property values, updated by observing the property is
used instead, so properties that are not observable will be stuck
at the initial value forever.
If you want to access properties, that actually contain _ in the
name, use get() (which does not perform transliteration).
Internally, the environment table has a __index meta method set,
which performs the access logic.
p A "magic" table similar to the environment table. Unlike the lat-
ter, this does not prefer accessing variables defined in _G - it
always accesses properties.
get(name [, def])
Read a property and return its value. If the property value is
nil (e.g. if the property does not exist), def is returned.
This is superficially similar to mp.get_property_native(name). An
important difference is that this accesses the property cache,
and enables the change detection logic (which is essential to the
dynamic runtime behavior of auto profiles). Also, it does not re-
turn an error value as second return value.
The "magic" tables mentioned above use this function as backend.
It does not perform the _ transliteration.
In addition, the same environment as in a blank mpv Lua script is
present. For example, math is defined and gives access to the Lua stan-
dard math library.
WARNING:
This feature is subject to change indefinitely. You might be forced
to adjust your profiles on mpv updates.
Legacy auto profiles
Some profiles are loaded automatically using a legacy mechanism. The
following example demonstrates this:
Auto profile loading
[extension.mkv]
profile-desc="profile for .mkv files"
vf=vflip
The profile name follows the schema type.name, where type can be proto-
col for the input/output protocol in use (see --list-protocols), and ex-
tension for the extension of the path of the currently played file (not
the file format).
This feature is very limited, and is considered soft-deprecated. Use
conditional auto profiles.
USING MPV FROM OTHER PROGRAMS OR SCRIPTS
There are three choices for using mpv from other programs or scripts:
1. Calling it as UNIX process. If you do this, do not parse terminal
output. The terminal output is intended for humans, and may
change any time. In addition, terminal behavior itself may change
any time. Compatibility cannot be guaranteed.
Your code should work even if you pass --terminal=no. Do not at-
tempt to simulate user input by sending terminal control codes to
mpv's stdin. If you need interactive control, using --in-
put-ipc-server or --input-ipc-client is recommended. This gives
you access to the JSON IPC over unix domain sockets (or named
pipes on Windows).
Depending on what you do, passing --no-config or --config-dir may
be a good idea to avoid conflicts with the normal mpv user config-
uration intended for CLI playback.
Using --input-ipc-server or --input-ipc-client is also suitable
for purposes like remote control (however, the IPC protocol itself
is not "secure" and not intended to be so).
2. Using libmpv. This is generally recommended when mpv is used as
playback backend for a completely different application. The pro-
vided C API is very close to CLI mechanisms and the scripting API.
Note that even though libmpv has different defaults, it can be
configured to work exactly like the CLI player (except command
line parsing is unavailable).
See EMBEDDING INTO OTHER PROGRAMS (LIBMPV).
3. As a user script (LUA SCRIPTING, JAVASCRIPT, C PLUGINS). This is
recommended when the goal is to "enhance" the CLI player. Scripts
get access to the entire client API of mpv.
This is the standard way to create third-party extensions for the
player.
All these access the client API, which is the sum of the various mecha-
nisms provided by the player core, as documented here: OPTIONS, List of
Input Commands, Properties, List of events (also see C API), Hooks.
TAKING SCREENSHOTS
Screenshots of the currently played file can be taken using the 'screen-
shot' input mode command, which is by default bound to the s key. Files
named mpv-shotNNNN.jpg will be saved in the working directory, using the
first available number - no files will be overwritten. In pseudo-GUI
mode, the screenshot will be saved somewhere else. See PSEUDO GUI MODE.
A screenshot will usually contain the unscaled video contents at the end
of the video filter chain and subtitles. By default, S takes screenshots
without subtitles, while s includes subtitles.
Unlike with MPlayer, the screenshot video filter is not required. This
filter was never required in mpv, and has been removed.
TERMINAL STATUS LINE
During playback, mpv shows the playback status on the terminal. It looks
like something like this:
AV: 00:03:12 / 00:24:25 (13%) A-V: -0.000
The status line can be overridden with the --term-status-msg option.
The following is a list of things that can show up in the status line.
Input properties, that can be used to get the same information manually,
are also listed.
• AV: or V: (video only) or A: (audio only)
• The current time position in HH:MM:SS format (playback-time property)
• The total file duration (absent if unknown) (duration property)
• Playback speed, e.g. x2.0. Only visible if the speed is not normal.
This is the user-requested speed, and not the actual speed (usually
they should be the same, unless playback is too slow). (speed prop-
erty.)
• Playback percentage, e.g. (13%). How much of the file has been played.
Normally calculated out of playback position and duration, but can
fallback to other methods (like byte position) if these are not avail-
able. (percent-pos property.)
• The audio/video sync as A-V: 0.000. This is the difference between
audio and video time. Normally it should be 0 or close to 0. If it's
growing, it might indicate a playback problem. (avsync property.)
• Total A/V sync change, e.g. ct: -0.417. Normally invisible. Can show
up if there is audio "missing", or not enough frames can be dropped.
Usually this will indicate a problem. (total-avsync-change property.)
• Encoding state in {...}, only shown in encoding mode.
• Display sync state. If display sync is active (display-sync-active
property), this shows DS: 2.500/13, where the first number is average
number of vsyncs per video frame (e.g. 2.5 when playing 24Hz videos on
60Hz screens), which might jitter if the ratio doesn't round off, or
there are mistimed frames (vsync-ratio), and the second number of es-
timated number of vsyncs which took too long (vo-delayed-frame-count
property). The latter is a heuristic, as it's generally not possible
to determine this with certainty.
• Dropped frames, e.g. Dropped: 4. Shows up only if the count is not 0.
Can grow if the video framerate is higher than that of the display, or
if video rendering is too slow. May also be incremented on "hiccups"
and when the video frame couldn't be displayed on time.
(frame-drop-count property.) If the decoder drops frames, the number
of decoder-dropped frames is appended to the display as well, e.g.:
Dropped: 4/34. This happens only if decoder frame dropping is enabled
with the --framedrop options. (decoder-frame-drop-count property.)
• Cache state, e.g. Cache: 2s/134KB. Visible if the stream cache is en-
abled. The first value shows the amount of video buffered in the de-
muxer in seconds, the second value shows the estimated size of the
buffered amount in kilobytes. (demuxer-cache-duration and de-
muxer-cache-state properties.)
LOW LATENCY PLAYBACK
mpv is optimized for normal video playback, meaning it actually tries to
buffer as much data as it seems to make sense. This will increase la-
tency. Reducing latency is possible only by specifically disabling fea-
tures which increase latency.
The builtin low-latency profile tries to apply some of the options which
can reduce latency. You can use --profile=low-latency to apply all of
them. You can list the contents with --show-profile=low-latency (some of
the options are quite obscure, and may change every mpv release).
Be aware that some of the options can reduce playback quality.
Most latency is actually caused by inconvenient timing behavior. You can
disable this with --untimed, but it will likely break, unless the stream
has no audio, and the input feeds data to the player at a constant rate.
Another common problem is with MJPEG streams. These do not signal the
correct framerate. Using --untimed or --correct-pts=no --con-
tainer-fps-override=60 might help.
For livestreams, data can build up due to pausing the stream, due to
slightly lower playback rate, or "buffering" pauses. If the demuxer
cache is enabled, these can be skipped manually. The experimental
drop-buffers command can be used to discard any buffered data, though
it's very disruptive.
In some cases, manually tuning TCP buffer sizes and such can help to re-
duce latency.
Additional options that can be tried:
• --opengl-glfinish=yes, can reduce buffering in the graphics driver
• --opengl-swapinterval=0, same
• --vo=xv, same
• without audio --framedrop=no --speed=1.01 may help for live sources
(results can be mixed)
RESUMING PLAYBACK
mpv is capable of storing the playback position of the currently playing
file and resume from there the next time that file is played. This is
done with the commands quit-watch-later (bound to Shift+Q by default)
and write-watch-later-config, and with the --save-position-on-quit op-
tion.
The difference between always quitting with a key bound to
quit-watch-later and using --save-position-on-quit is that the latter
will save the playback position even when mpv is closed with a method
other than a keybinding, such as clicking the close button in the window
title bar. However if mpv is terminated abruptly and doesn't have the
time to save, then the position will not be saved. For example, if you
shutdown your system without closing mpv beforehand.
mpv also stores options other than the playback position when they have
been modified after playback began, for example the volume and selected
audio/subtitles, and restores their values the next time the file is
played. Which options are saved can be configured with the
--watch-later-options option.
When playing multiple playlist entries, mpv checks if one them has a re-
sume config file associated, and if it finds one it restarts playback
from it. For example, if you use quit-watch-later on the 5th episode of
a show, and later play all the episodes, mpv will automatically resume
playback from episode 5.
More options to configure this functionality are listed in Watch Later.
PROTOCOLS
mpv://...
mpv protocol. This is used for starting mpv from URL handler. The
protocol is stripped and the rest is passed to the player as a normal
open argument. Only safe network protocols are allowed to be opened
this way.
http://..., https://, ...
Many network protocols are supported, but the protocol prefix must
always be specified. mpv will never attempt to guess whether a file-
name is actually a network address. A protocol prefix is always re-
quired.
Note that not all prefixes are documented here. Undocumented prefixes
are either aliases to documented protocols, or are just redirections
to protocols implemented and documented in FFmpeg.
data: is supported, but needs to be in the format data://. This is
done to avoid ambiguity with filenames. You can also prefix it with
lavf:// or ffmpeg://.
ytdl://...
By default, the youtube-dl hook script only looks at http(s) URLs.
Prefixing an URL with ytdl:// forces it to be always processed by the
script. This can also be used to invoke special youtube-dl function-
ality like playing a video by ID or invoking search.
Keep in mind that you can't pass youtube-dl command line options by
this, and you have to use --ytdl-raw-options instead.
-
Play data from stdin.
smb://PATH
Play a path from Samba share. (Requires FFmpeg support.)
bd://[title][/device] --bluray-device=PATH
Play a Blu-ray disc. Since libbluray 1.0.1, you can read from ISO
files by passing them to --bluray-device.
title can be: longest or first (selects the default playlist);
mpls/<number> (selects <number>.mpls playlist); <number> (select
playlist with the same index). mpv will list the available playlists
on loading.
bluray:// is an alias.
dvd://[title][/device] --dvd-device=PATH
Play a DVD. DVD menus are not supported. If no title is given, the
longest title is auto-selected. Without --dvd-device, it will proba-
bly try to open an actual optical drive, if available and implemented
for the OS.
dvdnav:// is an old alias for dvd:// and does exactly the same thing.
dvb://[cardnumber@]channel --dvbin-...
Digital TV via DVB. (Linux only.)
mf://[@listfile|filemask|glob|printf-format] --mf-...
Play a series of images as video.
If the URL path begins with @, it is interpreted as the path to a
file containing a list of image paths separated by newlines. If the
URL path contains ,, it is interpreted as a list of image paths sepa-
rated by ,. If the URL path does not contain % and if on POSIX plat-
forms, is interpreted as a glob, and * is automatically appended if
it was not specified. Otherwise, the printf sequences %[.][NUM]d,
where NUM is one, two, or three decimal digits, and %% and are inter-
preted. For example, mf://image-%d.jpg plays files like image-1.jpg,
image-2.jpg and image-10.jpg, provided that there are no big gaps be-
tween the files.
cdda://[device] --cdda-device=PATH
Play CD. You can select a specific range of tracks to play by using
the --start and --end options and specifying chapters. Navigating
forwards and backwards through tracks can also be done by navigating
through chapters (PGUP and PGDOWN in the default keybinds).
Example
mpv cdda:// --start=#4 --end=#6
This will start from track 4, play track 5, and then end.
lavf://...
Access any FFmpeg libavformat protocol. Basically, this passed the
string after the // directly to libavformat.
av://type:options
This is intended for using libavdevice inputs. type is the libavde-
vice demuxer name, and options is the (pseudo-)filename passed to the
demuxer.
Example
mpv av://v4l2:/dev/video0 --profile=low-latency --untimed
This plays video from the first v4l input with nearly the lowest
latency possible. It's a good replacement for the removed tv://
input. Using --untimed is a hack to output a captured frame im-
mediately, instead of respecting the input framerate. (There may
be better ways to handle this in the future.)
avdevice:// is an alias.
file://PATH
A local path as URL. Might be useful in some special use-cases. Note
that PATH itself should start with a third / to make the path an ab-
solute path.
appending://PATH
Play a local file, but assume it's being appended to. This is useful
for example for files that are currently being downloaded to disk.
This will block playback, and stop playback only if no new data was
appended after a timeout of about 2 seconds.
Using this is still a bit of a bad idea, because there is no way to
detect if a file is actually being appended, or if it's still writ-
ten. If you're trying to play the output of some program, consider
using a pipe (something | mpv -). If it really has to be a file on
disk, use tail to make it wait forever, e.g. tail -f -c +0 file.mkv |
mpv -.
fd://123
Read data from the given file descriptor (for example 123). This is
similar to piping data to stdin via -, but can use an arbitrary file
descriptor. mpv may modify some file descriptor properties when the
stream layer "opens" it.
fdclose://123
Like fd://, but the file descriptor is closed after use. When using
this you need to ensure that the same fd URL will only be used once.
edl://[edl specification as in edl-mpv.rst]
Stitch together parts of multiple files and play them.
slice://start[-end]@URL
Read a slice of a stream.
start and end represent a byte range and accept suffixes such as KiB
and MiB. end is optional.
if end starts with +, it is considered as offset from start.
Only works with seekable streams.
Examples:
mpv slice://1g-2g@cap.ts
This starts reading from cap.ts after seeking 1 GiB, then
reads until reaching 2 GiB or end of file.
mpv slice://1g-+2g@cap.ts
This starts reading from cap.ts after seeking 1 GiB, then
reads until reaching 3 GiB or end of file.
mpv slice://100m@appending://cap.ts
This starts reading from cap.ts after seeking 100MiB, then
reads until end of file.
null://
Simulate an empty file. If opened for writing, it will discard all
data. The null demuxer will specifically pass autoprobing if this
protocol is used (while it's not automatically invoked for empty
files).
memory://data
Use the data part as source data.
hex://data
Like memory://, but the string is interpreted as hexdump.
PSEUDO GUI MODE
mpv has no official GUI, other than the OSC (ON SCREEN CONTROLLER),
which is not a full GUI and is not meant to be. However, to compensate
for the lack of expected GUI behavior, mpv will in some cases start with
some settings changed to behave slightly more like a GUI mode.
Currently this happens only in the following cases:
• if started using the mpv.desktop file on Linux (e.g. started from
menus or file associations provided by desktop environments)
• if started from explorer.exe on Windows (technically, if it was
started on Windows, and all of the stdout/stderr/stdin handles are un-
set)
• started out of the bundle on macOS
• if you manually use --player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui on the command
line
This mode applies options from the builtin profile builtin-pseudo-gui,
but only if these haven't been set in the user's config file or on the
command line, which is the main difference to using --pro-
file=builtin-pseudo-gui.
The profile is currently defined as follows:
[builtin-pseudo-gui]
terminal=no
force-window=yes
idle=once
screenshot-directory=~~desktop/
The pseudo-gui profile exists for compatibility. The options in the
pseudo-gui profile are applied unconditionally. In addition, the profile
makes sure to enable the pseudo-GUI mode, so that --profile=pseudo-gui
works like in older mpv releases:
[pseudo-gui]
player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui
WARNING:
Currently, you can extend the pseudo-gui profile in the config file
the normal way. This is deprecated. In future mpv releases, the be-
havior might change, and not apply your additional settings, and/or
use a different profile name.
OPTIONS
Track Selection
--alang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>
Specify a prioritized list of audio languages to use, as IETF
language tags. Equivalent ISO 639-1 two-letter and ISO 639-2
three-letter codes are treated the same. The first tag in the
list that matches track's language in the file will be used. A
track that matches more subtags will be preferred over one that
matches fewer. See also --aid.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Examples
• mpv dvd://1 --alang=hu,en chooses the Hungarian language
track on a DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian is not
available.
• mpv --alang=jpn example.mkv plays a Matroska file with
Japanese audio.
--slang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>
Equivalent to --alang, for subtitle tracks.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Examples
• mpv dvd://1 --slang=hu,en chooses the Hungarian subtitle
track on a DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian is not
available.
• mpv --slang=jpn example.mkv plays a Matroska file with
Japanese subtitles.
• mpv --slang=pt-BR example.mkv plays a Matroska file with
Brazilian Portuguese subtitles if available, and otherwise
any Portuguese subtitles.
--vlang=<...>
Equivalent to --alang and --slang, for video tracks.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
--aid=<ID|auto|no>
Select audio track. auto selects the default, no disables audio.
See also --alang. mpv normally prints available audio tracks on
the terminal when starting playback of a file.
--audio is an alias for --aid.
--aid=no or --audio=no disables audio playback. (The latter
variant does not work with the client API.)
NOTE:
The track selection options (--aid but also --sid and the oth-
ers) sometimes expose behavior that may appear strange. Also,
the behavior tends to change around with each mpv release.
The track selection properties will return the option value
outside of playback (as expected), but during playback, the
affective track selection is returned. For example, with
--aid=auto, the aid property will suddenly return 2 after
playback initialization (assuming the file has at least 2 au-
dio tracks, and the second is the default).
At mpv 0.32.0 (and some releases before), if you passed a
track value for which a corresponding track didn't exist (e.g.
--aid=2 and there was only 1 audio track), the aid property
returned no. However if another audio track was added during
playback, and you tried to set the aid property to 2, nothing
happened, because the aid option still had the value 2, and
writing the same value has no effect.
With mpv 0.33.0, the behavior was changed. Now track selection
options are reset to auto at playback initialization, if the
option had tries to select a track that does not exist. The
same is done if the track exists, but fails to initialize. The
consequence is that unlike before mpv 0.33.0, the user's track
selection parameters are clobbered in certain situations.
Also since mpv 0.33.0, trying to select a track by number will
strictly select this track. Before this change, trying to se-
lect a track which did not exist would fall back to track de-
fault selection at playback initialization. The new behavior
is more consistent.
Setting a track selection property at runtime, and then play-
ing a new file might reset the track selection to defaults, if
the fingerprint of the track list of the new file is differ-
ent.
Be aware of tricky combinations of all of all of the above:
for example, mpv --aid=2 file_with_2_audio_tracks.mkv
file_with_1_audio_track.mkv would first play the correct
track, and the second file without audio. If you then go back
the first file, its first audio track will be played, and the
second file is played with audio. If you do the same thing
again but instead of using --aid=2 you run set aid 2 while the
file is playing, then changing to the second file will play
its audio track. This is because runtime selection enables
the fingerprint heuristic.
Most likely this is not the end.
--sid=<ID|auto|no>
Display the subtitle stream specified by <ID>. auto selects the
default, no disables subtitles.
--sub is an alias for --sid.
--sid=no or --sub=no disables subtitle decoding. (The latter
variant does not work with the client API.)
--vid=<ID|auto|no>
Select video channel. auto selects the default, no disables
video.
--video is an alias for --vid.
--vid=no or --video=no disables video playback. (The latter
variant does not work with the client API.)
If video is disabled, mpv will try to download the audio only if
media is streamed with youtube-dl, because it saves bandwidth.
This is done by setting the ytdl_format to "bestaudio/best" in
the ytdl_hook.lua script.
--edition=<ID|auto>
(Matroska files only) Specify the edition (set of chapters) to
use, where 0 is the first. If set to auto (the default), mpv will
choose the first edition declared as a default, or if there is no
default, the first edition defined.
--track-auto-selection=<yes|no>
Enable the default track auto-selection (default: yes). Enabling
this will make the player select streams according to --aid,
--alang, and others. If it is disabled, no tracks are selected.
In addition, the player will not exit if no tracks are selected,
and wait instead (this wait mode is similar to pausing, but the
pause option is not set).
This is useful with --lavfi-complex: you can start playback in
this mode, and then set select tracks at runtime by setting the
filter graph. Note that if --lavfi-complex is set before play-
back is started, the referenced tracks are always selected.
--subs-with-matching-audio=<yes|forced|no>
When autoselecting a subtitle track, select it even if the se-
lected audio stream matches you preferred subtitle language (de-
fault: yes). If this option is set to no, then no subtitle track
that matches the audio language will ever be autoselected by mpv
regardless of --slang or subs-fallback. If set to forced, then
only forced subtitles will be selected.
--subs-match-os-language=<yes|no>
When autoselecting a subtitle track, select the track that
matches the language of your OS if the audio stream is in a dif-
ferent language if suitable (default track or a forced track un-
der the right conditions). Note that if --slang is set, this will
be completely ignored (default: yes).
--subs-fallback=<yes|default|no>
When autoselecting a subtitle track, if no tracks match your pre-
ferred languages, select a full track even if it doesn't match
your preferred subtitle language (default: default). Setting
this to default means that only streams flagged as default will
be selected.
--subs-fallback-forced=<yes|no|always>
When autoselecting a subtitle track, the default value of yes
will prefer using a forced subtitle track if the subtitle lan-
guage matches the audio language and matches your list of pre-
ferred languages. The special value always will only select
forced subtitle tracks and never fallback on a non-forced track.
Conversely, no will never select a forced subtitle track.
Playback Control
--start=<relative time>
Seek to given time position.
The general format for times is [+|-][[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]. If the
time is prefixed with -, the time is considered relative from the
end of the file (as signaled by the demuxer/the file). A + is
usually ignored (but see below).
The following alternative time specifications are recognized:
pp% seeks to percent position pp (0-100).
#c seeks to chapter number c. (Chapters start from 1.)
none resets any previously set option (useful for libmpv).
If --rebase-start-time=no is given, then prefixing times with +
makes the time relative to the start of the file. A timestamp
without prefix is considered an absolute time, i.e. should seek
to a frame with a timestamp as the file contains it. As a bug,
but also a hidden feature, putting 1 or more spaces before the +
or - always interprets the time as absolute, which can be used to
seek to negative timestamps (useful for debugging at most).
Examples
--start=+56, --start=00:56
Seeks to the start time + 56 seconds.
--start=-56, --start=-00:56
Seeks to the end time - 56 seconds.
--start=01:10:00
Seeks to 1 hour 10 min.
--start=50%
Seeks to the middle of the file.
--start=30 --end=40
Seeks to 30 seconds, plays 10 seconds, and exits.
--start=-3:20 --length=10
Seeks to 3 minutes and 20 seconds before the end of the
file, plays 10 seconds, and exits.
--start='#2' --end='#4'
Plays chapters 2 and 3, and exits.
--end=<relative time>
Stop at given time. Use --length if the time should be relative
to --start. See --start for valid option values and examples.
--length=<relative time>
Stop after a given time relative to the start time. See --start
for valid option values and examples.
If both --end and --length are provided, playback will stop when
it reaches either of the two endpoints.
Obscurity note: this does not work correctly if --re-
base-start-time=no, and the specified time is not an "absolute"
time, as defined in the --start option description.
--rebase-start-time=<yes|no>
Whether to move the file start time to 00:00:00 (default: yes).
This is less awkward for files which start at a random timestamp,
such as transport streams. On the other hand, if there are time-
stamp resets, the resulting behavior can be rather weird. For
this reason, and in case you are actually interested in the real
timestamps, this behavior can be disabled with no.
--speed=<0.01-100>
Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given as parameter.
If --audio-pitch-correction (on by default) is used, playing with
a speed higher than normal automatically inserts the scaletempo2
audio filter.
--pitch=<0.01-100>
Raise or lower the audio's pitch by the factor given as parame-
ter. Does not affect playback speed. Playing with an altered
pitch automatically inserts the scaletempo2 audio filter.
Since pitch change is achieved by combining pitch-preserving
speed change and resampling, the range of pitch change is effec-
tively limited by the min-speed and max-speed parameters of
scaletempo2: for example, a min-speed of 0.25 limits the highest
pitch factor to 4 (1/0.25).
In a standard 12-tone scale system, octaves are separated by a
factor of 2 whereas semitones are represented by a factor of
2^(1/12). This means pitches can easily be shifted up or down
with a simple multiplier.
Examples
--pitch=2
Shifts the pitch up a full octave.
--pitch=0.5
Shifts the pitch down an octave.
--pitch=1.498307 (2^(7/12))
Shifts the pitch up a perfect fifth.
--pitch=0.667420 (2^(-7/12))
Shifts the pitch down a perfect fifth.
--pitch=1.059463 (2^(1/12))
Shifts the pitch up a semitone.
--pitch=0.943874 (2^(-1/12))
Shifts the pitch down a semitone.
--pause
Start the player in paused state.
--shuffle
Play files in random order.
--playlist-start=<auto|index>
Set which file on the internal playlist to start playback with.
The index is an integer, with 0 meaning the first file. The value
auto means that the selection of the entry to play is left to the
playback resume mechanism (default). If an entry with the given
index doesn't exist, the behavior is unspecified and might change
in future mpv versions. The same applies if the playlist contains
further playlists (don't expect any reasonable behavior). Passing
a playlist file to mpv should work with this option, though. E.g.
mpv playlist.m3u --playlist-start=123 will work as expected, as
long as playlist.m3u does not link to further playlists.
The value no is a deprecated alias for auto.
--playlist=<filename>
Play files according to a playlist file. Supports some common
formats. If no format is detected, it will be treated as list of
files, separated by newline characters. You may need this option
to load plaintext files as a playlist. Note that XML playlist
formats are not supported.
This option forces --demuxer=playlist to interpret the playlist
file. Some playlist formats, notably CUE and optical disc for-
mats, need to use different demuxers and will not work with this
option. They still can be played directly, without using this op-
tion.
You can play playlists directly, without this option. Before mpv
version 0.31.0, this option disabled any security mechanisms that
might be in place, but since 0.31.0 it uses the same security
mechanisms as playing a playlist file directly. If you trust the
playlist file, you can disable any security checks with
--load-unsafe-playlists. Because playlists can load other
playlist entries, consider applying this option only to the
playlist itself and not its entries, using something along these
lines:
mpv --{ --playlist=filename --load-unsafe-playlists --}
WARNING:
The way older versions of mpv played playlist files via
--playlist was not safe against maliciously constructed files.
Such files may trigger harmful actions. This has been the case
for all versions of mpv prior to 0.31.0, and all MPlayer ver-
sions, but unfortunately this fact was not well documented
earlier, and some people have even misguidedly recommended the
use of --playlist with untrusted sources. Do NOT use
--playlist with random internet sources or files you do not
trust if you are not sure your mpv is at least 0.31.0.
In particular, playlists can contain entries using protocols
other than local files, such as special protocols like avde-
vice:// (which are inherently unsafe).
--chapter-merge-threshold=<number>
Threshold for merging almost consecutive ordered chapter parts in
milliseconds (default: 100). Some Matroska files with ordered
chapters have inaccurate chapter end timestamps, causing a small
gap between the end of one chapter and the start of the next one
when they should match. If the end of one playback part is less
than the given threshold away from the start of the next one then
keep playing video normally over the chapter change instead of
doing a seek.
--chapter-seek-threshold=<seconds>
Distance in seconds from the beginning of a chapter within which
a backward chapter seek will go to the previous chapter (default:
5.0). Past this threshold, a backward chapter seek will go to the
beginning of the current chapter instead. A negative value means
always go back to the previous chapter.
--hr-seek=<no|absolute|yes|default>
Select when to use precise seeks that are not limited to
keyframes. Such seeks require decoding video from the previous
keyframe up to the target position and so can take some time de-
pending on decoding performance. For some video formats, precise
seeks are disabled. This option selects the default choice to use
for seeks; it is possible to explicitly override that default in
the definition of key bindings and in input commands.
no Never use precise seeks.
absolute
Use precise seeks if the seek is to an absolute position
in the file, such as a chapter seek, but not for relative
seeks like the default behavior of arrow keys.
default
Like absolute, but enable hr-seeks in audio-only cases.
The exact behavior is implementation specific and may
change with new releases (default).
yes Use precise seeks whenever possible.
always Same as yes (for compatibility).
--hr-seek-demuxer-offset=<seconds>
This option exists to work around failures to do precise seeks
(as in --hr-seek) caused by bugs or limitations in the demuxers
for some file formats. Some demuxers fail to seek to a keyframe
before the given target position, going to a later position in-
stead. The value of this option is subtracted from the time stamp
given to the demuxer. Thus, if you set this option to 1.5 and try
to do a precise seek to 60 seconds, the demuxer is told to seek
to time 58.5, which hopefully reduces the chance that it erro-
neously goes to some time later than 60 seconds. The downside of
setting this option is that precise seeks become slower, as video
between the earlier demuxer position and the real target may be
unnecessarily decoded.
--hr-seek-framedrop=<yes|no>
Allow the video decoder to drop frames during seek, if these
frames are before the seek target. If this is enabled, precise
seeking can be faster, but if you're using video filters which
modify timestamps or add new frames, it can lead to precise seek-
ing skipping the target frame. This e.g. can break frame back-
stepping when deinterlacing is enabled.
Default: yes
--index=<mode>
Controls how to seek in files. Note that if the index is missing
from a file, it will be built on the fly by default, so you don't
need to change this. But it might help with some broken files.
default
use an index if the file has one, or build it if missing
recreate
don't read or use the file's index
NOTE:
This option only works if the underlying media supports seek-
ing (i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).
--load-unsafe-playlists
Load URLs from playlists which are considered unsafe (default:
no). This includes special protocols and anything that doesn't
refer to normal files. Local files and HTTP links on the other
hand are always considered safe.
In addition, if a playlist is loaded while this is set, the added
playlist entries are not marked as originating from network or
potentially unsafe location. (Instead, the behavior is as if the
playlist entries were provided directly to mpv command line or
loadfile command.)
--access-references=<yes|no>
Follow any references in the file being opened (default: yes).
Disabling this is helpful if the file is automatically scanned
(e.g. thumbnail generation). If the thumbnail scanner for example
encounters a playlist file, which contains network URLs, and the
scanner should not open these, enabling this option will prevent
it. This option also disables ordered chapters, mov reference
files, opening of archives, and a number of other features.
On older FFmpeg versions, this will not work in some cases. Some
FFmpeg demuxers might not respect this option.
This option does not prevent opening of paired subtitle files and
such. Use --autoload-files=no to prevent this.
This option does not always work if you open non-files (for exam-
ple using dvd://directory would open a whole bunch of files in
the given directory). Prefixing the filename with ./ if it
doesn't start with a / will avoid this.
--loop-playlist=<N|inf|force|no>, --loop-playlist
Loops playback N times. A value of 1 plays it one time (default),
2 two times, etc. inf means forever. no is the same as 1 and dis-
ables looping. If several files are specified on command line,
the entire playlist is looped. --loop-playlist is the same as
--loop-playlist=inf.
The force mode is like inf, but does not skip playlist entries
which have been marked as failing. This means the player might
waste CPU time trying to loop a file that doesn't exist. But it
might be useful for playing webradios under very bad network con-
ditions.
--loop-file=<N|inf|no>, --loop=<N|inf|no>
Loop a single file N times. inf means forever, no means normal
playback. For compatibility, --loop-file and --loop-file=yes are
also accepted, and are the same as --loop-file=inf.
The difference to --loop-playlist is that this doesn't loop the
playlist, just the file itself. If the playlist contains only a
single file, the difference between the two option is that this
option performs a seek on loop, instead of reloading the file.
NOTE:
--loop-file counts the number of times it causes the player to
seek to the beginning of the file, not the number of full
playthroughs. This means --loop-file=1 will end up playing the
file twice. Contrast with --loop-playlist, which counts the
number of full playthroughs.
--loop is an alias for this option.
--ab-loop-a=<time>, --ab-loop-b=<time>
Set loop points. If playback passes the b timestamp, it will seek
to the a timestamp. Seeking past the b point doesn't loop (this
is intentional).
If a is after b, the behavior is as if the points were given in
the right order, and the player will seek to b after crossing
through a. This is different from old behavior, where looping was
disabled (and as a bug, looped back to a on the end of the file).
If either options are set to no (or unset), looping is disabled.
This is different from old behavior, where an unset a implied the
start of the file, and an unset b the end of the file.
The loop-points can be adjusted at runtime with the corresponding
properties. See also ab-loop command.
--ab-loop-count=<N|inf>
Run A-B loops only N times, then ignore the A-B loop points (de-
fault: inf). inf means that looping goes on forever. If this op-
tion is set to 0, A-B looping is ignored, and even the ab-loop
command will not enable looping again (the command will show
(disabled) on the OSD message if both loop points are set, but
ab-loop-count is 0).
--ordered-chapters=<yes|no>
Enable support for Matroska ordered chapters. mpv will load and
search for video segments from other files, and will also respect
any chapter order specified for the main file (default: yes).
--ordered-chapters-files=<playlist-file>
Loads the given file as playlist, and tries to use the files con-
tained in it as reference files when opening a Matroska file that
uses ordered chapters. This overrides the normal mechanism for
loading referenced files by scanning the same directory the main
file is located in.
Useful for loading ordered chapter files that are not located on
the local filesystem, or if the referenced files are in different
directories.
Note: a playlist can be as simple as a text file containing file-
names separated by newlines.
--chapters-file=<filename>
Load chapters from this file, instead of using the chapter meta-
data found in the main file.
This accepts a media file (like mkv) or even a pseudo-format like
ffmetadata and uses its chapters to replace the current file's
chapters. This doesn't work with OGM or XML chapters directly.
--sstep=<sec>
Skip <sec> seconds after every frame.
NOTE:
Without --hr-seek, skipping will snap to keyframes.
--stop-playback-on-init-failure=<yes|no>
Stop playback if either audio or video fails to initialize (de-
fault: no). With no, playback will continue in video-only or au-
dio-only mode if one of them fails. This doesn't affect playback
of audio-only or video-only files.
--play-direction=<forward|+|backward|->
Control the playback direction (default: forward). Setting back-
ward will attempt to play the file in reverse direction, with de-
creasing playback time. If this is set on playback starts, play-
back will start from the end of the file. If this is changed at
during playback, a hr-seek will be issued to change the direc-
tion.
+ and - are aliases for forward and backward.
The rest of this option description pertains to the backward
mode.
NOTE:
Backward playback is extremely fragile. It may not always
work, is much slower than forward playback, and breaks certain
other features. How well it works depends mainly on the file
being played. Generally, it will show good results (or results
at all) only if the stars align.
mpv, as well as most media formats, were designed for forward
playback only. Backward playback is bolted on top of mpv, and
tries to make a medium effort to make backward playback work. De-
pending on your use-case, another tool may work much better.
Backward playback is not exactly a 1st class feature. Implementa-
tion tradeoffs were made, that are bad for backward playback, but
in turn do not cause disadvantages for normal playback. Various
possible optimizations are not implemented in order to keep the
complexity down. Normally, a media player is highly pipelined
(future data is prepared in separate threads, so it is available
in realtime when the next stage needs it), but backward playback
will essentially stall the pipeline at various random points.
For example, for intra-only codecs are trivially backward
playable, and tools built around them may make efficient use of
them (consider video editors or camera viewers). mpv won't be ef-
ficient in this case, because it uses its generic backward play-
back algorithm, that on top of it is not very optimized.
If you just want to quickly go backward through the video and
just show "keyframes", just use forward playback, and hold down
the left cursor key (which on CLI with default config sends many
small relative seek commands).
The implementation consists of mostly 3 parts:
• Backward demuxing. This relies on the demuxer cache, so the de-
muxer cache should (or must, didn't test it) be enabled, and
its size will affect performance. If the cache is too small or
too large, quadratic runtime behavior may result.
• Backward decoding. The decoder library used (libavcodec) does
not support this. It is emulated by feeding bits of data in
forward, putting the result in a queue, returning the queue
data to the VO in reverse, and then starting over at an earlier
position. This can require buffering an extreme amount of de-
coded data, and also completely breaks pipelining.
• Backward output. This is relatively simple, because the decoder
returns the frames in the needed order. However, this may cause
various problems because filters see audio and video going
backward.
Known problems:
• It's fragile. If anything doesn't work, random behavior may oc-
cur. In simple cases, the player will just play nonsense and
artifacts. In other cases, it may get stuck or heat the CPU.
(Exceeding memory usage significantly beyond the user-set lim-
its would be a bug, though.)
• Performance and resource usage isn't good. In part this is in-
herent to backward playback of normal media formats, and in
parts due to implementation choices and tradeoffs.
• This is extremely reliant on good demuxer behavior. Although
backward demuxing requires no special demuxer support, it is
required that the demuxer performs seeks reliably, fulfills
some specific requirements about packet metadata, and has de-
terministic behavior.
• Starting playback exactly from the end may or may not work, de-
pending on seeking behavior and file duration detection.
• Some container formats, audio, and video codecs are not sup-
ported due to their behavior. There is no list, and the player
usually does not detect them. Certain live streams (including
TV captures) may exhibit problems in particular, as well as
some lossy audio codecs. h264 intra-refresh is known not to
work due to problems with libavcodec. WAV and some other raw
audio formats tend to have problems - there are hacks for deal-
ing with them, which may or may not work.
• Backward demuxing of subtitles is not supported. Subtitle dis-
play still works for some external text subtitle formats.
(These are fully read into memory, and only backward display is
needed.) Text subtitles that are cached in the subtitle ren-
derer also have a chance to be displayed correctly.
• Some features dealing with playback of broken or hard to deal
with files will not work fully (such as timestamp correction).
• If demuxer low level seeks (i.e. seeking the actual demuxer in-
stead of just within the demuxer cache) are performed by back-
ward playback, the created seek ranges may not join, because
not enough overlap is achieved.
• Trying to use this with hardware video decoding will probably
exhaust all your GPU memory and then crash a thing or two. Or
it will fail because --hwdec-extra-frames will certainly be set
too low.
• Stream recording is broken. --stream-record may keep working if
you backward play within a cached region only.
• Relative seeks may behave weird. Small seeks backward (towards
smaller time, i.e. seek -1) may not really seek properly, and
audio will remain muted for a while. Using hr-seek is recom-
mended, which should have none of these problems.
• Some things are just weird. For example, while seek commands
manipulate playback time in the expected way (provided they
work correctly), the framestep commands are transposed. Back-
stepping will perform very expensive work to step forward by 1
frame.
Tuning:
• Remove all --vf/--af filters you have set. Disable hardware de-
coding. Disable functions like SPDIF passthrough.
• Increasing --video-reversal-buffer might help if reversal queue
overflow is reported, which may happen in high bitrate video,
or video with large GOP. Hardware decoding mostly ignores this,
and you need to increase --hwdec-extra-frames instead (until
you get playback without logged errors).
• The demuxer cache is essential for backward demuxing. Make sure
to set --cache=yes. The cache size might matter. If it's too
small, a queue overflow will be logged, and backward playback
cannot continue, or it performs too many low level seeks. If
it's too large, implementation tradeoffs may cause general per-
formance issues. Use --demuxer-max-bytes to potentially in-
crease the amount of packets the demuxer layer can queue for
reverse demuxing (basically it's the --video-reversal-buffer
equivalent for the demuxer layer).
• Setting --vd-queue-enable=yes can help a lot to make playback
smooth (once it works).
• --demuxer-backward-playback-step also factors into how many
seeks may be performed, and whether backward demuxing could
break due to queue overflow. If it's set too high, the backstep
operation needs to search through more packets all the time,
even if the cache is large enough.
• Setting --demuxer-cache-wait may be useful to cache the entire
file into the demuxer cache. Set --demuxer-max-bytes to a large
size to make sure it can read the entire cache; --de-
muxer-max-back-bytes should also be set to a large size to pre-
vent that tries to trim the cache.
• If audio artifacts are audible, even though the AO does not un-
derrun, increasing --audio-backward-overlap might help in some
cases.
--video-reversal-buffer=<bytesize>, --audio-reversal-buffer=<bytesize>
For backward decoding. Backward decoding decodes forward in
steps, and then reverses the decoder output. These options con-
trol the approximate maximum amount of bytes that can be
buffered. The main use of this is to avoid unbounded resource us-
age; during normal backward playback, it's not supposed to hit
the limit, and if it does, it will drop frames and complain about
it.
Use this option if you get reversal queue overflow errors during
backward playback. Increase the size until the warning disap-
pears. Usually, the video buffer will overflow first, especially
if it's high resolution video.
This does not work correctly if video hardware decoding is used.
The video frame size will not include the referenced GPU and dri-
ver memory. Some hardware decoders may also be limited by
--hwdec-extra-frames.
How large the queue size needs to be depends entirely on the way
the media was encoded. Audio typically requires a very small
buffer, while video can require excessively large buffers.
(Technically, this allows the last frame to exceed the limit.
Also, this does not account for other buffered frames, such as
inside the decoder or the video output.)
This does not affect demuxer cache behavior at all.
See --list-options for defaults and value range. <bytesize> op-
tions accept suffixes such as KiB and MiB.
--video-backward-overlap=<auto|number>, --audio-backward-over-
lap=<auto|number>
Number of overlapping keyframe ranges to use for backward decod-
ing (default: auto) ("keyframe" to be understood as in the
mpv/ffmpeg specific meaning). Backward decoding works by forward
decoding in small steps. Some codecs cannot restart decoding from
any packet (even if it's marked as seek point), which becomes no-
ticeable with backward decoding (in theory this is a problem with
seeking too, but --hr-seek-demuxer-offset can fix it for seek-
ing). In particular, MDCT based audio codecs are affected.
The solution is to feed a previous packet to the decoder each
time, and then discard the output. This option controls how many
packets to feed. The auto choice is currently hardcoded to 0 for
video, and uses 1 for lossy audio, 0 for lossless audio. For some
specific lossy audio codecs, this is set to 2.
--video-backward-overlap can potentially handle intra-refresh
video, depending on the exact conditions. You may have to use the
--vd-lavc-show-all option as well.
--video-backward-batch=<number>, --audio-backward-batch=<number>
Number of keyframe ranges to decode at once when backward decod-
ing (default: 1 for video, 10 for audio). Another pointless tun-
ing parameter nobody should use. This should affect performance
only. In theory, setting a number higher than 1 for audio will
reduce overhead due to less frequent backstep operations and less
redundant decoding work due to fewer decoded overlap frames (see
--audio-backward-overlap). On the other hand, it requires a
larger reversal buffer, and could make playback less smooth due
to breaking pipelining (e.g. by decoding a lot, and then doing
nothing for a while).
It probably never makes sense to set --video-backward-batch. But
in theory, it could help with intra-only video codecs by reducing
backstep operations.
--demuxer-backward-playback-step=<seconds>
Number of seconds the demuxer should seek back to get new packets
during backward playback (default: 60). This is useful for tuning
backward playback, see --play-direction for details.
Setting this to a very low value or 0 may make the player think
seeking is broken, or may make it perform multiple seeks.
Setting this to a high value may lead to quadratic runtime behav-
ior.
Program Behavior
--help, --h
Show short summary of options.
You can also pass a string to this option, which will list all
top-level options which contain the string in the name, e.g.
--h=scale for all options that contain the word scale. The spe-
cial string * lists all top-level options.
-v Increment verbosity level, one level for each -v found on the
command line.
--version, -V
Print version string and exit.
--no-config
Do not load default configuration or any user files. This pre-
vents loading of both the user-level and system-wide mpv.conf and
input.conf files. Other user files are blocked as well, such as
resume playback files and cache files. This option only takes
effect when used as a command line flag.
NOTE:
Files explicitly requested by command line options, like --in-
clude or --use-filedir-conf, will still be loaded.
See also: --config-dir.
--list-options
Prints all available options.
--list-properties
Print a list of the available properties.
--list-protocols
Print a list of the supported protocols.
--log-file=<path>
Opens the given path for writing, and print log messages to it.
Existing files will be truncated. The log level is at least -v
-v, but can be raised via --msg-level (the option cannot lower it
below the forced minimum log level).
A special case is the macOS bundle, it will create a log file at
~/Library/Logs/mpv.log by default.
--config-dir=<path>
Force a different configuration directory. If this is set, the
given directory is used to load configuration files, and all
other configuration directories are ignored. This means the
global mpv configuration directory as well as per-user directo-
ries are ignored, and overrides through environment variables
(MPV_HOME) are also ignored.
Note that the cache and state paths (~~/cache, ~~/state) are not
considered "configuration" and keep their auto-detection logic.
Note that the --no-config option takes precedence over this op-
tion.
--dump-stats=<filename>
Write certain statistics to the given file. The file is truncated
on opening. The file will contain raw samples, each with a time-
stamp. To make this file into a readable, the script
TOOLS/stats-conv.py can be used (which currently displays it as a
graph).
This option is useful for debugging only.
--idle=<no|yes|once>
Makes mpv wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to
play. Mostly useful in input mode, where mpv can be controlled
through input commands. (Default: no)
once will only idle at start and let the player close once the
first playlist has finished playing back.
--include=<configuration-file>
Specify configuration file to be parsed after the default ones.
--load-scripts=<yes|no>
If set to no, don't auto-load scripts from the scripts configura-
tion subdirectory (usually ~/.config/mpv/scripts/). (Default:
yes)
--script=<filename>, --scripts=file1.lua:file2.lua:...
Load a Lua script. The second option allows you to load multiple
scripts by separating them with the path separator (: on Unix, ;
on Windows).
--scripts is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--script-opt=<key=value>, --script-opts=key1=value1,key2=value2,...
Set options for scripts. A script can query an option by key. If
an option is used and what semantics the option value has depends
entirely on the loaded scripts. Values not claimed by any scripts
are ignored.
Each use of the --script-opt option will add another option to
the internal list, while --script-opts takes a list of options at
once, and overwrites the internal list with it. The latter is a
key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--merge-files
Pretend that all files passed to mpv are concatenated into a sin-
gle, big file. This uses timeline/EDL support internally.
--profile=<profile1,profile2,...>
Use the given profile(s), --profile=help displays a list of the
defined profiles.
--reset-on-next-file=<all|option1,option2,...>
Normally, mpv will try to keep all settings when playing the next
file on the playlist, even if they were changed by the user dur-
ing playback. (This behavior is the opposite of MPlayer's, which
tries to reset all settings when starting next file.)
Default: Do not reset anything.
This can be changed with this option. It accepts a list of op-
tions, and mpv will reset the value of these options on playback
start to the initial value. The initial value is either the de-
fault value, or as set by the config file or command line.
The special name all resets as many options as possible.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Examples
• --reset-on-next-file=pause Reset pause mode when switching
to the next file.
• --reset-on-next-file=fullscreen,speed Reset fullscreen and
playback speed settings if they were changed during play-
back.
• --reset-on-next-file=all Try to reset all settings that were
changed during playback.
--show-profile=<profile>
Show the description and content of a profile. Lists all profiles
if no parameter is provided.
--use-filedir-conf
Look for a file-specific configuration file in the same directory
as the file that is being played. See File-specific Configuration
Files.
WARNING:
May be dangerous if playing from untrusted media.
--ytdl=<yes|no>
Enable the youtube-dl hook-script. It will look at the input URL,
and will play the video located on the website. This works with
many streaming sites, not just the one that the script is named
after. This requires a recent version of youtube-dl to be in-
stalled on the system (default: yes).
If the script can't do anything with an URL, it will do nothing.
This accepts a set of options, which can be passed to it with the
--script-opts option (using ytdl_hook- as prefix):
try_ytdl_first=<yes|no>
If 'yes' will try parsing the URL with youtube-dl first,
instead of the default where it's only after mpv failed to
open it. This mostly depends on whether most of your URLs
need youtube-dl parsing.
exclude=<URL1|URL2|...
A |-separated list of URL patterns which mpv should not
use with youtube-dl. The patterns are matched after the
http(s):// part of the URL.
^ matches the beginning of the URL, $ matches its end, and
you should use % before any of the characters
^$()%|,.[]*+-? to match that character.
URLs are converted to lower case before matching.
Examples
• --script-opts=ytdl_hook-exclude='^youtube%.com' will
exclude any URL that starts with http://youtube.com
or https://youtube.com.
• --script-opts=ytdl_hook-exclude='%.mkv$|%.mp4$' will
exclude any URL that ends with .mkv or .mp4.
See more lua patterns here: <https://www.lua.org/man-
ual/5.1/manual.html#5.4.1>
include=<URL1|URL2|...
A |-separated list of URL patterns which mpv should try to
parse with youtube-dl first when try_ytdl_first is no. The
patterns are matched in the same way as exclude.
Default:
^%w+%.youtube%.com/|^youtube%.com/|^youtu%.be/|^%w+%.twitch%.tv/|^twitch%.tv/
all_formats=<yes|no>
If 'yes' will attempt to add all formats found reported by
youtube-dl (default: no). Each format is added as a sepa-
rate track. In addition, they are delay-loaded, and actu-
ally opened only when a track is selected (this should
keep load times as low as without this option).
It adds average bitrate metadata, if available, which
means you can use --hls-bitrate to decide which track to
select. (HLS used to be the only format whose alternative
quality streams were exposed in a similar way, thus the
option name.)
Tracks which represent formats that were selected by
youtube-dl as default will have the default flag set. This
means mpv should generally still select formats chosen
with --ytdl-format by default.
Although this mechanism makes it possible to switch
streams at runtime, it's not suitable for this purpose for
various technical reasons. (It's slow, which can't be re-
ally fixed.) In general, this option is not useful, and
was only added to show that it's possible.
There are two cases that must be considered when doing
quality/bandwidth selection:
1. Completely separate audio and video streams
(DASH-like). Each of these streams contain either
only audio or video, so you can mix and combine au-
dio/video bandwidths without restriction. This intu-
itively matches best with the concept of selecting
quality by track (what all_formats is supposed to
do).
2. Separate sets of muxed audio and video streams. Each
version of the media contains both an audio and
video stream, and they are interleaved. In order not
to waste bandwidth, you should only select one of
these versions (if, for example, you select an audio
stream, then video will be downloaded, even if you
selected video from a different stream).
mpv will still represent them as separate tracks,
but will set the title of each track to muxed-N,
where N is replaced with the youtube-dl format ID of
the originating stream.
Some sites will mix 1. and 2., but we assume that they do
so for compatibility reasons, and there is no reason to
use them at all.
force_all_formats=<yes|no>
If set to 'yes', and all_formats is also set to 'yes',
this will try to represent all youtube-dl reported formats
as tracks, even if mpv would normally use the direct URL
reported by it (default: yes).
It appears this normally makes a difference if youtube-dl
works on a master HLS playlist.
If this is set to 'no', this specific kind of stream is
treated like all_formats is set to 'no', and the stream
selection as done by youtube-dl (via --ytdl-format) is
used.
thumbnails=<all|best|none>
Add thumbnails as video tracks (default: none).
Thumbnails get downloaded when they are added as tracks,
so 'all' can have a noticeable impact on how long it takes
to open the video when there are a lot of thumbnails.
use_manifests=<yes|no>
Make mpv use the master manifest URL for formats like HLS
and DASH, if available, allowing for video/audio selection
in runtime (default: no). It's disabled ("no") by default
for performance reasons.
ytdl_path=youtube-dl
Configure paths to youtube-dl's executable or a compatible
fork's. The paths should be separated by : on Unix and ;
on Windows. mpv looks in order for the configured paths in
PATH and in mpv's config directory. The defaults are
"yt-dlp", "yt-dlp_x86" and "youtube-dl". On Windows the
suffix extension is not necessary, but only ".exe" is ac-
ceptable.
Why do the option names mix _ and -?
I have no idea.
--ytdl-format=<ytdl|best|worst|mp4|webm|...>
Video format/quality that is directly passed to youtube-dl. The
possible values are specific to the website and the video, for a
given url the available formats can be found with the command
youtube-dl --list-formats URL. See youtube-dl's documentation for
available aliases. (Default: bestvideo+bestaudio/best)
The ytdl value does not pass a --format option to youtube-dl at
all, and thus does not override its default. Note that sometimes
youtube-dl returns a format that mpv cannot use, and in these
cases the mpv default may work better.
--ytdl-raw-options=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass arbitrary options to youtube-dl. Parameter and argument
should be passed as a key-value pair. Options without argument
must include =.
There is no sanity checking so it's possible to break things
(i.e. passing invalid parameters to youtube-dl).
A proxy URL can be passed for youtube-dl to use it in parsing the
website. This is useful for geo-restricted URLs. After
youtube-dl parsing, some URLs also require a proxy for playback,
so this can pass that proxy information to mpv. Take note that
SOCKS proxies aren't supported and https URLs also bypass the
proxy. This is a limitation in FFmpeg.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Example
• --ytdl-raw-options=username=user,password=pass
• --ytdl-raw-options=force-ipv6=
• --ytdl-raw-options=proxy=[http://127.0.0.1:3128]
• --ytdl-raw-options-append=proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128
--js-memory-report=<yes|no>
Enable memory reporting for javascript scripts in the stats over-
lay. This is disabled by default because it has an overhead and
increases memory usage. This option will only work if it is en-
abled before mpv is started.
--load-stats-overlay=<yes|no>
Enable the builtin script that shows useful playback information
on a key binding (default: yes). By default, the i key is used (I
to make the overlay permanent).
--load-console=<yes|no>
Enable the built-in script to handle textual input (default:
yes).
--load-commands=<yes|no>
Enable the built-in script to enter commands in the console (de-
fault: yes). The ` key is used to activate this by default.
--load-auto-profiles=<yes|no|auto>
Enable the builtin script that does auto profiles (default:
auto). See Conditional auto profiles for details. auto will load
the script, but immediately unload it if there are no conditional
profiles.
--load-select=<yes|no>
Enable the builtin script that lets you select from lists of
items (default: yes). By default, its keybindings start with the
g key.
--load-positioning=<yes|no>
Enable the builtin script that provides various keybindings to
pan videos and images (default: yes).
--player-operation-mode=<cplayer|pseudo-gui>
For enabling "pseudo GUI mode", which means that the defaults for
some options are changed. This option should not normally be used
directly, but only by mpv internally, or mpv-provided scripts,
config files, or .desktop files. See PSEUDO GUI MODE for details.
Watch Later
--save-position-on-quit
Always save the current playback position on quit, and also when
the loadfile command is used to replace the current playlist.
When this file is played again later, the player will seek to the
old playback position on start. This does not happen if playback
of a file is stopped in other ways. For example, going to the
next file in the playlist will not save the position, and will
start playback at beginning the next time the file is played.
This behavior is disabled by default, but is always available
when quitting the player with Shift+Q.
See RESUMING PLAYBACK.
--watch-later-dir=<path>
The directory in which to store the "watch later" temporary
files.
--watch-later-directory is an alias for --watch-later-dir.
If this option is unset, the files will be stored in a subdirec-
tory named "watch_later" underneath the local state directory
(usually ~/.local/state/mpv/).
--resume-playback=<yes|no>
Restore playback position from the watch_later configuration sub-
directory, usually ~/.config/mpv/watch_later/ (default: yes).
--resume-playback-check-mtime=<yes|no>
Only restore the playback position from the watch_later configu-
ration subdirectory (usually ~/.config/mpv/watch_later/) if the
file's modification time is the same as at the time of saving.
This may prevent skipping forward in files with the same name
which have different content. (Default: no)
--watch-later-options=option1,option2,...
The options that are saved in "watch later" files if they have
been changed since when mpv started. These values will be re-
stored the next time the files are played. Note that the playback
position is saved via the start option.
When removing options, existing watch later data won't be modi-
fied and will still be applied fully, but new watch later data
won't contain these options.
See --help=watch-later-options for the list of the properties
that are restored by default.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Examples
• --watch-later-options-remove=sid The subtitle track selec-
tion will not be restored.
• --watch-later-options-remove=volume --watch-later-op-
tions-remove=mute The volume and mute state won't be saved
to watch later files.
• --watch-later-options=start No option will be saved to watch
later files, except the playback position.
--write-filename-in-watch-later-config
Prepend the watch later config files with the name of the file
they refer to. This is simply written as comment on the top of
the file.
WARNING:
This option may expose privacy-sensitive information and is
thus disabled by default.
--ignore-path-in-watch-later-config
Ignore path (i.e. use filename only) when using watch later fea-
ture. (Default: disabled)
Watch History
--save-watch-history
Whether to save which files are played. These can be then se-
lected with the default g-h key binding.
WARNING:
This option may expose privacy-sensitive information and is
thus disabled by default.
--watch-history-path=<path>
The path in which to store the watch history. Default:
~~state/watch_history.jsonl (see PATHS).
This file contains one JSON object per line. Its time field is
the UNIX timestamp when the file was opened, its path field is
the normalized path, and its title field is the title when it was
available.
Video
--vo=<driver>
Specify the video output backend to be used. See VIDEO OUTPUT
DRIVERS for details and descriptions of available drivers.
--vd=<...>
Specify a priority list of video decoders to be used, according
to their family and name. See --ad for further details. Both of
these options use the same syntax and semantics; the only differ-
ence is that they operate on different codec lists.
NOTE:
See --vd=help for a full list of available decoders.
--vf=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Specify a list of video filters to apply to the video stream. See
VIDEO FILTERS for details and descriptions of the available fil-
ters. The option variants --vf-add, --vf-pre, and --vf-clr exist
to modify a previously specified list, but you should not need
these for typical use.
--untimed
Do not sleep when outputting video frames. Useful for benchmarks
when used with --audio=no.
--framedrop=<mode>
Skip displaying some frames to maintain A/V sync on slow systems,
or playing high framerate video on video outputs that have an up-
per framerate limit.
The argument selects the drop methods, and can be one of the fol-
lowing:
<no> Disable any frame dropping. Not recommended, for testing
only.
<vo> Drop late frames on video output (default). This still de-
codes and filters all frames, but doesn't render them on
the VO. Drops are indicated in the terminal status line as
Dropped: field.
In audio sync. mode, this drops frames that are outdated
at the time of display. If the decoder is too slow, in
theory all frames would have to be dropped (because all
frames are too late) - to avoid this, frame dropping stops
if the effective framerate is below 10 FPS.
In display-sync. modes (see --video-sync), this affects
only how A/V drops or repeats frames. If this mode is dis-
abled, A/V desync will in theory not affect video schedul-
ing anymore (much like the display-resample-desync mode).
However, even if disabled, frames will still be skipped
(i.e. dropped) according to the ratio between video and
display frequencies.
This is the recommended mode, and the default.
<decoder>
Old, decoder-based framedrop mode. (This is the same as
--framedrop=yes in mpv 0.5.x and before.) This tells the
decoder to skip frames (unless they are needed to decode
future frames). May help with slow systems, but can pro-
duce unwatchable choppy output, or even freeze the display
completely.
This uses a heuristic which may not make sense, and in
general cannot achieve good results, because the decoder's
frame dropping cannot be controlled in a predictable man-
ner. Not recommended.
Even if you want to use this, prefer decoder+vo for better
results.
The --vd-lavc-framedrop option controls what frames to
drop.
<decoder+vo>
Enable both modes. Not recommended. Better than just de-
coder mode.
NOTE:
--vo=vdpau has its own code for the vo framedrop mode. Slight
differences to other VOs are possible.
--video-latency-hacks=<yes|no>
Enable some things which tend to reduce video latency by 1 or 2
frames (default: no). Note that this option might be removed
without notice once the player's timing code does not inherently
need to do these things anymore. Using this option is known to
break other options such as interpolation, so it is not recom-
mended to enable this.
This does:
• Use the demuxer reported FPS for frame dropping. This avoids
the player needing to decode 1 frame in advance, lowering total
latency in effect. This also means that if the demuxer reported
FPS is wrong, or the video filter chain changes FPS (e.g. dein-
terlacing), then it could drop too many or not enough frames.
• Disable waiting for the first video frame. Normally the player
waits for the first video frame to be fully rendered before
starting playback properly. Some VOs will lazily initialize
stuff when rendering the first frame, so if this is not done,
there is some likeliness that the VO has to drop some frames if
rendering the first frame takes longer than needed.
--display-fps-override=<fps>
Set the display FPS used with the --video-sync=display-* modes.
By default, a detected value is used. Keep in mind that setting
an incorrect value (even if slightly incorrect) can ruin video
playback. On multi-monitor systems, there is a chance that the
detected value is from the wrong monitor.
Set this option only if you have reason to believe the automati-
cally determined value is wrong.
--hwdec=<api1,api2,...|no|auto|auto-copy>
Specify the hardware video decoding API that should be used if
possible. Whether hardware decoding is actually done depends on
the video codec. If hardware decoding is not possible, mpv will
fall back on software decoding.
Hardware decoding is not enabled by default, to keep the
out-of-the-box configuration as reliable as possible. However,
when using modern hardware, hardware video decoding should work
correctly, offering reduced CPU usage, and possibly lower power
consumption. On older systems, it may be necessary to use hard-
ware decoding due to insufficient CPU resources; and even on mod-
ern systems, sufficiently complex content (eg: 4K60 AV1) may re-
quire it.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
NOTE:
Use the Ctrl+h shortcut to toggle hardware decoding at run-
time. It toggles this option between auto and no.
If you decide you want to use hardware decoding by default,
the general recommendation is to try out decoding with the
command line option, and prove to yourself that it works as
desired for the content you care about. After that, you can
add it to your config file.
When testing, you should start by using hwdec=auto as it will
limit itself to choosing from hwdecs that are actively sup-
ported by the development team. If that doesn't result in
working hardware decoding, you can try hwdec=auto-unsafe to
have it attempt to load every possible hwdec, but if auto
didn't work, you will probably need to know exactly which
hwdec matches your hardware and read up on that entry below.
If auto produced the desired results, we recommend just stick-
ing with that and only setting a specific hwdec in your config
file if it is really necessary.
If you use the Ubuntu package, keep in mind that their
/etc/mpv/mpv.conf contains hwdec=vaapi, which is less than
ideal as it may not be the right choice for your system, and
it may end up using an inefficient wrapper library under the
covers. We recommend removing this line or deleting the file
altogether.
NOTE:
Even if enabled, hardware decoding is still only white-listed
for some codecs. See --hwdec-codecs to enable hardware decod-
ing in more cases.
Which method to choose?
• If you only want to enable hardware decoding at runtime,
don't set the parameter, or put hwdec=no into your mpv.conf
(relevant on distros which force-enable it by default, such
as on Ubuntu). Use the Ctrl+h default binding to enable it
at runtime.
• If you're not sure, but want hardware decoding always en-
abled by default, put hwdec=yes into your mpv.conf, and ac-
knowledge that this may cause problems.
• If you want to test available hardware decoding methods,
pass --hwdec=auto --hwdec-codecs=all and look at the termi-
nal output.
• If you're a developer, or want to perform elaborate tests,
you may need any of the other possible option values.
This option accepts a comma delimited list of api types, along
with certain special values:
no always use software decoding (default)
auto enable any whitelisted hw decoder (see below)
auto-unsafe
forcibly enable any hw decoder found (see below)
yes exactly the same as auto
auto-safe
exactly the same as auto
NOTE:
Special values can be mixed with api names. eg: vaapi,auto
will try and use the vaapi hwdec, and if that fails, will run
through the normal auto logic.
Actively supported hwdecs:
d3d11va
requires --vo=gpu with --gpu-context=d3d11 or --gpu-con-
text=angle (Windows 8+ only)
d3d11va-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Windows 8+ only)
videotoolbox
requires --vo=gpu (macOS 10.8 and up), or --vo=libmpv (iOS
9.0 and up)
videotoolbox-copy
copies video back into system RAM (macOS 10.8 or iOS 9.0
and up)
vaapi requires --vo=gpu, --vo=vaapi or --vo=dmabuf-wayland
(Linux only)
vaapi-copy
copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs or
Windows)
nvdec requires --vo=gpu (Any platform CUDA is available)
nvdec-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is
available)
drm requires --vo=gpu (Linux only)
drm-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Linux only)
vulkan requires --vo=gpu-next (Any platform with Vulkan Video De-
coding)
vulkan-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Any platform with Vulkan
Video Decoding)
Other hwdecs (only use if you know you have to):
dxva2 requires --vo=gpu with --gpu-context=d3d11, --gpu-con-
text=angle or --gpu-context=dxinterop (Windows only)
dxva2-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Windows only)
vdpau requires --vo=gpu with --gpu-context=x11, or --vo=vdpau
(Linux only)
vdpau-copy
copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs
only)
mediacodec
requires --vo=gpu --gpu-context=android or --vo=media-
codec_embed (Android only)
mediacodec-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Android only)
cuda requires --vo=gpu (Any platform CUDA is available)
cuda-copy
copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is
available)
crystalhd
copies video back to system RAM (Any platform supported by
hardware)
rkmpp requires --vo=gpu (some RockChip devices only)
auto tries to automatically enable hardware decoding using the
first available method, but allows only whitelisted methods that
are considered "safe". This is supposed to be a reasonable way to
enable hardware decoding by default in a config file (even though
you shouldn't do that anyway; prefer runtime enabling with
Ctrl+h). Unlike auto-unsafe, this will not try to enable unknown
or known-to-be-bad methods. In addition, this may disable hard-
ware decoding in other situations when it's known to cause prob-
lems, but currently this mechanism is quite primitive. (As an ex-
ample for something that still causes problems: certain combina-
tions of HEVC and Intel chips on Windows tend to cause mpv to
crash, most likely due to driver bugs.)
auto-unsafe is similar to auto, but without the whitelist. In
general, you should never need to use this beyond debugging or
development use. Any known unsafe hwdec you want to test can sim-
ply be appended to the list option such as --hwdec=auto,un-
safe-hwdec. This still depends what VO you are using. See the
list above, for which --vo and gpu-context is required for a
given hwdec. It will go down the list of available hwdecs until
one is successfully initialised. If all of them fail, it will
fallback to software decoding.
auto-copy selects only modes that copy the video data back to
system memory after decoding. This selects modes like vaapi-copy
(and so on), but it only allows whitelisted methods that are con-
sidered "safe". If none of these work, hardware decoding is dis-
abled. This mode is usually guaranteed to incur no additional
quality loss compared to software decoding (assuming modern
codecs and an error free video stream), and will allow CPU pro-
cessing with video filters. This mode works with all video fil-
ters and VOs.
auto-copy-safe is an alias for auto-copy
auto-copy-unsafe is the same as auto-copy except that it goes
through all methods and not just the whitelisted ones that are
considered "safe".
Because these copy the decoded video back to system RAM, they're
often less efficient than the direct modes, and may not help too
much over software decoding if you are short on CPU resources.
NOTE:
Most non-copy methods only work with the OpenGL GPU backend.
Currently, only the vaapi, nvdec, cuda and vulkan methods work
with Vulkan.
The vaapi mode, if used with --vo=gpu or --vo=gpu-next most
likely works with Intel and AMD GPUs only. It requires the opengl
EGL backend if the GPU does not support drm modifiers.
nvdec and nvdec-copy are the newest, and recommended method to do
hardware decoding on Nvidia GPUs.
cuda and cuda-copy are an older implementation of hardware decod-
ing on Nvidia GPUs that uses Nvidia's bitstream parsers rather
than FFmpeg's. This can lead to feature deficiencies, such as
incorrect playback of HDR content, and nvdec/nvdec-copy should
always be preferred unless you specifically need Nvidia's dein-
terlacing algorithms. To use this deinterlacing you must pass the
option: vd-lavc-o=deint=[weave|bob|adaptive]. Pass weave (or
leave the option unset) to not attempt any deinterlacing.
Quality reduction with hardware decoding
In theory, hardware decoding does not reduce video
quality (at least for the codecs h264 and HEVC). How-
ever, due to restrictions in video output APIs, as well
as bugs in the actual hardware decoders, there can be
some loss, or even blatantly incorrect results. This
has largely ceased to be a problem with modern hard-
ware, but there is a lot of hardware out there, so
caveat emptor. Known problems are discussed below, but
the list cannot be considered exhaustive, as even
hwdecs that work well on certain hardware generations
may be problematic on other ones.
In some cases, RGB conversion is forced, which means
the RGB conversion is performed by the hardware decod-
ing API, instead of the shaders used by --vo=gpu. This
means certain colorspaces may not display correctly,
and certain filtering (such as debanding) cannot be ap-
plied in an ideal way. This will also usually force the
use of low quality chroma scalers instead of the one
specified by --cscale. In other cases, hardware decod-
ing can also reduce the bit depth of the decoded image,
which can introduce banding or precision loss for
10-bit files.
vdpau always does RGB conversion in hardware, which
does not support newer colorspaces like BT.2020 cor-
rectly. However, vdpau doesn't support 10 bit or HDR
encodings, so these limitations are unlikely to be rel-
evant.
dxva2 is not safe. It appears to always use BT.601 for
forced RGB conversion, but actual behavior depends on
the GPU drivers. Some drivers appear to convert to lim-
ited range RGB, which gives a faded appearance. In ad-
dition to driver-specific behavior, global system set-
tings might affect this additionally. This can give in-
correct results even with completely ordinary video
sources.
mediacodec is not safe. It forces RGB conversion (not
with -copy) and how well it handles non-standard color-
spaces is not known. In the rare cases where 10-bit is
supported the bit depth of the output will be reduced
to 8.
cuda should usually be safe, but depending on how a
file/stream has been mixed, it has been reported to
corrupt the timestamps causing glitched, flashing
frames. It can also sometimes cause massive framedrops
for unknown reasons. Caution is advised, and nvdec
should always be preferred.
crystalhd is not safe. It always converts to 4:2:2 YUV,
which may be lossy, depending on how chroma sub-sam-
pling is done during conversion. It also discards the
top left pixel of each frame for some reason.
If you run into any weird decoding issues, frame
glitches or discoloration, and you have --hwdec turned
on, the first thing you should try is disabling it.
--gpu-hwdec-interop=<auto|all|no|name>
This option is for troubleshooting hwdec interop issues. Since
it's a debugging option, its semantics may change at any time.
This is useful for the gpu and libmpv VOs for selecting which
hwdec interop context to use exactly. Effectively it also can be
used to block loading of certain backends.
If set to auto (default), the behavior depends on the VO: for
gpu, it does nothing, and the interop context is loaded on demand
(when the decoder probes for --hwdec support). For libmpv, which
has has no on-demand loading, this is equivalent to all.
The empty string is equivalent to auto.
If set to all, it attempts to load all interop contexts at GL
context creation time.
Other than that, a specific backend can be set, and the list of
them can be queried with help (mpv CLI only).
Runtime changes to this are ignored (the current option value is
used whenever the renderer is created).
--hwdec-extra-frames=<N>
Number of GPU frames hardware decoding should preallocate (de-
fault: see --list-options output). If this is too low, frame al-
location may fail during decoding, and video frames might get
dropped and/or corrupted. Setting it too high simply wastes GPU
memory and has no advantages.
This value is used only for hardware decoding APIs which require
preallocating surfaces (known examples include d3d11va and
vaapi). For other APIs, frames are allocated as needed. The de-
tails depend on the libavcodec implementations of the hardware
decoders.
The required number of surfaces depends on dynamic runtime situa-
tions. The default is a fixed value that is thought to be suffi-
cient for most uses. But in certain situations, it may not be
enough.
--hwdec-image-format=<name>
Set the internal pixel format used by hardware decoding via
--hwdec (default no). The special value no selects an implementa-
tion specific standard format. Most decoder implementations sup-
port only one format, and will fail to initialize if the format
is not supported.
Some implementations might support multiple formats. In particu-
lar, videotoolbox is known to require uyvy422 for good perfor-
mance on some older hardware. d3d11va can always use yuv420p,
which uses an opaque format, with likely no advantages.
--cuda-decode-device=<auto|0..>
Choose the GPU device used for decoding when using the cuda or
nvdec hwdecs with the OpenGL GPU backend, and with the cuda-copy
or nvdec-copy hwdecs in all cases.
For the OpenGL GPU backend, the default device used for decoding
is the one being used to provide gpu output (and in the vast ma-
jority of cases, only one GPU will be present).
For the copy hwdecs, the default device will be the first device
enumerated by the CUDA libraries - however that is done.
For the Vulkan GPU backend, decoding must always happen on the
display device, and this option has no effect.
--vaapi-device=<device file|adapter name>
Choose the DRM device for vaapi-copy. This should be the path to
a DRM device file. (Default: /dev/dri/renderD128)
On Windows this takes adapter name as an input. Will pick the de-
fault adapter if unset. Alternatives are listed when the name
"help" is given.
--panscan=<0.0-1.0>
Enables pan-and-scan functionality (cropping the sides of e.g. a
16:9 video to make it fit a 4:3 display without black bands). The
range controls how much of the image is cropped. May not work
with all video output drivers.
This option has no effect if --video-unscaled option is used.
The difference between --panscan and --video-zoom is that --pan-
scan can only zoom in until either the video width or height
fills the window, while --video-zoom can zoom in or out arbitrary
amounts, and also works with --video-unscaled.
--video-aspect-override=<ratio|no>
Override video aspect ratio, in case aspect information is incor-
rect or missing in the file being played.
These values have special meaning:
no use the method of the --video-aspect-method option (de-
fault)
0 disable aspect ratio handling, pretend the video has
square pixels (deprecated, use --video-aspect-override=no
--video-aspect-method=ignore instead)
-1 strictly prefer the container aspect ratio (deprecated,
use --video-aspect-override=no --video-aspect-method=con-
tainer instead)
But note that handling of these special values might change in
the future.
Examples
• --video-aspect-override=4:3 or --video-aspect-over-
ride=1.3333
• --video-aspect-override=16:9 or --video-aspect-over-
ride=1.7777
• --no-video-aspect-override or --video-aspect-override=no
--video-aspect-method=<bitstream|container|ignore>
This sets the default video aspect determination method (if the
aspect is _not_ overridden by the user with --video-aspect-over-
ride or others).
container
Strictly prefer the container aspect ratio. This is appar-
ently the default behavior with VLC, at least with Ma-
troska. Note that if the container has no aspect ratio
set, the behavior is the same as with bitstream.
bitstream
Strictly prefer the bitstream aspect ratio, unless the
bitstream aspect ratio is not set. This is apparently the
default behavior with XBMC/kodi, at least with Matroska.
ignore Disable aspect ratio handling, pretend the video has
square pixels.
The current default for mpv is container.
Normally you should not set this. Try the various choices if you
encounter video that has the wrong aspect ratio in mpv, but seems
to be correct in other players.
--video-unscaled=<no|yes|downscale-big>
Disable scaling of the video. If the window is larger than the
video, black bars are added. Otherwise, the video is cropped, un-
less the option is set to downscale-big, in which case the video
is fit to window. The video still can be influenced by the other
--video-... options. This option disables the effect of --pan-
scan.
Note that the scaler algorithm may still be used, even if the
video isn't scaled. For example, this can influence chroma con-
version. The video will also still be scaled in one dimension if
the source uses non-square pixels (e.g. anamorphic widescreen
DVDs).
This option is disabled if --keepaspect=no is used.
--video-pan-x=<value>, --video-pan-y=<value>
Moves the displayed video rectangle by the given value in the X
or Y direction. The unit is in fractions of the size of the
scaled video (the full size, even if parts of the video are not
visible due to panscan or other options).
For example, displaying a video fullscreen on a 1920x1080 screen
with --video-pan-x=-0.1 would move the video 192 pixels to the
left and --video-pan-y=-0.1 would move the video 108 pixels up.
This option is disabled if --keepaspect=no is used.
--video-rotate=<0-359|no>
Rotate the video clockwise, in degrees. If no is given, the video
is never rotated, even if the file has rotation metadata. (The
rotation value is added to the rotation metadata, which means the
value 0 would rotate the video according to the rotation meta-
data.)
When using hardware decoding without copy-back, only 90° steps
work, while software decoding and hardware decoding methods that
copy the video back to system memory support all values between 0
and 359.
--video-crop=<[W[xH]][+x+y]>, --video-crop=<x:y>
Crop the video by starting at the x, y offset for w, h pixels.
The crop is applied to the source video rectangle (before anamor-
phic stretch) by the VO. A crop rectangle that is not within the
video rectangle will be ignored. This works with hwdec, unlike
the equivalent 'lavfi-crop'. When offset is omitted, the central
area will be cropped. Setting the crop to empty one
--video-crop=0x0+0+0 overrides container crop and disables crop-
ping. Setting the crop to --video-crop="" disables manual crop-
ping and restores the container crop if it's specified.
--video-zoom=<value>
Adjust the video display scale factor by the given value. The pa-
rameter is given log 2. For example, --video-zoom=0 is unscaled,
--video-zoom=1 is twice the size, --video-zoom=-2 is one fourth
of the size, and so on.
This option is disabled if --keepaspect=no is used.
--video-scale-x=<value>, --video-scale-y=<value>
Multiply the video display size with the given value (default:
1.0). If a non-default value is used, this will be different from
the window size, so video will be either cut off, or black bars
are added.
This value is multiplied with the value derived from --video-zoom
and the normal video aspect ratio. This option is disabled if
--keepaspect=no is used.
--video-align-x=<-1-1>, --video-align-y=<-1-1>
When the video is bigger than the window, these move the dis-
played rectangle to show different parts of the video.
--video-align-y=-1 would display the top of the video, 0 would
display the center (default), and 1 would display the bottom.
When the video is smaller than the window and --video-recenter is
disabled, these move the video rectangle within the black bor-
ders, which are usually added to pad the video to the window if
video and window aspect ratios are different. --video-align-y=-1
would move the video to the top of the window (leaving a border
only on the bottom), 0 would center it, and 1 would put the video
at the bottom of the window.
If video and screen aspect match perfectly, these options do
nothing.
Unlike --video-pan-x and --video-pan-y, these don't go beyond the
video's or window's boundaries or make the displayed rectangle
drift off after zooming.
This option is disabled if --keepaspect=no is used.
--video-recenter=<yes|no>
Whether to behave as if --video-align-x and --video-align-y were
0 when the video becomes smaller than the window in the respec-
tive direction
After zooming in until the video is bigger the window, panning
with --video-align-x and/or --video-align-y, and zooming out un-
til the video is smaller than the window, this is useful to re-
center the video in the window.
Default: no.
--video-margin-ratio-left=<val>, --video-margin-ratio-right=<val>,
--video-margin-ratio-top=<val>, --video-margin-ratio-bottom=<val>
Set extra video margins on each border (default: 0). Each value
is a ratio of the window size, using a range 0.0-1.0. For exam-
ple, setting the option --video-margin-ratio-right=0.2 at a win-
dow size of 1000 pixels will add a 200 pixels border on the right
side of the window.
The video is "boxed" by these margins. The window size is not
changed. In particular it does not enlarge the window, and the
margins will cause the video to be downscaled by default. This
may or may not change in the future.
The margins are applied after 90° video rotation, but before any
other video transformations.
This option is disabled if --keepaspect=no is used.
Subtitles still may use the margins, depending on --sub-use-mar-
gins and similar options.
These options were created for the OSC. Some odd decisions, such
as making the margin values a ratio (instead of pixels), were
made for the sake of the OSC. It's possible that these options
may be replaced by ones that are more generally useful. The be-
havior of these options may change to fit OSC requirements bet-
ter, too.
--correct-pts=<yes|no>
--correct-pts=no switches mpv to a mode where video timing is de-
termined using a fixed framerate value (either using the --con-
tainer-fps-override option, or using file information). Some-
times, files with very broken timestamps can be played somewhat
well in this mode. Note that video filters, subtitle rendering,
seeking (including hr-seeks and backstepping), and audio synchro-
nization can be completely broken in this mode.
--container-fps-override=<float>
Override video framerate. Useful if the original value is wrong
or missing.
NOTE:
Works in --correct-pts=no mode only.
--deinterlace=<yes|no|auto>
Enable or disable deinterlacing (default: no). Interlaced video
shows ugly comb-like artifacts, which are visible on fast move-
ment. Enabling this typically inserts the bwdif video filter in
order to deinterlace the video, or lets the video output apply
deinterlacing if supported.
When using auto, mpv will insert a deinterlacing filter if ffmpeg
detects that the video frame is interlaced. Be aware that there
can be false positives in certain cases, such as when files are
encoded as interlaced despite the video not actually being so.
This is why auto is not the default value.
Keep in mind that using this filter will conflict with any manu-
ally inserted deinterlacing filters, and that this will make
video look worse if it's not actually interlaced.
--deinterlace-field-parity=<tff|bff|auto>
Specify the field parity/order when deinterlacing (default:
auto). Each frame of an interlaced video is divided into two
fields, which are then separately transmitted. Top field repre-
sents even lines while bottom field represents odd lines. When
deinterlacing the deinterlacer needs to know the correct temporal
order of the fields else the video will appear jittery.
auto will automatically try to detect the field order of the
video, tff forces top field first while bff forces bottom field
first.
--frames=<number>
Play/convert only first <number> video frames, then quit.
--frames=0 loads the file, but immediately quits before initial-
izing playback. (Might be useful for scripts which just want to
determine some file properties.)
For audio-only playback, any value greater than 0 will quit play-
back immediately after initialization. The value 0 works as with
video.
--video-output-levels=<outputlevels>
RGB color levels used with YUV to RGB conversion. Normally, out-
put devices such as PC monitors use full range color levels. How-
ever, some TVs and video monitors expect studio RGB levels. Pro-
viding full range output to a device expecting studio level input
results in crushed blacks and whites, the reverse in dim gray
blacks and dim whites.
Not all VOs support this option. Some will silently ignore it.
Available color ranges are:
auto automatic selection (equals to full range) (default)
limited
limited range (16-235 per component), studio levels
full full range (0-255 per component), PC levels
NOTE:
It is advisable to use your graphics driver's color range op-
tion instead, if available.
--hwdec-codecs=<codec1,codec2,...|all>
Allow hardware decoding for a given list of codecs only. The spe-
cial value all always allows all codecs.
You can get the list of allowed codecs with mpv --vd=help. Remove
the prefix, e.g. instead of lavc:h264 use h264.
By default, this is set to h264,vc1,hevc,vp8,vp9,av1,prores. Note
that the hardware acceleration special codecs like h264_vdpau are
not relevant anymore, and in fact have been removed from FFmpeg
in this form.
This is usually only needed with broken GPUs, where a codec is
reported as supported, but decoding causes more problems than it
solves.
NOTE:
On some broken drivers (e.g. NVIDIA on Linux), probing for
codecs which the GPU does not support can unnecessarily slow
down video playback initialization. To alleviate this, explic-
itly specify a list which only includes the codecs supported
on the setup.
Example
mpv --hwdec=vdpau --hwdec-codecs=h264,mpeg2video
Enable vdpau decoding for h264 and mpeg2 only.
--hwdec-software-fallback=<yes|no|N>
Fallback to software decoding if the hardware-accelerated decoder
fails (default: 3). If this is a number, then fallback will be
triggered if N frames fail to decode in a row. 1 is equivalent to
yes.
Setting this to a higher number might break the playback start
fallback: if a fallback happens, parts of the file will be
skipped, approximately by to the number of packets that could not
be decoded. Values below an unspecified count will not have this
problem, because mpv retains the packets.
--vd-lavc-check-hw-profile=<yes|no>
Check hardware decoder profile (default: yes). If no is set, the
highest profile of the hardware decoder is unconditionally se-
lected, and decoding is forced even if the profile of the video
is higher than that. The result is most likely broken decoding,
but may also help if the detected or reported profiles are some-
how incorrect.
--vd-lavc-film-grain=<auto|cpu|gpu>
Enables film grain application on the GPU. If video decoding is
done on the CPU, doing film grain application on the GPU can
speed up decoding. This option can also help hardware decoding,
as it can reduce the number of frame copies done.
By default, it's set to auto, so if the VO supports film grain
application, then it will be treated as gpu. If the VO does not
support this, then it will be treated as cpu, regardless of the
setting. Currently, only gpu-next supports film grain applica-
tion.
--vd-lavc-dr=<auto|yes|no>
Enable direct rendering (default: auto). If this is set to yes,
the video will be decoded directly to GPU video memory (or stag-
ing buffers). This can speed up video upload, and may help with
large resolutions or slow hardware. This works only with the fol-
lowing VOs:
• gpu: requires at least OpenGL 4.4 or Vulkan.
• libmpv: The libmpv render API has optional support.
The auto option will try to guess whether DR can improve perfor-
mance on your particular hardware. Currently this enables it on
AMD or NVIDIA if using OpenGL or unconditionally if using Vulkan.
Using video filters of any kind that write to the image data (or
output newly allocated frames) will silently disable the DR code
path.
--vd-lavc-bitexact
Only use bit-exact algorithms in all decoding steps (for codec
testing).
--vd-lavc-fast (MPEG-1/2 and H.264 only)
Enable optimizations which do not comply with the format specifi-
cation and potentially cause problems, like simpler dequantiza-
tion, simpler motion compensation, assuming use of the default
quantization matrix, assuming YUV 4:2:0 and skipping a few checks
to detect damaged bitstreams.
--vd-lavc-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass AVOptions to libavcodec decoder. Note, a patch to make the
o= unneeded and pass all unknown options through the AVOption
system is welcome. A full list of AVOptions can be found in the
FFmpeg manual.
Some options which used to be direct options can be set with this
mechanism, like bug, gray, idct, ec, vismv, skip_top (was st),
skip_bottom (was sb), debug.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Example
--vd-lavc-o=debug=pict
--vd-lavc-show-all=<yes|no>
Show even broken/corrupt frames (default: no). If this option is
set to no, libavcodec won't output frames that were either de-
coded before an initial keyframe was decoded, or frames that are
recognized as corrupted.
--vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=<skipvalue> (H.264, HEVC only)
Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during decoding. Since the
filtered frame is supposed to be used as reference for decoding
dependent frames, this has a worse effect on quality than not do-
ing deblocking on e.g. MPEG-2 video. But at least for high bi-
trate HDTV, this provides a big speedup with little visible qual-
ity loss. Codecs other than H.264 or HEVC may have partial sup-
port for this option (often only all and none).
<skipvalue> can be one of the following:
none Never skip.
default
Skip useless processing steps (e.g. 0 size packets in
AVI).
nonref Skip frames that are not referenced (i.e. not used for de-
coding other frames, the error cannot "build up").
bidir Skip B-Frames.
nonkey Skip all frames except keyframes.
all Skip all frames.
--vd-lavc-skipidct=<skipvalue> (MPEG-1/2/4 only)
Skips the IDCT step. This degrades quality a lot in almost all
cases (see skiploopfilter for available skip values).
--vd-lavc-skipframe=<skipvalue>
Skips decoding of frames completely. Big speedup, but jerky mo-
tion and sometimes bad artifacts (see skiploopfilter for avail-
able skip values).
--vd-lavc-framedrop=<skipvalue>
Set framedropping mode used with --framedrop (see skiploopfilter
for available skip values).
--vd-lavc-threads=<N>
Number of threads to use for decoding. Whether threading is actu-
ally supported depends on codec (default: 0). 0 means autodetect
number of cores on the machine and use that, up to the maximum of
16. You can set more than 16 threads manually.
--vd-lavc-assume-old-x264=<yes|no>
Assume the video was encoded by an old, buggy x264 version (de-
fault: no). Normally, this is autodetected by libavcodec. But if
the bitstream contains no x264 version info (or it was somehow
skipped), and the stream was in fact encoded by an old x264 ver-
sion (build 150 or earlier), and if the stream uses 4:4:4 chroma,
then libavcodec will by default show corrupted video. This op-
tion sets the libavcodec x264_build option to 150, which means
that if the stream contains no version info, or was not encoded
by x264 at all, it assumes it was encoded by the old version. En-
abling this option is pretty safe if you want your broken files
to work, but in theory this can break on streams not encoded by
x264, or if a stream encoded by a newer x264 version contains no
version info.
--vd-apply-cropping
Certain video codecs support cropping, meaning that only a
sub-rectangle of the decoded frame is intended for display. This
option controls how cropping is handled by libavcodec. Cropping
during decoding has certain limitations with regards to alignment
and hardware decoding. If this option is enabled, decoder will
apply the crop, else VO will handle it. Enabled by default.
--swapchain-depth=<N>
Allow up to N in-flight frames. This essentially controls the
frame latency. Increasing the swapchain depth can improve
pipelining and prevent missed vsyncs, but increases visible la-
tency. This option only mandates an upper limit, the implementa-
tion can use a lower latency than requested internally. A setting
of 1 means that the VO will wait for every frame to become visi-
ble before starting to render the next frame. (Default: 3)
Audio
--audio-pitch-correction=<yes|no>
If this is enabled (default), playing with a speed different from
normal automatically inserts the scaletempo2 audio filter. You
can insert filters besides scaletempo2 and modify their params
using Conditional auto profiles:
[af_insert]
profile-cond=speed ~= 1
profile-restore=copy
af-add=scaletempo2=search-interval=50 # Insert filter and params here.
Filters set this way replace the scaletempo2 default, instead of
overlapping with it. If there are multiple audio filters inserted
that can do pitch correction, then only the last one in the fil-
ter chain is used. For details on the specifics of each avail-
able filter, see the audio filter section.
--audio-device=<name>
Use the given audio device. This consists of the audio output
name, e.g. alsa, followed by /, followed by the audio output
specific device name. The default value for this option is auto,
which tries every audio output in preference order with the de-
fault device.
You can list audio devices with --audio-device=help. This outputs
the device name in quotes, followed by a description. The device
name is what you have to pass to the --audio-device option. The
list of audio devices can be retrieved by API by using the au-
dio-device-list property.
While the option normally takes one of the strings as indicated
by the methods above, you can also force the device for most AOs
by building it manually. For example name/foobar forces the AO
name to use the device foobar. However, the --ao option will
strictly force a specific AO. To avoid confusion, don't use --ao
and --audio-device together.
Example for ALSA
MPlayer and mplayer2 required you to replace any ','
with '.' and any ':' with '=' in the ALSA device name.
For example, to use the device named dmix:default, you
had to do:
-ao alsa:device=dmix=default
In mpv you could instead use:
--audio-device=alsa/dmix:default
--audio-exclusive=<yes|no>
Enable exclusive output mode. In this mode, the system is usually
locked out, and only mpv will be able to output audio.
This only works for some audio outputs, such as wasapi, coreau-
dio, pipewire and audiounit. Other audio outputs silently ignore
this option. They either have no concept of exclusive mode, or
the mpv side of the implementation is missing.
--audio-fallback-to-null=<yes|no>
If no audio device can be opened, behave as if --ao=null was
given. This is useful in combination with --audio-device: instead
of causing an error if the selected device does not exist, the
client API user (or a Lua script) could let playback continue
normally, and check the current-ao and audio-device-list proper-
ties to make high-level decisions about how to continue.
--ao=<driver>
Specify the audio output drivers to be used. See AUDIO OUTPUT
DRIVERS for details and descriptions of available drivers.
--af=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Specify a list of audio filters to apply to the audio stream. See
AUDIO FILTERS for details and descriptions of the available fil-
ters. The option variants --af-add, --af-pre, and --af-clr exist
to modify a previously specified list, but you should not need
these for typical use.
--audio-spdif=<codecs>
List of codecs for which compressed audio passthrough should be
used. This works for both classic S/PDIF and HDMI.
Possible codecs are ac3, dts, dts-hd, eac3, truehd. Multiple
codecs can be specified by separating them with ,. dts refers to
low bitrate DTS core, while dts-hd refers to DTS MA (receiver and
OS support varies). If both dts and dts-hd are specified, it be-
haves equivalent to specifying dts-hd only.
In earlier mpv versions you could use --ad to force the spdif
wrapper. This does not work anymore.
WARNING:
There is not much reason to use this. HDMI supports uncom-
pressed multichannel PCM, and mpv supports lossless DTS-HD de-
coding via FFmpeg's new DCA decoder (based on libdcadec).
--ad=<decoder1,decoder2,...[-]>
Specify a priority list of audio decoders to be used, according
to their decoder name. When determining which decoder to use, the
first decoder that matches the audio format is selected. If that
is unavailable, the next decoder is used. Finally, it tries all
other decoders that are not explicitly selected or rejected by
the option.
- at the end of the list suppresses fallback on other available
decoders not on the --ad list. This should not normally be used,
because they break normal decoder auto-selection! The - mode is
deprecated.
Examples
--ad=mp3float
Prefer the FFmpeg mp3float decoder over all other MP3
decoders.
--ad=help
List all available decoders.
WARNING:
Enabling compressed audio passthrough (AC3 and DTS via
SPDIF/HDMI) with this option is not possible. Use --au-
dio-spdif instead.
--volume=<value>
Set the startup volume. 0 means silence, 100 means no volume re-
duction or amplification. Negative values can be passed for com-
patibility, but are treated as 0.
Since mpv 0.18.1, this always controls the internal mixer (aka
software volume).
--volume-max=<100.0-1000.0>
Set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 130). A
value of 130 will allow you to adjust the volume up to about dou-
ble the normal level.
--volume-gain=<db>
Set the volume gain in dB. This is applied on top of other volume
and gain settings.
--volume-gain-max=<0.0-150.0>, --volume-gain-min=<-150.0-0.0>
Set the volume gain range in dB (default: -96 dB min, 12 dB max).
--replaygain=<no|track|album>
Adjust volume gain according to replaygain values stored in the
file metadata. With --replaygain=no (the default), perform no ad-
justment. With --replaygain=track, apply track gain. With --re-
playgain=album, apply album gain if present and fall back to
track gain otherwise.
--replaygain-preamp=<db>
Pre-amplification gain in dB to apply to the selected replaygain
gain (default: 0).
--replaygain-clip=<yes|no>
Allow the volume gain to clip (default: no). If this option is
not enabled, mpv automatically will prevent clipping by lowering
the gain.
--replaygain-fallback=<db>
Gain in dB to apply if the file has no replay gain tags. This op-
tion is always applied if the replaygain logic is somehow inac-
tive. If this is applied, no other replaygain options are ap-
plied.
--audio-delay=<sec>
Audio delay in seconds (positive or negative float value). Posi-
tive values delay the audio, and negative values delay the video.
--mute=<yes|no>
Set startup audio mute status (default: no).
See also: --volume.
--audio-demuxer=<[+]name>
Use this audio demuxer type when using --audio-file. Use a '+'
before the name to force it; this will skip some checks. Give the
demuxer name as printed by --audio-demuxer=help.
--ad-lavc-ac3drc=<level>
Select the Dynamic Range Compression level for AC-3 audio
streams. <level> is a float value ranging from 0 to 1, where 0
means no compression (which is the default) and 1 means full com-
pression (make loud passages more silent and vice versa). Values
up to 6 are also accepted, but are purely experimental. This op-
tion only shows an effect if the AC-3 stream contains the re-
quired range compression information.
The standard mandates that DRC is enabled by default, but mpv
(and some other players) ignore this for the sake of better audio
quality.
--ad-lavc-downmix=<yes|no>
Whether to request audio channel downmixing from the decoder (de-
fault: no). Some decoders, like AC-3, AAC and DTS, can remix au-
dio on decoding. The requested number of output channels is set
with the --audio-channels option. Useful for playing surround
audio on a stereo system.
--ad-lavc-threads=<0-16>
Number of threads to use for decoding. Whether threading is actu-
ally supported depends on codec. As of this writing, it's sup-
ported for some lossless codecs only. 0 means autodetect number
of cores on the machine and use that, up to the maximum of 16
(default: 1).
--ad-lavc-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass AVOptions to libavcodec decoder. Note, a patch to make the
o= unneeded and pass all unknown options through the AVOption
system is welcome. A full list of AVOptions can be found in the
FFmpeg manual.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--ad-spdif-dtshd=<yes|no>, --dtshd=<yes|no>
If DTS is passed through, use DTS-HD.
WARNING:
This and enabling passthrough via --ad are deprecated in favor
of using --audio-spdif=dts-hd.
--audio-channels=<auto-safe|auto|layouts>
Control which audio channels are output (e.g. surround vs.
stereo). There are the following possibilities:
•
--audio-channels=auto-safe
Use the system's preferred channel layout. If there is
none (such as when accessing a hardware device instead
of the system mixer), force stereo. Some audio outputs
might simply accept any layout and do downmixing on
their own.
This is the default.
•
--audio-channels=auto
Send the audio device whatever it accepts, preferring
the audio's original channel layout. Can cause issues
with HDMI (see the warning below).
•
--audio-channels=layout1,layout2,...
List of ,-separated channel layouts which should be al-
lowed. Technically, this only adjusts the filter chain
output to the best matching layout in the list, and
passes the result to the audio API. It's possible that
the audio API will select a different channel layout.
Using this mode is recommended for direct hardware out-
put, especially over HDMI (see HDMI warning below).
•
--audio-channels=<stereo|mono>
Force a downmix to stereo or mono. These are spe-
cial-cases of the previous item. (See paragraphs below
for implications.)
If a list of layouts is given, each item can be either an ex-
plicit channel layout name (like 5.1), or a channel number. Chan-
nel numbers refer to default layouts, e.g. 2 channels refer to
stereo, 6 refers to 5.1.
See --audio-channels=help output for defined default layouts.
This also lists speaker names, which can be used to express arbi-
trary channel layouts (e.g. fl-fr-lfe is 2.1).
If the list of channel layouts has only 1 item, the decoder is
asked to produce according output. This sometimes triggers de-
coder-downmix, which might be different from the normal mpv down-
mix. (Only some decoders support remixing audio, like AC-3, AAC
or DTS. You can use --ad-lavc-downmix=no to make the decoder al-
ways output its native layout.) One consequence is that --au-
dio-channels=stereo triggers decoder downmix, while auto or
auto-safe never will, even if they end up selecting stereo. This
happens because the decision whether to use decoder downmix hap-
pens long before the audio device is opened.
If the channel layout of the media file (i.e. the decoder) and
the AO's channel layout don't match, mpv will attempt to insert a
conversion filter. You may need to change the channel layout of
the system mixer to achieve your desired output as mpv does not
have control over it. Another work-around for this on some AOs is
to use --audio-exclusive=yes to circumvent the system mixer en-
tirely.
WARNING:
Using auto can cause issues when using audio over HDMI. The OS
will typically report all channel layouts that _can_ go over
HDMI, even if the receiver does not support them. If a re-
ceiver gets an unsupported channel layout, random things can
happen, such as dropping the additional channels, or adding
noise.
You are recommended to set an explicit whitelist of the lay-
outs you want. For example, most A/V receivers connected via
HDMI and that can do 7.1 would be served by: --audio-chan-
nels=7.1,5.1,stereo
--audio-display=<no|embedded-first|external-first>
Determines whether to display cover art when playing audio files
and with what priority. It will display the first image found,
and additional images are available as video tracks.
no Disable display of video entirely when playing audio
files.
embedded-first
Display embedded images and external cover art, giving
priority to embedded images (default).
external-first
Display embedded images and external cover art, giving
priority to external files.
This option has no influence on files with normal video tracks.
--audio-files=<files>
Play audio from an external file while viewing a video.
This is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--audio-file=<file>
CLI/config file only alias for --audio-files-append. Each use of
this option will add a new audio track. The details are similar
to how --sub-file works.
--audio-format=<format>
Select the sample format used for output from the audio filter
layer to the sound card. The values that <format> can adopt are
listed below in the description of the format audio filter.
--audio-samplerate=<Hz>
Select the output sample rate to be used (of course sound cards
have limits on this). If the sample frequency selected is differ-
ent from that of the current media, the internal swresample audio
filter will be inserted into the audio filter layer to compensate
for the difference.
--gapless-audio=<no|yes|weak>
Try to play consecutive audio files with no silence or disruption
at the point of file change. Default: weak.
no Disable gapless audio.
yes The audio device is opened using parameters chosen for the
first file played and is then kept open for gapless play-
back. This means that if the first file for example has a
low sample rate, then the following files may get resam-
pled to the same low sample rate, resulting in reduced
sound quality. If you play files with different parame-
ters, consider using options such as --audio-samplerate
and --audio-format to explicitly select what the shared
output format will be.
weak Normally, the audio device is kept open (using the format
it was first initialized with). If the audio format the
decoder output changes, the audio device is closed and re-
opened. This means that you will normally get gapless au-
dio with files that were encoded using the same settings,
but might not be gapless in other cases. The exact condi-
tions under which the audio device is kept open is an im-
plementation detail, and can change from version to ver-
sion. Currently, the device is kept even if the sample
format changes, but the sample formats are convertible.
If video is still going on when there is still audio, try-
ing to use gapless is also explicitly given up.
NOTE:
This feature is implemented in a simple manner and relies on
audio output device buffering to continue playback while mov-
ing from one file to another. If playback of the new file
starts slowly, for example because it is played from a remote
network location or because you have specified cache settings
that require time for the initial cache fill, then the
buffered audio may run out before playback of the new file can
start.
--initial-audio-sync=<yes|no>
When starting a video file or after events such as seeking, mpv
will by default modify the audio stream to make it start from the
same timestamp as video, by either inserting silence at the start
or cutting away the first samples. Disabling this option makes
the player behave like older mpv versions did: video and audio
are both started immediately even if their start timestamps dif-
fer, and then video timing is gradually adjusted if necessary to
reach correct synchronization later.
--audio-file-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>
Load additional audio files matching the video filename. The pa-
rameter specifies how external audio files are matched.
no Don't automatically load external audio files (default).
exact Load the media filename with audio file extension.
fuzzy Load all audio files containing the media filename.
all Load all audio files in the current and --audio-file-paths
directories.
--audio-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Audio file extensions to try to match when using --au-
dio-file-auto, --autocreate-playlist or --directory-filter-types.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details. Use
--help=audio-exts to see default extensions.
--audio-file-paths=<path1:path2:...>
Equivalent to --sub-file-paths option, but for auto-loaded audio
files.
This is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--audio-client-name=<name>
The application name the player reports to the audio API. Can be
useful if you want to force a different audio profile (e.g. with
PulseAudio), or to set your own application name when using
libmpv.
--audio-buffer=<seconds>
Set the audio output minimum buffer. The audio device might actu-
ally create a larger buffer if it pleases. If the device creates
a smaller buffer, additional audio is buffered in an additional
software buffer.
Making this larger may make soft-volume and other filters react
slower, introduce additional issues on playback speed change, and
block the player on audio format changes. A smaller buffer might
lead to audio dropouts.
This option should be used for testing only. If a non-default
value helps significantly, the mpv developers should be con-
tacted.
Default: 0.2 (200 ms).
--audio-stream-silence=<yes|no>
Cash-grab consumer audio hardware (such as A/V receivers) often
ignore initial audio sent over HDMI. This can happen every time
audio over HDMI is stopped and resumed. In order to compensate
for this, you can enable this option to not to stop and restart
audio on seeks, and fill the gaps with silence. Likewise, when
pausing playback, audio is not stopped, and silence is played
while paused. Note that if no audio track is selected, the audio
device will still be closed immediately.
Not all AOs support this.
WARNING:
This modifies certain subtle player behavior, like A/V-sync
and underrun handling. Enabling this option is strongly dis-
couraged.
--audio-wait-open=<secs>
This makes sense for use with --audio-stream-silence=yes. If this
option is given, the player will wait for the given amount of
seconds after opening the audio device before sending actual au-
dio data to it. Useful if your expensive hardware discards the
first 1 or 2 seconds of audio data sent to it. If --au-
dio-stream-silence=yes is not set, this option will likely just
waste time.
Subtitles
NOTE:
Changing styling and position does not work with all subtitles. Im-
age-based subtitles (DVD, Bluray/PGS, DVB) cannot changed for funda-
mental reasons. Subtitles in ASS format are normally not changed in-
tentionally, but overriding them can be controlled with
--sub-ass-override.
--sub-demuxer=<[+]name>
Force subtitle demuxer type for --sub-file. Give the demuxer name
as printed by --sub-demuxer=help.
--sub-lavc-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass AVOptions to libavcodec decoder. Note, a patch to make the
o= unneeded and pass all unknown options through the AVOption
system is welcome. A full list of AVOptions can be found in the
FFmpeg manual.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--sub-delay=<sec>
Delays primary subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be negative.
--secondary-sub-delay=<sec>
Delays secondary subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be negative.
--sub-files=<file-list>, --sub-file=<filename>
Add a subtitle file to the list of external subtitles.
If you use --sub-file only once, this subtitle file is displayed
by default.
If --sub-file is used multiple times, the subtitle to use can be
switched at runtime by cycling subtitle tracks. It's possible to
show two subtitles at once: use --sid to select the first subti-
tle index, and --secondary-sid to select the second index. (The
index is printed on the terminal output after the --sid= in the
list of streams.)
--sub-files is a path list option (see List Options for de-
tails), and can take multiple file names separated by : (Unix) or
; (Windows), while --sub-file takes a single filename, but can
be used multiple times to add multiple files. Technically,
--sub-file is a CLI/config file only alias for --sub-files-ap-
pend.
--secondary-sid=<ID|auto|no>
Select a secondary subtitle stream. This is similar to --sid. If
a secondary subtitle is selected, it will be rendered as toptitle
(i.e. on the top of the screen) alongside the normal subtitle by
default, and provides a way to render two subtitles at once.
There are some caveats associated with this feature. For example,
bitmap subtitles will always be rendered in their usual position,
so selecting a bitmap subtitle as secondary subtitle will result
in overlapping subtitles. Secondary subtitles are never shown on
the terminal if video is disabled.
NOTE:
Styling and interpretation of any formatting tags is disabled
for the secondary subtitle. Internally, the same mechanism as
--sub-ass=no is used to strip the styling.
NOTE:
If the main subtitle stream contains formatting tags which
display the subtitle at the top of the screen, it will overlap
with the secondary subtitle. To prevent this, you could use
--sub-ass=no to disable styling in the main subtitle stream.
--sub-scale=<0-100>
Factor for the text subtitle font size (default: 1).
NOTE:
This affects ASS subtitles as well, and may lead to incorrect
subtitle rendering. Use with care, or use --sub-font-size in-
stead.
--sub-scale-signs=<yes|no>
When set to yes, also apply --sub-scale to typesetting (or
"signs"). When this is set to no, --sub-scale is only applied to
dialogue. The distinction between dialogue and typesetting is
done on a best effort basis and is not infallible (default: no).
--sub-scale-by-window=<yes|no>
Whether to scale subtitles with the window size (default: yes).
If this is disabled while --sub-scale-with-window is set to yes,
changing the window size won't change the subtitle font size.
Affects plain text subtitles only (or ASS if --sub-ass-override
is set high enough).
--sub-scale-with-window=<yes|no>
Make the subtitle font size relative to the window (default:
yes). If this is disabled while --sub-scale-by-window is set to
yes, the subtitle font size is scaled relative to the video size
instead.
Affects plain text subtitles only (or ASS if --sub-ass-override
is set high enough).
NOTE:
By default, the subtitle font size is scaled with the window
size. To make the font size constant, set only
--sub-scale-by-window to no. To make the font size scale with
video size instead, set only --sub-scale-with-window to no.
It's not meaningful to set both options to no.
--sub-ass-scale-with-window=<yes|no>
Like --sub-scale-with-window, but affects subtitles in ASS format
only. Like --sub-scale, this can break ASS subtitles.
Default: no.
--embeddedfonts=<yes|no>
Use fonts embedded in Matroska container files and ASS scripts
(default: yes). These fonts can be used for SSA/ASS subtitle ren-
dering.
--sub-pos=<0-150>
Specify the position of subtitles on the screen. The value is the
vertical position of the subtitle in % of the screen height. 100
is the original position, which is often not the absolute bottom
of the screen, but with some margin between the bottom and the
subtitle. Values above 100 move the subtitle further down.
WARNING:
Text subtitles (as opposed to image subtitles) may be cut off
if the value of the option is above 100. This is a libass re-
striction.
This affects ASS subtitles as well, and may lead to incorrect
subtitle rendering in addition to the problem above.
Using --sub-margin-y can achieve this in a better way.
--secondary-sub-pos=<0-150>
Specify the position of secondary subtitles on the screen. This
is similar to --sub-pos but for secondary subtitles.
--sub-speed=<0.1-10.0>
Multiply the subtitle event timestamps with the given value. Can
be used to fix the playback speed for frame-based subtitle for-
mats. Affects text subtitles only.
Example
--sub-speed=25/23.976 plays frame based subtitles which
have been loaded assuming a framerate of 23.976 at 25
FPS.
--sub-ass-style-overrides=<[Style.]Param=Value[,...]>
Override some style or script info parameters.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Examples
• --sub-ass-style-overrides=FontName=Arial,Default.Bold=1
• --sub-ass-style-overrides=PlayResY=768
NOTE:
Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.
--sub-hinting=<none|light|normal|native>
Set font hinting type. <type> can be:
none no hinting (default)
light FreeType autohinter, light mode
normal FreeType autohinter, normal mode
native font native hinter
WARNING:
Enabling hinting can lead to mispositioned text (in situations
it's supposed to match up video background), or reduce the
smoothness of animations with some badly authored ASS scripts.
It is recommended to not use this option, unless really
needed.
--sub-line-spacing=<value>
Set line spacing value for SSA/ASS renderer.
--sub-shaper=<simple|complex>
Set the text layout engine used by libass.
simple uses Fribidi only, fast, doesn't render some languages
correctly
complex
uses HarfBuzz, slower, wider language support
complex is the default. If libass hasn't been compiled against
HarfBuzz, libass silently reverts to simple.
--sub-ass-prune-delay=<-1|seconds>
Set the delay for automatic pruning of events from memory in
libass. When enabled, subtitle events are removed from memory
once their end timestamp is older than the specified delay.
-1 disables automatic pruning (default).
seconds
specify how many seconds after an event is no longer dis-
played should the pruning occur. 0 prunes events as soon
as they're off screen.
NOTE:
This breaks sub-seek and subtitle rendering when changing
play-direction from forward to backward during runtime for
events that were already "seen" and need to be rendered again,
if those events got pruned.
--sub-ass-styles=<filename>
Load all SSA/ASS styles found in the specified file and use them
for rendering text subtitles. The syntax of the file is exactly
like the [V4 Styles] / [V4+ Styles] section of SSA/ASS.
NOTE:
Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.
--sub-ass-override=<no|yes|scale|force|strip>
Control whether user style overrides should be applied. Note that
all of these overrides try to be somewhat smart about figuring
out whether or not a subtitle is considered a "sign" and try to
be as non-destructive as possible.
no Render subtitles as specified by the subtitle scripts,
without overrides.
yes Apply all the --sub-ass-* style override options. Changing
the default for any of these options can lead to incorrect
subtitle rendering.
scale Like yes, but also apply --sub-scale (default).
force Like yes, but also force all --sub-* options. Can break
rendering easily. Certain options aren't overridden if
they can potentially be too destructive.
strip Radically strip all ASS tags and styles from the subtitle.
This is equivalent to the old --no-ass / --no-sub-ass op-
tions.
This also controls some bitmap subtitle overrides, as well as
HTML tags in formats like SRT, despite the name of the option.
--secondary-sub-ass-override=<no|yes|scale|force|strip>
Control whether user secondary substyle overrides should be ap-
plied. This works exactly like --sub-ass-override.
Default: strip.
--sub-ass-force-margins
Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when
they are available, if the subtitles are in the ASS format.
Default: no.
--sub-use-margins
Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when
they are available, if the subtitles are in a plain text format
(or ASS if --sub-ass-override is set high enough).
Default: yes.
--sub-ass-use-video-data=<none|aspect-ratio|all>
Controls which information about the video stream is passed to
libass. Any option but all is incompatible with standard ASS as
defined by VSFilter, whose behavior most subtitle scripts and
renderers target, including libass. Video stream properties are
needed to accurately emulate VSFilter semantics and withholding
them will likely result in broken subtitle rendering for most
files. It's thus recommended to only change this selectively if
required on a per-file basis.
none Don't forward any video stream information.
aspect-ratio
Only forward aspect ratio; fallbacks are used for other
properties. This makes behavior consistent across differ-
ent video resolutions.
all Forward all available information, notably including stor-
age resolution.
For certain kinds of broken ASS files which got repurposed across
several video resolutions without either setting LayoutRes head-
ers or adjusting affected effects, it may be desirable to with-
hold storage resolution information from libass to ensure consis-
tent rendering across resolutions. Among others this affects 3D
rotations and blurs. When encountering such files, try setting
aspect-ratio.
Even more broken files on anamorphic video might also exhibit
stretching unless aspect ratio information is also faked, in this
case you can try using none. This has never an effect on
non-anamorphic video.
Default: all
--sub-ass-video-aspect-override=<no|ratio>
Allows passing any arbitrary aspect ratio to libass instead of
the video’s actual aspect ratio. Zero aspect ratio is identical
to no.
This has no effect if sub-ass-use-video-data is set to none.
--sub-vsfilter-bidi-compat=<yes|no>
Set implicit bidi detection to ltr instead of auto to match ASS'
default. This also disables libass' incompatible extensions. This
currently includes bracket pair matching according to the revised
Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm introduced in Unicode 6.3, and
also affects how BiDi runs are split and processed, as well as
soft linewrapping of Unicode text.
This affects plaintext (non-ASS) subtitles only. Default: no.
--sub-ass-vsfilter-color-compat=<basic|full|force-601|no>
Mangle colors like (xy-)vsfilter do (default: basic). Histori-
cally, VSFilter was not color space aware. This was no problem as
long as the color space used for SD video (BT.601) was used. But
when everything switched to HD (BT.709), VSFilter was still con-
verting RGB colors to BT.601, rendered them into the video frame,
and handled the frame to the video output, which would use BT.709
for conversion to RGB. The result were mangled subtitle colors.
Later on, bad hacks were added on top of the ASS format to con-
trol how colors are to be mangled.
basic Handle only BT.601->BT.709 mangling, if the subtitles seem
to indicate that this is required (default).
full Handle the full YCbCr Matrix header with all video color
spaces supported by libass and mpv. This might lead to bad
breakages in corner cases and is not strictly needed for
compatibility (hopefully), which is why this is not de-
fault.
force-601
Force BT.601->BT.709 mangling, regardless of subtitle
headers or video color space.
no Disable color mangling completely. All colors are RGB.
Choosing anything other than no will make the subtitle color de-
pend on the video color space, and it's for example in theory not
possible to reuse a subtitle script with another video file. The
--sub-ass-override option doesn't affect how this option is in-
terpreted.
--stretch-dvd-subs=<yes|no>
Stretch DVD subtitles when playing anamorphic videos for better
looking fonts on badly mastered DVDs. This switch has no effect
when the video is stored with square pixels - which for DVD input
cannot be the case though.
Many studios tend to use bitmap fonts designed for square pixels
when authoring DVDs, causing the fonts to look stretched on play-
back on DVD players. This option fixes them, however at the price
of possibly misaligning some subtitles (e.g. sign translations).
Disabled by default.
--stretch-image-subs-to-screen=<yes|no>
Stretch DVD and other image subtitles to the screen, ignoring the
video margins. This has a similar effect as --sub-use-margins for
text subtitles, except that the text itself will be stretched,
not only just repositioned. (At least in general it is unavoid-
able, as an image bitmap can in theory consist of a single bitmap
covering the whole screen, and the player won't know where ex-
actly the text parts are located.)
This option does not display subtitles correctly. Use with care.
Disabled by default.
--image-subs-video-resolution=<yes|no>
Override the image subtitle resolution with the video resolution
(default: no). Normally, the subtitle canvas is fit into the
video canvas (e.g. letterboxed). Setting this option uses the
video size as subtitle canvas size. Can be useful to test broken
subtitles, which often happen when the video was transcoded,
while attempting to keep the old subtitles.
--sub-ass=<yes|no>
Render ASS subtitles natively (default: yes).
NOTE:
This has been deprecated by --sub-ass-override=strip. You also
may need --embeddedfonts=no to get the same behavior. Also,
using --sub-ass-override=style should give better results
without breaking subtitles too much.
If --sub-ass=no is specified, all tags and style declarations are
stripped and ignored on display. The subtitle renderer uses the
font style as specified by the --sub- options instead.
NOTE:
Using --sub-ass=no may lead to incorrect or completely broken
rendering of ASS/SSA subtitles. It can sometimes be useful to
forcibly override the styling of ASS subtitles, but should be
avoided in general.
--sub-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>
Load additional subtitle files matching the video filename. The
parameter specifies how external subtitle files are matched. ex-
act is enabled by default.
no Don't automatically load external subtitle files.
exact Load the media filename with subtitle file extension and
possibly language suffixes (default).
fuzzy Load all subs containing the media filename.
all Load all subs in the current and --sub-file-paths directo-
ries.
--sub-auto-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Subtitle extensions to try and match when using --sub-auto. Note
that modifying this list will also affect what mpv recognizes as
subtitles when using drag and drop.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
--sub-codepage=<codepage>
You can use this option to specify the subtitle codepage.
uchardet will be used to guess the charset. (If mpv was not com-
piled with uchardet, then utf-8 is the effective default.)
The default value for this option is auto, which enables autode-
tection.
The following steps are taken to determine the final codepage, in
order:
• if the specific codepage has a +, use that codepage
• if the data looks like UTF-8, assume it is UTF-8
• if --sub-codepage is set to a specific codepage, use that
• run uchardet, and if successful, use that
• otherwise, use UTF-8-BROKEN
Examples
• --sub-codepage=latin2 Use Latin 2 if input is not UTF-8.
• --sub-codepage=+cp1250 Always force recoding to cp1250.
The pseudo codepage UTF-8-BROKEN is used internally. If it's set,
subtitles are interpreted as UTF-8 with "Latin 1" as fallback for
bytes which are not valid UTF-8 sequences. iconv is never in-
volved in this mode.
NOTE:
This works for text subtitle files only. Other types of subti-
tles (in particular subtitles in mkv files) are always assumed
to be UTF-8.
--sub-stretch-durations=<yes|no>
Stretch a subtitle duration so it ends when the next one starts.
Should help with subtitles which erroneously have zero durations.
NOTE:
Only applies to text subtitles.
--sub-fix-timing=<yes|no>
Adjust subtitle timing is to remove minor gaps or overlaps be-
tween subtitles (if the difference is smaller than 210 ms, the
gap or overlap is removed).
--sub-forced-events-only=<yes|no>
Enabling this displays only forced events within subtitle
streams. Only some bitmap subtitle formats (such as DVD or PGS)
are capable of having a mixture of forced and unforced events
within the stream. Enabling this on text subtitles will cause no
subtitles to be displayed (default: no).
--sub-fps=<rate>
Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: video fps).
Affects text subtitles only.
NOTE:
<rate> > video fps speeds the subtitles up for frame-based
subtitle files and slows them down for time-based ones.
See also: --sub-speed.
--sub-gauss=<0.0-3.0>
Apply Gaussian blur to image subtitles (default: 0). This can
help to make pixelated DVD/Vobsubs look nicer. A value other than
0 also switches to software subtitle scaling. Might be slow.
NOTE:
Never applied to text subtitles.
--sub-gray
Convert image subtitles to grayscale. Can help to make yellow
DVD/Vobsubs look nicer.
NOTE:
Never applied to text subtitles.
--sub-file-paths=<path-list>
Specify extra directories to search for subtitles matching the
video. Multiple directories can be separated by ":" (";" on Win-
dows). Paths can be relative or absolute. Relative paths are in-
terpreted relative to video file directory. If the file is a
URL, only absolute paths and sub configuration subdirectory will
be scanned.
Example
Assuming that /path/to/video/video.avi is played and
--sub-file-paths=sub:subtitles is specified, mpv
searches for subtitle files in these directories:
• /path/to/video/
• /path/to/video/sub/
• /path/to/video/subtitles/
• the sub configuration subdirectory (usually ~/.con-
fig/mpv/sub/)
This is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--sub-visibility=<yes|no>
Can be used to disable display of subtitles, but still select and
decode them.
--secondary-sub-visibility=<yes|no>
Can be used to disable display of secondary subtitles, but still
select and decode them.
--sub-clear-on-seek
(Obscure, rarely useful.) Can be used to play broken mkv files
with duplicate ReadOrder fields. ReadOrder is the first field in
a Matroska-style ASS subtitle packets. It should be unique, and
libass uses it for fast elimination of duplicates. This option
disables caching of subtitles across seeks, so after a seek
libass can't eliminate subtitle packets with the same ReadOrder
as earlier packets. Note that enabling this option can result in
broken subtitle behavior if you are not actually playing one of
the aforementioned broken mkv files.
--teletext-page=<-1-999>
Select a teletext page number to decode.
This works for dvb_teletext subtitle streams, and if FFmpeg has
been compiled with support for it.
Values 1-999 are for individual pages. Special value 0 (default)
matches all subtitle pages. Special value -1 matches all pages.
Note that page 100 is the default start page of actual teletext.
It is also the former default value of this option.
See the libzvbi-teletext section in FFmpeg documentation for de-
tails.
Default: 0
--sub-past-video-end
After the last frame of video, if this option is enabled, subti-
tles will continue to update based on audio timestamps. Other-
wise, the subtitles for the last video frame will stay onscreen.
Default: disabled
--sub-font=<name>
Specify font to use for subtitles that do not themselves specify
a particular font. The default is sans-serif.
Examples
• --sub-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'
• --sub-font='Comic Sans MS'
NOTE:
The --sub-font option (and many other style related --sub- op-
tions) are ignored when ASS-subtitles are rendered, unless
--sub-ass=no is specified.
This used to support fontconfig patterns. Starting with libass
0.13.0, this stopped working.
--sub-font-size=<size>
Specify the sub font size. The unit is the size in scaled pixels
at a window height of 720. The actual pixel size is scaled with
the window height: if the window height is larger or smaller than
720, the actual size of the text increases or decreases as well.
Default: 38
--sub-blur=<0..20.0>
Gaussian blur factor applied to the sub font border. 0 means no
blur applied (default).
--sub-bold=<yes|no>
Format text on bold.
--sub-italic=<yes|no>
Format text on italic.
--sub-outline-color=<color>
See --sub-color. Color used for the sub font outline.
--sub-border-color is an alias for --sub-outline-color.
--sub-back-color=<color>
See --sub-color. Color used for sub text background.
--sub-shadow-color is an alias for --sub-back-color.
--sub-outline-size=<size>
Size of the sub font outline in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables outlines.
--sub-border-size is an alias for --sub-outline-size.
Default: 1.65
--sub-border-style=<outline-and-shadow|opaque-box|background-box>
The style of the border.
• outline-and-shadow: draw outline and shadow. The size of the
outline is determined by --sub-outline-size, and the offset of
the shadow is determined by --sub-shadow-offset. The outline
is colored by --sub-outline-color, and the shadow is colored by
--sub-back-color. This corresponds to BorderStyle=1 in the ASS
spec.
• opaque-box: draw outline and shadow as opaque boxes that
tightly wrap each lines of text. The margin of the outline
opaque box is determined by --sub-outline-size, and the offset
of the shadow opaque box is determined by --sub-shadow-offset.
The outline opaque box is colored by --sub-outline-color, and
the shadow opaque box is colored by --sub-back-color. Despite
its name, the opaque box can be semi-transparent. This corre-
sponds to BorderStyle=3 in the ASS spec.
• background-box: draw a background box that bounds all lines of
text. The background box is colored by --sub-back-color, and
the margin of the background box is determined by
--sub-shadow-offset. The behavior of the outline is the same
as the outline-and-shadow style. This corresponds to Border-
Style=4, which is a libass-specific extension.
Default: outline-and-shadow.
Predefined profiles are available to enable optimized back-
ground-box style for OSD and subtitles.
Profiles
• --profile=sub-box applies the background-box style to subti-
tles
• --profile=osd-box applies the background-box style to the
OSD, including stats and console
• --profile=box applies the background-box style to both sub-
titles and OSD
--sub-color=<color>
Specify the color used for unstyled text subtitles.
The color is specified in the form r/g/b, where each color compo-
nent is specified as number in the range 0.0 to 1.0. It's also
possible to specify the transparency by using r/g/b/a, where the
alpha value 0 means fully transparent, and 1.0 means opaque. If
the alpha component is not given, the color is 100% opaque.
Passing a single number to the option sets the sub to gray, and
the form gray/a lets you specify alpha additionally.
Examples
• --sub-color=1.0/0.0/0.0 set sub to opaque red
• --sub-color=1.0/0.0/0.0/0.75 set sub to opaque red with 75%
alpha
• --sub-color=0.5/0.75 set sub to 50% gray with 75% alpha
Alternatively, the color can be specified as a RGB hex triplet in
the form #RRGGBB, where each 2-digit group expresses a color
value in the range 0 (00) to 255 (FF). For example, #FF0000 is
red. Alpha is given with #AARRGGBB.
Examples
• --sub-color='#FF0000' set sub to opaque red
• --sub-color='#C0808080' set sub to 50% gray with 75% alpha
--sub-margin-x=<size>
Left and right screen margin for the subs in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details).
This option specifies the distance of the sub to the left, as
well as at which distance from the right border long sub text
will be broken.
Default: 19
--sub-margin-y=<size>
Top and bottom screen margin for the subs in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details).
This option specifies the vertical margins of unstyled text sub-
titles. If you just want to raise the vertical subtitle posi-
tion, use --sub-pos.
Default: 34
--sub-align-x=<left|center|right>
Control to which corner of the screen text subtitles should be
aligned to (default: center).
Never applied to ASS subtitles, except in --sub-ass=no mode.
Likewise, this does not apply to image subtitles.
--sub-align-y=<top|center|bottom>
Vertical position (default: bottom). Details see --sub-align-x.
--sub-justify=<auto|left|center|right>
Control how multi line subs are justified irrespective of where
they are aligned (default: auto which justifies as defined by
--sub-align-x). Left justification is recommended to make the
subs easier to read as it is easier for the eyes.
--sub-ass-justify=<yes|no>
Applies justification as defined by --sub-justify on ASS subti-
tles if --sub-ass-override is not set to no. Default: no.
--sub-shadow-offset=<size>
Displacement of the sub text shadow in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables shadows.
Default: 0.
--sub-spacing=<size>
Horizontal sub font spacing in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size
for details). This value is added to the normal letter spacing.
Negative values are allowed.
Default: 0.
--sub-filter-sdh=<yes|no>
Applies filter removing subtitle additions for the deaf or
hard-of-hearing (SDH). This is intended for English, but may in
part work for other languages too. The intention is that it can
be always enabled so may not remove all parts added.
It removes speaker labels (like MAN:) and any text enclosed
within symbols like parentheses or brackets as specified by the
--sub-filter-sdh-enclosures option. Note that parenthesis (full
width parenthesis and the normal variant) are a special case and
only upper case text is removed. For more filtering, you can use
the --sub-filter-sdh-harder option.
Default: no.
--sub-filter-sdh-harder=<yes|no>
Do harder SDH filtering (if enabled by --sub-filter-sdh). Will
also remove speaker labels and text within parentheses using both
lower and upper case letters.
Default: no.
--sub-filter-sdh-enclosures=<string>
Specify a string of characters that --sub-filter-sdh will use to
potentially remove text. Text that is enclosed within characters
specified by this string will be removed. Note that bracket char-
acters with known pairs (such as ( or [) will be mapped inter-
nally to their matching right hand character, so you only need to
specify left hand characters.
Default: ([（.
--sub-filter-regex-...=...
Set a list of regular expressions to match on text subtitles, and
remove any lines that match (default: empty). This is a string
list option. See List Options for details. Normally, you should
use --sub-filter-regex-append=<regex>, where each option use will
append a new regular expression, without having to fight escaping
problems.
List items are matched in order. If a regular expression matches,
the process is stopped, and the subtitle line is discarded. The
text matched against is, by default, the Text field of ASS events
(if the subtitle format is different, it is always converted).
This may include formatting tags. Matching is case-insensitive,
but how this is done depends on the libc, and most likely works
in ASCII only. It does not work on bitmap/image subtitles. Un-
available on inferior OSes (requires POSIX regex support).
Example
--sub-filter-regex-append=opensubtitles\.org filters
some ads.
Technically, using a list for matching is redundant, since you
could just use a single combined regular expression. But it helps
with diagnosis, ease of use, and temporarily disabling or en-
abling individual filters.
WARNING:
This is experimental. The semantics most likely will change,
and if you use this, you should be prepared to update the op-
tion later. Ideas include replacing the regexes with a very
primitive and small subset of sed, or some method to control
case-sensitivity.
--sub-filter-jsre-...=...
Same as --sub-filter-regex but with JavaScript regular expres-
sions. Shares/affected-by all --sub-filter-regex-* control op-
tions (see below), and also experimental. Requires only
JavaScript support.
--sub-filter-regex-plain=<yes|no>
Whether to first convert the ASS "Text" field to plain-text (de-
fault: no). This strips ASS tags and applies ASS directives,
like \N to new-line. If the result is multi-line then the regexp
anchors ^ and $ match each line, but still any match discards all
lines.
--sub-filter-regex-warn=<yes|no>
Log dropped lines with warning log level, instead of verbose (de-
fault: no). Helpful for testing.
--sub-filter-regex-enable=<yes|no>
Whether to enable regex filtering (default: yes). Note that if no
regexes are added to the --sub-filter-regex list, setting this
option to yes has no effect. It's meant to easily disable or en-
able filtering temporarily.
--sub-create-cc-track=<yes|no>
For every video stream, create a closed captions track (default:
no). The only purpose is to make the track available for selec-
tion at the start of playback, instead of creating it lazily.
This applies only to ATSC A53 Part 4 Closed Captions (displayed
by mpv as subtitle tracks using the codec eia_608). The CC track
is marked "default" and selected according to the normal subtitle
track selection rules. You can then use --sid to explicitly se-
lect the correct track too.
If the video stream contains no closed captions, or if no video
is being decoded, the CC track will remain empty and will not
show any text.
--sub-font-provider=<auto|none|fontconfig>
Which libass font provider backend to use (default: auto). auto
will attempt to use the native font provider: fontconfig on
Linux, CoreText on macOS, DirectWrite on Windows. fontconfig
forces fontconfig, if libass was built with support (if not, it
behaves like none).
The none font provider effectively disables system fonts. It will
still attempt to use embedded fonts (unless --embeddedfonts=no is
set; this is the same behavior as with all other font providers),
subfont.ttf if provided, and fonts in the fonts sub-directory if
provided. (The fallback is more strict than that of other font
providers, and if a font name does not match, it may prefer not
to render any text that uses the missing font.)
--sub-fonts-dir=<path>
Font files in this directory are used by mpv/libass for subti-
tles. Useful if you do not want to install fonts to your system.
Note that files in this directory are loaded into memory before
being used by mpv. If you have a lot of fonts, consider using
fonts.conf (see FILES section) to include additional mpv user
settings.
If this option is not specified, ~~/fonts will be used by de-
fault.
Window
--title=<string>
Set the window title. This is used for the video window, and if
possible, also sets the audio stream title.
Properties are expanded. (See Property Expansion.)
WARNING:
There is a danger of this causing significant CPU usage, de-
pending on the properties used. Changing the window title is
often a slow operation, and if the title changes every frame,
playback can be ruined.
--screen=<default|0-32>
In multi-monitor configurations (i.e. a single desktop that spans
across multiple displays), this option tells mpv which screen to
display the video on.
Note (X11)
This option does not work properly with all window man-
agers. In these cases, you can try to use --geometry to
position the window explicitly. It's also possible that
the window manager provides native features to control
which screens application windows should use.
Note (Wayland)
This option does not actually work on wayland since
window placement is not allowed. However setting this
option does influence mpv's initial guess at finding an
output which may be useful for options like --geometry
or --autofit which depend on the monitor resolution.
See also --fs-screen.
--screen-name=<string>
In multi-monitor configurations, this option tells mpv which
screen to display the video on based on the screen name from the
video backend. The same caveats in the --screen option also apply
here. This option is ignored and does nothing if --screen is ex-
plicitly set.
--fullscreen, --fs
Fullscreen playback.
--fs-screen=<all|current|0-32>
In multi-monitor configurations (i.e. a single desktop that spans
across multiple displays), this option tells mpv which screen to
go fullscreen to. If current is used mpv will fallback on what
the user provided with the screen option.
Note (X11)
This option works properly only with window managers
which understand the EWMH _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS
hint.
Note (macOS)
all does not work on macOS and will behave like cur-
rent.
See also --screen.
--fs-screen-name=<string>
In multi-monitor configurations, this option tells mpv which
screen to go fullscreen to based on the screen name from the
video backend. The same caveats in the --fs-screen option also
apply here. This option is ignored and does nothing if
--fs-screen is explicitly set.
--keep-open=<yes|no|always>
Do not terminate when playing or seeking beyond the end of the
file, and there is no next file to be played (and --loop is not
used). Instead, pause the player. When trying to seek beyond end
of the file, the player will attempt to seek to the last frame.
Normally, this will act like set pause yes on EOF, unless the
--keep-open-pause=no option is set.
The following arguments can be given:
no If the current file ends, go to the next file or termi-
nate. (Default.)
yes Don't terminate if the current file is the last playlist
entry. Equivalent to --keep-open without arguments.
always Like yes, but also applies to files before the last
playlist entry. This means playback will never automati-
cally advance to the next file.
NOTE:
This option is not respected when using --frames. Explicitly
skipping to the next file if the binding uses force will ter-
minate playback as well.
Also, if errors or unusual circumstances happen, the player
can quit anyway.
Since mpv 0.6.0, this doesn't pause if there is a next file in
the playlist, or the playlist is looped. Approximately, this will
pause when the player would normally exit, but in practice there
are corner cases in which this is not the case (e.g. mpv
--keep-open file.mkv /dev/null will play file.mkv normally, then
fail to open /dev/null, then exit). (In mpv 0.8.0, always was in-
troduced, which restores the old behavior.)
--keep-open-pause=<yes|no>
If set to no, instead of pausing when --keep-open is active, just
stop at end of file and continue playing forward when you seek
backwards until end where it stops again. Default: yes.
--image-display-duration=<seconds|inf>
If the current file is an image, play the image for the given
amount of seconds (default: 5). inf means the file is kept open
forever (until the user stops playback manually).
Unlike --keep-open, the player is not paused, but simply contin-
ues playback until the time has elapsed. (It should not use any
resources during "playback".)
This affects image files, which are defined as having only 1
video frame and no audio. The player may recognize certain
non-images as images, for example if --length is used to reduce
the length to 1 frame, or if you seek to the last frame.
This option does not affect the framerate used for mf:// or
--merge-files. For that, use --mf-fps instead.
When viewing images, the playback time is not tracked on the com-
mand line output, and the image frame is not duplicated when en-
coding. To force the player into "dumb mode" and actually count
out seconds, or to duplicate the image when encoding, you need to
use --demuxer=lavf --demuxer-lavf-o=loop=1, and use --length or
--frames to stop after a particular time.
--force-window=<yes|no|immediate>
Create a video output window even if there is no video. This can
be useful when pretending that mpv is a GUI application. Cur-
rently, the window always has the size 960x540, and is subject to
--geometry, --autofit, and similar options.
WARNING:
The window is created only after initialization (to make sure
default window placement still works if the video size is dif-
ferent from the --force-window default window size). This can
be a problem if initialization doesn't work perfectly, such as
when opening URLs with bad network connection, or opening bro-
ken video files. The immediate mode can be used to create the
window always on program start, but this may cause other is-
sues.
--taskbar-progress=<yes|no>
(Windows only) Enable/disable playback progress rendering in
taskbar (Windows 7 and above).
Enabled by default.
--snap-window
(Windows only) Snap the player window to screen edges.
--drag-and-drop=<no|auto|replace|append|insert-next>
Controls the default behavior of drag and drop on platforms that
support this. auto will obey what the underlying os/platform
gives mpv. Typically, holding shift during the drag and drop
will append the item to the playlist. Otherwise, it will com-
pletely replace it. replace, append, and insert-next always force
replacing, appending to, and inserting next into the playlist re-
spectively. no disables all drag and drop behavior.
--ontop
Makes the player window stay on top of other windows.
On Windows, if combined with fullscreen mode, this causes mpv to
be treated as exclusive fullscreen window that bypasses the Desk-
top Window Manager.
--ontop-level=<window|system|desktop|level>
(macOS only) Sets the level of an on-top window (default: win-
dow).
window On top of all other windows.
system On top of system elements like Taskbar, Menubar and Dock.
desktop
On top of the Desktop behind windows and Desktop icons.
level A level as integer.
--focus-on=<never|open|all>,
(macOS only) Focus the video window and make it the front most
window on specific events (default: open).
never Never focus the window on open or new file load events.
open Focus the window on creation, eg when a vo is initialised.
all Focus the window on open and new file load event.
--window-corners=<default|donotround|round|roundsmall>
(Windows only) Set the preference for window corner rounding.
default
Let the system decide whether or not to round window cor-
ners
donotround
Never round window corners
round Round the corners if appropriate
roundsmall
Round the corners if appropriate, with a small radius
--border=<yes|no>
Play video with window border and decorations. Since this is on
by default, use --no-border to disable the standard window deco-
rations.
--title-bar=<yes|no>
(Windows and X11 only) Play video with the window title bar.
Since this is on by default, use --title-bar=no to hide the title
bar. The --border option takes precedence.
--on-all-workspaces
(X11 and macOS only) Show the video window on all virtual desk-
tops.
--geometry=<[W[xH]][+-x+-y][/WS]>, --geometry=<x:y>
Adjust the initial window position or size. W and H set the win-
dow size in pixels. x and y set the window position, measured in
pixels from the top-left corner of the screen to the top-left
corner of the image being displayed. If a percentage sign (%) is
given after the argument, it turns the value into a percentage of
the screen size in that direction. Positions are specified simi-
lar to the standard X11 --geometry option format, in which e.g.
+10-50 means "place 10 pixels from the left border and 50 pixels
from the lower border" and "--20+-10" means "place 20 pixels be-
yond the right and 10 pixels beyond the top border". A trailing /
followed by an integer denotes on which workspace (virtual desk-
top) the window should appear (X11 only).
If an external window is specified using the --wid option, this
option is ignored.
The coordinates are relative to the screen given with --screen
for the video output drivers that fully support --screen.
NOTE:
Generally only supported by GUI VOs. Ignored for encoding.
Note (macOS)
On macOS, the origin of the screen coordinate system is
located on the bottom-left corner. For instance, 0:0
will place the window at the bottom-left of the screen.
Note (X11)
This option does not work properly with all window man-
agers.
Note (Wayland)
Wayland does not allow a client to position itself so
this option will only affect the window size.
Examples
50:40 Places the window at x=50, y=40.
50%:50%
Places the window in the middle of the screen.
100%:100%
Places the window at the bottom right corner of the
screen.
50% Sets the window width to half the screen width. Window
height is set so that the window has the video aspect
ratio.
50%x50%
Forces the window width and height to half the screen
width and height. Will show black borders to compensate
for the video aspect ratio (with most VOs and with
--keepaspect=yes).
50%+10+10/2
Sets the window to half the screen widths, and posi-
tions it 10 pixels below/left of the top left corner of
the screen, on the second workspace.
See also --autofit and --autofit-larger for fitting the window
into a given size without changing aspect ratio.
--autofit=<[W[xH]]>
Set the initial window size to a maximum size specified by WxH,
without changing the window's aspect ratio. The size is measured
in pixels, or if a number is followed by a percentage sign (%),
in percents of the screen size.
This option never changes the aspect ratio of the window. If the
aspect ratio mismatches, the window's size is reduced until it
fits into the specified size.
Window position is not taken into account, nor is it modified by
this option (the window manager still may place the window dif-
ferently depending on size). Use --geometry to change the window
position. Its effects are applied after this option.
See --geometry for details how this is handled with multi-monitor
setups.
Use --autofit-larger instead if you just want to limit the maxi-
mum size of the window, rather than always forcing a window size.
Use --geometry if you want to force both window width and height
to a specific size.
NOTE:
Generally only supported by GUI VOs. Ignored for encoding.
Examples
70% Make the window width 70% of the screen size, keeping
aspect ratio.
1000 Set the window width to 1000 pixels, keeping aspect ra-
tio.
70%x60%
Make the window as large as possible, without being
wider than 70% of the screen width, or higher than 60%
of the screen height.
--autofit-larger=<[W[xH]]>
This option behaves exactly like --autofit, except that it sets
the maximum size of the window.
Example
90%x80%
If the video is larger than 90% of the screen width or
80% of the screen height, make the window smaller until
either its width is 90% of the screen, or its height is
80% of the screen.
--autofit-smaller=<[W[xH]]>
This option behaves exactly like --autofit, except that it sets
the minimum size of the window (just as --autofit-larger sets the
maximum).
Example
500x500
Make the window at least 500 pixels wide and 500 pixels
high (depending on the video aspect ratio, the width or
height will be larger than 500 in order to keep the as-
pect ratio the same).
--window-scale=<factor>
Resize the video window to a multiple (or fraction) of the video
size. This option is applied before --autofit and other options
are applied (so they override this option). Changing this option
while the window is maximized can unmaximize the window depending
on the OS and window manager. If the window does not unmaximize,
the multiplier will be applied if the user unmaximizes the window
later.
For example, --window-scale=0.5 would show the window at half the
video size.
--window-minimized=<yes|no>
Whether the video window is minimized or not. Setting this will
minimize, or unminimize, the video window if the current VO sup-
ports it. Note that some VOs may support minimization while not
supporting unminimization (eg: Wayland).
Whether this option and --window-maximized work on program start
or at runtime, and whether they're (at runtime) updated to re-
flect the actual window state, heavily depends on the VO and the
windowing system. Some VOs simply do not implement them or parts
of them, while other VOs may be restricted by the windowing sys-
tems (especially Wayland).
--window-maximized=<yes|no>
Whether the video window is maximized or not. Setting this will
maximize, or unmaximize, the video window if the current VO sup-
ports it. See --window-minimized for further remarks.
--cursor-autohide=<number|no|always>
Make mouse cursor automatically hide after given number of mil-
liseconds (default: 1000 ms). no will disable cursor autohide.
always means the cursor will stay hidden.
--cursor-autohide-fs-only
If this option is given, the cursor is always visible in windowed
mode. In fullscreen mode, the cursor is shown or hidden according
to --cursor-autohide.
--force-rgba-osd-rendering
Change how some video outputs render the OSD and text subtitles.
This does not change appearance of the subtitles and only has
performance implications. For VOs which support native ASS ren-
dering (like gpu, vdpau, direct3d), this can be slightly faster
or slower, depending on GPU drivers and hardware. For other VOs,
this just makes rendering slower.
--force-render
Forces mpv to always render frames regardless of the visibility
of the window. Currently only affects X11 and Wayland VOs since
they are the only ones that have this optimization (i.e. every-
thing else always renders regardless of visibility).
--force-window-position
Forcefully move mpv's video output window to default location
whenever there is a change in video parameters, video stream or
file. This used to be the default behavior. Currently only af-
fects X11, macvk and SDL VOs.
--auto-window-resize=<yes|no>
By default, mpv will automatically resize itself if the video's
size changes (i.e. advancing forward in a playlist). Setting this
to no disables this behavior so the window size never changes au-
tomatically. This option does not have any impact on the --aut-
ofit or --geometry options.
--keepaspect=<yes|no>
--keepaspect=no will always stretch the video to window size, and
will disable the window manager hints that force the window as-
pect ratio. (Ignored in fullscreen mode.)
--keepaspect-window=<yes|no>
--keepaspect-window=yes (the default) will lock the window size
to the video aspect. --keepaspect-window=no disables this behav-
ior, and will instead add black bars if window aspect and video
aspect mismatch. Whether this actually works depends on the VO
backend. (Ignored in fullscreen mode.)
--monitoraspect=<ratio>
Set the aspect ratio of your monitor or TV screen. A value of 0
disables a previous setting (e.g. in the config file). Overrides
the --monitorpixelaspect setting if enabled.
See also --monitorpixelaspect and --video-aspect-override.
Examples
• --monitoraspect=4:3 or --monitoraspect=1.3333
• --monitoraspect=16:9 or --monitoraspect=1.7777
--hidpi-window-scale=<yes|no>
Scale the window size according to the backing DPI scale factor
from the OS (default: no). For example, if the OS DPI scaling is
set to 200%, mpv's window size will be multiplied by 2.
--native-fs=<yes|no>
(macOS only) Uses the native fullscreen mechanism of the OS (de-
fault: yes).
--show-in-taskbar=<yes|no>
(Windows and X11 only) Show mpv in the taskbar (default: yes). If
set to no, mpv will no longer appear in taskbars and tasklists in
supported window managers, and may be excluded from Alt+Tab win-
dow switching.
--monitorpixelaspect=<ratio>
Set the aspect of a single pixel of your monitor or TV screen
(default: 1). A value of 1 means square pixels (correct for (al-
most?) all LCDs). See also --monitoraspect and --video-as-
pect-override.
--stop-screensaver=<yes|no|always>
Turns off the screensaver (or screen blanker and similar mecha-
nisms) at startup and turns it on again on exit (default: yes).
When using yes, the screensaver will re-enable when playback is
not active. always will always disable the screensaver. Note that
stopping the screensaver is only possible if a video output is
available (i.e. there is an open mpv window). This is not sup-
ported on all video outputs, platforms, or desktop environments.
Before mpv 0.33.0, the X11 backend ran xdg-screensaver reset in
10 second intervals when not paused in order to support screen-
saver inhibition in some environments. This functionality was re-
moved in 0.33.0, but it is possible to call the xdg-screensaver
command line program from a user script instead.
--wid=<ID>
This tells mpv to attach to an existing window. If a VO is se-
lected that supports this option, it will use that window for
video output. mpv will scale the video to the size of this win-
dow, and will add black bars to compensate if the aspect ratio of
the video is different.
On X11, the ID is interpreted as a Window on X11. Unlike
MPlayer/mplayer2, mpv always creates its own window, and sets the
wid window as parent. The window will always be resized to cover
the parent window fully. The value 0 is interpreted specially,
and mpv will draw directly on the root window.
On win32, the ID is interpreted as HWND. Pass it as value cast to
uint32_t (all Windows handles are 32-bit), this is important as
mpv will not accept negative values. mpv will create its own win-
dow and set the wid window as parent, like with X11.
On Android, the ID is interpreted as android.view.Surface. Pass
it as a value cast to intptr_t. Use with --vo=mediacodec_embed
and --hwdec=mediacodec for direct rendering using MediaCodec, or
with --vo=gpu --gpu-context=android (with or without --hwdec=me-
diacodec).
--window-dragging=<yes|no>
Move the window when clicking on it and moving the mouse pointer
(default: yes).
--x11-name=<string>
Set the window instance name for X11-based video output methods.
--x11-netwm=<yes|no|auto>
(X11 only) Control the use of NetWM protocol features.
This may or may not help with broken window managers. This pro-
vides some functionality that was implemented by the now removed
--fstype option. Actually, it is not known to the developers to
which degree this option was needed, so feedback is welcome.
Specifically, yes will force use of NetWM fullscreen support,
even if not advertised by the WM. This can be useful for WMs that
are broken on purpose, like XMonad. (XMonad supposedly doesn't
advertise fullscreen support, because Flash uses it. Apparently,
applications which want to use fullscreen anyway are supposed to
either ignore the NetWM support hints, or provide a workaround.
Shame on XMonad for deliberately breaking X protocols (as if X
isn't bad enough already).
By default, NetWM support is autodetected (auto).
This option might be removed in the future.
--x11-bypass-compositor=<yes|no|fs-only|never>
If set to yes, then ask the compositor to unredirect the mpv win-
dow (default: fs-only). This uses the _NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR
hint.
fs-only asks the window manager to disable the compositor only in
fullscreen mode.
no sets _NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR to 0, which is the default
value as declared by the EWMH specification, i.e. no change is
done.
never asks the window manager to never disable the compositor.
--x11-present=<no|auto|yes>
Whether or not to use presentation statistics from X11's presen-
tation extension (default: auto).
mpv asks X11 for present events which it then may use for more
accurate frame presentation. This only has an effect if
--video-sync=display-... is being used.
The auto option enumerates XRandr providers for autodetection. If
amd, radeon, intel, or nouveau (the standard x86 Mesa drivers) is
found presentation feedback is enabled. Other drivers are not as-
sumed to work, so they are not enabled automatically.
yes or no can still be passed regardless to enable/disable this
mechanism in case there is good/bad behavior with whatever your
combination of hardware/drivers/etc. happens to be.
--x11-wid-title=<yes|no>
Whether or not to set the window title when mpv is embedded on
X11 (default: no).
Disc Devices
--cdda-device=<path>
Specify the CD device for CDDA playback. The default device path
depends on the OS. See the OPTICAL DRIVES section.
--dvd-device=<path>
Specify the DVD device or .iso filename. You can also specify a
directory that contains files previously copied directly from a
DVD (with e.g. vobcopy). The default device path depends on the
OS. See the OPTICAL DRIVES section.
Example
mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/path/to/dvd/
--bluray-device=<path>
Specify the Blu-ray disc location. Must be a directory with
Blu-ray structure. The default device path depends on the OS. See
the OPTICAL DRIVES section.
Example
mpv bd:// --bluray-device=/path/to/bd/
--cdda-...
These options can be used to tune the CD Audio reading feature of
mpv.
--cdda-speed=<value>
Set CD spin speed.
--cdda-paranoia=<0-2>
Set paranoia level. Values other than 0 seem to break playback of
anything but the first track.
0 disable checking (default)
1 overlap checking only
2 full data correction and verification
--cdda-sector-size=<value>
Set atomic read size.
--cdda-overlap=<value>
Force minimum overlap search during verification to <value> sec-
tors.
--cdda-toc-offset=<value>
Add <value> sectors to the values reported when addressing
tracks. May be negative.
--cdda-skip=<yes|no>
(Never) accept imperfect data reconstruction.
--cdda-cdtext=<yes|no>
Print CD text. This is disabled by default, because it ruins per-
formance with CD-ROM drives for unknown reasons.
--dvd-speed=<speed>
Try to limit DVD speed (default: 0, no change). DVD base speed is
1385 kB/s, so an 8x drive can read at speeds up to 11080 kB/s.
Slower speeds make the drive more quiet. For watching DVDs, 2700
kB/s should be quiet and fast enough. mpv resets the speed to the
drive default value on close. Values of at least 100 mean speed
in kB/s. Values less than 100 mean multiples of 1385 kB/s, i.e.
--dvd-speed=8 selects 11080 kB/s.
NOTE:
You need write access to the DVD device to change the speed.
--dvd-angle=<ID>
Some DVDs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles.
This option tells mpv which angle to use (default: 1).
Equalizer
--brightness=<-100-100>
Adjust the brightness of the video signal (default: 0). Not sup-
ported by all video output drivers.
--contrast=<-100-100>
Adjust the contrast of the video signal (default: 0). Not sup-
ported by all video output drivers.
--saturation=<-100-100>
Adjust the saturation of the video signal (default: 0). You can
get grayscale output with this option. Not supported by all video
output drivers.
--gamma=<-100-100>
Adjust the gamma of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported
by all video output drivers.
--hue=<-100-100>
Adjust the hue of the video signal (default: 0). You can get a
colored negative of the image with this option. Not supported by
all video output drivers.
Demuxer
--demuxer=<[+]name>
Force demuxer type. Use a '+' before the name to force it; this
will skip some checks. Give the demuxer name as printed by --de-
muxer=help.
--demuxer-lavf-analyzeduration=<value>
Maximum length in seconds to analyze the stream properties.
--demuxer-lavf-probe-info=<yes|no|auto|nostreams>
Whether to probe stream information (default: auto). Technically,
this controls whether libavformat's avformat_find_stream_info()
function is called. Usually it's safer to call it, but it can
also make startup slower.
The auto choice (the default) tries to skip this for a few
know-safe whitelisted formats, while calling it for everything
else.
The nostreams choice only calls it if and only if the file seems
to contain no streams after opening (helpful in cases when call-
ing the function is needed to detect streams at all, such as with
FLV files).
--demuxer-lavf-probescore=<1-100>
Minimum required libavformat probe score. Lower values will re-
quire less data to be loaded (makes streams start faster), but
makes file format detection less reliable. Can be used to force
auto-detected libavformat demuxers, even if libavformat considers
the detection not reliable enough. (Default: 26.)
--demuxer-lavf-allow-mimetype=<yes|no>
Allow deriving the format from the HTTP MIME type (default: yes).
Set this to no in case playing things from HTTP mysteriously
fails, even though the same files work from local disk.
This is default in order to reduce latency when opening HTTP
streams.
--demuxer-lavf-format=<name>
Force a specific libavformat demuxer.
--demuxer-lavf-hacks=<yes|no>
By default, some formats will be handled differently from other
formats by explicitly checking for them. Most of these compensate
for weird or imperfect behavior from libavformat demuxers. Pass-
ing no disables these. For debugging and testing only.
--demuxer-lavf-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass AVOptions to libavformat demuxer.
Note, a patch to make the o= unneeded and pass all unknown op-
tions through the AVOption system is welcome. A full list of
AVOptions can be found in the FFmpeg manual. Note that some op-
tions may conflict with mpv options.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Example
--demuxer-lavf-o=fflags=+ignidx
--demuxer-lavf-probesize=<value>
Maximum amount of data to probe during the detection phase. In
the case of MPEG-TS this value identifies the maximum number of
TS packets to scan.
--demuxer-lavf-buffersize=<value>
Size of the stream read buffer allocated for libavformat in bytes
(default: 32768). Lowering the size could lower latency. Note
that libavformat might reallocate the buffer internally, or not
fully use all of it.
--demuxer-lavf-linearize-timestamps=<yes|no|auto>
Attempt to linearize timestamp resets in demuxed streams (de-
fault: auto). This was tested only for single audio streams.
It's unknown whether it works correctly for video (but likely
won't). Note that the implementation is slightly incorrect either
way, and will introduce a discontinuity by about 1 codec frame
size.
The auto mode enables this for OGG audio stream. This covers the
common and annoying case of OGG web radio streams. Some of these
will reset timestamps to 0 every time a new song begins. This
breaks the mpv seekable cache, which can't deal with timestamp
resets. Note that FFmpeg/libavformat's seeking API can't deal
with this either; it's likely that if this option breaks this
even more, while if it's disabled, you can at least seek within
the first song in the stream. Well, you won't get anything useful
either way if the seek is outside of mpv's cache.
--demuxer-lavf-propagate-opts=<yes|no>
Propagate FFmpeg-level options to recursively opened connections
(default: yes). This is needed because FFmpeg will apply these
settings to nested AVIO contexts automatically. On the other
hand, this could break in certain situations - it's the FFmpeg
API, you just can't win.
This affects in particular the --timeout option and anything
passed with --demuxer-lavf-o.
If this option is deemed unnecessary at some point in the future,
it will be removed without notice.
--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll=<yes|index|no>
Try harder to show embedded soft subtitles when seeking some-
where. Normally, it can happen that the subtitle at the seek tar-
get is not shown due to how some container file formats are de-
signed. The subtitles appear only if seeking before or exactly to
the position a subtitle first appears. To make this worse, subti-
tles are often timed to appear a very small amount before the as-
sociated video frame, so that seeking to the video frame typi-
cally does not demux the subtitle at that position.
Enabling this option makes the demuxer start reading data a bit
before the seek target, so that subtitles appear correctly. Note
that this makes seeking slower, and is not guaranteed to always
work. It only works if the subtitle is close enough to the seek
target.
Works with the internal Matroska demuxer only. Always enabled for
absolute and hr-seeks, and this option changes behavior with rel-
ative or imprecise seeks only.
You can use the --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs option to
specify how much data the demuxer should pre-read at most in or-
der to find subtitle packets that may overlap. Setting this to 0
will effectively disable this preroll mechanism. Setting a very
large value can make seeking very slow, and an extremely large
value would completely reread the entire file from start to seek
target on every seek - seeking can become slower towards the end
of the file. The details are messy, and the value is actually
rounded down to the cluster with the previous video keyframe.
Some files, especially files muxed with newer mkvmerge versions,
have information embedded that can be used to determine what sub-
title packets overlap with a seek target. In these cases, mpv
will reduce the amount of data read to a minimum. (Although it
will still read all data between the cluster that contains the
first wanted subtitle packet, and the seek target.) If the index
choice (which is the default) is specified, then prerolling will
be done only if this information is actually available. If this
method is used, the maximum amount of data to skip can be addi-
tionally controlled by --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs-index
(it still uses the value of the option without -index if that is
higher).
See also --hr-seek-demuxer-offset option. This option can achieve
a similar effect, but only if hr-seek is active. It works with
any demuxer, but makes seeking much slower, as it has to decode
audio and video data instead of just skipping over it.
--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs=<value>
See --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll.
--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs-index=<value>
See --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll.
--demuxer-mkv-probe-start-time=<yes|no>
Check the start time of Matroska files (default: yes). This sim-
ply reads the first cluster timestamps and assumes it is the
start time. Technically, this also reads the first timestamp,
which may increase latency by one frame (which may be relevant
for live streams).
--demuxer-mkv-probe-video-duration=<yes|no|full>
When opening the file, seek to the end of it, and check what
timestamp the last video packet has, and report that as file du-
ration. This is strictly for compatibility with Haali only. In
this mode, it's possible that opening will be slower (especially
when playing over http), or that behavior with broken files is
much worse. So don't use this option.
The yes mode merely uses the index and reads a small number of
blocks from the end of the file. The full mode actually traverses
the entire file and can make a reliable estimate even without an
index present (such as partial files).
--demuxer-mkv-crop-compat=<yes|no>
Enable compatibility mode for files that do not fully comply with
the Matroska specification. (default: yes)
Most files containing cropping metadata require this mode to dis-
play correctly.
If this option is enabled, crop metadata will be applied before
calculating the video's aspect ratio, ensuring it is cropped ac-
cordingly. If this option is disabled, the image will be cropped
first and then stretched to match DisplayWidth and DisplayHeight.
According to the Matroska specification, the Pixel Aspect Ratio
(PAR) should be calculated after cropping. However, the majority
of files do not adhere to this rule, as it would cause incompati-
bility with crop-unaware players. Additionally, MKVToolNix does
not automatically adjust DisplayWidth and DisplayHeight when
cropping metadata is applied, leading to most of files created
with it also failing to conform to the specification.
See for more details:
<https://github.com/ietf-wg-cellar/matroska-specifica-
tion/pull/947>
<https://gitlab.com/mbunkus/mkvtoolnix/-/issues/2389>
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/pull/13446>
--demuxer-rawaudio-channels=<value>
Number of channels (or channel layout) if --demuxer=rawaudio is
used (default: stereo).
--demuxer-rawaudio-format=<value>
Sample format for --demuxer=rawaudio (default: s16le). Use --de-
muxer-rawaudio-format=help to get a list of all formats.
--demuxer-rawaudio-rate=<value>
Sample rate for --demuxer=rawaudio (default: 44 kHz).
--demuxer-rawvideo-fps=<value>
Rate in frames per second for --demuxer=rawvideo (default: 25.0).
--demuxer-rawvideo-w=<value>, --demuxer-rawvideo-h=<value>
Image dimension in pixels for --demuxer=rawvideo.
Example
Play a raw YUV sample:
mpv sample-720x576.yuv --demuxer=rawvideo \
--demuxer-rawvideo-w=720 --demuxer-rawvideo-h=576
--demuxer-rawvideo-format=<value>
Color space (fourcc) in hex or string for --demuxer=rawvideo (de-
fault: YV12).
--demuxer-rawvideo-mp-format=<value>
Color space by internal video format for --demuxer=rawvideo. Use
--demuxer-rawvideo-mp-format=help for a list of possible formats.
--demuxer-rawvideo-codec=<value>
Set the video codec instead of selecting the rawvideo codec when
using --demuxer=rawvideo. This uses the same values as codec
names in --vd (but it does not accept decoder names).
--demuxer-rawvideo-size=<value>
Frame size in bytes when using --demuxer=rawvideo.
--demuxer-max-bytes=<bytesize>
This controls how much the demuxer is allowed to buffer ahead.
The demuxer will normally try to read ahead as much as necessary,
or as much is requested with --demuxer-readahead-secs. The option
can be used to restrict the maximum readahead. This limits exces-
sive readahead in case of broken files or desynced playback. The
demuxer will stop reading additional packets as soon as one of
the limits is reached. (The limits still can be slightly over-
stepped due to technical reasons.)
Set these limits higher if you get a packet queue overflow warn-
ing, and you think normal playback would be possible with a
larger packet queue.
See --list-options for defaults and value range. <bytesize> op-
tions accept suffixes such as KiB and MiB.
--demuxer-max-back-bytes=<bytesize>
This controls how much past data the demuxer is allowed to pre-
serve. This is useful only if the cache is enabled.
Unlike the forward cache, there is no control how many seconds
are actually cached - it will simply use as much memory this op-
tion allows. Setting this option to 0 will strictly disable any
back buffer, but this will lead to the situation that the forward
seek range starts after the current playback position (as it re-
moves past packets that are seek points).
If the end of the file is reached, the remaining unused forward
buffer space is "donated" to the backbuffer (unless the back-
buffer size is set to 0, or --demuxer-donate-buffer is set to
no). This still limits the total cache usage to the sum of the
forward and backward cache, and effectively makes better use of
the total allowed memory budget. (The opposite does not happen:
free backward buffer is never "donated" to the forward buffer.)
Keep in mind that other buffers in the player (like decoders)
will cause the demuxer to cache "future" frames in the back
buffer, which can skew the impression about how much data the
backbuffer contains.
See --list-options for defaults and value range.
--demuxer-donate-buffer=<yes|no>
Whether to let the back buffer use part of the forward buffer
(default: yes). If set to yes, the "donation" behavior described
in the option description for --demuxer-max-back-bytes is en-
abled. This means the back buffer may use up memory up to the sum
of the forward and back buffer options, minus the active size of
the forward buffer. If set to no, the options strictly limit the
forward and back buffer sizes separately.
Note that if the end of the file is reached, the buffered data
stays the same, even if you seek back within the cache. This is
because the back buffer is only reduced when new data is read.
--demuxer-seekable-cache=<yes|no|auto>
Debugging option to control whether seeking can use the demuxer
cache (default: auto). Normally you don't ever need to set this;
the default auto does the right thing and enables cache seeking
it if --cache is set to yes (or is implied yes if --cache=auto).
If enabled, short seek offsets will not trigger a low level de-
muxer seek (which means for example that slow network round trips
or FFmpeg seek bugs can be avoided). If a seek cannot happen
within the cached range, a low level seek will be triggered.
Seeking outside of the cache will start a new cached range, but
can discard the old cache range if the demuxer exhibits certain
unsupported behavior.
The special value auto means yes in the same situation as
--cache-secs is used (i.e. when the stream appears to be a net-
work stream or the stream cache is enabled).
--demuxer-thread=<yes|no>
Run the demuxer in a separate thread, and let it prefetch a cer-
tain amount of packets (default: yes). Having this enabled leads
to smoother playback, enables features like prefetching, and pre-
vents that stuck network freezes the player. On the other hand,
it can add overhead, or the background prefetching can hog CPU
resources.
Disabling this option is not recommended. Use it for debugging
only.
--demuxer-termination-timeout=<seconds>
Number of seconds the player should wait to shutdown the demuxer
(default: 0.1). The player will wait up to this much time before
it closes the stream layer forcefully. Forceful closing usually
means the network I/O is given no chance to close its connections
gracefully (of course the OS can still close TCP connections
properly), and might result in annoying messages being logged,
and in some cases, confused remote servers.
This timeout is usually only applied when loading has finished
properly. If loading is aborted by the user, or in some corner
cases like removing external tracks sourced from network during
playback, forceful closing is always used.
--demuxer-readahead-secs=<seconds>
If --demuxer-thread is enabled, this controls how much the de-
muxer should buffer ahead in seconds (default: 1). As long as no
packet has a timestamp difference higher than the readahead
amount relative to the last packet returned to the decoder, the
demuxer keeps reading.
Note that enabling the cache (such as --cache=yes, or if the in-
put is considered a network stream, and --cache=auto is used),
this option is mostly ignored. (--cache-secs will override this.
Technically, the maximum of both options is used.)
The main purpose of this option is to limit the readhead for lo-
cal playback, since a large readahead value is not overly useful
in this case.
(This value tends to be fuzzy, because many file formats don't
store linear timestamps.)
--demuxer-hysteresis-secs=<seconds>
Once the demuxer limit is reached (--demuxer-max-bytes, --de-
muxer-readahead-secs or --cache-secs), this value can be used to
specify a hysteresis before the demuxer will buffer ahead again.
This specifies the maximum number of seconds from the current
playback position that needs to be remaining in the cache before
the demuxer will continue buffering ahead.
For example, with a value of 10 seconds specified, the demuxer
will buffer ahead up to the demuxer limit and won't start buffer-
ing ahead again until there is only 10 seconds of content left in
the cache.
This can provide significant power savings and reduce load by
making the demuxer only buffer ahead in chunks at a time rather
than buffering ahead nonstop to keep the cache filled.
If you want to save power and reduce load, configure this to a
small number that's much lower than --cache-secs or --de-
muxer-readahead-secs. If it takes a long time to buffer anything
at all for a given stream (like when reading from a very slow
disk is involved), then the hysteresis value should be larger to
compensate.
The default value is 0 seconds, which disables the caching hys-
teresis. A value of 10 seconds probably works well for most use-
cases.
--prefetch-playlist=<yes|no>
Prefetch next playlist entry while playback of the current entry
is ending (default: yes).
This does not prefill the cache with the video data of the next
URL. Prefetching video data is supported only for the current
playlist entry, and depends on the demuxer cache settings (on by
default). This merely opens the URL of the next playlist entry as
soon the current URL is fully read.
This does not work with URLs resolved by the youtube-dl wrapper,
and it won't.
This can occasionally make wrong prefetching decisions. For exam-
ple, it can't predict whether you go backwards in the playlist,
and assumes you won't edit the playlist.
--force-seekable=<yes|no>
If the player thinks that the media is not seekable (e.g. playing
from a pipe, or it's an http stream with a server that doesn't
support range requests), seeking will be disabled. This option
can forcibly enable it. For seeks within the cache, there's a
good chance of success.
--demuxer-cache-wait=<yes|no>
Before starting playback, read data until either the end of the
file was reached, or the demuxer cache has reached maximum capac-
ity. Only once this is done, playback starts. This intentionally
happens before the initial seek triggered with --start. This does
not change any runtime behavior after the initial caching. This
option is useless if the file cannot be cached completely.
--rar-list-all-volumes=<yes|no>
When opening multi-volume rar files, open all volumes to create a
full list of contained files (default: no). If disabled, only the
archive entries whose headers are located within the first volume
are listed (and thus played when opening a .rar file with mpv).
Doing so speeds up opening, and the typical idiotic use-case of
playing uncompressed multi-volume rar files that contain a single
media file is made faster.
Opening is still slow, because for unknown, idiotic, and unneces-
sary reasons libarchive opens all volumes anyway when playing the
main file, even though mpv iterated no archive entries yet.
--directory-mode=<auto|lazy|recursive|ignore>
When opening a directory, open subdirectories lazily, recursively
or not at all. The default is auto, which behaves like recursive
with --shuffle, and like lazy otherwise.
--directory-filter-types=<video,audio,image,archive,playlist>
Media file types to filter when opening directory. If the list is
empty, all files are added to the playlist. (Default: video,au-
dio,image,archive,playlist)
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
--autocreate-playlist=<no|filter|same>
When opening a local file, act as if the parent directory is
opened and create a playlist automatically.
no Load a single file (default).
filter Create a playlist from the parent directory with files
matching --directory-filter-types.
same Create a playlist from the parent directory with files
matching the same category as the currently loaded file.
One of the *-exts is selected based on the input file and
only files with matching extensions are added to the
playlist. If the input file itself is not matched to any
extension list, the playlist is not autogenerated.
Input
--native-keyrepeat=<yes|no>
Use system settings for keyrepeat delay and rate, instead of
--input-ar-delay and --input-ar-rate (default: no). Whether this
applies depends on the VO backend and how it handles keyboard in-
put. Does not apply to terminal input.
--native-touch=<yes|no>
(Windows only) For platforms which send emulated mouse inputs for
touch-unaware clients, such as Windows, use system native touch
events, instead of receiving them as emulated mouse events (de-
fault: no). This is required for multi-touch support for these
platforms.
Note that this option has no effect on other platforms: either
native touch is not supported by mpv, or the platform does not
give an option to receive emulated mouse inputs (so native touch
is always enabled, e.g. Wayland).
--input-ar-delay
Delay in milliseconds before we start to autorepeat a key (de-
fault: 200). Set it to 0 to disable.
--input-ar-rate
Number of key presses to generate per second on autorepeat (de-
fault: 40).
--input-conf=<filename>
Specify input configuration file other than the default location
in the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv/in-
put.conf).
--input-default-bindings=<yes|no>
Enable default-level ("weak") key bindings (default: yes). These
are bindings which config files like input.conf can override. It
currently affects the builtin key bindings, and keys which
scripts bind using mp.add_key_binding (but not
mp.add_forced_key_binding because this overrides input.conf).
--input-builtin-bindings=<yes|no>
Enable loading of built-in key bindings during start-up (default:
yes). This option is applied only during (lib)mpv initialization,
and if disabled then it will not be not possible to enable them
later. May be useful to libmpv clients.
--input-builtin-dragging=<yes|no>
Enable the built-in window-dragging behavior (default: yes). Set-
ting it to no disables the built-in dragging behavior. Note that
unlike the window-dragging option, this option only affects VOs
which support the begin-vo-dragging command, and does not disable
window dragging initialized with the command.
--input-cmdlist
Prints all commands that can be bound to keys.
--input-commands=<cmd1,cmd2,...>
Define a list of commands for mpv to run. The syntax is the same
as format as input.conf but without the key binding argument at
the beginning. When this option is set at startup, the commands
will run after audio and video playback are about to begin if ap-
plicable (in idle mode with no file, it will run immediately).
When changing values at runtime, the commands will also run as
soon as possible.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Example
--input-commands="playlist-play-index 1,set ao-volume 40"
sets the playlist index to 1 and the ao-volume to 40
--input-doubleclick-time=<milliseconds>
Time in milliseconds to recognize two consecutive button presses
as a double-click (default: 300).
--input-keylist
Prints all keys that can be bound to commands.
--input-key-fifo-size=<2-65000>
Specify the size of the FIFO that buffers key events (default:
7). If it is too small, some events may be lost. The main disad-
vantage of setting it to a very large value is that if you hold
down a key triggering some particularly slow command then the
player may be unresponsive while it processes all the queued com-
mands.
--input-test
Input test mode. Instead of executing commands on key presses,
mpv will show the keys and the bound commands on the OSD. Has to
be used with a dummy video, and the normal ways to quit the
player will not work (key bindings that normally quit will be
shown on OSD only, just like any other binding). See INPUT.CONF.
--input-terminal=<yes|no>
--input-terminal=no prevents the player from reading key events
from standard input. Useful when reading data from standard in-
put. This is automatically enabled when - is found on the command
line. There are situations where you have to set it manually,
e.g. if you open /dev/stdin (or the equivalent on your system),
use stdin in a playlist or intend to read from stdin later on via
the loadfile or loadlist input commands.
--input-ipc-server=<filename>
Enable the IPC support and create the listening socket at the
given path.
On Linux and Unix, the given path is a regular filesystem path.
On Windows, named pipes are used, so the path refers to the pipe
namespace (\\.\pipe\<name>). If the \\.\pipe\ prefix is missing,
mpv will add it automatically before creating the pipe, so --in-
put-ipc-server=/tmp/mpv-socket and --in-
put-ipc-server=\\.\pipe\tmp\mpv-socket are equivalent for IPC on
Windows.
See JSON IPC for details.
--input-ipc-client=fd://<N>
Connect a single IPC client to the given FD. This is somewhat
similar to --input-ipc-server, except no socket is created, and
instead the passed FD is treated like a socket connection re-
ceived from accept(). In practice, you could pass either a FD
created by socketpair(), or a pipe. In both cases, you must make
sure that the FD is actually inherited by mpv (do not set the
POSIX CLOEXEC flag).
The player quits when the connection is closed.
This is somewhat similar to the removed --input-file option, ex-
cept it supports only integer FDs, and cannot open actual paths.
Example
--input-ipc-client=fd://123
NOTE:
To use this option on Windows, the fd must refer to a wrapped
(created by _open_osfhandle) named pipe server handle with a
client already connected. The named pipe must be created du-
plex with overlapped IO and inheritable handles. The program
communicates with mpv through the client handle.
WARNING:
Writing to the input-ipc-server option at runtime will start
another instance of an IPC client handler for the in-
put-ipc-client option, because initialization is bundled, and
this thing is stupid. This is a bug. Writing to in-
put-ipc-client at runtime will start another IPC client han-
dler for the new value, without stopping the old one, even if
the FD value is the same (but the string is different e.g. due
to whitespace). This is not a bug.
--input-gamepad=<yes|no>
Enable/disable SDL2 Gamepad support. Disabled by default.
--input-cursor=<yes|no>
Permit mpv to receive pointer events reported by the video output
driver. Necessary to use the OSC. Support depends on the VO in
use.
--input-cursor-passthrough=<yes|no>
Tell the backend windowing system to allow pointer events to
passthrough the mpv window. This allows windows under mpv to in-
stead receive pointer events as if the mpv window was never
there.
--input-media-keys=<yes|no>
On systems where mpv can choose between receiving media keys or
letting the system handle them - this option controls whether mpv
should receive them.
Default: yes (except for libmpv). macOS and Windows only, because
elsewhere mpv doesn't have a choice - the system decides whether
to send media keys to mpv. For instance, on X11 or Wayland, sys-
tem-wide media keys are not implemented. Whether media keys work
when the mpv window is focused is implementation-defined.
--input-preprocess-wheel=<yes|no>
Preprocess WHEEL_* events so that while scrolling on the horizon-
tal or vertical direction, the events aren't generated for an-
other direction even when the two directions are scrolled to-
gether (default: yes).
This preprocessing can be beneficial for preventing accidentally
seeking while changing the volume by scrolling on a touchpad with
the default keybind. Due to the deadzone mechanism used, dis-
abling the preprocessing allows for diagonal scrolling (such as
panning) and potentially reduces input latency.
Note that disabling the preprocessing does not affect any filter-
ing done by the OS/driver before these events are delivered to
mpv, if any.
--input-right-alt-gr=<yes|no>
(macOS and Windows only) Use the right Alt key as Alt Gr to pro-
duce special characters. If disabled, count the right Alt as an
Alt modifier key. Enabled by default.
--input-vo-keyboard=<yes|no>
Disable all keyboard input on for VOs which can't participate in
proper keyboard input dispatching. May not affect all VOs. Gener-
ally useful for embedding only.
On X11, a sub-window with input enabled grabs all keyboard input
as long as it is 1. a child of a focused window, and 2. the mouse
is inside of the sub-window. It can steal away all keyboard input
from the application embedding the mpv window, and on the other
hand, the mpv window will receive no input if the mouse is out-
side of the mpv window, even though mpv has focus. Modern toolk-
its work around this weird X11 behavior, but naively embedding
foreign windows breaks it.
The only way to handle this reasonably is using the XEmbed proto-
col, which was designed to solve these problems. GTK provides
GtkSocket, which supports XEmbed. Qt doesn't seem to provide any-
thing working in newer versions.
If the embedder supports XEmbed, input should work with default
settings and with this option disabled. Note that input-de-
fault-bindings is disabled by default in libmpv as well - it
should be enabled if you want the mpv default key bindings.
--input-touch-emulate-mouse=<yes|no>
When multi-touch support is enabled (either required by the plat-
form, or enabled by --native-touch), emulate mouse move and but-
ton presses for the touch events (default: yes). This is useful
for compatibility for mouse key bindings and scripts which read
mouse positions for platforms which do not support --na-
tive-touch=no (e.g. Wayland).
--input-dragging-deadzone=<N>
Begin the built-in window dragging when the mouse moves outside a
deadzone of N pixels while the mouse button is being held down
(default: 3). This only affects VOs which support the be-
gin-vo-dragging command.
--input-ime=<yes|no>
Enable keyboard input via an active input method (IME) connected
to the VO. (default: no). The input popup window, if there is
any, is always positioned at the top left of the window. Whether
pre-edit text is drawn depends on the platform. You may need to
configure your IME to display the pre-edit inside of the input
popup window if you cannot read the pre-edit text in the mpv win-
dow.
Wayland and Windows only. This option is not applicable to termi-
nal input.
NOTE:
Enabling IME can cause problems with key bindings, because mpv
cannot detect any key presses when they go into the IME
pre-edit area. It is recommended to enable IME on demand only
for the duration while text input is expected.
The builtin console and input selector enable IME for the du-
ration of accepting text input.
OSD
--osc=<yes|no>
Whether to load the on-screen-controller (default: yes).
--osd-bar=<yes|no>
Enable display of the OSD bar (default: yes).
You can configure this on a per-command basis in input.conf using
osd- prefixes, see Input Command Prefixes. If you want to disable
the OSD completely, use --osd-level=0.
--osd-on-seek=<no,bar,msg,msg-bar>
Set what is displayed on the OSD during seeks. The default is
bar.
You can configure this on a per-command basis in input.conf using
osd- prefixes, see Input Command Prefixes.
--osd-duration=<time>
Set the duration of the OSD messages in ms (default: 1000).
--osd-font=<name>
Specify font to use for OSD. The default is sans-serif.
Examples
• --osd-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'
• --osd-font='Comic Sans MS'
--osd-font-size=<size>
Specify the OSD font size. See --sub-font-size for details.
Default: 30
--osd-msg1=<string>
Show this string as message on OSD with OSD level 1 (visible by
default). The message will be visible by default, and as long as
no other message covers it, and the OSD level isn't changed (see
--osd-level). Expands properties; see Property Expansion.
--osd-msg2=<string>
Similar to --osd-msg1, but for OSD level 2. If this is an empty
string (default), then the playback time is shown.
--osd-msg3=<string>
Similar to --osd-msg1, but for OSD level 3. If this is an empty
string (default), then the playback time, duration, and some more
information is shown.
This is used for the show-progress command (by default mapped to
P), and when seeking if enabled with --osd-on-seek or by osd-
prefixes in input.conf (see Input Command Prefixes).
--osd-status-msg is a legacy equivalent (but with a minor differ-
ence).
--osd-status-msg=<string>
Show a custom string during playback instead of the standard sta-
tus text. This overrides the status text used for --osd-level=3,
when using the show-progress command (by default mapped to P),
and when seeking if enabled with --osd-on-seek or osd- prefixes
in input.conf (see Input Command Prefixes). Expands properties.
See Property Expansion.
This option has been replaced with --osd-msg3. The only differ-
ence is that this option implicitly includes ${osd-sym-cc}. This
option is ignored if --osd-msg3 is not empty.
--osd-playing-msg=<string>
Show a message on OSD when playback starts. The string is ex-
panded for properties, e.g. --osd-playing-msg='file: ${filename}'
will show the message file: followed by a space and the currently
played filename.
See Property Expansion.
--osd-playing-msg-duration=<time>
Set the duration of osd-playing-msg in ms. If this is unset,
osd-playing-msg stays on screen for the duration of osd-duration.
--osd-playlist-entry=<title|filename|both>
Whether to display the media title, filename, or both. If the me-
dia-title is not available, it will display only the filename.
Default: title.
--osd-bar-align-x=<-1-1>
Position of the OSD bar. -1 is far left, 0 is centered, 1 is far
right. Fractional values (like 0.5) are allowed.
--osd-bar-align-y=<-1-1>
Position of the OSD bar. -1 is top, 0 is centered, 1 is bottom.
Fractional values (like 0.5) are allowed.
--osd-bar-w=<1-100>
Width of the OSD bar, in percentage of the screen width (default:
75). A value of 50 means the bar is half the screen wide.
--osd-bar-h=<0.1-50>
Height of the OSD bar, in percentage of the screen height (de-
fault: 3.125).
--osd-bar-outline-size=<size>
Size of the outline of the OSD bar in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details).
--osd-bar-border-size is an alias for --osd-bar-outline-size.
Default: 0.5.
--osd-bar-marker-scale=<0-100>
Factor for the OSD bar marker size relative to the OSD bar out-
line size.
Default: 1.3.
--osd-bar-marker-min-size=<size>
Minimum OSD bar marker size.
Default: 1.6.
--osd-bar-marker-style=<none|triangle|line>
Set the OSD bar marker style.
none Don't draw markers.
triangle
Draw markers as triangles (default).
line Draw markers as lines.
--osd-blur=<0..20.0>
Gaussian blur factor applied to the OSD font border. 0 means no
blur applied (default).
--osd-bold=<yes|no>
Format text on bold.
--osd-italic=<yes|no>
Format text on italic.
--osd-outline-color=<color>
See --sub-color. Color used for the OSD font outline.
--osd-border-color is an alias for --osd-outline-color.
--osd-back-color=<color>
See --sub-color. Color used for OSD text background.
--osd-shadow-color is an alias for --osd-back-color.
--osd-outline-size=<size>
Size of the OSD font outline in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables outlines.
--osd-border-size is an alias for --osd-outline-size.
Default: 1.65
--osd-border-style=<outline-and-shadow|opaque-box|background-box>
See --sub-border-style. Style used for OSD text border.
--osd-color=<color>
Specify the color used for OSD. See --sub-color for details.
--osd-selected-color=<color>
The color of the selected item in lists. See --sub-color for de-
tails.
--osd-selected-outline-color=<color>
The outline color of the selected item in lists. See --sub-color
for details.
--osd-fractions
Show OSD times with fractions of seconds (in millisecond preci-
sion). Useful to see the exact timestamp of a video frame.
--osd-level=<0-3>
Specifies which mode the OSD should start in.
0 OSD completely disabled (subtitles only)
1 enabled (shows up only on user interaction)
2 enabled + current time visible by default
3 enabled + --osd-status-msg (current time and status by de-
fault)
--osd-margin-x=<size>
Left and right screen margin for the OSD in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details).
This option specifies the distance of the OSD to the left, as
well as at which distance from the right border long OSD text
will be broken.
Default: 16
--osd-margin-y=<size>
Top and bottom screen margin for the OSD in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details).
This option specifies the vertical margins of the OSD.
Default: 16
--osd-align-x=<left|center|right>
Control to which corner of the screen OSD should be aligned to
(default: left).
--osd-align-y=<top|center|bottom>
Vertical position (default: top). Details see --osd-align-x.
--osd-scale=<factor>
OSD font size multiplier, multiplied with --osd-font-size value.
--osd-scale-by-window=<yes|no>
Whether to scale the OSD with the window size (default: yes). If
this is disabled, --osd-font-size and other OSD options that use
scaled pixels are always in actual pixels. The effect is that
changing the window size won't change the OSD font size.
NOTE:
For scripts which draw user interface elements, it is recom-
mended to respect the value of this option when deciding
whether the elements are scaled with window size or not.
--osd-shadow-offset=<size>
Displacement of the OSD shadow in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables shadows.
Default: 0.
--osd-spacing=<size>
Horizontal OSD/sub font spacing in scaled pixels (see
--sub-font-size for details). This value is added to the normal
letter spacing. Negative values are allowed.
Default: 0.
--video-osd=<yes|no>
Enabled OSD rendering on the video window (default: yes). This
can be used in situations where terminal OSD is preferred. If you
just want to disable all OSD rendering, use --osd-level=0.
It does not affect subtitles or overlays created by scripts (in
particular, the OSC needs to be disabled with --osc=no).
This option is somewhat experimental and could be replaced by an-
other mechanism in the future.
--osd-font-provider=<...>
See --sub-font-provider for details and accepted values. Note
that unlike subtitles, OSD never uses embedded fonts from media
files.
--osd-fonts-dir=<path>
See --sub-fonts-dir for details. Defaults to ~~/fonts.
Screenshot
--screenshot-format=<type>
Set the image file type used for saving screenshots.
Available choices:
png PNG
jpg JPEG (default)
jpeg JPEG (alias for jpg)
webp WebP
jxl JPEG XL
avif AVIF
--screenshot-tag-colorspace=<yes|no>
Tag screenshots with the appropriate colorspace (default: yes).
Note that not all formats support this. When it is unsupported,
or when this option is disabled, screenshots will be converted to
sRGB before being written.
--screenshot-high-bit-depth=<yes|no>
If possible, write screenshots with a bit depth similar to the
source video (default: yes). This is interesting in particular
for PNG, as this sometimes triggers writing 16 bit PNGs with huge
file sizes. This will also include an unused alpha channel in the
resulting files if 16 bit is used.
--screenshot-template=<template>
Specify the filename template used to save screenshots. The tem-
plate specifies the filename without file extension, and can con-
tain format specifiers, which will be substituted when taking a
screenshot. By default, the template is mpv-shot%n, which re-
sults in filenames like mpv-shot0012.png for example.
The template can start with a relative or absolute path, in order
to specify a directory location where screenshots should be
saved.
If the final screenshot filename points to an already existing
file, the file will not be overwritten. The screenshot will ei-
ther not be saved, or if the template contains %n, saved using
different, newly generated filename.
Allowed format specifiers:
%[#][0X]n
A sequence number, padded with zeros to length X (default:
04). E.g. passing the format %04n will yield 0012 on the
12th screenshot. The number is incremented every time a
screenshot is taken or if the file already exists. The
length X must be in the range 0-9. With the optional #
sign, mpv will use the lowest available number. For exam-
ple, if you take three screenshots--0001, 0002, 0003--and
delete the first two, the next two screenshots will not be
0004 and 0005, but 0001 and 0002 again.
%f Filename of the currently played video.
%F Same as %f, but strip the file extension, including the
dot.
%x Directory path of the currently played video. If the video
is not on the filesystem (but e.g. http://), this expand
to an empty string.
%X{fallback}
Same as %x, but if the video file is not on the filesys-
tem, return the fallback string inside the {...}.
%p Current playback time, in the same format as used in the
OSD. The result is a string of the form "HH:MM:SS". For
example, if the video is at the time position 5 minutes
and 34 seconds, %p will be replaced with "00:05:34".
%P Similar to %p, but extended with the playback time in mil-
liseconds. It is formatted as "HH:MM:SS.mmm", with "mmm"
being the millisecond part of the playback time.
NOTE:
This is a simple way for getting unique per-frame time-
stamps. (Frame numbers would be more intuitive, but are
not easily implementable because container formats usu-
ally use time stamps for identifying frames.)
%wX Specify the current playback time using the format string
X. %p is like %wH:%wM:%wS, and %P is like
%wH:%wM:%wS.%wT.
Valid format specifiers:
%wH hour (padded with 0 to two digits)
%wh hour (not padded)
%wM minutes (00-59)
%wm total minutes (includes hours, unlike %wM)
%wS seconds (00-59)
%ws total seconds (includes hours and minutes)
%wf like %ws, but as float
%wT milliseconds (000-999)
%tX Specify the current local date/time using the format X.
This format specifier uses the UNIX strftime() function
internally, and inserts the result of passing "%X" to
strftime. For example, %tm will insert the number of the
current month as number. You have to use multiple %tX
specifiers to build a full date/time string.
%{prop[:fallback text]}
Insert the value of the input property 'prop'. E.g.
%{filename} is the same as %f. If the property does not
exist or is not available, an error text is inserted, un-
less a fallback is specified.
%% Replaced with the % character itself.
--screenshot-dir=<path>
Store screenshots in this directory. This path is joined with the
filename generated by --screenshot-template. If the template
filename is already absolute, the directory is ignored.
--screenshot-directory is an alias for --screenshot-dir.
If the directory does not exist, it is created on the first
screenshot. If it is not a directory, an error is generated when
trying to write a screenshot.
This option is not set by default, and thus will write screen-
shots to the directory from which mpv was started. In pseudo-gui
mode (see PSEUDO GUI MODE), this is set to the desktop.
--screenshot-jpeg-quality=<0-100>
Set the JPEG quality level. Higher means better quality. The de-
fault is 90.
--screenshot-jpeg-source-chroma=<yes|no>
Write JPEG files with the same chroma subsampling as the video
(default: yes). If disabled, the libjpeg default is used.
--screenshot-png-compression=<0-9>
Set the PNG compression level. Higher means better compression.
This will affect the file size of the written screenshot file and
the time it takes to write a screenshot. Too high compression
might occupy enough CPU time to interrupt playback. The default
is 7.
--screenshot-png-filter=<0-5>
Set the filter applied prior to PNG compression. 0 is none, 1 is
"sub", 2 is "up", 3 is "average", 4 is "Paeth", and 5 is "mixed".
This affects the level of compression that can be achieved. For
most images, "mixed" achieves the best compression ratio, hence
it is the default.
--screenshot-webp-lossless=<yes|no>
Write lossless WebP files. --screenshot-webp-quality is ignored
if this is set. The default is no.
--screenshot-webp-quality=<0-100>
Set the WebP quality level. Higher means better quality. The de-
fault is 75.
--screenshot-webp-compression=<0-6>
Set the WebP compression level. Higher means better compression,
but takes more CPU time. Note that this also affects the screen-
shot quality when used with lossy WebP files. The default is 4.
--screenshot-jxl-distance=<0-15>
Set the JPEG XL Butteraugli distance. Lower means better quality.
Lossless is 0.0, and 1.0 is approximately equivalent to JPEG
quality 90 for photographic content. Use 0.1 for "visually loss-
less" screenshots. The default is 1.0.
--screenshot-jxl-effort=<1-9>
Set the JPEG XL compression effort. Higher effort (usually) means
better compression, but takes more CPU time. The default is 4.
--screenshot-avif-encoder=<encoder>
Specify the AV1 encoder to be used by libavcodec for encoding
avif screenshots.
Default: libaom-av1
--screenshot-avif-pixfmt=<format>
Specify the pixel format for the libavcodec encoder. Defaults to
empty, which lets mpv pick one close to the source format.
--screenshot-avif-opts=key1=value1,key2=value2,...
Specifies libavcodec options for selected encoder. For more in-
formation, consult the FFmpeg documentation.
Default: usage=allintra,crf=0,cpu-used=8
Note: the default is only guaranteed to work with the libaom-av1
encoder. Above options may not be valid and or optimal for other
encoders.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Example
"--screenshot-avif-opts=crf=23,aq-mode=complexity"
sets the crf to 23 and quantization (aq-mode) to com-
plexity based.
--screenshot-sw=<yes|no>
Whether to use software rendering for screenshots (default: no).
If set to no, the screenshot will be rendered by the current VO
(only vo_gpu or vo_gpu_next currently). The advantage is that
this will (probably) always show up as in the video window, be-
cause the same code is used for rendering. But since the ren-
derer needs to be reinitialized, this can be slow and interrupt
playback.
If set to yes, the software scaler is used to convert the video
to RGB (or whatever the target screenshot requires). In this
case, conversion will run in a separate thread and will probably
not interrupt playback. The software renderer may lack some capa-
bilities, such as HDR rendering. If window mode is used, the im-
age will also be scaled in software which may not accurately re-
flect the actual visible result.
Software Scaler
--sws-scaler=<name>
Specify the software scaler algorithm to be used with --vf=scale.
This also affects video output drivers which lack hardware accel-
eration, e.g. x11. See also --vf=scale.
To get a list of available scalers, run --sws-scaler=help.
Default: bicubic.
--sws-lgb=<0-100>
Software scaler Gaussian blur filter (luma). See --sws-scaler.
--sws-cgb=<0-100>
Software scaler Gaussian blur filter (chroma). See --sws-scaler.
--sws-ls=<-100-100>
Software scaler sharpen filter (luma). See --sws-scaler.
--sws-cs=<-100-100>
Software scaler sharpen filter (chroma). See --sws-scaler.
--sws-chs=<h>
Software scaler chroma horizontal shifting. See --sws-scaler.
--sws-cvs=<v>
Software scaler chroma vertical shifting. See --sws-scaler.
--sws-bitexact=<yes|no>
Unknown functionality (default: no). Consult libswscale source
code. The primary purpose of this, as far as libswscale API
goes), is to produce exactly the same output for the same input
on all platforms (output has the same "bits" everywhere, thus
"bitexact"). Typically disables optimizations.
--sws-fast=<yes|no>
Allow optimizations that help with performance, but reduce qual-
ity (default: no).
VOs like drm and x11 will benefit a lot from using --sws-fast.
You may need to set other options, like --sws-scaler. The builtin
sws-fast profile sets this option and some others to gain perfor-
mance for reduced quality. Also see --sws-allow-zimg.
--sws-allow-zimg=<yes|no>
Allow using zimg (if the component using the internal swscale
wrapper explicitly allows so) (default: yes). In this case, zimg
may be used, if the internal zimg wrapper supports the input and
output formats. It will silently or noisily fall back to libsws-
cale if one of these conditions does not apply.
If zimg is used, the other --sws- options are ignored, and the
--zimg- options are used instead.
If the internal component using the swscale wrapper hooks up log-
ging correctly, a verbose priority log message will indicate
whether zimg is being used.
Most things which need software conversion can make use of this.
NOTE:
Do note that zimg may be slower than libswscale. Usually, it's
faster on x86 platforms, but slower on ARM (due to lack of ARM
specific optimizations). The mpv zimg wrapper uses unoptimized
repacking for some formats, for which zimg cannot be blamed.
--zimg-scaler=<point|bilinear|bicubic|spline16|spline36|lanczos>
Zimg luma scaler to use (default: lanczos).
--zimg-scaler-param-a=<default|float>, --zimg-scaler-param-b=<de-
fault|float>
Set scaler parameters. By default, these are set to the special
string default, which maps to a scaler-specific default value.
Ignored if the scaler is not tunable.
lanczos
--zimg-scaler-param-a is the number of taps.
bicubic
a and b are the bicubic b and c parameters.
--zimg-scaler-chroma=...
Same as --zimg-scaler, for for chroma interpolation (default: bi-
linear).
--zimg-scaler-chroma-param-a, --zimg-scaler-chroma-param-b
Same as --zimg-scaler-param-a / --zimg-scaler-param-b, for
chroma.
--zimg-dither=<no|ordered|random|error-diffusion>
Dithering (default: random).
--zimg-threads=<auto|integer>
Set the maximum number of threads to use for scaling (default:
auto). auto uses the number of logical cores on the current ma-
chine. Note that the scaler may use less threads (or even just 1
thread) depending on stuff. Passing a value of 1 disables
threading and always scales the image in a single operation.
Higher thread counts waste resources, but make it typically
faster.
Note that some zimg git versions had bugs that will corrupt the
output if threads are used.
--zimg-fast=<yes|no>
Allow optimizations that help with performance, but reduce qual-
ity (default: yes). Currently, this may simplify gamma conversion
operations.
Audio Resampler
This controls the default options of any resampling done by mpv (but not
within libavfilter, within the system audio API resampler, or any other
places).
--audio-resample-filter-size=<length>
Length of the filter with respect to the lower sampling rate.
(default: 16)
--audio-resample-phase-shift=<count>
Log2 of the number of polyphase entries. (..., 10->1024,
11->2048, 12->4096, ...) (default: 10->1024)
--audio-resample-cutoff=<cutoff>
Cutoff frequency (0.0-1.0), default set depending upon filter
length.
--audio-resample-linear=<yes|no>
If set then filters will be linearly interpolated between
polyphase entries. (default: no)
--audio-normalize-downmix=<yes|no>
Enable/disable normalization if surround audio is downmixed to
stereo (default: no). If this is disabled, downmix can cause
clipping. If it's enabled, the output might be too quiet. It de-
pends on the source audio.
If downmix happens outside of mpv for some reason, or in the de-
coder (decoder downmixing), or in the audio output (system
mixer), this has no effect.
--audio-resample-max-output-size=<length>
Limit maximum size of audio frames filtered at once, in ms (de-
fault: 40). The output size size is limited in order to make re-
sample speed changes react faster. This is necessary especially
if decoders or filters output very large frame sizes (like some
lossless codecs or some DRC filters). This option does not af-
fect the resampling algorithm in any way.
For testing/debugging only. Can be removed or changed any time.
--audio-swresample-o=<string>
Set AVOptions on the SwrContext or AVAudioResampleContext. These
should be documented by FFmpeg.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Terminal
--quiet
Make console output less verbose; in particular, prevents the
status line (i.e. AV: 3.4 (00:00:03.37) / 5320.6 ...) from being
displayed. Particularly useful on slow terminals or broken ones
which do not properly handle carriage return (i.e. \r).
See also: --really-quiet and --msg-level.
--really-quiet
Display even less output and status messages than with --quiet.
--terminal=<yes|no>
--terminal=no disables any use of the terminal and stdin/std-
out/stderr. This completely silences any message output.
Unlike --really-quiet, this disables input and terminal initial-
ization as well.
--msg-color=<yes|no>
Enable colorful console output on terminals (default: yes).
--msg-level=<module1=level1,module2=level2,...>
Control verbosity directly for each module. The all module
changes the verbosity of all the modules. The verbosity changes
from this option are applied in order from left to right, and
each item can override a previous one.
Run mpv with --msg-level=all=trace to see all messages mpv out-
puts. You can use the module names printed in the output (pre-
fixed to each line in [...]) to limit the output to interesting
modules.
This also affects --log-file, and in certain cases libmpv API
logging.
NOTE:
Some messages are printed before the command line is parsed
and are therefore not affected by --msg-level. To control
these messages, you have to use the MPV_VERBOSE environment
variable; see ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES for details.
Available levels:
no complete silence
fatal fatal messages only
error error messages
warn warning messages
info informational messages
status status messages (default)
v verbose messages
debug debug messages
trace very noisy debug messages
Example
mpv --msg-level=ao/sndio=no
Completely silences the output of ao_sndio, which uses the log
prefix [ao/sndio].
mpv --msg-level=all=warn,ao/alsa=error
Only show warnings or worse, and let the ao_alsa output show
errors only.
--term-osd=<auto|no|force>
Control whether OSD messages are shown on the console when no
video output is available (default: auto).
auto use terminal OSD if no video output active
no disable terminal OSD
force use terminal OSD even if video output active
The auto mode also enables terminal OSD if --video-osd=no was
set.
--term-osd-bar=<yes|no>
Enable printing a progress bar under the status line on the ter-
minal. (Disabled by default.)
--term-osd-bar-chars=<string>
Customize the --term-osd-bar feature. The string is expected to
consist of 5 characters (start, left space, position indicator,
right space, end). You can use Unicode characters, but note that
double- width characters will not be treated correctly.
Default: [-+-].
--term-playing-msg=<string>
Print out a string after starting playback. The string is ex-
panded for properties, e.g. --term-playing-msg='file: ${file-
name}' will print the string file: followed by a space and the
currently played filename.
See Property Expansion.
--term-status-msg=<string>
Print out a custom string during playback instead of the standard
status line. Expands properties. See Property Expansion.
--term-title=<string>
Set the terminal title. Currently, this simply concatenates the
escape sequence setting the window title with the provided (prop-
erty expanded) string. This will mess up if the expanded string
contain bytes that end the escape sequence, or if the terminal
does not understand the sequence. The latter probably includes
the regrettable win32.
Expands properties. See Property Expansion.
--msg-module
Prepend module name to each console message.
--msg-time
Prepend timing information to each console message. The time is
in seconds since the player process was started (technically,
slightly later actually), using a monotonic time source depending
on the OS. This is CLOCK_MONOTONIC on sane UNIX variants.
Cache
--cache=<yes|no|auto>
Decide whether to use network cache settings (default: auto).
If enabled, use up to --cache-secs for the cache size (but still
limited to --demuxer-max-bytes), and make the cached data seek-
able (if possible). If disabled, --cache-pause and related are
implicitly disabled.
The auto choice enables this depending on whether the stream is
thought to involve network accesses or other slow media (this is
an imperfect heuristic).
Before mpv 0.30.0, this used to accept a number, which specified
the size of the cache in kilobytes. Use e.g. --cache --de-
muxer-max-bytes=123k instead.
--cache-secs=<seconds>
How many seconds of audio/video to prefetch if the cache is ac-
tive. This overrides the --demuxer-readahead-secs option if and
only if the cache is enabled and the value is larger. The default
value is set to something very high, so the actually achieved
readahead will usually be limited by the value of the --de-
muxer-max-bytes option. Setting this option is usually only use-
ful for limiting readahead.
--cache-on-disk=<yes|no>
Write packet data to a temporary file, instead of keeping them in
memory. This makes sense only with --cache. If the normal cache
is disabled, this option is ignored.
The cache file is append-only. Even if the player appears to
prune data, the file space freed by it is not reused. The cache
file is deleted when playback is closed.
Note that packet metadata is still kept in memory. --de-
muxer-max-bytes and related options are applied to metadata only.
The size of this metadata varies, but 50 MB per hour of media is
typical. The cache statistics will report this metadats size, in-
stead of the size of the cache file. If the metadata hits the
size limits, the metadata is pruned (but not the cache file).
When the media is closed, the cache file is deleted. A cache file
is generally worthless after the media is closed, and it's hard
to retrieve any media data from it (it's not supported by de-
sign).
If the option is enabled at runtime, the cache file is created,
but old data will remain in the memory cache. If the option is
disabled at runtime, old data remains in the disk cache, and the
cache file is not closed until the media is closed. If the option
is disabled and enabled again, it will continue to use the cache
file that was opened first.
--demuxer-cache-dir=<path>
Directory where to create temporary files. Cache is stored in the
system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is unset.
Currently, this is used for --cache-on-disk only.
--cache-pause=<yes|no>
Whether the player should automatically pause when the cache runs
out of data and stalls decoding/playback (default: yes). If en-
abled, it will pause and unpause once more data is available, aka
"buffering".
--cache-pause-wait=<seconds>
Number of seconds the packet cache should have buffered before
starting playback again if "buffering" was entered (default: 1).
This can be used to control how long the player rebuffers if
--cache-pause is enabled, and the demuxer underruns. If the given
time is higher than the maximum set with --cache-secs or --de-
muxer-readahead-secs, or prefetching ends before that for some
other reason (like file end or maximum configured cache size
reached), playback resumes earlier.
--cache-pause-initial=<yes|no>
Enter "buffering" mode before starting playback (default: no).
This can be used to ensure playback starts smoothly, in exchange
for waiting some time to prefetch network data (as controlled by
--cache-pause-wait). For example, some common behavior is that
playback starts, but network caches immediately underrun when
trying to decode more data as playback progresses.
Another thing that can happen is that the network prefetching is
so CPU demanding (due to demuxing in the background) that play-
back drops frames at first. In these cases, it helps enabling
this option, and setting --cache-secs and --cache-pause-wait to
roughly the same value.
This option also triggers when playback is restarted after seek-
ing.
--demuxer-cache-unlink-files=<immediate|whendone|no>
Whether or when to unlink cache files (default: immediate). This
affects cache files which are inherently temporary, and which
make no sense to remain on disk after the player terminates. This
is a debugging option.
immediate
Unlink cache file after they were created. The cache files
won't be visible anymore, even though they're in use. This
ensures they are guaranteed to be removed from disk when
the player terminates, even if it crashes.
whendone
Delete cache files after they are closed.
no Don't delete cache files. They will consume disk space
without having a use.
Currently, this is used for --cache-on-disk only.
--stream-buffer-size=<bytesize>
Size of the low level stream byte buffer (default: 128KB). This
is used as buffer between demuxer and low level I/O (e.g. sock-
ets). Generally, this can be very small, and the main purpose is
similar to the internal buffer FILE in the C standard library
will have.
Half of the buffer is always used for guaranteed seek back, which
is important for unseekable input.
There are known cases where this can help performance to set a
large buffer:
1. mp4 files. libavformat may trigger many small seeks in both
directions, depending on how the file was muxed.
2. Certain network filesystems, which do not have a cache, and
where small reads can be inefficient.
In other cases, setting this to a large value can reduce perfor-
mance.
Usually, read accesses are at half the buffer size, but it may
happen that accesses are done alternating with smaller and larger
sizes (this is due to the internal ring buffer wrap-around).
See --list-options for defaults and value range. <bytesize> op-
tions accept suffixes such as KiB and MiB.
--vd-queue-enable=<yes|no>, --ad-queue-enable
Enable running the video/audio decoder on a separate thread (de-
fault: no). If enabled, the decoder is run on a separate thread,
and a frame queue is put between decoder and higher level play-
back logic. The size of the frame queue is defined by the other
options below.
This is probably quite pointless. libavcodec already has multi-
threaded decoding (enabled by default), which makes this largely
unnecessary. It might help in some corner cases with high band-
width video that is slow to decode (in these cases libavcodec
would block the playback logic, while using a decoding thread
would distribute the decoding time evenly without affecting the
playback logic). In other situations, it will simply make seeking
slower and use significantly more memory.
The queue size is restricted by the other --vd-queue-... options.
The final queue size is the minimum as indicated by the option
with the lowest limit. Each decoder/track has its own queue that
may use the full configured queue size.
Most queue options can be changed at runtime. --vd-queue-enable
itself (and the audio equivalent) update only if decoding is com-
pletely reinitialized. However, setting --vd-queue-max-samples=1
should almost lead to the same behavior as --vd-queue-enable=no,
so that value can be used for effectively runtime enabling/dis-
abling the queue.
This should not be used with hardware decoding. It is possible to
enable this for audio, but it makes even less sense.
--vd-queue-max-bytes=<bytesize>, --ad-queue-max-bytes
Maximum approximate allowed size of the queue. If exceeded, de-
coding will be stopped. The maximum size can be exceeded by about
1 frame.
See --list-options for defaults and value range. <bytesize> op-
tions accept suffixes such as KiB and MiB.
--vd-queue-max-samples=<int>, --ad-queue-max-samples
Maximum number of frames (video) or samples (audio) of the queue.
The audio size may be exceeded by about 1 frame.
See --list-options for defaults and value range.
--vd-queue-max-secs=<seconds>, --ad-queue-max-secs
Maximum number of seconds of media in the queue. The special
value 0 means no limit is set. The queue size may be exceeded by
about 2 frames. Timestamp resets may lead to random queue size
usage.
See --list-options for defaults and value range.
Network
--user-agent=<string>
Use <string> as user agent for HTTP streaming.
--cookies=<yes|no>
Support cookies when making HTTP requests. Disabled by default.
--cookies-file=<filename>
Read HTTP cookies from <filename>. The file is assumed to be in
Netscape format.
--http-header-fields=<field1,field2>
Set custom HTTP fields when accessing HTTP stream.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Example
mpv --http-header-fields='Field1: value1','Field2: value2' \
http://localhost:1234
Will generate HTTP request:
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: localhost:1234
User-Agent: MPlayer
Icy-MetaData: 1
Field1: value1
Field2: value2
Connection: close
--http-proxy=<proxy>
URL of the HTTP/HTTPS proxy. If this is set, the http_proxy envi-
ronment is ignored. The no_proxy environment variable is still
respected. This option is silently ignored if it does not start
with http://. Proxies are not used for https URLs. Setting this
option does not try to make the ytdl script use the proxy.
--tls-ca-file=<filename>
Certificate authority database file for use with TLS. (Silently
fails with older FFmpeg versions.)
--tls-verify
Verify peer certificates when using TLS (e.g. with https://...).
(Silently fails with older FFmpeg versions.)
--tls-cert-file
A file containing a certificate to use in the handshake with the
peer.
--tls-key-file
A file containing the private key for the certificate.
--referrer=<string>
Specify a referrer path or URL for HTTP requests.
--network-timeout=<seconds>
Specify the network timeout in seconds (default: 60 seconds).
This affects at least HTTP. The special value 0 uses the FFmpeg
defaults. If a protocol is used which does not support timeouts,
this option is silently ignored.
WARNING:
This breaks the RTSP protocol, because of inconsistent FFmpeg
API regarding its internal timeout option. Not only does the
RTSP timeout option accept different units (seconds instead of
microseconds, causing mpv to pass it huge values), it will
also overflow FFmpeg internal calculations. The worst is that
merely setting the option will put RTSP into listening mode,
which breaks any client uses. At time of this writing, the fix
was not made effective yet. For this reason, this option is
ignored (or should be ignored) on RTSP URLs. You can still set
the timeout option directly with --demuxer-lavf-o.
--rtsp-transport=<lavf|udp|udp_multicast|tcp|http>
Select RTSP transport method (default: tcp). This selects the un-
derlying network transport when playing rtsp://... URLs. The
value lavf leaves the decision to libavformat.
--hls-bitrate=<no|min|max|<rate>>
If HLS streams are played, this option controls what streams are
selected by default. The option allows the following parameters:
no Don't do anything special. Typically, this will simply
pick the first audio/video streams it can find.
min Pick the streams with the lowest bitrate.
max Same, but highest bitrate. (Default.)
Additionally, if the option is a number, the stream with the
highest rate equal or below the option value is selected.
The bitrate as used is sent by the server, and there's no guaran-
tee it's actually meaningful.
DVB
--dvbin-prog=<string>
This defines the program to tune to. Usually, you may specify
this by using a stream URI like "dvb://ZDF HD", but you can tune
to a different channel by writing to this property at runtime.
Also see dvbin-channel-switch-offset for more useful channel
switching functionality.
--dvbin-card=<0-15>
Specifies using card number 0-15 (default: 0).
--dvbin-file=<filename>
Instructs mpv to read the channels list from <filename>. The de-
fault is in the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.con-
fig/mpv) with the filename channels.conf.{sat,ter,cbl,atsc,isdbt}
(based on your card type) or channels.conf as a last resort.
Please note that using specific file name with card type is rec-
ommended, since the legacy channel format is not fully standard-
ized so autodetection of the delivery system may fail otherwise.
For DVB-S/2 cards, a VDR 1.7.x format channel list is recommended
as it allows tuning to DVB-S2 channels, enabling subtitles and
decoding the PMT (which largely improves the demuxing). Classic
mplayer format channel lists are still supported (without these
improvements), and for other card types, only limited VDR format
channel list support is implemented (patches welcome). For chan-
nels with dynamic PID switching or incomplete channels.conf,
--dvbin-full-transponder or the magic PID 8192 are recommended.
--dvbin-timeout=<seconds>
Maximum number of seconds to wait when trying to tune a frequency
before giving up (default: 30).
--dvbin-full-transponder=<yes|no>
Apply no filters on program PIDs, only tune to frequency and pass
full transponder to demuxer. The player frontend selects the
streams from the full TS in this case, so the program which is
shown initially may not match the chosen channel. Switching be-
tween the programs is possible by cycling the program property.
This is useful to record multiple programs on a single transpon-
der, or to work around issues in the channels.conf. It is also
recommended to use this for channels which switch PIDs
on-the-fly, e.g. for regional news.
Default: no
--dvbin-channel-switch-offset=<integer>
This value is not meant for setting via configuration, but used
in channel switching. An input.conf can cycle this value up and
down to perform channel switching. This number effectively gives
the offset to the initially tuned to channel in the channel list.
An example input.conf could contain: H cycle dvbin-chan-
nel-switch-offset up, K cycle dvbin-channel-switch-offset down
GPU renderer options
The following video options are currently all specific to --vo=gpu,
--vo=libmpv and --vo=gpu-next, which are the only VOs that implement
them.
--scale=<filter>
The filter function to use when upscaling video.
bilinear
Bilinear hardware texture filtering (fastest, very low
quality). This is the default when using the fast profile.
lanczos
Lanczos scaling. Provides good balance between quality and
performance. This is the default for scale. The number of
taps can be controlled with scale-radius, but is best left
unchanged.
(This filter is an alias for sinc-windowed sinc)
ewa_lanczos
Elliptic weighted average Lanczos scaling. Also known as
Jinc. Relatively slow, but very good quality. The radius
can be controlled with scale-radius. Increasing the radius
makes the filter sharper but adds more ringing.
(This filter is an alias for jinc-windowed jinc)
ewa_lanczossharp
A slightly sharpened version of ewa_lanczos. This is the
default when using the high-quality profile. Blur value
determined by method originally developed by Nicolas Ro-
bidoux for Image Magick, see:
<https://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-server/view-
topic.php?p=89068#p89068>
ewa_lanczos4sharpest
Very sharp scaler, but also slightly slower than ewa_lanc-
zossharp. Prone to ringing, so it's recommended to com-
bine this with an anti-ringing shader. On --vo=gpu-next,
setting this filter enables built-in anti-ringing, so no
extra action needs to be taken.
For more details, see:
<https://www.imagemagick.org/discourse-server/view-
topic.php?p=128587#p128587>
mitchell
Mitchell-Netravali. Piecewise cubic filter with a support
of radius 2.0. Provides a balanced compromise of all
scaling artifacts. This filter has both B and C set to
1/3. The B and C parameters can be controlled with
--scale-param1 and --scale-param2.
hermite
Hermite spline. Similar to bicubic but with B set to 0.0.
This filter has the special property of having a support
of radius 1.0, making it very fast in comparison, but
prone to blocking. This is the default for --dscale.
catmull_rom
Catmull-Rom spline. Similar to mitchell, but with B and C
set to 0.0 and 0.5 respectively. This filter is sharper
than mitchell, but prone to ringing.
oversample
A version of nearest neighbour that (naively) oversamples
pixels, so that pixels overlapping edges get linearly in-
terpolated instead of rounded. This essentially removes
the small imperfections and judder artifacts caused by
nearest-neighbour interpolation, in exchange for adding
some blur. This can also be used for frame mixing, where
it is commonly known as "smoothmotion" (see --tscale).
linear A --tscale filter.
There are some more filters, but most are not as useful. For a
complete list, pass help as value, e.g.:
mpv --scale=help
--cscale=<filter>
As --scale, but for interpolating chroma information. If the im-
age is not subsampled, this option is ignored entirely. If this
option is unset, the filter implied by --scale will be applied.
--dscale=<filter>
Like --scale, but apply these filters on downscaling instead.
--tscale=<filter>
The filter used for interpolating the temporal axis (frames).
This is only used if --interpolation is enabled. The only valid
choices for --tscale are separable convolution filters (use
--tscale=help to get a list). The default is oversample.
Common --tscale choices include oversample, linear, catmull_rom,
mitchell, gaussian, or bicubic. These are listed in increasing
order of smoothness/blurriness, with bicubic being the
smoothest/blurriest and oversample being the sharpest/least
smooth.
--scale-param1=<value>, --scale-param2=<value>, --cscale-param1=<value>,
--cscale-param2=<value>, --dscale-param1=<value>,
--dscale-param2=<value>, --tscale-param1=<value>,
--tscale-param2=<value>
Set filter parameters. By default, these are set to the special
string default, which maps to a scaler-specific default value.
Ignored if the filter is not tunable. Currently, this affects the
following filter parameters:
bicubic
Spline parameters (B and C). Defaults to B=1 and C=0.
gaussian
Scale parameter (t). Increasing this makes the result
blurrier. Defaults to 1.
oversample
Minimum distance to an edge before interpolation is used.
Setting this to 0 will always interpolate edges, whereas
setting it to 0.5 will never interpolate, thus behaving as
if the regular nearest neighbour algorithm was used. De-
faults to 0.0.
--scale-blur=<value>, --cscale-blur=<value>, --dscale-blur=<value>,
--tscale-blur=<value>
Kernel scaling factor (also known as a blur factor). Decreasing
this makes the result sharper, increasing it makes it blurrier
(default 0). If set to 0, the kernel's preferred blur factor is
used. Note that setting this too low (eg. 0.5) leads to bad re-
sults. It's generally recommended to stick to values between 0.8
and 1.2.
--scale-clamp=<0.0-1.0>, --cscale-clamp, --dscale-clamp, --tscale-clamp
Specifies a weight bias to multiply into negative coefficients.
Specifying --scale-clamp=1 has the effect of removing negative
weights completely, thus effectively clamping the value range to
[0-1]. Values between 0.0 and 1.0 can be specified to apply only
a moderate diminishment of negative weights. This is especially
useful for --tscale, where it reduces excessive ringing artifacts
in the temporal domain (which typically manifest themselves as
short flashes or fringes of black, mostly around moving edges) in
exchange for potentially adding more blur. The default for
--tscale-clamp is 1.0, the others default to 0.0.
--scale-taper=<value>, --scale-wtaper=<value>, --dscale-taper=<value>,
--dscale-wtaper=<value>, --cscale-taper=<value>, --cscale-wta-
per=<value>, --tscale-taper=<value>, --tscale-wtaper=<value>
Kernel/window taper factor. Increasing this flattens the filter
function. Value range is 0 to 1. A value of 0 (the default)
means no flattening, a value of 1 makes the filter completely
flat (equivalent to a box function). Values in between mean that
some portion will be flat and the actual filter function will be
squeezed into the space in between.
--scale-radius=<value>, --cscale-radius=<value>, --dscale-ra-
dius=<value>, --tscale-radius=<value>
Set radius for tunable filters, must be a float number between
0.5 and 16.0. Defaults to the filter's preferred radius if not
specified. Doesn't work for every scaler and VO combination.
Note that depending on filter implementation details and video
scaling ratio, the radius that actually being used might be dif-
ferent (most likely being increased a bit).
--scale-antiring=<value>, --cscale-antiring=<value>, --dscale-antir-
ing=<value>, --tscale-antiring=<value>
Set the antiringing strength. This tries to eliminate ringing,
but can introduce other artifacts in the process. Must be a float
number between 0.0 and 1.0. The default value of 0.0 disables an-
tiringing entirely.
Note that this doesn't affect the special filters bilinear and
bicubic_fast, nor does it affect any polar (EWA) scalers.
On --vo=gpu-next, this also affects polar (EWA) scalers. Certain
filter aliases may also implicitly enable antiringing, regardless
of this setting (see --scale).
NOTE:
When downscaling with separable (orthogonal) filters, setting
--dscale-antiring to a value other than 0.0 (default) will re-
duce scaler quality and produce aliasing artifacts. On
--vo=gpu-next, --dscale-antiring is disabled for separable
(orthogonal) filters.
--scale-window=<window>, --cscale-window=<window>, --dscale-window=<win-
dow>, --tscale-window=<window>
(Advanced users only) Choose a custom windowing function for the
kernel. Defaults to the filter's preferred window if unset. Use
--scale-window=help to get a list of supported windowing func-
tions.
--scale-wparam=<window>, --cscale-wparam=<window>, --cscale-wparam=<win-
dow>, --tscale-wparam=<window>
(Advanced users only) Configure the parameter for the window
function given by --scale-window etc. By default, these are set
to the special string default, which maps to a window-specific
default value. Ignored if the window is not tunable. Currently,
this affects the following window parameters:
kaiser Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 6.33.
blackman
Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 0.16.
gaussian
Scale parameter (t). Increasing this makes the window
wider. Defaults to 1.
--scaler-resizes-only
Disable the scaler if the video image is not resized. In that
case, bilinear is used instead of whatever is set with --scale.
Bilinear will reproduce the source image perfectly if no scaling
is performed. Enabled by default. Note that this option never
affects --cscale.
--correct-downscaling
When using convolution based filters, extend the filter size when
downscaling. Increases quality, but reduces performance while
downscaling. Enabled by default.
This will perform slightly sub-optimally for anamorphic video
(but still better than without it) since it will extend the size
to match only the milder of the scale factors between the axes.
Note: this option is ignored when using bilinear downscaling with
--vo=gpu.
--linear-downscaling
Scale in linear light when downscaling. It should only be used
with a --fbo-format that has at least 16 bit precision. This op-
tion has no effect on HDR content. Enabled by default.
--linear-upscaling
Scale in linear light when upscaling. Like --linear-downscaling,
it should only be used with a --fbo-format that has at least 16
bits precisions. This is not usually recommended except for test-
ing/specific purposes. Users are advised to either enable --sig-
moid-upscaling or keep both options disabled (i.e. scaling in
gamma light).
--sigmoid-upscaling
When upscaling, use a sigmoidal color transform to avoid empha-
sizing ringing artifacts. Enabled by default. This is incompati-
ble with and replaces --linear-upscaling. (Note that sigmoidiza-
tion also requires linearization, so the LINEAR rendering step
fires in both cases)
For more information about sigmoidization, see:
<https://imagemagick.org/Usage/resize/#resize_sigmoidal>
--sigmoid-center
The center of the sigmoid curve used for --sigmoid-upscaling,
must be a float between 0.0 and 1.0. Defaults to 0.75 if not
specified.
--sigmoid-slope
The slope of the sigmoid curve used for --sigmoid-upscaling, must
be a float between 1.0 and 20.0. Defaults to 6.5 if not speci-
fied.
--interpolation
Reduce stuttering caused by mismatches in the video fps and dis-
play refresh rate (also known as judder).
WARNING:
This requires setting the --video-sync option to one of the
display- modes, or it will be silently disabled. This was not
required before mpv 0.14.0.
This essentially attempts to interpolate the missing frames by
convoluting the video along the temporal axis. The filter used
can be controlled using the --tscale setting.
--interpolation-threshold=<0..1,-1>
Threshold below which frame ratio interpolation gets disabled
(default: 0.01). This is calculated as abs(disphz/vfps - 1) <
threshold, where vfps is the speed-adjusted video FPS, and disphz
the display refresh rate. (The speed-adjusted video FPS is
roughly equal to the normal video FPS, but with slowdown and
speedup applied. This matters if you use --video-sync=display-re-
sample to make video run synchronously to the display FPS, or if
you change the speed property.)
The default is intended to enable interpolation in scenarios
where retiming with the --video-sync=display-* cannot adjust the
speed of the video sufficiently for smooth playback. For example
if a video is 60.00 FPS and your display refresh rate is 59.94
Hz, interpolation will never be activated, since the mismatch is
within 1% of the refresh rate. The default also handles the sce-
nario when mpv cannot determine the container FPS, such as during
certain live streams, and may dynamically toggle interpolation on
and off. In this scenario, the default would be to not use inter-
polation but rather to allow --video-sync=display-* to retime the
video to match display refresh rate. See
--video-sync-max-video-change for more information about how mpv
will retime video.
Also note that if you use e.g. --video-sync=display-vdrop, small
deviations in the rate can disable interpolation and introduce a
discontinuity every other minute.
Set this to -1 to disable this logic.
--interpolation-preserve
Preserve the previous frames' interpolated results even when ren-
derer parameters are changed - with the exception of options re-
lated to cropping and video placement, which always invalidate
the cache. Enabling this option makes dynamic updates of renderer
settings slightly smoother at the cost of slightly higher latency
in response to such changes. Defaults to on. (Only affects
--vo=gpu-next, note that --vo=gpu always invalidates interpolated
frames)
--opengl-pbo
Enable use of PBOs. On some drivers this can be faster, espe-
cially if the source video size is huge (e.g. so called "4K"
video). On other drivers it might be slower or cause latency is-
sues.
--dither-depth=<N|no|auto>
Set dither target depth to N. Default: auto.
no Disable any dithering done by mpv.
auto Automatic selection. On --vo=gpu: detected depth or 8 bpc
otherwise On --vo=gpu-next: detected depth or 8 bpc (for
SDR target)
8 Dither to 8 bit output.
Note that the on-the-wire bit depth cannot be detected except
when using gpu-api=d3d11. Explicitly setting the value to your
display's bit depth is recommended, as dithering performed by
some LCD panels can be of low quality.
--dither-size-fruit=<2-8>
Set the size of the dither matrix (default: 6). The actual size
of the matrix is (2^N) x (2^N) for an option value of N, so a
value of 6 gives a size of 64x64. The matrix is generated at
startup time, and a large matrix can take rather long to compute
(seconds).
Used in --dither=fruit mode only.
--dither=<fruit|ordered|error-diffusion|no>
Select dithering algorithm (default: fruit). (Normally, the
--dither-depth option controls whether dithering is enabled.)
The error-diffusion option requires compute shader support. It
also requires large amount of shared memory to run, the size of
which depends on both the kernel (see --error-diffusion option
below) and the height of video window. It will fallback to fruit
dithering if there is no enough shared memory to run the shader.
--temporal-dither
Enable temporal dithering. (Only active if dithering is enabled
in general.) This changes between 8 different dithering patterns
on each frame by changing the orientation of the tiled dithering
matrix. Unfortunately, this can lead to flicker on LCD displays,
since these have a high reaction time.
--temporal-dither-period=<1-128>
Determines how often the dithering pattern is updated when --tem-
poral-dither is in use. 1 (the default) will update on every
video frame, 2 on every other frame, etc.
--error-diffusion=<kernel>
The error diffusion kernel to use when --dither=error-diffusion
is set.
simple Propagate error to only two adjacent pixels. Fastest but
low quality.
sierra-lite
Fast with reasonable quality. This is the default.
floyd-steinberg
Most notable error diffusion kernel.
atkinson
Looks different from other kernels because only fraction
of errors will be propagated during dithering. A typical
use case of this kernel is saving dithered screenshot (in
window mode). This kernel produces slightly smaller file,
with still reasonable dithering quality.
There are other kernels (use --error-diffusion=help to list) but
most of them are much slower and demanding even larger amount of
shared memory. Among these kernels, burkes achieves a good bal-
ance between performance and quality, and probably is the one you
want to try first.
--gpu-debug
Enables GPU debugging. What this means depends on the API type.
For OpenGL, it calls glGetError(), and requests a debug context.
For Vulkan, it enables validation layers.
--opengl-swapinterval=<n>
Interval in displayed frames between two buffer swaps. 1 is
equivalent to enable VSYNC, 0 to disable VSYNC. Defaults to 1 if
not specified.
Note that this depends on proper OpenGL vsync support. On some
platforms and drivers, this only works reliably when in
fullscreen mode. It may also require driver-specific hacks if us-
ing multiple monitors, to ensure mpv syncs to the right one. Com-
positing window managers can also lead to bad results, as can
missing or incorrect display FPS information (see --dis-
play-fps-override).
--egl-config-id=<ID>
(EGL only) Select EGLConfig with specific EGL_CONFIG_ID. Render-
ing surfaces and contexts will be created using this EGLConfig.
You can use --msg-level=vo=trace to obtain a list of available
configs.
--egl-output-for-
mat=<auto|rgb8|rgba8|rgb10|rgb10_a2|rgb16|rgba16|rgb16f|rgba16f|rgb32f|rgba32f>
(EGL only) Select a specific EGL output format to utilize for
OpenGL rendering. This option is mutually exclusive with
--egl-config-id. "auto" is the default, which will pick the
first usable config based on the order given by the driver.
All formats are not available. A fatal error is caused if an un-
available format is selected.
NOTE:
There is no reliable API to query desktop bit depth in EGL.
You can manually set this option according to the bit depth of
your display. This option also affects the auto-detection of
--dither-depth.
NOTE:
Unlike --d3d11-output-format, this option also takes effect
with --vo=gpu-next.
--vulkan-device=<device name|UUID>
The name or UUID of the Vulkan device to use for rendering and
presentation. Use --vulkan-device=help to see the list of avail-
able devices and their names and UUIDs. If left unspecified, the
first enumerated hardware Vulkan device will be used.
--vulkan-swap-mode=<mode>
Controls the presentation mode of the vulkan swapchain. This is
similar to the --opengl-swapinterval option.
auto Use the preferred swapchain mode for the vulkan context.
(Default)
fifo Non-tearing, vsync blocked. Similar to "VSync on".
fifo-relaxed
Tearing, vsync blocked. Late frames will tear instead of
stuttering.
mailbox
Non-tearing, not vsync blocked. Similar to "triple buffer-
ing".
immediate
Tearing, not vsync blocked. Similar to "VSync off".
--vulkan-queue-count=<1..8>
Controls the number of VkQueues used for rendering (limited by
how many your device supports). In theory, using more queues
could enable some parallelism between frames (when using a
--swapchain-depth higher than 1), but it can also slow things
down on hardware where there's no true parallelism between
queues. (Default: 1)
--vulkan-async-transfer
Enables the use of async transfer queues on supported vulkan de-
vices. Using them allows transfer operations like texture uploads
and blits to happen concurrently with the actual rendering, thus
improving overall throughput and power consumption. Enabled by
default, and should be relatively safe.
--vulkan-async-compute
Enables the use of async compute queues on supported vulkan de-
vices. Using this, in theory, allows out-of-order scheduling of
compute shaders with graphics shaders, thus enabling the hardware
to do more effective work while waiting for pipeline bubbles and
memory operations. Not beneficial on all GPUs. It's worth noting
that if async compute is enabled, and the device supports more
compute queues than graphics queues (bound by the restrictions
set by --vulkan-queue-count), mpv will internally try and prefer
the use of compute shaders over fragment shaders wherever possi-
ble. Enabled by default, although Nvidia users may want to dis-
able it.
--vulkan-display-display=<n>
The index of the display, on the selected Vulkan device, to
present on when using the displayvk GPU context. Use
--vulkan-display-display=help to see the list of available dis-
plays. If left unspecified, the first enumerated display will be
used.
--vulkan-display-mode=<n>
The index of the display mode, of the selected Vulkan display, to
use when using the displayvk GPU context. Use --vulkan-dis-
play-mode=help to see the list of available modes. If left un-
specified, the first enumerated mode will be used.
--vulkan-display-plane=<n>
The index of the plane, on the selected Vulkan device, to present
on when using the displayvk GPU context. Use --vulkan-dis-
play-plane=help to see the list of available planes. If left un-
specified, the first enumerated plane will be used.
--d3d11-exclusive-fs=<yes|no>
Switches the D3D11 swap chain fullscreen state to 'fullscreen'
when fullscreen video is requested. Also known as "exclusive
fullscreen" or "D3D fullscreen" in other applications. Gives mpv
full control of rendering on the swap chain's screen. Off by de-
fault.
--d3d11-warp=<yes|no|auto>
Use WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) with the D3D11
GPU backend (default: auto). This is a high performance software
renderer. By default, it is only used when the system has no
hardware adapters that support D3D11. While the extended GPU fea-
tures will work with WARP, they can be very slow.
--d3d11-feature-level=<12_1|12_0|11_1|11_0|10_1|10_0|9_3|9_2|9_1>
Select a specific feature level when using the D3D11 GPU backend.
By default, the highest available feature level is used. This op-
tion can be used to select a lower feature level, which is mainly
useful for debugging. Most extended GPU features will not work
at 9_x feature levels.
--d3d11-flip=<yes|no>
Enable flip-model presentation, which avoids unnecessarily copy-
ing the backbuffer by sharing surfaces with the DWM (default:
yes). This may cause performance issues with older drivers. If
flip-model presentation is not supported (for example, on Windows
7 without the platform update), mpv will automatically fall back
to the older bitblt presentation model.
flip-model needs presentation needs to be disabled for background
transparency to work.
--d3d11-sync-interval=<0..4>
Schedule each frame to be presented for this number of VBlank in-
tervals. (default: 1) Setting to 1 will enable VSync, setting to
0 will disable it.
--d3d11-adapter=<adapter name|help>
Select a specific D3D11 adapter to utilize for D3D11 rendering.
Will pick the default adapter if unset. Alternatives are listed
when the name "help" is given.
Checks for matches based on the start of the string, case insen-
sitive. Thus, if the description of the adapter starts with the
vendor name, that can be utilized as the selection parameter.
Hardware decoders utilizing the D3D11 rendering abstraction's
helper functionality to receive a device, such as D3D11VA or
DXVA2's DXGI mode, will be affected by this choice.
--d3d11-output-format=<auto|rgba8|bgra8|rgb10_a2|rgba16f>
Select a specific D3D11 output format to utilize for D3D11 ren-
dering. "auto" is the default, which will pick either rgba8 or
rgb10_a2 depending on the configured desktop bit depth. rgba16f
and bgra8 are left out of the autodetection logic, and are avail-
able for manual testing.
NOTE:
Desktop bit depth querying is only available from an API
available from Windows 10. Thus on older systems it will only
automatically utilize the rgba8 output format.
NOTE:
For --vo=gpu-next, this is used as a best-effort hint and lib-
placebo has the last say on which format is utilized.
--d3d11-output-csp=<auto|srgb|linear|pq|bt.2020>
Select a specific D3D11 output color space to utilize for D3D11
rendering. "auto" is the default, which will select the color
space of the desktop on which the swap chain is located.
Values other than "srgb" and "pq" have had issues in testing, so
they are mostly available for manual testing.
NOTE:
Swap chain color space configuration is only available from an
API available from Windows 10. Thus on older systems it will
not work.
--d3d11va-zero-copy=<yes|no>
By default, when using hardware decoding with --gpu-api=d3d11,
the video image will be copied (GPU-to-GPU) from the decoder sur-
face to a shader resource. Set this option to avoid that copy by
sampling directly from the decoder image. This may increase per-
formance and reduce power usage, but can cause the image to be
sampled incorrectly on the bottom and right edges due to padding,
and may invoke driver bugs, since Direct3D 11 technically does
not allow sampling from a decoder surface (though most drivers
support it.)
Currently only relevant for --gpu-api=d3d11.
--wayland-app-id=<string>
Set the client app id for Wayland-based video output methods (de-
fault: mpv).
--wayland-configure-bounds=<auto|yes|no>
Controls whether or not mpv opts into the configure bounds event
if sent by the compositor (default: auto). This restricts the
initial size of the mpv window to a certain maximum size intended
by the compositor. In most cases, this simply just prevents the
mpv window from being larger than the size of the monitor when it
first renders. With the default value of auto, configure-bounds
will silently be ignored if any autofit or geometry type option
is also set.
--wayland-content-type=<auto|none|photo|video|game>
If supported by the compositor, mpv will send a hint using the
content-type protocol telling the compositor what type of content
is being displayed. auto (default) will automatically switch be-
tween telling the compositor the content is a photo, video or
possibly none depending on internal heuristics.
--wayland-edge-pixels-pointer=<value>
Defines the size of an edge border (default: 16) to initiate
client side resize events in the wayland contexts with the mouse.
This is only active if there are no server side decorations from
the compositor.
--wayland-edge-pixels-touch=<value>
Defines the size of an edge border (default: 32) to initiate
client side resizes events in the wayland contexts with touch
events.
--wayland-internal-vsync=<no|auto|yes>
Controls whether to use mpv's internal vsync for Wayland-base
video outputs (default: auto). This is mainly useful for bench-
marking wayland VOs when combined with video-sync=display-desync,
--audio=no, and --untimed=yes. The special auto value will dis-
able the internal vsync if the compositor supports the fifo pro-
tocol and version 2 of the presentation time protocol when using
--gpu-api=vulkan. In any other situation, it is exactly the same
as yes.
--wayland-present=<yes|no>
Enable the use of wayland's presentation time protocol for more
accurate frame presentation if it is supported by the compositor
(default: yes). This only has an effect if --video-sync=dis-
play-... is being used.
--spirv-compiler=<compiler>
Controls which compiler is used to translate GLSL to SPIR-V. This
is only relevant for --gpu-api=d3d11 with --vo=gpu. The possible
choices are currently:
auto Use the first available compiler. (Default)
shaderc
Use libshaderc, which is an API wrapper around glslang.
This is generally the most preferred, if available.
NOTE:
This option is deprecated, since there is only one usable
value. It may be removed in the future.
--glsl-shader=<file>, --glsl-shaders=<file-list>
Custom GLSL hooks. These are a flexible way to add custom frag-
ment shaders, which can be injected at almost arbitrary points in
the rendering pipeline, and access all previous intermediate tex-
tures.
Each use of the --glsl-shader option will add another file to the
internal list of shaders, while --glsl-shaders takes a list of
files, and overwrites the internal list with it. The latter is a
path list option (see List Options for details).
WARNING:
The syntax is not stable yet and may change any time.
The general syntax of a user shader looks like this:
//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...
vec4 hook() {
...
return something;
}
//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...
...
Each section of metadata, along with the non-metadata lines after
it, defines a single block. There are currently two types of
blocks, HOOKs and TEXTUREs.
A TEXTURE block can set the following options:
TEXTURE <name> (required)
The name of this texture. Hooks can then bind the texture
under this name using BIND. This must be the first option
of the texture block.
SIZE <width> [<height>] [<depth>] (required)
The dimensions of the texture. The height and depth are
optional. The type of texture (1D, 2D or 3D) depends on
the number of components specified.
FORMAT <name> (required)
The texture format for the samples. Supported texture for-
mats are listed in debug logging when the gpu VO is ini-
tialized (look for Texture formats:). Usually, this fol-
lows OpenGL naming conventions. For example, rgb16 pro-
vides 3 channels with normalized 16 bit components. One
oddity are float formats: for example, rgba16f has 16 bit
internal precision, but the texture data is provided as 32
bit floats, and the driver converts the data on texture
upload.
Although format names follow a common naming convention,
not all of them are available on all hardware, drivers, GL
versions, and so on.
FILTER <LINEAR|NEAREST>
The min/magnification filter used when sampling from this
texture.
BORDER <CLAMP|REPEAT|MIRROR>
The border wrapping mode used when sampling from this tex-
ture.
Following the metadata is a string of bytes in hexadecimal nota-
tion that define the raw texture data, corresponding to the for-
mat specified by FORMAT, on a single line with no extra white-
space.
A HOOK block can set the following options:
HOOK <name> (required)
The texture which to hook into. May occur multiple times
within a metadata block, up to a predetermined limit. See
below for a list of hookable textures.
DESC <title>
User-friendly description of the pass. This is the name
used when representing this shader in the list of passes
for property vo-passes.
BIND <name>
Loads a texture (either coming from mpv or from a TEXTURE
block) and makes it available to the pass. When binding
textures from mpv, this will also set up macros to facili-
tate accessing it properly. See below for a list. By de-
fault, no textures are bound. The special name HOOKED can
be used to refer to the texture that triggered this pass.
SAVE <name>
Gives the name of the texture to save the result of this
pass into. By default, this is set to the special name
HOOKED which has the effect of overwriting the hooked tex-
ture.
WIDTH <szexpr>, HEIGHT <szexpr>
Specifies the size of the resulting texture for this pass.
szexpr refers to an expression in RPN (reverse polish no-
tation), using the operators + - * / > < !, floating point
literals, and references to sizes of existing texture
(such as MAIN.width or CHROMA.height), OUTPUT, or NA-
TIVE_CROPPED (size of an input texture cropped after
pan-and-scan, video-align-x/y, video-pan-x/y, etc. and
possibly prescaled). By default, these are set to HOOKED.w
and HOOKED.h, espectively.
WHEN <szexpr>
Specifies a condition that needs to be true (non-zero) for
the shader stage to be evaluated. If it fails, it will
silently be omitted. (Note that a shader stage like this
which has a dependency on an optional hook point can still
cause that hook point to be saved, which has some minor
overhead)
OFFSET <ox oy | ALIGN>
Indicates a pixel shift (offset) introduced by this pass.
These pixel offsets will be accumulated and corrected dur-
ing the next scaling pass (cscale or scale). The default
values are 0 0 which correspond to no shift. Note that
offsets are ignored when not overwriting the hooked tex-
ture.
A special value of ALIGN will attempt to fix existing off-
set of HOOKED by align it with reference. It requires
HOOKED to be resizable (see below). It works transparently
with fragment shader. For compute shader, the predefined
texmap macro is required to handle coordinate mapping.
COMPONENTS <n>
Specifies how many components of this pass's output are
relevant and should be stored in the texture, up to 4
(rgba). By default, this value is equal to the number of
components in HOOKED.
COMPUTE <bw> <bh> [<tw> <th>]
Specifies that this shader should be treated as a compute
shader, with the block size bw and bh. The compute shader
will be dispatched with however many blocks are necessary
to completely tile over the output. Within each block,
there will be tw*th threads, forming a single work group.
In other words: tw and th specify the work group size,
which can be different from the block size. So for exam-
ple, a compute shader with bw, bh = 32 and tw, th = 8 run-
ning on a 500x500 texture would dispatch 16x16 blocks
(rounded up), each with 8x8 threads.
Compute shaders in mpv are treated a bit different from
fragment shaders. Instead of defining a vec4 hook that
produces an output sample, you directly define void hook
which writes to a fixed writeonly image unit named out_im-
age (this is bound by mpv) using imageStore. To help
translate texture coordinates in the absence of vertices,
mpv provides a special function NAME_map(id) to map from
the texel space of the output image to the texture coordi-
nates for all bound textures. In particular, NAME_pos is
equivalent to NAME_map(gl_GlobalInvocationID), although
using this only really makes sense if (tw,th) == (bw,bh).
Each bound mpv texture (via BIND) will make available the follow-
ing definitions to that shader pass, where NAME is the name of
the bound texture:
vec4 NAME_tex(vec2 pos)
The sampling function to use to access the texture at a
certain spot (in texture coordinate space, range [0,1]).
This takes care of any necessary normalization conver-
sions.
vec4 NAME_texOff(vec2 offset)
Sample the texture at a certain offset in pixels. This
works like NAME_tex but additionally takes care of neces-
sary rotations, so that sampling at e.g. vec2(-1,0) is al-
ways one pixel to the left.
vec2 NAME_pos
The local texture coordinate of that texture, range [0,1].
vec2 NAME_size
The (rotated) size in pixels of the texture.
mat2 NAME_rot
The rotation matrix associated with this texture. (Rotates
pixel space to texture coordinates)
vec2 NAME_pt
The (unrotated) size of a single pixel, range [0,1].
float NAME_mul
The coefficient that needs to be multiplied into the tex-
ture contents in order to normalize it to the range [0,1].
sampler NAME_raw
The raw bound texture itself. The use of this should be
avoided unless absolutely necessary.
Normally, users should use either NAME_tex or NAME_texOff to read
from the texture. For some shaders however , it can be better for
performance to do custom sampling from NAME_raw, in which case
care needs to be taken to respect NAME_mul and NAME_rot.
In addition to these parameters, the following uniforms are also
globally available:
float random
A random number in the range [0-1], different per frame.
int frame
A simple count of frames rendered, increases by one per
frame and never resets (regardless of seeks).
vec2 input_size
The size in pixels of the input image (possibly cropped
and prescaled).
vec2 target_size
The size in pixels of the visible part of the scaled (and
possibly cropped) image.
vec2 tex_offset
Texture offset introduced by user shaders or options like
panscan, video-align-x/y, video-pan-x/y.
Internally, vo_gpu may generate any number of the following tex-
tures. Whenever a texture is rendered and saved by vo_gpu, all
of the passes that have hooked into it will run, in the order
they were added by the user. This is a list of the legal hook
points:
RGB, LUMA, CHROMA, ALPHA, XYZ (resizable)
Source planes (raw). Which of these fire depends on the
image format of the source.
CHROMA_SCALED, ALPHA_SCALED (fixed)
Source planes (upscaled). These only fire on subsampled
content.
NATIVE (resizable)
The combined image, in the source colorspace, before con-
version to RGB.
MAINPRESUB (resizable)
The image, after conversion to RGB, but before
--blend-subtitles=video is applied.
MAIN (resizable)
The main image, after conversion to RGB but before upscal-
ing.
LINEAR (fixed)
Linear light image, before scaling. This only fires when
--linear-upscaling, --linear-downscaling or --sigmoid-up-
scaling is in effect.
SIGMOID (fixed)
Sigmoidized light, before scaling. This only fires when
--sigmoid-upscaling is in effect.
PREKERNEL (fixed)
The image immediately before the scaler kernel runs.
POSTKERNEL (fixed)
The image immediately after the scaler kernel runs.
SCALED (fixed)
The final upscaled image, before color management.
OUTPUT (fixed)
The final output image, after color management but before
dithering and drawing to screen.
Only the textures labelled with resizable may be transformed by
the pass. When overwriting a texture marked fixed, the WIDTH,
HEIGHT and OFFSET must be left at their default values.
--glsl-shader=<file>
CLI/config file only alias for --glsl-shaders-append.
--glsl-shader-opts=param1=value1,param2=value2,...
Specifies the options to use for tunable shader parameters. You
can target specific named shaders by prefixing the shader name
with a /, e.g. shader/param=value. Without a prefix, parameters
affect all shaders. The shader name is the base part of the
shader filename, without the extension. (--vo=gpu-next only)
Some parameters are filled automatically if the shader requests
them. Currently following parameters are available:
PTS PTS of the current frame in seconds.
chroma_offset_x
chroma offset to the reference plane in x direction.
chroma_offset_y
chroma offset to the reference plane in y direction.
min_luma
Minimum luminance value (in cd/m²).
max_luma
Maximum luminance value (in cd/m²).
max_cll
Maximum Content Light Level (in cd/m²).
max_fall
Maximum Frame Average Light Level (in cd/m²).
scene_max_r
Maximum scene light level of the red channel (in cd/m²).
scene_max_g
Maximum scene light level of the green channel (in cd/m²).
scene_max_b
Maximum scene light level of the blue channel (in cd/m²).
scene_avg
Average scene light level (in cd/m²).
max_pq_y
Maximum PQ luminance (in PQ, 0-1).
avg_pq_y
Average PQ luminance (in PQ, 0-1).
--deband
Enable the debanding algorithm. This greatly reduces the amount
of visible banding, blocking and other quantization artifacts, at
the expense of very slightly blurring some of the finest details.
In practice, it's virtually always an improvement - the only rea-
son to disable it would be for performance.
--deband-iterations=<0..16>
The number of debanding steps to perform per sample. Each step
reduces a bit more banding, but takes time to compute. Note that
the strength of each step falls off very quickly, so high numbers
(>4) are practically useless. (Default 1)
--deband-threshold=<0..4096>
The debanding filter's cut-off threshold. Higher numbers increase
the debanding strength dramatically but progressively diminish
image details. (Default 48)
--deband-range=<1..64>
The debanding filter's initial radius. The radius increases lin-
early for each iteration. A higher radius will find more gradi-
ents, but a lower radius will smooth more aggressively. (Default
16)
If you increase the --deband-iterations, you should probably de-
crease this to compensate.
--deband-grain=<0..4096>
Add some extra noise to the image. This significantly helps cover
up remaining quantization artifacts. Higher numbers add more
noise. (Default 32)
--corner-rounding=<0..1>
If set to a value above 0.0, the output will be rendered with
rounded corners, as if an alpha transparency mask had been ap-
plied. The value indicates the relative fraction of the side
length to round - a value of 1.0 rounds the corners as much as
possible. (--vo=gpu-next only)
--sharpen=<value>
If set to a value other than 0, enable an unsharp masking filter.
Positive values will sharpen the image (but add more ringing and
aliasing). Negative values will blur the image. If your GPU is
powerful enough, consider alternatives like the ewa_lanczossharp
scale filter, or the --scale-blur option. (Only for --vo=gpu)
--opengl-glfinish
Call glFinish() before swapping buffers (default: disabled).
Slower, but might improve results when doing framedropping. Can
completely ruin performance. The details depend entirely on the
OpenGL driver.
--opengl-waitvsync
Call glXWaitVideoSyncSGI after each buffer swap (default: dis-
abled). This may or may not help with video timing accuracy and
frame drop. It's possible that this makes video output slower, or
has no effect at all.
X11/GLX only.
--opengl-dwmflush=<no|windowed|yes|auto>
(Windows only) Calls DwmFlush after swapping buffers on Windows
(default: auto). It also sets SwapInterval(0) to ignore the
OpenGL timing. Values are: no (disabled), windowed (only in win-
dowed mode), yes (also in full screen).
The value auto will try to determine whether the compositor is
active, and calls DwmFlush only if it seems to be.
This may help to get more consistent frame intervals, especially
with high-fps clips - which might also reduce dropped frames.
Typically, a value of windowed should be enough, since full
screen may bypass the DWM.
--angle-d3d11-feature-level=<11_0|10_1|10_0|9_3>
Selects a specific feature level when using the ANGLE backend
with D3D11. By default, the highest available feature level is
used. This option can be used to select a lower feature level,
which is mainly useful for debugging. Note that OpenGL ES 3.0 is
only supported at feature level 10_1 or higher. Most extended
OpenGL features will not work at lower feature levels (similar to
--gpu-dumb-mode).
Windows with ANGLE only.
--angle-d3d11-warp=<yes|no|auto>
Use WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) when using the
ANGLE backend with D3D11 (default: auto). This is a high perfor-
mance software renderer. By default, it is used when the Direct3D
hardware does not support Direct3D 11 feature level 9_3. While
the extended OpenGL features will work with WARP, they can be
very slow.
Windows with ANGLE only.
--angle-egl-windowing=<yes|no|auto>
Use ANGLE's built in EGL windowing functions to create a swap
chain (default: auto). If this is set to no and the D3D11 ren-
derer is in use, ANGLE's built in swap chain will not be used and
a custom swap chain that is optimized for video rendering will be
created instead. If set to auto, a custom swap chain will be used
for D3D11 and the built in swap chain will be used for D3D9. This
option is mainly for debugging purposes, in case the custom swap
chain has poor performance or does not work.
If set to yes, the --angle-flip option will have no effect.
Windows with ANGLE only.
--angle-flip=<yes|no>
Enable flip-model presentation, which avoids unnecessarily copy-
ing the backbuffer by sharing surfaces with the DWM (default:
yes). This may cause performance issues with older drivers. If
flip-model presentation is not supported (for example, on Windows
7 without the platform update), mpv will automatically fall back
to the older bitblt presentation model.
If set to no, the --angle-swapchain-length option will have no
effect.
Windows with ANGLE only.
--angle-renderer=<d3d9|d3d11|auto>
Forces a specific renderer when using the ANGLE backend (default:
auto). In auto mode this will pick D3D11 for systems that support
Direct3D 11 feature level 9_3 or higher, and D3D9 otherwise. This
option is mainly for debugging purposes. Normally there is no
reason to force a specific renderer, though --angle-renderer=d3d9
may give slightly better performance on old hardware. Note that
the D3D9 renderer only supports OpenGL ES 2.0, so most extended
OpenGL features will not work if this renderer is selected (simi-
lar to --gpu-dumb-mode).
Windows with ANGLE only.
--macos-force-dedicated-gpu=<yes|no>
Deactivates the automatic graphics switching and forces the dedi-
cated GPU. (default: no)
macOS only.
--cocoa-cb-sw-renderer=<yes|no|auto>
Use the Apple Software Renderer when using cocoa-cb (default:
auto). If set to no the software renderer is never used and in-
stead fails when a the usual pixel format could not be created,
yes will always only use the software renderer, and auto only
falls back to the software renderer when the usual pixel format
couldn't be created.
macOS and cocoa-cb only.
--cocoa-cb-10bit-context=<yes|no>
Creates a 10bit capable pixel format for the context creation
(default: yes). Instead of 8bit integer framebuffer a 16bit
half-float framebuffer is requested.
macOS and cocoa-cb only.
--cocoa-cb-output-csp=<csp>
This sets the color space of the layer to activate the macOS
color transformation. Depending on the color space used the sys-
tem's EDR (HDR) support will be activated. To get correct re-
sults, this needs to be set to the color primaries/transfer char-
acteristics of the VO target. It is recommended to use this
switch together with --target-trc and --target-prim.
<csp> can be one of the following:
auto Sets the color space to the icc profile of the screen (de-
fault).
display-p3
DCI P3 primaries, a D65 white point and the sRGB transfer
function.
display-p3-hlg
DCI P3 primaries, a D65 white point and the Hybrid
Log-Gamma (HLG) transfer function.
display-p3-pq
DCI P3 primaries, a D65 white point and the Perceptual
Quantizer (PQ) transfer function.
display-p3-linear
DCI P3 primaries, a D65 white point and linear transfer
function.
dci-p3 DCI P3 color space.
bt.2020
ITU BT.2020 color space.
bt.2020-linear
ITU BT.2020 color space and linear transfer function.
bt.2100-hlg
ITU BT.2100 and the Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) transfer func-
tion.
bt.2100-pq
ITU BT.2100 and the Perceptual Quantizer (PQ) transfer
function.
bt.709 ITU BT.709 color space.
srgb sRGB colorimetry and non-linear transfer function.
srgb-linear
Same as sRGB but linear transfer function.
rgb-linear
RGB and linear transfer function.
adobe Adobe RGB (1998) color space.
macOS and cocoa-cb only.
--macos-title-bar-appearance=<appearance>
Sets the appearance of the title bar (default: auto). Not all
combinations of appearances and --macos-title-bar-material mate-
rials make sense or are unique. Appearances that are not sup-
ported by you current macOS version fall back to the default
value. macOS only
<appearance> can be one of the following:
auto Detects the system settings and sets the title bar appear-
ance appropriately. On macOS 10.14 it also detects run
time changes.
aqua The standard macOS Light appearance.
darkAqua
The standard macOS Dark appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
vibrantLight
Light vibrancy appearance with.
vibrantDark
Dark vibrancy appearance with.
aquaHighContrast
Light Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
darkAquaHighContrast
Dark Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
vibrantLightHighContrast
Light vibrancy Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
vibrantDarkHighContrast
Dark vibrancy Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
--macos-title-bar-material=<material>
Sets the material of the title bar (default: titlebar). All dep-
recated materials should not be used on macOS 10.14+ because
their functionality is not guaranteed. Not all combinations of
materials and --macos-title-bar-appearance appearances make sense
or are unique. Materials that are not supported by you current
macOS version fall back to the default value. macOS only
<material> can be one of the following:
titlebar
The standard macOS title bar material.
selection
The standard macOS selection material.
menu The standard macOS menu material. (macOS 10.11+)
popover
The standard macOS popover material. (macOS 10.11+)
sidebar
The standard macOS sidebar material. (macOS 10.11+)
headerView
The standard macOS header view material. (macOS 10.14+)
sheet The standard macOS sheet material. (macOS 10.14+)
windowBackground
The standard macOS window background material. (macOS
10.14+)
hudWindow
The standard macOS hudWindow material. (macOS 10.14+)
fullScreen
The standard macOS full screen material. (macOS 10.14+)
toolTip
The standard macOS tool tip material. (macOS 10.14+)
contentBackground
The standard macOS content background material. (macOS
10.14+)
underWindowBackground
The standard macOS under window background material. (ma-
cOS 10.14+)
underPageBackground
The standard macOS under page background material. (dep-
recated in macOS 10.14+)
dark The standard macOS dark material. (deprecated in macOS
10.14+)
light The standard macOS light material. (macOS 10.14+)
mediumLight
The standard macOS mediumLight material. (macOS 10.11+,
deprecated in macOS 10.14+)
ultraDark
The standard macOS ultraDark material. (macOS 10.11+ dep-
recated in macOS 10.14+)
--macos-title-bar-color=<color>
Sets the color of the title bar (default: completely transpar-
ent). Is influenced by --macos-title-bar-appearance and --ma-
cos-title-bar-material. See --sub-color for color syntax.
--macos-fs-animation-duration=<default|0-1000>
Sets the fullscreen resize animation duration in ms (default: de-
fault). The default value is slightly less than the system's an-
imation duration (500ms) to prevent some problems when the end of
an async animation happens at the same time as the end of the
system wide fullscreen animation. Setting anything higher than
500ms will only prematurely cancel the resize animation after the
system wide animation ended. The upper limit is still set at
1000ms since it's possible that Apple or the user changes the
system defaults. Anything higher than 1000ms though seems too
long and shouldn't be set anyway. (macOS)
--macos-app-activation-policy=<regular|accessory|prohibited>
Changes the App activation policy. With accessory the mpv icon in
the Dock can be hidden. (default: regular)
macOS only.
--macos-geometry-calculation=<visible|whole>
This changes the rectangle which is used to calculate the screen
position and size of the window (default: visible). visible takes
the the menu bar and Dock into account and the window is only po-
sitioned/sized within the visible screen frame rectangle, whole
takes the whole screen frame rectangle and ignores the menu bar
and Dock. Other previous restrictions still apply, like the win-
dow can't be placed on top of the menu bar etc.
macOS only.
--macos-render-timer=<timer>
Sets the mode (default: callback) for syncing the rendering of
frames to the display's vertical refresh rate. macOS and Vulkan
(macvk) only.
<timer> can be one of the following:
callback
Syncs to the CVDisplayLink callback
precise
Syncs to the time of the next vertical display refresh re-
ported by the CVDisplayLink callback provided information
system No manual syncing, depend on the layer mechanic and the
next drawable
feedback
Same as precise but uses the presentation feedback core
mechanism
--macos-menu-shortcuts=<yes|no>
Enables the default menu bar shortcuts (default: yes). The menu
bar shortcuts always take precedence over any other shortcuts,
they are not propagated to the mpv core and they can't be used in
config files like input.conf or script bindings.
--macos-bundle-path=path1,path2,...
App Bundles operate in their own shell environment that is dif-
ferent from the one in the terminal. The default PATH variable
for all Bundles is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin. Because of
that mpv can not find binaries installed by package manager that
might be used in scripts for example. This option prepends all
given paths to the default Bundle PATH.
Default value in following order:
/usr/local/bin
homebrew (Intel) install path
/usr/local/sbin
homebrew (Intel) install path
/opt/local/bin
MacPorts install path
/opt/local/sbin
MacPorts install path
/opt/homebrew/bin
homebrew (ARM) install path
/opt/homebrew/sbin
homebrew (ARM) install path
--android-surface-size=<WxH>
Set dimensions of the rendering surface used by the Android gpu
context. Needs to be set by the embedding application if the di-
mensions change during runtime (i.e. if the device is rotated),
via the surfaceChanged callback.
Android with --gpu-context=android only.
--gpu-sw
Continue even if a software renderer is detected. This only works
with OpenGL/Vulkan backends. For d3d11, see --d3d11-warp.
--gpu-context=<context1,context2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of the GPU contexts to be used. The
value auto (the default) selects the GPU context with the default
autoprobe order. You can also pass help to get a complete list of
compiled in backends (sorted by the default autoprobe order).
Note that the default GPU context is subject to change, and must
not be relied upon. If a certain GPU context needs to be used,
it must be explicitly specified.
auto auto-select (default). Note that this context must be used
alone and does not participate in the priority list.
win Win32/WGL
winvk VK_KHR_win32_surface
angle Direct3D11 through the OpenGL ES translation layer ANGLE.
This supports almost everything the win backend does (if
the ANGLE build is new enough).
dxinterop (experimental)
Win32, using WGL for rendering and Direct3D 9Ex for pre-
sentation. Works on Nvidia and AMD. Newer Intel chips with
the latest drivers may also work.
d3d11 Win32, with native Direct3D 11 rendering.
x11 X11/GLX (deprecated/legacy, EGL is preferred these days)
x11vk VK_KHR_xlib_surface
wayland
Wayland/EGL
waylandvk
VK_KHR_wayland_surface
drm DRM/EGL
displayvk
VK_KHR_display. This backend is roughly the Vulkan equiva-
lent of DRM/EGL, allowing for direct rendering via Vulkan
without a display manager.
x11egl X11/EGL
android
Android/EGL. Requires --wid be set to an android.view.Sur-
face.
macvk Vulkan on macOS with a metal surface through a translation
layer (experimental)
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for de-
tails.
--gpu-api=<type1,type2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of accepted graphics APIs.
auto Use any available API (default). Note that the default GPU
API used for this value is subject to change, and must not
be relied upon. If a certain GPU API needs to be used, it
must be explicitly specified.
opengl Allow only OpenGL (requires OpenGL 2.1+ or GLES 2.0+)
vulkan Allow only Vulkan (requires a valid/working --spirv-com-
piler)
d3d11 Allow only --gpu-context=d3d11
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for de-
tails.
--opengl-es=<mode>
Controls which type of OpenGL context will be accepted:
auto Allow all types of OpenGL (default)
yes Only allow GLES
no Only allow desktop/core GL
--fbo-format=<fmt>
Selects the internal format of textures used for FBOs. The format
can influence performance and quality of the video output. fmt
can be one of: rgb8, rgb10, rgb10_a2, rgb16, rgb16f, rgb32f,
rgba12, rgba16, rgba16f, rgba16hf, rgba32f.
Default: auto, which first attempts to utilize 16bit float
(rgba16f, rgba16hf), and falls back to rgba16 if those are not
available. Finally, attempts to utilize rgb10_a2 or rgba8 if all
of the previous formats are not available.
--gamma-factor=<0.1..2.0>
Set an additional raw gamma factor (default: 1.0). If gamma is
adjusted in other ways (like with the --gamma option or key bind-
ings and the gamma property), the value is multiplied with the
other gamma value.
--gamma-auto
Automatically corrects the gamma value depending on ambient
lighting conditions (adding a gamma boost for bright rooms).
This option is deprecated and may be removed in the future.
NOTE: Only implemented on macOS and --vo=gpu.
--image-lut=<file>
Specifies a custom LUT file (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to
the colors during image decoding. The exact interpretation of the
LUT depends on the value of --image-lut-type. (Only for
--vo=gpu-next)
--image-lut-type=<value>
Controls the interpretation of color values fed to and from the
LUT specified as --image-lut. Valid values are:
auto Chooses the interpretation of the LUT automatically from
tagged metadata, and otherwise falls back to native. (De-
fault)
native Applied to the raw image contents in its native color-
space, before decoding to RGB. For example, for a HDR10
image, this would be fed PQ-encoded YCbCr values in the
range 0.0 - 1.0.
normalized
Applied to the normalized RGB image contents, after decod-
ing from its native color encoding, but before lineariza-
tion.
conversion
Fully replaces the color decoding. A LUT of this type
should ingest the image's native colorspace and output
normalized non-linear RGB.
--target-colorspace-hint=<auto|yes|no>
Automatically configure the output colorspace of the display to
pass through the input values of the stream (e.g. for HDR
passthrough), if possible. In auto mode, the target colorspace is
only set, if the display signals support for HDR colorspace. Re-
quires a supporting driver and --vo=gpu-next. (Default: no)
--target-prim=<value>
Specifies the primaries of the display. Video colors will be
adapted to this colorspace when ICC color management is not being
used. Valid values are:
auto Disable any adaptation, except for atypical color spaces.
Specifically, wide/unusual gamuts get automatically
adapted to BT.709, while standard gamut (i.e. BT.601 and
BT.709) content is not touched. (default)
bt.470m
ITU-R BT.470 M
bt.601-525
ITU-R BT.601 (525-line SD systems, eg. NTSC), SMPTE
170M/240M
bt.601-625
ITU-R BT.601 (625-line SD systems, eg. PAL/SECAM), ITU-R
BT.470 B/G
bt.709 ITU-R BT.709 (HD), IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB), SMPTE RP177 Annex
B
bt.2020
ITU-R BT.2020 (UHD)
apple Apple RGB
adobe Adobe RGB (1998)
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
cie1931
CIE 1931 RGB (not to be confused with CIE XYZ)
dci-p3 DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Colorspace), SMPTE RP431-2
v-gamut
Panasonic V-Gamut (VARICAM) primaries
s-gamut
Sony S-Gamut (S-Log) primaries
--target-trc=<value>
Specifies the transfer characteristics (gamma) of the display.
Video colors will be adjusted to this curve when ICC color man-
agement is not being used. Valid values are:
auto Disable any adaptation, except for atypical transfers.
Specifically, HDR or linear light source material gets au-
tomatically converted to gamma 2.2, while SDR content is
not touched. (default)
bt.1886
ITU-R BT.1886 curve (assuming infinite contrast)
srgb IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB)
linear Linear light output
gamma1.8
Pure power curve (gamma 1.8), also used for Apple RGB
gamma2.0
Pure power curve (gamma 2.0)
gamma2.2
Pure power curve (gamma 2.2)
gamma2.4
Pure power curve (gamma 2.4)
gamma2.6
Pure power curve (gamma 2.6)
gamma2.8
Pure power curve (gamma 2.8), also used for BT.470-BG
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
pq ITU-R BT.2100 PQ (Perceptual quantizer) curve, aka SMPTE
ST2084
hlg ITU-R BT.2100 HLG (Hybrid Log-gamma) curve, aka ARIB
STD-B67
v-log Panasonic V-Log (VARICAM) curve
s-log1 Sony S-Log1 curve
s-log2 Sony S-Log2 curve
NOTE:
When using HDR output formats, mpv will encode to the speci-
fied curve but it will not set any HDMI flags or other sig-
nalling that might be required for the target device to cor-
rectly display the HDR signal. The user should independently
guarantee this before using these signal formats for display.
--target-peak=<auto|nits>
Specifies the measured peak brightness of the output display, in
cd/m^2 (AKA nits). The interpretation of this brightness depends
on the configured --target-trc. In all cases, it imposes a limit
on the signal values that will be sent to the display. If the
source exceeds this brightness level, a tone mapping filter will
be inserted. For HLG, it has the additional effect of parametriz-
ing the inverse OOTF, in order to get colorimetrically consistent
results with the mastering display. For SDR, or when using an ICC
(profile (--icc-profile), setting this to a value above 203 es-
sentially causes the display to be treated as if it were an HDR
display in disguise. (See the note below)
In auto mode (the default), the chosen peak is an appropriate
value based on the TRC in use. For SDR curves, it uses 203. For
HDR curves, it uses 203 * the transfer function's nominal peak.
If available, it will use the target display's peak brightness as
reported by the display.
NOTE:
When using an SDR transfer function, this is normally not
needed, and setting it may lead to very unexpected results.
The one time it is useful is if you want to calibrate a HDR
display using traditional transfer functions and calibration
equipment. In such cases, you can set your HDR display to a
high brightness such as 800 cd/m^2, and then calibrate it to a
standard curve like gamma2.8. Setting this value to 800 would
then instruct mpv to essentially treat it as an HDR display
with the given peak. This may be a good alternative in envi-
ronments where PQ or HLG input to the display is not possible,
and makes it possible to use HDR displays with mpv regardless
of operating system support for HDMI HDR metadata.
In such a configuration, we highly recommend setting
--tone-mapping to mobius or even clip.
--target-contrast=<auto|10-1000000|inf>
Specifies the measured contrast of the output display. --tar-
get-contrast in conjunction with --target-peak value is used to
calculate display black point. Used in black point compensation
during HDR tone-mapping. auto is the default and assumes 1000:1
contrast as a typical SDR display would have or an infinite con-
trast when HDR --target-trc is used. If supported by the API,
display contrast will be used as reported. inf contrast speci-
fies display with perfect black level, in practice OLED. (Only
for --vo=gpu-next)
--target-gamut=<value>
Constrains the gamut of the display. You can use this option to
output e.g. DCIP3-in-BT.2020. Set --target-prim to the primaries
of the containing colorspace (into which values will be encoded),
and --target-gamut to the gamut you want to limit colors to.
Takes the same values as --target-prim. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)
--target-lut=<file>
Specifies a custom LUT file (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to
the colors before display on-screen. This LUT is fed values in
normalized RGB, after encoding into the target colorspace, so af-
ter the application of --target-trc. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)
--tone-mapping=<value>
Specifies the algorithm used for tone-mapping images onto the
target display. This is relevant for both HDR->SDR conversion as
well as gamut reduction (e.g. playing back BT.2020 content on a
standard gamut display). Valid values are:
auto Maps to bt.2390 when using --vo=gpu, and to spline with
--vo=gpu-next. (Default)
clip Hard-clip any out-of-range values. Use this when you care
about perfect color accuracy for in-range values at the
cost of completely distorting out-of-range values. Not
generally recommended.
mobius Generalization of Reinhard to a Möbius transform with lin-
ear section. Smoothly maps out-of-range values while re-
taining contrast and colors for in-range material as much
as possible. Use this when you care about color accuracy
more than detail preservation. This is somewhere in be-
tween clip and reinhard, depending on the value of
--tone-mapping-param.
reinhard
Reinhard tone mapping algorithm. Very simple continuous
curve. Preserves overall image brightness but uses non-
linear contrast, which results in flattening of details
and degradation in color accuracy.
hable Similar to reinhard but preserves both dark and bright de-
tails better (slightly sigmoidal), at the cost of slightly
darkening / desaturating everything. Developed by John
Hable for use in video games. Use this when you care about
detail preservation more than color/brightness accuracy.
This is roughly equivalent to --tone-mapping=reinhard
--tone-mapping-param=0.24. If possible, you should also
enable --hdr-compute-peak for the best results.
bt.2390
Perceptual tone mapping curve (EETF) specified in ITU-R
Report BT.2390.
gamma Fits a logarithmic transfer between the tone curves.
linear Linearly stretches the entire reference gamut to (a linear
multiple of) the display.
spline Perceptually linear single-pivot polynomial.
(--vo=gpu-next only)
bt.2446a
HDR<->SDR mapping specified in ITU-R Report BT.2446,
method A. This is the recommended curve for well-mastered
content. (--vo=gpu-next only)
st2094-40
Dynamic HDR10+ tone-mapping method specified in SMPTE
ST2094-40 Annex B. In the absence of metadata, falls back
to a fixed spline matched to the input/output average
brightness characteristics. (--vo=gpu-next only)
st2094-10
Dynamic tone-mapping method specified in SMPTE ST2094-10
Annex B.2. Conceptually simpler than ST2094-40, and gen-
erally produces worse results.
--tone-mapping-param=<value>
Set tone mapping parameters. By default, this is set to the spe-
cial string default, which maps to an algorithm-specific default
value. Ignored if the tone mapping algorithm is not tunable. This
affects the following tone mapping algorithms:
clip Specifies an extra linear coefficient to multiply into the
signal before clipping. Defaults to 1.0.
mobius Specifies the transition point from linear to mobius
transform. Every value below this point is guaranteed to
be mapped 1:1. The higher the value, the more accurate the
result will be, at the cost of losing bright details. De-
faults to 0.3, which due to the steep initial slope still
preserves in-range colors fairly accurately.
reinhard
Specifies the local contrast coefficient at the display
peak. Defaults to 0.5, which means that in-gamut values
will be about half as bright as when clipping.
bt.2390
Specifies the offset for the knee point. Defaults to 1.0,
which is higher than the value from the original ITU-R
specification (0.5). (--vo=gpu-next only)
gamma Specifies the exponent of the function. Defaults to 1.8.
linear Specifies the scale factor to use while stretching. De-
faults to 1.0.
spline Specifies the knee point (in PQ space). Defaults to 0.30.
st2094-10
Specifies the contrast (slope) at the knee point. Defaults
to 1.0.
--inverse-tone-mapping
If set, allows inverse tone mapping (expanding SDR to HDR). Not
supported by all tone mapping curves. Use with caution.
(--vo=gpu-next only)
--tone-mapping-max-boost=<1.0..10.0>
Upper limit for how much the tone mapping algorithm is allowed to
boost the average brightness by over-exposing the image. The de-
fault value of 1.0 allows no additional brightness boost. A value
of 2.0 would allow over-exposing by a factor of 2, and so on.
Raising this setting can help reveal details that would otherwise
be hidden in dark scenes, but raising it too high will make dark
scenes appear unnaturally bright. (--vo=gpu only)
--tone-mapping-visualize
Display a (PQ-PQ) graph of the active tone-mapping LUT. Intended
only for debugging purposes. The X axis shows PQ input values,
the Y axis shows PQ output values. The tone-mapping curve is
shown in green/yellow. Yellow means the brightness has been
boosted from the source, dark blue regions show where the bright-
ness has been reduced. The extra colored regions and lines indi-
cate various monitor limits, as well a reference diagonal (neu-
tral tone-mapping) and source scene average brightness informa-
tion (if available). (--vo=gpu-next only)
--gamut-mapping-mode
Specifies the algorithm used for reducing the gamut of images for
the target display, after any tone mapping is done.
auto Choose the best mode automatically. (Default)
clip Hard-clip to the gamut (per-channel). Very low quality,
but free.
perceptual
Performs a perceptually balanced gamut mapping using a
soft knee function to roll-off clipped regions, and a hue
shifting function to preserve saturation. (--vo=gpu-next
only)
relative
Performs relative colorimetric clipping, while maintaining
an exponential relationship between brightness and chro-
maticity. (--vo=gpu-next only)
saturation
Performs simple RGB->RGB saturation mapping. The input
R/G/B channels are mapped directly onto the output R/G/B
channels. Will never clip, but will distort all hues
and/or result in a faded look. (--vo=gpu-next only)
absolute
Performs absolute colorimetric clipping. Like relative,
but does not adapt the white point. (--vo=gpu-next only)
desaturate
Performs constant-luminance colorimetric clipping, desat-
uring colors towards white until they're in-range.
darken Uniformly darkens the input slightly to prevent clipping
on blown-out highlights, then clamps colorimetrically to
the input gamut boundary, biased slightly to preserve
chromaticity over luminance. (--vo=gpu-next only)
warn Performs no gamut mapping, but simply highlights
out-of-gamut pixels.
linear Linearly/uniformly desaturates the image in order to bring
the entire image into the target gamut. (--vo=gpu-next
only)
--hdr-compute-peak=<auto|yes|no>
Compute the HDR peak and frame average brightness per-frame in-
stead of relying on tagged metadata. These values are averaged
over local regions as well as over several frames to prevent the
value from jittering around too much. This option basically gives
you dynamic, per-scene tone mapping. Requires compute shaders,
which is a fairly recent OpenGL feature, and will probably also
perform horribly on some drivers, so enable at your own risk.
The special value auto (default) will enable HDR peak computation
automatically if compute shaders and SSBOs are supported.
--allow-delayed-peak-detect
When using --hdr-compute-peak, allow delaying the detected peak
by a frame when beneficial for performance. In particular, this
is required to avoid an unnecessary FBO indirection when no ad-
vanced rendering is required otherwise. Has no effect if there
already is an indirect pass, such as when advanced scaling is en-
abled. Defaults to no. (Only affects --vo=gpu-next, note that
--vo=gpu always delays the peak.)
--hdr-peak-percentile=<0.0..100.0>
Which percentile of the input image brightness histogram to con-
sider as the true peak of the scene. If this is set to 100 (de-
fault), the brightest pixel is measured. Otherwise, the top of
the frequency distribution is progressively cut off. Setting this
too low will cause clipping of very bright details, but can im-
prove the dynamic brightness range of scenes with very bright
isolated highlights. Values other than 100 come with a small per-
formance penalty. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)
--hdr-peak-decay-rate=<0.0..1000.0>
The decay rate used for the HDR peak detection algorithm (de-
fault: 20.0). This is only relevant when --hdr-compute-peak is
enabled. Higher values make the peak decay more slowly, leading
to more stable values at the cost of more "eye adaptation"-like
effects (although this is mitigated somewhat by
--hdr-scene-threshold). A value of 0.0 (the lowest possible) dis-
ables all averaging, meaning each frame's value is used directly
as measured, but doing this is not recommended for "noisy"
sources since it may lead to excessive flicker. (In signal theory
terms, this controls the time constant "tau" of an IIR low pass
filter)
--hdr-scene-threshold-low=<0.0..100.0>, --hdr-scene-thresh-
old-high=<0.0..100.0>
The lower and upper thresholds (in dB) for a brightness differ-
ence to be considered a scene change (default: 1.0 low, 3.0
high). This is only relevant when --hdr-compute-peak is enabled.
Normally, small fluctuations in the frame brightness are compen-
sated for by the peak averaging mechanism, but for large jumps in
the brightness this can result in the frame remaining too bright
or too dark for up to several seconds, depending on the value of
--hdr-peak-decay-rate. To counteract this, when the brightness
between the running average and the current frame exceeds the low
threshold, mpv will make the averaging filter more aggressive, up
to the limit of the high threshold (at which point the filter be-
comes instant).
--hdr-contrast-recovery=<0.0..2.0>, --hdr-contrast-smooth-
ness=<1.0..100.0>
Enables the HDR contrast recovery algorithm, which is to designed
to enhance contrast of HDR video after tone mapping. The strength
(default: 0.0) indicates the degree of contrast recovery, with
0.0 being completely disabled and 1.0 being 100% strength. Values
higher than 1.0 are allowed, but may result in excessive sharpen-
ing. The smoothness (default: 3.5) indicates the degree to which
the HDR source is low-passed in order to obtain contrast informa-
tion - a value of 2.0 corresponds to 2x downscaling. Users on
low DPI displays (<= 100) may want to lower this value, while
users on very high DPI displays ("retina") may want to increase
it. (Only for vo=gpu-next)
--use-embedded-icc-profile
Load the embedded ICC profile contained in media files such as
PNG images. (Default: yes). Note that this option only works
when also using a display ICC profile (--icc-profile or
--icc-profile-auto), and also requires LittleCMS 2 support.
--icc-profile=<file>
Load an ICC profile and use it to transform video RGB to screen
output. Needs LittleCMS 2 support compiled in. This option over-
rides the --target-prim, --target-trc and --icc-profile-auto op-
tions.
--icc-profile-auto
Automatically select the ICC display profile currently specified
by the display settings of the operating system.
NOTE: On Windows, the default profile must be an ICC profile. WCS
profiles are not supported.
Applications using libmpv with the render API need to provide the
ICC profile via MPV_RENDER_PARAM_ICC_PROFILE.
--icc-cache
Store and load 3DLUTs created from the ICC profile on disk in the
cache directory (Default: yes). This can be used to speed up
loading, since LittleCMS 2 can take a while to create a 3D LUT.
Note that these files contain uncompressed LUTs. Their size de-
pends on the --icc-3dlut-size, and can be very big.
On --vo=gpu-next, files that have not been accessed in the last
24 hours may be cleared if the cache limit (1.5 GiB) is exceeded.
On --vo=gpu, this is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused
cache files may stick around indefinitely.
--icc-cache-dir
The directory where icc cache is stored. Cache is stored in the
system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is unset.
--icc-intent=<value>
Specifies the ICC intent used for the color transformation (when
using --icc-profile).
0 perceptual
1 relative colorimetric (default)
2 saturation
3 absolute colorimetric
--icc-3dlut-size=<auto|RxGxB>
Size of the 3D LUT generated from the ICC profile in each dimen-
sion. The default of auto means to pick the size automatically
based on the profile characteristics. Sizes may range from 2 to
512.
NOTE: Setting this option to anything other than auto is strongly
discouraged, except for testing.
--icc-force-contrast=<no|0-1000000|inf>
Override the target device's detected contrast ratio by a spe-
cific value. This is detected automatically from the profile if
possible, but for some profiles it might be missing, causing the
contrast to be assumed as infinite. As a result, video may appear
darker than intended. If this is the case, setting this option
might help. This only affects BT.1886 content. The default of no
means to use the profile values. The special value inf causes the
BT.1886 curve to be treated as a pure power gamma 2.4 function.
--icc-use-luma
Use ICC profile luminance value. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)
--lut=<file>
Specifies a custom LUT (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to the
colors as part of color conversion. The exact interpretation de-
pends on the value of --lut-type. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)
--lut-type=<value>
Controls the interpretation of color values fed to and from the
LUT specified as --lut. Valid values are:
auto Chooses the interpretation of the LUT automatically from
tagged metadata, and otherwise falls back to native. (De-
fault)
native Applied to raw image contents in its native RGB colorspace
(non-linear light), before conversion to the output color
space.
normalized
Applied to the normalized RGB image contents, in linear
light, before conversion to the output color space.
conversion
Fully replaces the conversion from the image color space
to the output color space. If such a LUT is present, it
has the highest priority, and overrides any ICC profiles,
as well as options related to tone mapping and output col-
orimetry (--target-prim, --target-trc etc.).
--blend-subtitles=<yes|video|no>
Blend subtitles directly onto upscaled video frames, before in-
terpolation and/or color management (default: no). Enabling this
causes subtitles to be affected by --icc-profile, --target-prim,
--target-trc, --interpolation, --gamma-factor and --glsl-shaders.
It also increases subtitle performance when using --interpola-
tion.
The downside of enabling this is that it restricts subtitles to
the visible portion of the video, so you can't have subtitles ex-
ist in the black margins below a video (for example).
If video is selected, the behavior is similar to yes, but subs
are drawn at the video's native resolution, and scaled along with
the video.
WARNING:
This changes the way subtitle colors are handled. Normally,
subtitle colors are assumed to be in sRGB and color managed as
such. Enabling this makes them treated as being in the video's
color space instead. This is good if you want things like
softsubbed ASS signs to match the video colors, but may cause
SRT subtitles or similar to look slightly off.
--background=<none|color|tiles>
If the frame has an alpha component, decide what kind of back-
ground, if any, to blend it with. This does nothing if there is
no alpha component.
color Blend the frame against the background color (--back-
ground-color, normally black).
tiles Blend the frame against a 16x16 gray/white tiles back-
ground (default).
none Do not blend the frame and leave the alpha as is.
Background transparency on d3d11 requires --d3d11-flip=no.
Before mpv 0.38.0, this option used to accept a color value spec-
ifying the background color. This is now done by the --back-
ground-color option. Use that instead.
--background-color=<color>
Color used to draw parts of the mpv window not covered by video.
See the --sub-color option for how colors are defined.
--border-background=<none|color|tiles>
Same as --background but only applies to the black bar/border
area of the window. vo=gpu-next only. Defaults to color.
--opengl-rectangle-textures
Force use of rectangle textures (default: no). Normally this
shouldn't have any advantages over normal textures. Note that
hardware decoding overrides this flag. Could be removed any time.
--gpu-tex-pad-x, --gpu-tex-pad-y
Enlarge the video source textures by this many pixels. For debug-
ging only (normally textures are sized exactly, but due to hard-
ware decoding interop we may have to deal with additional
padding, which can be tested with these options). Could be re-
moved any time.
--opengl-early-flush=<yes|no|auto>
Call glFlush() after rendering a frame and before attempting to
display it (default: auto). Can fix stuttering in some cases, in
other cases probably causes it. The auto mode will call glFlush()
only if the renderer is going to wait for a while after render-
ing, instead of flipping GL front and backbuffers immediately
(i.e. it doesn't call it in display-sync mode).
On macOS this is always deactivated because it only causes per-
formance problems and other regressions.
--gpu-dumb-mode=<yes|no|auto>
This mode is extremely restricted, and will disable most extended
features. That includes high quality scalers and custom shaders!
It is intended for hardware that does not support FBOs (including
GLES, which supports it insufficiently), or to get some more per-
formance out of bad or old hardware.
This mode is forced automatically if needed, and this option is
mostly useful for debugging. The default of auto will enable it
automatically if nothing uses features which require FBOs.
This option might be silently removed in the future.
--gpu-shader-cache
Store and load compiled GLSL shaders in the cache directory (De-
fault: yes). Normally, shader compilation is very fast, so this
is not usually needed. It mostly matters for anything involving
GLSL to SPIR-V conversion, that is: D3D11, ANGLE or Vulkan, as
well as on some other proprietary drivers. Enabling this can im-
prove startup performance on these platforms.
On --vo=gpu-next, files that have not been accessed in the last
24 hours may be cleared if the cache limit (128 MiB) is exceeded.
On --vo=gpu, this is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused
cache files may stick around indefinitely.
--gpu-shader-cache-dir
The directory where gpu shader cache is stored. Cache is stored
in the system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is
unset.
--libplacebo-opts=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Passes extra raw option to the libplacebo rendering backend (used
by --vo=gpu-next). May override the effects of any other options
set using the normal options system. Requires libplacebo v6.309
or higher. Included for debugging purposes only. For more infor-
mation, see:
<https://libplacebo.org/options/>
Video Sync
--mc=<seconds/frame>
Maximum A-V sync correction per frame (in seconds)
--autosync=<factor>
Gradually adjusts the A/V sync based on audio delay measurements.
Specifying --autosync=0, the default, will cause frame timing to
be based entirely on audio delay measurements. Specifying --auto-
sync=1 will do the same, but will subtly change the A/V correc-
tion algorithm. An uneven video framerate in a video which plays
fine with --audio=no can often be helped by setting this to an
integer value greater than 1. The higher the value, the closer
the timing will be to --audio=no. Try --autosync=30 to smooth out
problems with sound drivers which do not implement a perfect au-
dio delay measurement. With this value, if large A/V sync offsets
occur, they will only take about 1 or 2 seconds to settle out.
This delay in reaction time to sudden A/V offsets should be the
only side effect of turning this option on, for all sound dri-
vers.
--video-timing-offset=<seconds>
Control how long before video display target time the frame
should be rendered (default: 0.050). If a video frame should be
displayed at a certain time, the VO will start rendering the
frame earlier, and then will perform a blocking wait until the
display time, and only then "swap" the frame to display. The ren-
dering cannot start before the previous frame is displayed, so
this value is implicitly limited by the video framerate. With
normal video frame rates, the default value will ensure that ren-
dering is always immediately started after the previous frame was
displayed. On the other hand, setting a too high value can reduce
responsiveness with low FPS value.
This option is interesting for client API users using the render
API because you can stop it from limiting your FPS (see mpv_ren-
der_context_render() documentation).
This applies only to audio timing modes (e.g. --video-sync=au-
dio). In other modes (--video-sync=display-...), video timing re-
lies on vsync blocking, and this option is not used.
--video-sync=<audio|...>
How the player synchronizes audio and video.
If you use this option, you usually want to set it to display-re-
sample to enable a timing mode that tries to not skip or repeat
frames when for example playing 24fps video on a 24Hz screen.
The modes starting with display- try to output video frames com-
pletely synchronously to the display, using the detected display
vertical refresh rate as a hint how fast frames will be displayed
on average. These modes change video speed slightly to match the
display. See --video-sync-... options for fine tuning. The ro-
bustness of this mode is further reduced by making a some ideal-
ized assumptions, which may not always apply in reality. Behav-
ior can depend on the VO and the system's video and audio dri-
vers. Media files must use constant framerate. Section-wise VFR
might work as well with some container formats (but not e.g.
mkv).
Under some circumstances, the player automatically reverts to au-
dio mode for some time or permanently. This can happen on very
low framerate video, or if the framerate cannot be detected.
Also in display-sync modes it can happen that interruptions to
video playback (such as toggling fullscreen mode, or simply re-
sizing the window) will skip the video frames that should have
been displayed, while audio mode will display them after the ren-
derer has resumed (typically resulting in a short A/V desync and
the video "catching up").
Before mpv 0.30.0, there was a fallback to audio mode on severe
A/V desync. This was changed for the sake of not sporadically
stopping. Now, display-desync does what it promises and may de-
sync with audio by an arbitrary amount, until it is manually
fixed with a seek.
These modes also require a vsync blocked presentation mode. For
OpenGL, this translates to --opengl-swapinterval=1. For Vulkan,
it translates to --vulkan-swap-mode=fifo (or fifo-relaxed).
The modes with desync in their names do not attempt to keep au-
dio/video in sync. They will slowly (or quickly) desync, until
e.g. the next seek happens. These modes are meant for testing,
not serious use.
audio Time video frames to audio. This is the most robust mode,
because the player doesn't have to assume anything about
how the display behaves. The disadvantage is that it can
lead to occasional frame drops or repeats. If audio is
disabled, this uses the system clock. This is the default
mode.
display-resample
Resample audio to match the video. This mode will also try
to adjust audio speed to compensate for other drift.
(This means it will play the audio at a different speed
every once in a while to reduce the A/V difference.)
display-resample-vdrop
Resample audio to match the video. Drop video frames to
compensate for drift.
display-resample-desync
Like the previous mode, but no A/V compensation.
display-tempo
Same as display-resample, but apply audio speed changes to
audio filters instead of resampling to avoid the change in
pitch. Beware that some audio filters don't do well with a
speed close to 1. It is recommend to use a conditional
profile to automatically switch to display-resample when
speed gets too close to 1 for your filter setup. Use
(speed * video_speed_correction) to get the actual play-
back speed in the condition. See Conditional auto pro-
files for details.
display-vdrop
Drop or repeat video frames to compensate desyncing video.
(Although it should have the same effects as audio, the
implementation is very different.)
display-adrop
Drop or repeat audio data to compensate desyncing video.
This mode will cause severe audio artifacts if the real
monitor refresh rate is too different from the reported or
forced rate. Since mpv 0.33.0, this acts on entire audio
frames, instead of single samples.
display-desync
Sync video to display, and let audio play on its own.
desync Sync video according to system clock, and let audio play
on its own.
--video-sync-max-factor=<value>
Maximum multiple for which to try to fit the video's FPS to the
display's FPS (default: 5).
For example, if this is set to 1, the video FPS is forced to an
integer multiple of the display FPS, as long as the speed change
does not exceed the value set by --video-sync-max-video-change.
See --interpolation-threshold for how this option affects inter-
polation.
--video-sync-max-video-change=<value>
Maximum speed difference in percent that is applied to video with
--video-sync=display-... (default: 1). Display sync mode will be
disabled if the monitor and video refresh way do not match within
the given range. It tries multiples as well: playing 30 fps video
on a 60 Hz screen will duplicate every second frame. Playing 24
fps video on a 60 Hz screen will play video in a 2-3-2-3-... pat-
tern.
The default settings are not loose enough to speed up 23.976 fps
video to 25 fps. We consider the pitch change too extreme to al-
low this behavior by default. Set this option to a value of 5 to
enable it.
Note that --video-sync=display-tempo avoids this pitch change.
Also note that in the --video-sync=display-resample or
--video-sync=display-tempo mode, audio speed will additionally be
changed by a small amount if necessary for A/V sync. See
--video-sync-max-audio-change.
--video-sync-max-audio-change=<value>
Maximum additional speed difference in percent that is applied to
audio with --video-sync=display-... (default: 0.125). Normally,
the player plays the audio at the speed of the video. But if the
difference between audio and video position is too high, e.g. due
to drift or other timing errors, it will attempt to speed up or
slow down audio by this additional factor. Too low values could
lead to video frame dropping or repeating if the A/V desync can-
not be compensated, too high values could lead to chaotic frame
dropping due to the audio "overshooting" and skipping multiple
video frames before the sync logic can react.
Miscellaneous
--display-tags=tag1,tags2,...
Set the list of tags that should be displayed on the terminal and
stats. Tags that are in the list, but are not present in the
played file, will not be shown. If a value ends with *, all tags
are matched by prefix (though there is no general globbing). Just
passing * essentially filtering.
The default includes a common list of tags, call mpv with
--list-options to see it.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
--mf-fps=<value>
Framerate used when decoding from multiple PNG or JPEG files with
mf:// (default: 1).
--mf-type=<value>
Input file type for mf:// (available: jpeg, png, tga, sgi). By
default, this is guessed from the file extension.
--stream-dump=<destination-filename>
Instead of playing a file, read its byte stream and write it to
the given destination file. The destination is overwritten. Can
be useful to test network-related behavior.
--stream-lavf-o=opt1=value1,opt2=value2,...
Set AVOptions on streams opened with libavformat. Unknown or mis-
spelled options are silently ignored. (They are mentioned in the
terminal output in verbose mode, i.e. --v. In general we can't
print errors, because other options such as e.g. user agent are
not available with all protocols, and printing errors for unknown
options would end up being too noisy.)
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--backdrop-type=<auto|none|mica|acrylic|mica-alt>
(Windows only) Controls the backdrop/border style.
auto Default Windows behavior
none The backdrop will be black or white depending on the sys-
tem's theme settings.
mica Enables the Mica style, which is the default on Windows
11.
acrylic
Enables the Acrylic style (frosted glass look).
mica-alt
Same as Mica, except reversed.
--window-affinity=<default|excludefromcmcapture|monitor>
(Windows only) Controls the window affinity behavior of mpv.
default
Default Windows behavior
excludefromcapture
mpv's window will be completely excluded from capture by
external applications or screen recording software.
monitor
Blacks out the mpv window
--vo-mmcss-profile=<name>
(Windows only) Set the MMCSS profile for the video renderer
thread (default: Playback).
--priority=<prio>
(Windows only) Set process priority for mpv according to the pre-
defined priorities available under Windows.
Possible values of <prio>: idle|belownormal|normal|abovenor-
mal|high|realtime
WARNING:
Using realtime priority can cause system lockup.
--media-controls=<yes|no>
(Windows only) Enable integration of media control interface Sys-
temMediaTransportControls. Default: yes (except for libmpv)
--force-media-title=<string>
Force the contents of the media-title property to this value.
Useful for scripts which want to set a title, without overriding
the user's setting in --title.
--external-files=<file-list>
Load a file and add all of its tracks. This is useful to play
different files together (for example audio from one file, video
from another), or for advanced --lavfi-complex used (like playing
two video files at the same time).
Unlike --sub-files and --audio-files, this includes all tracks,
and does not cause default stream selection over the "proper"
file. This makes it slightly less intrusive. (In mpv 0.28.0 and
before, this was not quite strictly enforced.)
This is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--external-file=<file>
CLI/config file only alias for --external-files-append. Each use
of this option will add a new external file.
--cover-art-files=<file-list>
Use an external file as cover art while playing audio. This makes
it appear on the track list and subject to automatic track selec-
tion. Options like --audio-display control whether such tracks
are supposed to be selected.
(The difference to loading a file with --external-files is that
video tracks will be marked as being pictures, which affects the
auto-selection method. If the passed file is a video, only the
first frame will be decoded and displayed. Enabling the cover art
track during playback may show a random frame if the source file
is a video. Normally you're not supposed to pass videos to this
option, so this paragraph describes the behavior coincidentally
resulting from implementation details.)
This is a path list option. See List Options for details.
--cover-art-file=<file>
CLI/config file only alias for --cover-art-files-append. Each use
of this option will add a new external file.
--cover-art-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>
Whether to load _external_ cover art automatically. Similar to
--sub-auto and --audio-file-auto. If a video already has tracks
(which are not marked as cover art), external cover art will not
be loaded.
no Don't automatically load cover art.
exact Load the media filename with an image file extension (de-
fault).
fuzzy Load all cover art containing the media filename.
all Load all images in the current directory.
See --cover-art-files for details about what constitutes cover
art.
See --audio-display how to control display of cover art (this can
be used to disable cover art that is part of the file).
--image-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Image file extensions to try to match when using
--cover-art-auto, --autocreate-playlist or --directory-fil-
ter-types.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details. Use
--help=image-exts to see default extensions.
--cover-art-whitelist=filename1,filename2,...
Filenames to load as cover art, sorted by descending priority.
They are combined with the extensions in --image-exts. This has
no effect if cover-art-auto is no.
Default: AlbumArt,Album,cover,front,AlbumArtS-
mall,Folder,.folder,thumb
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
--video-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Video file extensions to try to match when using --autocre-
ate-playlist or --directory-filter-types.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details. Use
--help=video-exts to see default extensions.
--archive-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Archive file extensions to try to match when using --autocre-
ate-playlist or --directory-filter-types.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details. Use
--help=archive-exts to see the default extensions.
--playlist-exts=ext1,ext2,...
Playlist file extensions to try to match when using --autocre-
ate-playlist or --directory-filter-types.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details. Use
--help=playlist-exts to see the default extensions.
--autoload-files=<yes|no>
Automatically load/select external files (default: yes).
If set to no, then do not automatically load external files as
specified by --sub-auto, --audio-file-auto and --cover-art-auto.
If external files are forcibly added (like with --sub-files),
they will not be auto-selected.
This does not affect playlist expansion, redirection, or other
loading of referenced files like with ordered chapters.
--stream-record=<file>
Write received/read data from the demuxer to the given output
file. The output file will always be overwritten without asking.
The output format is determined by the extension of the output
file.
Switching streams or seeking during recording might result in
recording being stopped and/or broken files. Use with care.
Seeking outside of the demuxer cache will result in "skips" in
the output file, but seeking within the demuxer cache should not
affect recording. One exception is when you seek back far enough
to exceed the forward buffering size, in which case the cache
stops actively reading. This will return in dropped data if it's
a live stream.
If this is set at runtime, the old file is closed, and the new
file is opened. Note that this will write only data that is ap-
pended at the end of the cache, and the already cached data can-
not be written. You can try the dump-cache command as an alterna-
tive.
External files (--audio-file etc.) are ignored by this, it works
on the "main" file only. Using this with files using ordered
chapters or EDL files will also not work correctly in general.
There are some glitches with this because it uses FFmpeg's libav-
format for writing the output file. For example, it's typical
that it will only work if the output format is the same as the
input format. This is the case even if it works with the ffmpeg
tool. One reason for this is that ffmpeg and its libraries con-
tain certain hacks and workarounds for these issues, that are un-
available to outside users.
--lavfi-complex=<string>
Set a "complex" libavfilter filter, which means a single filter
graph can take input from multiple source audio and video tracks.
The graph can result in a single audio or video output (or both).
Currently, the filter graph labels are used to select the partic-
ipating input tracks and audio/video output. The following rules
apply:
• A label of the form aidN selects audio track N as input (e.g.
aid1).
• A label of the form vidN selects video track N as input.
• A label named ao will be connected to the audio output.
• A label named vo will be connected to the video output.
Each label can be used only once. If you want to use e.g. an au-
dio stream for multiple filters, you need to use the asplit fil-
ter. Multiple video or audio outputs are not possible, but you
can use filters to merge them into one.
It's not possible to change the tracks connected to the filter at
runtime, unless you explicitly change the lavfi-complex property
and set new track assignments. When the graph is changed, the
track selection is changed according to the used labels as well.
Other tracks, as long as they're not connected to the filter, and
the corresponding output is not connected to the filter, can
still be freely changed with the normal methods.
Note that the normal filter chains (--af, --vf) are applied be-
tween the complex graphs (e.g. ao label) and the actual output.
Examples
• --lavfi-complex='[aid1] [aid2] amix [ao]' Play audio track 1
and 2 at the same time.
• --lavfi-complex='[vid1] [vid2] vstack [vo]' Stack video
track 1 and 2 and play them at the same time. Note that both
tracks need to have the same width, or filter initialization
will fail (you can add scale filters before the vstack fil-
ter to fix the size). To load a video track from another
file, you can use --external-file=other.mkv.
• --lavfi-complex='[vid1] [vid2] [vid3] hstack=inputs=3 [vo]'
Use the inputs option to stack more than 2 tracks.
• --lavfi-complex='[aid1] asplit [t1] [ao] ; [t1] showvolume
[t2] ; [vid1] [t2] overlay [vo]' Play audio track 1, and
overlay the measured volume for each speaker over video
track 1.
See the FFmpeg libavfilter documentation for details on the
available filters.
--metadata-codepage=<codepage>
Codepage for various input metadata (default: auto). This affects
how file tags, chapter titles, etc. are interpreted. In most
cases, this merely evaluates to UTF-8 as non-UTF-8 codepages are
obscure.
See --sub-codepage option on how codepages are specified and fur-
ther details regarding autodetection and codepage conversion.
(The underlying code is the same.)
Conversion is not applied to metadata that is updated at runtime.
--clipboard-backends=<backend1,backend2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of the clipboard backends to be used.
You can also pass help to get a complete list of compiled in
backends.
If the list is not empty, it enables native clipboard support for
the specified backends. This allows reading and writing to the
clipboard property to get and set clipboard contents.
Native clipboard support is enabled by default. To disable this,
remove all backends in this list with --clipboard-backends-clr.
Note that the default clipboard backends are subject to change,
and must not be relied upon.
The following clipboard backends are implemented:
win32 Windows backend.
mac macOS backend.
wayland
Wayland backend. This backend is only available if the
compositor supports the ext-data-control-v1 protocol.
vo VO backend. Requires an active VO window, and support dif-
fers across platforms. Currently, this is used as a fall-
back for Wayland compositors without support for the
ext-data-control-v1 protocol, or if the wayland backend is
disabled.
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for de-
tails.
--clipboard-monitor=<yes|no>
(Windows, Wayland and macOS only)
Enable clipboard monitoring so that the clipboard property can be
observed for content changes (default: no). This only affects
clipboard implementations which use polling to monitor clipboard
updates. Other platforms currently ignore this option and al-
ways/never notify changes.
On Wayland, this option only has effect on the wayland backend,
and not for the vo backend. See current-clipboard-backend prop-
erty for more details.
AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS
Audio output drivers are interfaces to different audio output facili-
ties. The syntax is:
--ao=<driver1,driver2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of audio output drivers to be used.
If the list has a trailing ',', mpv will fall back on drivers not con-
tained in the list.
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for details.
NOTE:
See --ao=help for a list of compiled-in audio output drivers sorted
by autoprobe order.
Note that the default audio output driver is subject to change, and
must not be relied upon. If a certain AO needs to be used, it must be
explicitly specified.
Available audio output drivers are:
alsa ALSA audio output driver.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--alsa-resample=yes
Enable ALSA resampling plugin. (This is disabled by de-
fault, because some drivers report incorrect audio delay
in some cases.)
--alsa-mixer-device=<device>
Set the mixer device used with ao-volume (default: de-
fault).
--alsa-mixer-name=<name>
Set the name of the mixer element (default: Master). This
is for example PCM or Master.
--alsa-mixer-index=<number>
Set the index of the mixer channel (default: 0). Consider
the output of "amixer scontrols", then the index is the
number that follows the name of the element.
--alsa-non-interleaved
Allow output of non-interleaved formats (if the audio de-
coder uses this format). Currently disabled by default,
because some popular ALSA plugins are utterly broken with
non-interleaved formats.
--alsa-ignore-chmap
Don't read or set the channel map of the ALSA device -
only request the required number of channels, and then
pass the audio as-is to it. This option most likely should
not be used. It can be useful for debugging, or for static
setups with a specially engineered ALSA configuration (in
this case you should always force the same layout with
--audio-channels, or it will work only for files which use
the layout implicit to your ALSA device).
--alsa-buffer-time=<microseconds>
Set the requested buffer time in microseconds. A value of
0 skips requesting anything from the ALSA API. This and
the --alsa-periods option uses the ALSA near functions to
set the requested parameters. If doing so results in an
empty configuration set, setting these parameters is
skipped.
Both options control the buffer size. A low buffer size
can lead to higher CPU usage and audio dropouts, while a
high buffer size can lead to higher latency in volume
changes and other filtering.
--alsa-periods=<number>
Number of periods requested from the ALSA API. See
--alsa-buffer-time for further remarks.
WARNING:
To get multichannel/surround audio, use --audio-channels=auto.
The default for this option is auto-safe, which makes this au-
dio output explicitly reject multichannel output, as there is
no way to detect whether a certain channel layout is actually
supported.
You can also try using the upmix plugin
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/ALSA-Surround-Sound-
and-Upmixing> . This setup enables multichannel audio on the
default device with automatic upmixing with shared access, so
playing stereo and multichannel audio at the same time will
work as expected.
oss OSS audio output driver
jack JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit) audio output driver.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--jack-port=<name>
Connects to the ports with the given name (default: physi-
cal ports).
--jack-name=<client>
Client name that is passed to JACK (default: mpv). Useful
if you want to have certain connections established auto-
matically.
--jack-autostart=<yes|no>
Automatically start jackd if necessary (default: dis-
abled). Note that this tends to be unreliable and will
flood stdout with server messages.
--jack-connect=<yes|no>
Automatically create connections to output ports (default:
enabled). When enabled, the maximum number of output
channels will be limited to the number of available output
ports.
--jack-std-channel-layout=<waveext|any>
Select the standard channel layout (default: waveext).
JACK itself has no notion of channel layouts (i.e. assign-
ing which speaker a given channel is supposed to map to) -
it just takes whatever the application outputs, and
reroutes it to whatever the user defines. This means the
user and the application are in charge of dealing with the
channel layout. waveext uses WAVE_FORMAT_EXTENSIBLE order,
which, even though it was defined by Microsoft, is the
standard on many systems. The value any makes JACK accept
whatever comes from the audio filter chain, regardless of
channel layout and without reordering. This mode is proba-
bly not very useful, other than for debugging or when used
with fixed setups.
coreaudio (macOS only)
Native macOS audio output driver using AudioUnits and the CoreAu-
dio sound server.
Automatically redirects to coreaudio_exclusive when playing com-
pressed formats.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--coreaudio-change-physical-format=<yes|no>
Change the physical format to one similar to the requested
audio format (default: no). This has the advantage that
multichannel audio output will actually work. The disad-
vantage is that it will change the system-wide audio set-
tings. This is equivalent to changing the Format setting
in the Audio Devices dialog in the Audio MIDI Setup util-
ity. Note that this does not affect the selected speaker
setup.
--coreaudio-spdif-hack=<yes|no>
Try to pass through AC3/DTS data as PCM. This is useful
for drivers which do not report AC3 support. It converts
the AC3 data to float, and assumes the driver will do the
inverse conversion, which means a typical A/V receiver
will pick it up as compressed IEC framed AC3 stream, ig-
noring that it's marked as PCM. This disables normal AC3
passthrough (even if the device reports it as supported).
Use with extreme care.
coreaudio_exclusive (macOS only)
Native macOS audio output driver using direct device access and
exclusive mode (bypasses the sound server).
avfoundation (macOS only)
Native macOS audio output driver using AVSampleBufferAudioRen-
derer in AVFoundation, which supports spatial audio <https://sup-
port.apple.com/en-us/HT211775> .
WARNING:
Turning on spatial audio may hang the playback if mpv is not
started out of the bundle, though playback with spatial audio
off always works.
audiounit (iOS only)
Native iOS audio output driver using AudioUnits and AudioToolbox.
openal OpenAL audio output driver.
--openal-num-buffers=<2-128>
Specify the number of audio buffers to use. Lower values
are better for lower CPU usage. Default: 4.
--openal-num-samples=<256-32768>
Specify the number of complete samples to use for each
buffer. Higher values are better for lower CPU usage. De-
fault: 8192.
--openal-direct-channels=<yes|no>
Enable OpenAL Soft's direct channel extension when avail-
able to avoid tinting the sound with ambisonics or HRTF.
Default: yes.
pulse PulseAudio audio output driver
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--pulse-host=<host>
Specify the host to use. An empty <host> string uses a lo-
cal connection, "localhost" uses network transfer (most
likely not what you want).
--pulse-buffer=<1-2000|native>
Set the audio buffer size in milliseconds. A higher value
buffers more data, and has a lower probability of buffer
underruns. A smaller value makes the audio stream react
faster, e.g. to playback speed changes. "native" lets the
sound server determine buffers.
--pulse-latency-hacks=<yes|no>
Enable hacks to workaround PulseAudio timing bugs (de-
fault: yes). If enabled, mpv will do elaborate latency
calculations on its own. If disabled, it will use PulseAu-
dio automatically updated timing information. Disabling
this might help with e.g. networked audio or some plugins,
while enabling it might help in some unknown situations
(it is currently enabled due to known bugs with PulseAudio
16.0).
--pulse-allow-suspended=<yes|no>
Allow mpv to use PulseAudio even if the sink is suspended
(default: no). Can be useful if PulseAudio is running as
a bridge to jack and mpv has its sink-input set to the one
jack is using.
pipewire
PipeWire audio output driver
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--pipewire-buffer=<1-2000|native>
Set the audio buffer size in milliseconds. A higher value
buffers more data, and has a lower probability of buffer
underruns. A smaller value makes the audio stream react
faster, e.g. to playback speed changes. "native" lets the
sound server determine buffers.
--pipewire-remote=<remote>
Specify the PipeWire remote daemon name to connect to via
local UNIX sockets. An empty <remote> string uses the de-
fault remote named pipewire-0.
--pipewire-volume-mode=<channel|global>
Specify if the ao-volume property should apply to the
channel volumes or the global volume. By default the
channel volumes are used.
sdl SDL 2.0+ audio output driver. Should work on any platform sup-
ported by SDL 2.0, but may require the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environ-
ment variable to be set appropriately for your system.
NOTE:
This driver is for compatibility with extremely foreign envi-
ronments, such as systems where none of the other drivers are
available.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--sdl-buflen=<length>
Sets the audio buffer length in seconds. Is used only as a
hint by the sound system. Playing a file with -v will show
the requested and obtained exact buffer size. A value of 0
selects the sound system default.
null Produces no audio output but maintains video playback speed. You
can use --ao=null --ao-null-untimed for benchmarking.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--ao-null-untimed
Do not simulate timing of a perfect audio device. This
means audio decoding will go as fast as possible, instead
of timing it to the system clock.
--ao-null-buffer
Simulated buffer length in seconds.
--ao-null-outburst
Simulated chunk size in samples.
--ao-null-speed
Simulated audio playback speed as a multiplier. Usually, a
real audio device will not go exactly as fast as the sys-
tem clock. It will deviate just a little, and this option
helps to simulate this.
--ao-null-latency
Simulated device latency. This is additional to EOF.
--ao-null-broken-eof
Simulate broken audio drivers, which always add the fixed
device latency to the reported audio playback position.
--ao-null-broken-delay
Simulate broken audio drivers, which don't report latency
correctly.
--ao-null-channel-layouts
If not empty, this is a , separated list of channel lay-
outs the AO allows. This can be used to test channel lay-
out selection.
--ao-null-format
Force the audio output format the AO will accept. If unset
accepts any.
pcm Raw PCM/WAVE file writer audio output
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--ao-pcm-waveheader=<yes|no>
Include or do not include the WAVE header (default: in-
cluded). When not included, raw PCM will be generated.
--ao-pcm-file=<filename>
Write the sound to <filename> instead of the default au-
diodump.wav. If no-waveheader is specified, the default is
audiodump.pcm.
--ao-pcm-append=<yes|no>
Append to the file, instead of overwriting it. Always use
this with the no-waveheader option - with waveheader it's
broken, because it will write a WAVE header every time the
file is opened.
sndio Audio output to the OpenBSD sndio sound system
(Note: only supports mono, stereo, 4.0, 5.1 and 7.1 channel lay-
outs.)
wasapi Audio output to the Windows Audio Session API.
The following global options are supported by this audio output:
--wasapi-exclusive-buffer=<default|min|1-2000000>
Set buffer duration in exclusive mode (i.e., with --au-
dio-exclusive=yes). default and min use the default and
minimum device period reported by WASAPI, respectively.
You can also directly specify the buffer duration in mi-
croseconds, in which case a duration shorter than the min-
imum device period will be rounded up to the minimum pe-
riod.
The default buffer duration should provide robust playback
in most cases, but reportedly on some devices there are
glitches following stream resets under the default set-
ting. In such cases, specifying a shorter duration might
help.
VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS
Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facili-
ties. The syntax is:
--vo=<driver1,driver2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.
If the list has a trailing ,, mpv will fall back on drivers not con-
tained in the list.
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for details.
NOTE:
See --vo=help for a list of compiled-in video output drivers.
The recommended output driver is --vo=gpu, which is the default. All
other drivers are for compatibility or special purposes. If the de-
fault does not work, it will fallback to other drivers (in the same
order as listed by --vo=help).
Note that the default video output driver is subject to change, and
must not be relied upon. If a certain VO needs to be used (e.g. for
libmpv rendering API), it must be explicitly specified.
Available video output drivers are:
gpu General purpose, customizable, GPU-accelerated video output dri-
ver. It supports extended scaling methods, dithering, color man-
agement, custom shaders, HDR, and more.
See GPU renderer options for options specific to this VO.
By default, mpv utilizes settings that balance quality and per-
formance. Additionally, two predefined profiles are available:
fast for maximum performance and high-quality for superior ren-
dering quality. You can apply a specific profile using the --pro-
file=<name> option and inspect its contents using --show-pro-
file=<name>.
This VO abstracts over several possible graphics APIs and window-
ing contexts, which can be influenced using the --gpu-api and
--gpu-context options.
Hardware decoding over OpenGL-interop is supported to some de-
gree. Note that in this mode, some corner case might not be
gracefully handled, and color space conversion and chroma upsam-
pling is generally in the hand of the hardware decoder APIs.
gpu makes use of FBOs by default. Sometimes you can achieve bet-
ter quality or performance by changing the --fbo-format option to
rgb16f, rgb32f or rgb. Known problems include Mesa/Intel not ac-
cepting rgb16, Mesa sometimes not being compiled with float tex-
ture support, and some macOS setups being very slow with rgb16
but fast with rgb32f. If you have problems, you can also try en-
abling the --gpu-dumb-mode=yes option.
gpu-next
Experimental video renderer based on libplacebo. This supports
almost the same set of features as --vo=gpu. See GPU renderer op-
tions for a list.
Should generally be faster and higher quality, but some features
may still be missing or misbehave. Expect (and report!) bugs. See
here for a list of known differences and bugs:
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/wiki/GPU-Next-vs-GPU>
xv (X11 only)
Uses the XVideo extension to enable hardware-accelerated display.
This is the most compatible VO on X, but may be low-quality, and
has issues with OSD and subtitle display.
NOTE:
This driver is for compatibility with old systems.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--xv-adaptor=<number>
Select a specific XVideo adapter (check xvinfo results).
--xv-port=<number>
Select a specific XVideo port.
--xv-ck=<cur|use|set>
Select the source from which the color key is taken (de-
fault: cur).
cur The default takes the color key currently set in
Xv.
use Use but do not set the color key from mpv (use the
--colorkey option to change it).
set Same as use but also sets the supplied color key.
--xv-ck-method=<none|man|bg|auto>
Sets the color key drawing method (default: man).
none Disables color-keying.
man Draw the color key manually (reduces flicker in
some cases).
bg Set the color key as window background.
auto Let Xv draw the color key.
--xv-colorkey=<number>
Changes the color key to an RGB value of your choice.
0x000000 is black and 0xffffff is white.
--xv-buffers=<number>
Number of image buffers to use for the internal ringbuffer
(default: 2). Increasing this will use more memory, but
might help with the X server not responding quickly enough
if video FPS is close to or higher than the display re-
fresh rate.
x11 (X11 only)
Shared memory video output driver without hardware acceleration
that works whenever X11 is present.
Since mpv 0.30.0, you may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get
decent performance.
NOTE:
This is a fallback only, and should not be normally used.
vdpau (X11 only)
Uses the VDPAU interface to display and optionally also decode
video. Hardware decoding is used with --hwdec=vdpau. Note that
there is absolutely no reason to use this, other than compatibil-
ity. We strongly recommend that you use --vo=gpu with
--hwdec=nvdec instead.
NOTE:
Earlier versions of mpv (and MPlayer, mplayer2) provided
sub-options to tune vdpau post-processing, like deint,
sharpen, denoise, chroma-deint, pullup, hqscaling. These
sub-options are deprecated, and you should use the vdpaupp
video filter instead.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--vo-vdpau-sharpen=<-1-1>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
For positive values, apply a sharpening algorithm to the
video, for negative values a blurring algorithm (default:
0).
--vo-vdpau-denoise=<0-1>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Apply a noise reduction algorithm to the video (default:
0; no noise reduction).
--vo-vdpau-chroma-deint
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Makes temporal deinterlacers operate both on luma and
chroma (default). Use no-chroma-deint to solely use luma
and speed up advanced deinterlacing. Useful with slow
video memory.
--vo-vdpau-pullup
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Try to apply inverse telecine, needs motion adaptive tem-
poral deinterlacing.
--vo-vdpau-hqscaling=<0-9>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
0 Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9 Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable
hardware).
--vo-vdpau-fps=<number>
Override autodetected display refresh rate value (the
value is needed for framedrop to allow video playback
rates higher than display refresh rate, and for
vsync-aware frame timing adjustments). Default 0 means use
autodetected value. A positive value is interpreted as a
refresh rate in Hz and overrides the autodetected value. A
negative value disables all timing adjustment and frame-
drop logic.
--vo-vdpau-composite-detect
NVIDIA's current VDPAU implementation behaves somewhat
differently under a compositing window manager and does
not give accurate frame timing information. With this op-
tion enabled, the player tries to detect whether a com-
positing window manager is active. If one is detected, the
player disables timing adjustments as if the user had
specified fps=-1 (as they would be based on incorrect in-
put). This means timing is somewhat less accurate than
without compositing, but with the composited mode behavior
of the NVIDIA driver, there is no hard playback speed
limit even without the disabled logic. Enabled by default,
use --vo-vdpau-composite-detect=no to disable.
--vo-vdpau-queuetime-windowed=<number> and queuetime-fs=<number>
Use VDPAU's presentation queue functionality to queue fu-
ture video frame changes at most this many milliseconds in
advance (default: 50). See below for additional informa-
tion.
--vo-vdpau-output-surfaces=<2-15>
Allocate this many output surfaces to display video frames
(default: 3). See below for additional information.
--vo-vdpau-colorkey=<#RRGGBB|#AARRGGBB>
Set the VDPAU presentation queue background color, which
in practice is the colorkey used if VDPAU operates in
overlay mode (default: #020507, some shade of black). If
the alpha component of this value is 0, the default VDPAU
colorkey will be used instead (which is usually green).
--vo-vdpau-force-yuv
Never accept RGBA input. This means mpv will insert a fil-
ter to convert to a YUV format before the VO. Sometimes
useful to force availability of certain YUV-only features,
like video equalizer or deinterlacing.
Using the VDPAU frame queuing functionality controlled by the
queuetime options makes mpv's frame flip timing less sensitive to
system CPU load and allows mpv to start decoding the next
frame(s) slightly earlier, which can reduce jitter caused by in-
dividual slow-to-decode frames. However, the NVIDIA graphics dri-
vers can make other window behavior such as window moves choppy
if VDPAU is using the blit queue (mainly happens if you have the
composite extension enabled) and this feature is active. If this
happens on your system and it bothers you then you can set the
queuetime value to 0 to disable this feature. The settings to use
in windowed and fullscreen mode are separate because there should
be no reason to disable this for fullscreen mode (as the driver
issue should not affect the video itself).
You can queue more frames ahead by increasing the queuetime val-
ues and the output_surfaces count (to ensure enough surfaces to
buffer video for a certain time ahead you need at least as many
surfaces as the video has frames during that time, plus two).
This could help make video smoother in some cases. The main down-
sides are increased video RAM requirements for the surfaces and
laggier display response to user commands (display changes only
become visible some time after they're queued). The graphics dri-
ver implementation may also have limits on the length of maximum
queuing time or number of queued surfaces that work well or at
all.
direct3d (Windows only)
Video output driver that uses the Direct3D interface.
NOTE:
This driver is for compatibility with systems that don't pro-
vide proper OpenGL drivers, and where ANGLE does not perform
well.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--vo-direct3d-disable-texture-align
Normally texture sizes are always aligned to 16. With this
option enabled, the video texture will always have exactly
the same size as the video itself.
Debug options. These might be incorrect, might be removed in the
future, might crash, might cause slow downs, etc. Contact the de-
velopers if you actually need any of these for performance or
proper operation.
--vo-direct3d-force-power-of-2
Always force textures to power of 2, even if the device
reports non-power-of-2 texture sizes as supported.
--vo-direct3d-texture-memory=<mode>
Only affects operation with shaders/texturing enabled, and
(E)OSD. Possible values:
default (default)
Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM tex-
ture for locking. If the driver supports D3DDEV-
CAPS_TEXTURESYSTEMMEMORY, D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM is used
directly.
default-pool
Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT. (Like default, but never use a
shadow-texture.)
default-pool-shadow
Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM tex-
ture for locking. (Like default, but always force
the shadow-texture.)
managed
Use D3DPOOL_MANAGED.
scratch
Use D3DPOOL_SCRATCH, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM tex-
ture for locking.
--vo-direct3d-swap-discard
Use D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD, which might be faster. Might
be slower too, as it must(?) clear every frame.
--vo-direct3d-exact-backbuffer
Always resize the backbuffer to window size.
sdl SDL 2.0+ Render video output driver, depending on system with or
without hardware acceleration. Should work on all platforms sup-
ported by SDL 2.0. For tuning, refer to your copy of the file
SDL_hints.h.
NOTE:
This driver is for compatibility with systems that don't pro-
vide proper graphics drivers.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--sdl-sw
Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
--sdl-switch-mode
Instruct SDL to switch the monitor video mode when going
fullscreen.
dmabuf-wayland
Experimental Wayland output driver designed for use with either
drm stateless or VA API hardware decoding. The driver is designed
to avoid any GPU to CPU copies, and to perform scaling and color
space conversion using fixed-function hardware, if available,
rather than GPU shaders. This frees up GPU resources for other
tasks. It is highly recommended to use this VO with the appro-
priate --hwdec option such as auto-safe. It can still work in
some circumstances without --hwdec due to mpv's internal conver-
sion filters, but this is not recommended as it's a needless ex-
tra step. Correct output depends on support from your GPU, dri-
vers, and compositor. This requires the compositor and mpv to
support color-management-v1 to accurately display colorspaces
that are different from the compositor default (bt.601 in most
cases).
WARNING:
This driver is not required for mpv to work on Wayland. vo=gpu
and vo=gpu-next will switch to the appropriate Wayland context
automatically. This driver is experimental and generally lower
quality than gpu/gpu-next.
vaapi Intel VA API video output driver with support for hardware decod-
ing. Note that there is absolutely no reason to use this, other
than compatibility. This is low quality, and has issues with
OSD. We strongly recommend that you use --vo=gpu with
--hwdec=vaapi instead.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--vo-vaapi-scaling=<algorithm>
default
Driver default (mpv default as well).
fast Fast, but low quality.
hq Unspecified driver dependent high-quality scaling,
slow.
nla non-linear anamorphic scaling
--vo-vaapi-scaled-osd=<yes|no>
If enabled, then the OSD is rendered at video resolution
and scaled to display resolution. By default, this is dis-
abled, and the OSD is rendered at display resolution if
the driver supports it.
null Produces no video output. Useful for benchmarking.
Usually, it's better to disable video with --video=no instead.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--vo-null-fps=<value>
Simulate display FPS. This artificially limits how many
frames the VO accepts per second.
caca Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.
This driver reserves some keys for runtime configuration. These
keys are hardcoded and cannot be bound:
d and D
Toggle dithering algorithm.
a and A
Toggle antialiasing method.
h and H
Toggle charset method.
c and C
Toggle color method.
NOTE:
This driver is a joke.
tct Color Unicode art video output driver that works on a text con-
sole. By default depends on support of true color by modern ter-
minals to display the images at full color range, but 256-colors
output is also supported (see below). On Windows it requires an
ansi terminal such as mintty.
Since mpv 0.30.0, you may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get
decent performance.
Note: the TCT image output is not synchronized with other termi-
nal output from mpv, which can lead to broken images. The options
--terminal=no or --really-quiet can help with that.
--vo-tct-algo=<algo>
Select how to write the pixels to the terminal.
half-blocks
Uses Unicode LOWER HALF BLOCK character to achieve
higher vertical resolution. (Default.)
plain Uses spaces. Causes vertical resolution to drop
twofolds, but in theory works in more places.
--vo-tct-buffering=<pixel|line|frame>
Specifies the size of data batches buffered before being
sent to the terminal.
TCT image output is not synchronized with other terminal
output from mpv, which can lead to broken images. Sending
data to the terminal in small batches may improve paral-
lelism between terminal processing and mpv processing but
incurs a static overhead of generating tens of thousands
of small writes. Also, depending on the terminal used,
sending frames in one chunk might help with tearing of the
output, especially if not used with --really-quiet and
other logs interrupt the data stream.
pixel Send data to terminal for each pixel.
line Send data to terminal for each line. (Default)
frame Send data to terminal for each frame.
--vo-tct-width=<width> --vo-tct-height=<height>
Assume the terminal has the specified character width
and/or height. These default to 80x25 if the terminal
size cannot be determined.
--vo-tct-256=<yes|no> (default: no)
Use 256 colors - for terminals which don't support true
color.
kitty Graphical output for the terminal, using the kitty graphics pro-
tocol. Tested with kitty and Konsole.
You may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get decent performance.
Kitty size and alignment options:
--vo-kitty-cols=<columns>, --vo-kitty-rows=<rows> (default: 0)
Specify the terminal size in character cells, otherwise
(0) read it from the terminal, or fall back to 80x25.
--vo-kitty-width=<width>, --vo-kitty-height=<height> (default: 0)
Specify the available size in pixels, otherwise (0) read
it from the terminal, or fall back to 320x240.
--vo-kitty-left=<col>, --vo-kitty-top=<row> (default: 0)
Specify the position in character cells where the image
starts (1 is the first column or row). If 0 (default) then
try to automatically determine it according to the other
values and the image aspect ratio and zoom.
--vo-kitty-config-clear=<yes|no> (default: yes)
Whether or not to clear the terminal whenever the output
is reconfigured (e.g. when video size changes).
--vo-kitty-alt-screen=<yes|no> (default: yes)
Whether or not to use the alternate screen buffer and re-
turn the terminal to its previous state on exit. When set
to no, the last kitty image stays on screen after quit,
with the cursor following it.
--vo-kitty-use-shm=<yes|no> (default: no)
Use shared memory objects to transfer image data to the
terminal. This is much faster than sending the data as
escape codes, but is not supported by as many terminals.
It also only works on the local machine and not via e.g.
SSH connections.
This option is not implemented on Windows.
sixel Graphical output for the terminal, using sixels. Tested with ml-
term and xterm.
Note: the Sixel image output is not synchronized with other ter-
minal output from mpv, which can lead to broken images. The op-
tion --really-quiet can help with that, and is recommended. On
some platforms, using the --vo-sixel-buffered option may work as
well.
You may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get decent performance.
Note: at the time of writing, xterm does not enable sixel by de-
fault - launching it as xterm -ti 340 is one way to enable it.
Also, xterm does not display images bigger than 1000x1000 pixels
by default.
To render and align sixel images correctly, mpv needs to know the
terminal size both in cells and in pixels. By default it tries to
use values which the terminal reports, however, due to differ-
ences between terminals this is an error-prone process which can-
not be automated with certainty - some terminals report the size
in pixels including the padding - e.g. xterm, while others report
the actual usable number of pixels - like mlterm. Additionally,
they may behave differently when maximized or in fullscreen, and
mpv cannot detect this state using standard methods.
Sixel size and alignment options:
--vo-sixel-cols=<columns>, --vo-sixel-rows=<rows> (default: 0)
Specify the terminal size in character cells, otherwise
(0) read it from the terminal, or fall back to 80x25. Note
that mpv doesn't use the the last row with sixel because
this seems to result in scrolling.
--vo-sixel-width=<width>, --vo-sixel-height=<height> (default: 0)
Specify the available size in pixels, otherwise (0) read
it from the terminal, or fall back to 320x240. Other than
excluding the last line, the height is also further
rounded down to a multiple of 6 (sixel unit height) to
avoid overflowing below the designated size.
--vo-sixel-left=<col>, --vo-sixel-top=<row> (default: 0)
Specify the position in character cells where the image
starts (1 is the first column or row). If 0 (default) then
try to automatically determine it according to the other
values and the image aspect ratio and zoom.
--vo-sixel-pad-x=<pad_x>, --vo-sixel-pad-y=<pad_y> (default: -1)
Used only when mpv reads the size in pixels from the ter-
minal. Specify the number of padding pixels (on one side)
which are included at the size which the terminal reports.
If -1 (default) then the number of pixels is rounded down
to a multiple of number of cells (per axis), to take into
account padding at the report - this only works correctly
when the overall padding per axis is smaller than the num-
ber of cells.
--vo-sixel-config-clear=<yes|no> (default: yes)
Whether or not to clear the terminal whenever the output
is reconfigured (e.g. when video size changes).
--vo-sixel-alt-screen=<yes|no> (default: yes)
Whether or not to use the alternate screen buffer and re-
turn the terminal to its previous state on exit. When set
to no, the last sixel image stays on screen after quit,
with the cursor following it.
--vo-sixel-exit-clear is a deprecated alias for this op-
tion and may be removed in the future.
--vo-sixel-buffered=<yes|no> (default: no)
Buffers the full output sequence before writing it to the
terminal. On POSIX platforms, this can help prevent in-
terruption (including from other applications) and thus
broken images, but may come at a performance cost with
some terminals and is subject to implementation details.
Sixel image quality options:
--vo-sixel-dither=<algo>
Selects the dither algorithm which libsixel should apply.
Can be one of the below list as per libsixel's documenta-
tion.
auto (Default)
Let libsixel choose the dithering method.
none Don't diffuse
atkinson
Diffuse with Bill Atkinson's method.
fs Diffuse with Floyd-Steinberg method
jajuni Diffuse with Jarvis, Judice & Ninke method
stucki Diffuse with Stucki's method
burkes Diffuse with Burkes' method
arithmetic
Positionally stable arithmetic dither
xor Positionally stable arithmetic xor based dither
--vo-sixel-fixedpalette=<yes|no> (default: yes)
Use libsixel's built-in static palette using the XTERM256
profile for dither. Fixed palette uses 256 colors for
dithering. Note that using no (at the time of writing)
will slow down xterm.
--vo-sixel-reqcolors=<colors> (default: 256)
Has no effect with fixed palette. Set up libsixel to use
required number of colors for dynamic palette. This value
depends on the terminal emulator as well. Xterm supports
256 colors. Can set this to a lower value for faster per-
formance.
--vo-sixel-threshold=<threshold> (default: -1)
Has no effect with fixed palette. Defines the threshold to
change the palette - as percentage of the number of col-
ors, e.g. 20 will change the palette when the number of
colors changed by 20%. It's a simple measure to reduce the
number of palette changes, because it can be slow in some
terminals (xterm). The default (-1) will choose a palette
on every frame and will have better quality.
image Output each frame into an image file in the current directory.
Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as
name.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--vo-image-format=<format>
Select the image file format.
jpg JPEG files, extension .jpg. (Default.)
jpeg JPEG files, extension .jpeg.
png PNG files.
webp WebP files.
--vo-image-png-compression=<0-9>
PNG compression factor (speed vs. file size tradeoff) (de-
fault: 7)
--vo-image-png-filter=<0-5>
Filter applied prior to PNG compression (0 = none; 1 =
sub; 2 = up; 3 = average; 4 = Paeth; 5 = mixed) (default:
5)
--vo-image-jpeg-quality=<0-100>
JPEG quality factor (default: 90)
--vo-image-jpeg-optimize=<0-100>
JPEG optimization factor (default: 100)
--vo-image-webp-lossless=<yes|no>
Enable writing lossless WebP files (default: no)
--vo-image-webp-quality=<0-100>
WebP quality (default: 75)
--vo-image-webp-compression=<0-6>
WebP compression factor (default: 4)
--vo-image-outdir=<dirname>
Specify the directory to save the image files to (default:
./).
libmpv For use with libmpv direct embedding. As a special case, on macOS
it is used like a normal VO within mpv (cocoa-cb). Otherwise use-
less in any other contexts. (See <mpv/render.h>.)
This also supports many of the options the gpu VO has, depending
on the backend.
drm (Direct Rendering Manager)
Video output driver using Kernel Mode Setting / Direct Rendering
Manager. Should be used when one doesn't want to install
full-blown graphical environment (e.g. no X). Does not support
hardware acceleration (if you need this, check the drm backend
for gpu VO).
Since mpv 0.30.0, you may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get
decent performance.
The following global options are supported by this video output:
--drm-connector=<name>
Select the connector to use (usually this is a monitor.)
If <name> is empty or auto, mpv renders the output on the
first available connector. Use --drm-connector=help to get
a list of available connectors. (default: empty)
--drm-device=<path>
Select the DRM device file to use. If specified this over-
rides automatic card selection. (default: empty)
--drm-mode=<preferred|highest|N|WxH[@R]>
Mode to use (resolution and frame rate). Possible values:
preferred
Use the preferred mode for the screen on the se-
lected connector. (default)
highest
Use the mode with the highest resolution available
on the selected connector.
N Select mode by index.
WxH[@R]
Specify mode by width, height, and optionally re-
fresh rate. In case several modes match, selects
the mode that comes first in the EDID list of
modes.
Use --drm-mode=help to get a list of available modes for
all active connectors.
--drm-draw-plane=<primary|overlay|N>
Select the DRM plane to which video and OSD is drawn to,
under normal circumstances. The plane can be specified as
primary, which will pick the first applicable primary
plane; overlay, which will pick the first applicable over-
lay plane; or by index. The index is zero based, and re-
lated to the CRTC. (default: primary)
When using this option with the drmprime-overlay hwdec in-
terop, only the OSD is rendered to this plane.
--drm-drmprime-video-plane=<primary|overlay|N>
Select the DRM plane to use for video with the drm-
prime-overlay hwdec interop (used by e.g. the rkmpp hwdec
on RockChip SoCs, and v4l2 hwdec:s on various other
SoC:s). The plane is unused otherwise. This option accepts
the same values as --drm-draw-plane. (default: overlay)
To be able to successfully play 4K video on various SoCs
you might need to set --drm-draw-plane=overlay --drm-drm-
prime-video-plane=primary and setting --drm-draw-sur-
face-size=1920x1080, to render the OSD at a lower resolu-
tion (the video when handled by the hwdec will be on the
drmprime-video plane and at full 4K resolution)
--drm-format=<xrgb8888|xbgr8888|xrgb2101010|xbgr2101010|yuyv>
Select the DRM format to use (default: xrgb8888). This al-
lows you to choose the bit depth and color type of the DRM
mode.
xrgb8888 is your usual 24bpp packed RGB format with 8 bits
of padding. xrgb2101010 is a 30bpp packed RGB format with
2 bits of padding. yuyv is a 32bpp packed YUV 4:2:2 for-
mat. No planar formats are currently supported.
There are cases when xrgb2101010 will work with the drm
VO, but not with the drm backend for the gpu VO. This is
because with the gpu VO, in addition to requiring support
in your DRM driver, requires support for xrgb2101010 in
your EGL driver. yuyv only ever works with the drm VO.
--drm-draw-surface-size=<[WxH]>
Sets the size of the surface used on the draw plane. The
surface will then be upscaled to the current screen reso-
lution. This option can be useful when used together with
the drmprime-overlay hwdec interop at high resolutions, as
it allows scaling the draw plane (which in this case only
handles the OSD) down to a size the GPU can handle.
When used without the drmprime-overlay hwdec interop this
option will just cause the video to get rendered at a dif-
ferent resolution and then scaled to screen size.
(default: display resolution)
--drm-vrr-enabled=<no|yes|auto>
Toggle use of Variable Refresh Rate (VRR), aka Freesync or
Adaptive Sync on compatible systems. VRR allows for the
display to be refreshed at any rate within a range (usu-
ally ~40Hz-60Hz for 60Hz displays). This can help with
playback of 24/25/50fps content. Support depends on the
use of a compatible monitor, GPU, and a sufficiently new
kernel with drivers that support the feature.
no Do not attempt to enable VRR. (default)
yes Attempt to enable VRR, whether the capability is
reported or not.
auto Attempt to enable VRR if support is reported.
mediacodec_embed (Android)
Renders IMGFMT_MEDIACODEC frames directly to an android.view.Sur-
face. Requires --hwdec=mediacodec for hardware decoding, along
with --vo=mediacodec_embed and --wid=(intptr_t)(*an-
droid.view.Surface).
Since this video output driver uses native decoding and rendering
routines, many of mpv's features (subtitle rendering, OSD/OSC,
video filters, etc) are not available with this driver.
To use hardware decoding with --vo=gpu instead, use --hwdec=medi-
acodec or mediacodec-copy along with --gpu-context=android.
wlshm (Wayland only)
Shared memory video output driver without hardware acceleration
that works whenever Wayland is present.
Since mpv 0.30.0, you may need to use --profile=sw-fast to get
decent performance.
NOTE:
This is a fallback only, and should not be normally used.
AUDIO FILTERS
Audio filters allow you to modify the audio stream and its properties.
The syntax is:
--af=...
Setup a chain of audio filters. See --vf (VIDEO FILTERS) for the
full syntax.
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for de-
tails.
NOTE:
To get a full list of available audio filters, see --af=help.
Also, keep in mind that most actual filters are available via the
lavfi wrapper, which gives you access to most of libavfilter's fil-
ters. This includes all filters that have been ported from MPlayer to
libavfilter.
The --vf description describes how libavfilter can be used and how to
workaround deprecated mpv filters.
See --vf group of options for info on how --af-add, --af-pre, --af-clr,
and possibly others work.
Available filters are:
lavcac3enc[=options]
Encode multi-channel audio to AC-3 at runtime using libavcodec.
Supports 16-bit native-endian input format, maximum 6 channels.
The output is big-endian when outputting a raw AC-3 stream, na-
tive-endian when outputting to S/PDIF. If the input sample rate
is not 48 kHz, 44.1 kHz or 32 kHz, it will be resampled to 48
kHz.
tospdif=<yes|no>
Output raw AC-3 stream if no, output to S/PDIF for
pass-through if yes (default).
bitrate=<rate>
The bitrate use for the AC-3 stream. Set it to 384 to get
384 kbps.
The default is 640. Some receivers might not be able to
handle this.
Valid values: 32, 40, 48, 56, 64, 80, 96, 112, 128, 160,
192, 224, 256, 320, 384, 448, 512, 576, 640.
The special value auto selects a default bitrate based on
the input channel number:
1ch 96
2ch 192
3ch 224
4ch 384
5ch 448
6ch 448
minch=<n>
If the input channel number is less than <minch>, the fil-
ter will detach itself (default: 3).
encoder=<name>
Select the libavcodec encoder used. Currently, this should
be an AC-3 encoder, and using another codec will fail hor-
ribly.
format=format:srate:channels:out-srate:out-channels
Does not do any format conversion itself. Rather, it may cause
the filter system to insert necessary conversion filters before
or after this filter if needed. It is primarily useful for con-
trolling the audio format going into other filters. To specify
the format for audio output, see --audio-format, --audio-sampler-
ate, and --audio-channels. This filter is able to force a partic-
ular format, whereas --audio-* may be overridden by the ao based
on output compatibility.
All parameters are optional. The first 3 parameters restrict what
the filter accepts as input. They will therefore cause conversion
filters to be inserted before this one. The out- parameters tell
the filters or audio outputs following this filter how to inter-
pret the data without actually doing a conversion. Setting these
will probably just break things unless you really know you want
this for some reason, such as testing or dealing with broken me-
dia.
<format>
Force conversion to this format. Use --af=format=for-
mat=help to get a list of valid formats.
<srate>
Force conversion to a specific sample rate. The rate is an
integer, 48000 for example.
<channels>
Force mixing to a specific channel layout. See --au-
dio-channels option for possible values.
<out-srate>
<out-channels>
NOTE: this filter used to be named force. The old format filter
used to do conversion itself, unlike this one which lets the fil-
ter system handle the conversion.
scaletempo[=option1:option2:...]
Scales audio tempo without altering pitch, optionally synced to
playback speed.
This works by playing 'stride' ms of audio at normal speed then
consuming 'stride*scale' ms of input audio. It pieces the strides
together by blending 'overlap'% of stride with audio following
the previous stride. It optionally performs a short statistical
analysis on the next 'search' ms of audio to determine the best
overlap position.
scale=<amount>
Nominal amount to scale tempo. Scales this amount in addi-
tion to speed. (default: 1.0)
stride=<amount>
Length in milliseconds to output each stride. Too high of
a value will cause noticeable skips at high scale amounts
and an echo at low scale amounts. Very low values will al-
ter pitch. Increasing improves performance. (default: 60)
overlap=<factor>
Factor of stride to overlap. Decreasing improves perfor-
mance. (default: .20)
search=<amount>
Length in milliseconds to search for best overlap posi-
tion. Decreasing improves performance greatly. On slow
systems, you will probably want to set this very low. (de-
fault: 14)
speed=<tempo|pitch|both|none>
Set response to speed change.
tempo Scale tempo in sync with speed (default).
pitch Reverses effect of filter. Scales pitch without al-
tering tempo. Add this to your input.conf to step
by musical semi-tones:
[ multiply speed 0.9438743126816935
] multiply speed 1.059463094352953
WARNING:
Loses sync with video.
both Scale both tempo and pitch.
none Ignore speed changes.
Examples
mpv --af=scaletempo --speed=1.2 media.ogg
Would play media at 1.2x normal speed, with audio at
normal pitch. Changing playback speed would change au-
dio tempo to match.
mpv --af=scaletempo=scale=1.2:speed=none --speed=1.2 media.ogg
Would play media at 1.2x normal speed, with audio at
normal pitch, but changing playback speed would have no
effect on audio tempo.
mpv --af=scaletempo=stride=30:overlap=.50:search=10 media.ogg
Would tweak the quality and performance parameters.
mpv --af=scaletempo=scale=1.2:speed=pitch audio.ogg
Would play media at 1.2x normal speed, with audio at
normal pitch. Changing playback speed would change
pitch, leaving audio tempo at 1.2x.
scaletempo2[=option1:option2:...]
Scales audio tempo without altering pitch. The algorithm is
ported from chromium and uses the Waveform Similarity Over-
lap-and-add (WSOLA) method. It seems to achieves higher audio
quality than scaletempo, and rubberband R2 engine, or en-
gine=faster. This filter is inserted automatically if au-
dio-pitch-correction option is used (on by default) when the
playback speed is changed.
By default, the search-interval and window-size parameters have
the same values as in chromium.
min-speed=<speed>
Mute audio if the playback speed is below <speed>. (de-
fault: 0.25)
max-speed=<speed>
Mute audio if the playback speed is above <speed> and
<speed> != 0. (default: 8.0)
search-interval=<amount>
Length in milliseconds to search for best overlap posi-
tion. (default: 40)
window-size=<amount>
Length in milliseconds of the overlap-and-add window. (de-
fault: 12)
rubberband
High quality pitch correction with librubberband. This can be
used in place of scaletempo and scaletempo2, and will be used to
adjust audio pitch when playing at speed different from normal.
It can also be used to adjust audio pitch without changing play-
back speed.
pitch-scale=<amount>
Sets the pitch scaling factor. Frequencies are multiplied
by this value. (default: 1.0)
engine=<faster|finer>
Select the core Rubberband engine to be used. There are
two available:
Faster This is the Rubberband R2 engine. It uses signifi-
cantly less CPU than the Finer (R3) engine.
Finer This is the Rubberband R3 engine. This engine is
only available with librubberband version 3 or
newer. This produces significantly higher quality
output, at the cost of higher CPU usage. (Default
if available)
This filter has a number of additional sub-options. You can list
them with mpv --af=rubberband=help. This will also show the de-
fault values for each option. The options are not documented
here, because they are merely passed to librubberband. Look at
the librubberband documentation to learn what each option does:
<https://breakfastquay.com/rubberband/code-doc/classRubber-
Band_1_1RubberBandStretcher.html> Do note that certain options
are only applicable to one of R2 (faster) and R3 (finer) engines.
(The mapping of the mpv rubberband filter sub-option names and
values to those of librubberband follows a simple pattern: "Op-
tion" + Name + Value.)
This filter supports the following af-command commands:
set-pitch
Set the <pitch-scale> argument dynamically. This can be
used to change the playback pitch at runtime. Note that
speed is controlled using the standard speed property, not
af-command.
multiply-pitch <factor>
Multiply the current value of <pitch-scale> dynamically.
lavfi=graph
Filter audio using FFmpeg's libavfilter.
<graph>
Libavfilter graph. See lavfi video filter for details -
the graph syntax is the same.
WARNING:
Don't forget to quote libavfilter graphs as described
in the lavfi video filter section.
o=<string>
AVOptions.
fix-pts=<yes|no>
Determine PTS based on sample count (default: no). If this
is enabled, the player won't rely on libavfilter passing
through PTS accurately. Instead, it pass a sample count
as PTS to libavfilter, and compute the PTS used by mpv
based on that and the input PTS. This helps with filters
which output a recomputed PTS instead of the original PTS
(including filters which require the PTS to start at 0).
mpv normally expects filters to not touch the PTS (or only
to the extent of changing frame boundaries), so this is
not the default, but it will be needed to use broken fil-
ters. In practice, these broken filters will either cause
slow A/V desync over time (with some files), or break
playback completely if you seek or start playback from the
middle of a file.
drop This filter drops or repeats audio frames to adapt to playback
speed. It always operates on full audio frames, because it was
made to handle SPDIF (compressed audio passthrough). This is used
automatically if the --video-sync=display-adrop option is used.
Do not use this filter (or the given option); they are extremely
low quality.
VIDEO FILTERS
Video filters allow you to modify the video stream and its properties.
All of the information described in this section applies to audio fil-
ters as well (generally using the prefix --af instead of --vf).
The exact syntax is:
--vf=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Setup a chain of video filters. This consists on the filter name,
and an option list of parameters after =. The parameters are sep-
arated by : (not ,, as that starts a new filter entry).
Before the filter name, a label can be specified with @name:,
where name is an arbitrary user-given name, which identifies the
filter. This is only needed if you want to toggle the filter at
runtime.
A ! before the filter name means the filter is disabled by de-
fault. It will be skipped on filter creation. This is also useful
for runtime filter toggling.
See the vf command (and toggle sub-command) for further explana-
tions and examples.
This is an object settings list option. See List Options for de-
tails.
The general filter entry syntax is:
["@"<label-name>":"] ["!"] <filter-name> [ "=" <filter-parame-
ter-list> ]
or for the special "toggle" syntax (see vf command):
"@"<label-name>
and the filter-parameter-list:
<filter-parameter> | <filter-parameter> "," <filter-parame-
ter-list>
and filter-parameter:
( <param-name> "=" <param-value> ) | <param-value>
param-value can further be quoted in [ / ] in case the value con-
tains characters like , or =. This is used in particular with the
lavfi filter, which uses a very similar syntax as mpv (MPlayer
historically) to specify filters and their parameters.
NOTE:
--vf can only take a single track as input, even if the filter sup-
ports dynamic input. Filters that require multiple inputs can't be
used. Use --lavfi-complex for such a use case. This also applies for
--af.
Filters can be manipulated at run time. You can use @ labels as de-
scribed above in combination with the vf command (see COMMAND INTERFACE)
to get more control over this. Initially disabled filters with ! are
useful for this as well.
NOTE:
To get a full list of available video filters, see --vf=help and
<https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html> .
Also, keep in mind that most actual filters are available via the
lavfi wrapper, which gives you access to most of libavfilter's fil-
ters. This includes all filters that have been ported from MPlayer to
libavfilter.
Most builtin filters are deprecated in some ways, unless they're only
available in mpv (such as filters which deal with mpv specifics, or
which are implemented in mpv only).
If a filter is not builtin, the lavfi-bridge will be automatically
tried. This bridge does not support help output, and does not verify
parameters before the filter is actually used. Although the mpv syn-
tax is rather similar to libavfilter's, it's not the same. (Which
means not everything accepted by vf_lavfi's graph option will be ac-
cepted by --vf.)
You can also prefix the filter name with lavfi- to force the wrapper.
This is helpful if the filter name collides with a deprecated mpv
builtin filter. For example --vf=lavfi-scale=args would use libavfil-
ter's scale filter over mpv's deprecated builtin one.
Video filters are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage
the filter list.
--vf-append=filter
Appends the filter given as arguments to the filter list.
--vf-add=filter
Appends the filter given as arguments to the filter list. (Pass-
ing multiple filters is currently still possible, but depre-
cated.)
--vf-pre=filter
Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
(Passing multiple filters is currently still possible, but depre-
cated.)
--vf-remove=filter
Deletes the filter from the list. The filter can be either given
the way it was added (filter name and its full argument list), or
by label (prefixed with @). Matching of filters works as follows:
if either of the compared filters has a label set, only the la-
bels are compared. If none of the filters have a label, the fil-
ter name, arguments, and argument order are compared. (Passing
multiple filters is currently still possible, but deprecated.)
--vf-toggle=filter
Add the given filter to the list if it was not present yet, or
remove it from the list if it was present. Matching of filters
works as described in --vf-remove.
--vf-clr
Completely empties the filter list.
With filters that support it, you can access parameters by their name.
--vf=<filter>=help
Prints the parameter names and parameter value ranges for a par-
ticular filter.
Available mpv-only filters are:
format=fmt=<value>:colormatrix=<value>:...
Applies video parameter overrides, with optional conversion. By
default, this overrides the video's parameters without conversion
(except for the fmt parameter), but can be made to perform an ap-
propriate conversion with convert=yes for parameters for which
conversion is supported.
<fmt> Image format name, e.g. rgb15, bgr24, 420p, etc. (default:
don't change).
This filter always performs conversion to the given for-
mat.
NOTE:
For a list of available formats, use --vf=for-
mat=fmt=help.
NOTE:
Conversion between hardware formats is supported in
some cases. eg: cuda to vulkan, or vaapi to vulkan.
<convert=yes|no>
Force conversion of color parameters (default: no).
If this is disabled (the default), the only conversion
that is possibly performed is format conversion if <fmt>
is set. All other parameters (like <colormatrix>) are
forced without conversion. This mode is typically useful
when files have been incorrectly tagged.
If this is enabled, libswscale or zimg is used if any of
the parameters mismatch. zimg is used of the input/output
image formats are supported by mpv's zimg wrapper, and if
--sws-allow-zimg=yes is used. Both libraries may not sup-
port all kinds of conversions. This typically results in
silent incorrect conversion. zimg has in many cases a bet-
ter chance of performing the conversion correctly.
In both cases, the color parameters are set on the output
stage of the image format conversion (if fmt was set). The
difference is that with convert=no, the color parameters
are not passed on to the converter.
If input and output video parameters are the same, conver-
sion is always skipped.
When converting between hardware formats, this parameter
has no effect, and the only conversion that is done is the
format conversion.
Examples
mpv test.mkv --vf=format:colormatrix=ycgco
Results in incorrect colors (if test.mkv was
tagged correctly).
mpv test.mkv --vf=format:colormatrix=ycgco:convert=yes
--sws-allow-zimg
Results in true conversion to ycgco, assuming
the renderer supports it (--vo=gpu normally
does). You can add --vo=xv to force a VO which
definitely does not support it, which should
show incorrect colors as confirmation.
Using --sws-allow-zimg=no (or disabling zimg at
build time) will use libswscale, which cannot
perform this conversion as of this writing.
<colormatrix>
Controls the YUV to RGB color space conversion when play-
ing video. There are various standards. Normally, BT.601
should be used for SD video, and BT.709 for HD video.
(This is done by default.) Using incorrect color space re-
sults in slightly under or over saturated and shifted col-
ors.
These options are not always supported. Different video
outputs provide varying degrees of support. The gpu and
vdpau video output drivers usually offer full support. The
xv output can set the color space if the system video dri-
ver supports it, but not input and output levels. The
scale video filter can configure color space and input
levels, but only if the output format is RGB (if the video
output driver supports RGB output, you can force this with
--vf=scale,format=rgba).
If this option is set to auto (which is the default), the
video's color space flag will be used. If that flag is un-
set, the color space will be selected automatically. This
is done using a simple heuristic that attempts to distin-
guish SD and HD video. If the video is larger than
1279x576 pixels, BT.709 (HD) will be used; otherwise
BT.601 (SD) is selected.
Available color spaces are:
auto automatic selection (default)
bt.601 ITU-R Rec. BT.601 (SD)
bt.709 ITU-R Rec. BT.709 (HD)
bt.2020-ncl
ITU-R Rec. BT.2020 (non-constant luminance)
bt.2020-cl
ITU-R Rec. BT.2020 (constant luminance)
bt.2100-pq
ITU-R Rec. BT.2100 ICtCp PQ variant
bt.2100-hlg
ITU-R Rec. BT.2100 ICtCp HLG variant
dolbyvision
Dolby Vision
smpte-240m
SMPTE-240M
<colorlevels>
YUV color levels used with YUV to RGB conversion. This op-
tion is only necessary when playing broken files which do
not follow standard color levels or which are flagged
wrong. If the video does not specify its color range, it
is assumed to be limited range.
The same limitations as with <colormatrix> apply.
Available color ranges are:
auto automatic selection (normally limited range) (de-
fault)
limited
limited range (16-235 for luma, 16-240 for chroma)
full full range (0-255 for both luma and chroma)
<primaries>
RGB primaries the source file was encoded with. Normally
this should be set in the file header, but when playing
broken or mistagged files this can be used to override the
setting.
This option only affects video output drivers that perform
color management, for example gpu with the target-prim or
icc-profile suboptions set.
If this option is set to auto (which is the default), the
video's primaries flag will be used. If that flag is un-
set, the color space will be selected automatically, using
the following heuristics: If the <colormatrix> is set or
determined as BT.2020 or BT.709, the corresponding pri-
maries are used. Otherwise, if the video height is exactly
576 (PAL), BT.601-625 is used. If it's exactly 480 or 486
(NTSC), BT.601-525 is used. If the video resolution is
anything else, BT.709 is used.
Available primaries are:
auto automatic selection (default)
bt.601-525
ITU-R BT.601 (SD) 525-line systems (NTSC, SMPTE-C)
bt.601-625
ITU-R BT.601 (SD) 625-line systems (PAL, SECAM)
bt.709 ITU-R BT.709 (HD) (same primaries as sRGB)
bt.2020
ITU-R BT.2020 (UHD)
apple Apple RGB
adobe Adobe RGB (1998)
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
cie1931
CIE 1931 RGB
dci-p3 DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema)
v-gamut
Panasonic V-Gamut primaries
<gamma>
Gamma function the source file was encoded with. Normally
this should be set in the file header, but when playing
broken or mistagged files this can be used to override the
setting.
This option only affects video output drivers that perform
color management.
If this option is set to auto (which is the default), the
gamma will be set to BT.1886 for YCbCr content, sRGB for
RGB content and Linear for XYZ content.
Available gamma functions are:
auto automatic selection (default)
bt.1886
ITU-R BT.1886 (EOTF corresponding to
BT.601/BT.709/BT.2020)
srgb IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB)
linear Linear light
gamma1.8
Pure power curve (gamma 1.8)
gamma2.0
Pure power curve (gamma 2.0)
gamma2.2
Pure power curve (gamma 2.2)
gamma2.4
Pure power curve (gamma 2.4)
gamma2.6
Pure power curve (gamma 2.6)
gamma2.8
Pure power curve (gamma 2.8)
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM) curve
pq ITU-R BT.2100 PQ (Perceptual quantizer) curve
hlg ITU-R BT.2100 HLG (Hybrid Log-gamma) curve
v-log Panasonic V-Log transfer curve
s-log1 Sony S-Log1 transfer curve
s-log2 Sony S-Log2 transfer curve
<sig-peak>
Reference peak illumination for the video file, relative
to the signal's reference white level. This is mostly in-
teresting for HDR, but it can also be used tone map SDR
content to simulate a different exposure. Normally in-
ferred from tags such as MaxCLL or mastering metadata.
The default of 0.0 will default to the source's nominal
peak luminance.
<light>
Light type of the scene. This is mostly correctly in-
ferred based on the gamma function, but it can be use-
ful to override this when viewing raw camera footage
(e.g. V-Log), which is normally scene-referred instead
of display-referred.
Available light types are:
auto Automatic selection (default)
display
Display-referred light (most content)
hlg Scene-referred using the HLG OOTF (e.g. HLG con-
tent)
709-1886
Scene-referred using the BT709+BT1886 interaction
gamma1.2
Scene-referred using a pure power OOTF (gamma=1.2)
<dolbyvision=yes|no>
Whether or not to include Dolby Vision metadata (default:
yes). If disabled, any Dolby Vision metadata will be
stripped from frames.
<hdr10plus=yes|no>
Whether or not to include HDR10+ metadata (default: yes).
If disabled, any HDR10+ metadata will be stripped from
frames.
<film-grain=yes|no>
Whether or not to include film grain metadata (default:
yes). If disabled, any film grain metadata will be
stripped from frames.
<chroma-location>
Set the chroma loc of the video. Use --vf=for-
mat:chroma-location=help to list all available modes.
<stereo-in>
Set the stereo mode the video is assumed to be encoded in.
Use --vf=format:stereo-in=help to list all available
modes. Check with the stereo3d filter documentation to see
what the names mean.
<rotate>
Set the rotation the video is assumed to be encoded with
in degrees. The special value -1 uses the input format.
<w>, <h>
If not 0, perform conversion to the given size. Ignored if
convert=yes is not set.
<dw>, <dh>
Set the display size. Note that setting the display size
such that the video is scaled in both directions instead
of just changing the aspect ratio is an implementation de-
tail, and might change later.
<dar> Set the display aspect ratio of the video frame. This is a
float, but values such as [16:9] can be passed too ([...]
for quoting to prevent the option parser from interpreting
the : character).
<force-scaler=auto|zimg|sws>
Force a specific scaler backend, if applicable. This is a
debug option and could go away any time.
<alpha=auto|straight|premul>
Set the kind of alpha the video uses. Undefined effect if
the image format has no alpha channel (could be ignored or
cause an error, depending on how mpv internals evolve).
Setting this may or may not cause downstream image pro-
cessing to treat alpha differently, depending on support.
With convert and zimg used, this will convert the alpha.
libswscale and other FFmpeg components completely ignore
this.
lavfi=graph[:sws-flags[:o=opts]]
Filter video using FFmpeg's libavfilter.
<graph>
The libavfilter graph string. The filter must have a sin-
gle video input pad and a single video output pad.
See <https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html> for syntax
and available filters.
WARNING:
If you want to use the full filter syntax with this op-
tion, you have to quote the filter graph in order to
prevent mpv's syntax and the filter graph syntax from
clashing. To prevent a quoting and escaping mess, con-
sider using --lavfi-complex if you know which video
track you want to use from the input file. (There is
only one video track for nearly all video files any-
way.)
Examples
--vf=lavfi=[gradfun=20:30,vflip]
gradfun filter with nonsense parameters, fol-
lowed by a vflip filter. (This demonstrates how
libavfilter takes a graph and not just a single
filter.) The filter graph string is quoted with
[ and ]. This requires no additional quoting or
escaping with some shells (like bash), while
others (like zsh) require additional " quotes
around the option string.
'--vf=lavfi="gradfun=20:30,vflip"'
Same as before, but uses quoting that should be
safe with all shells. The outer ' quotes make
sure that the shell does not remove the " quotes
needed by mpv.
'--vf=lavfi=graph="gradfun=ra-
dius=30:strength=20,vflip"'
Same as before, but uses named parameters for
everything.
<sws-flags>
If libavfilter inserts filters for pixel format conver-
sion, this option gives the flags which should be passed
to libswscale. This option is numeric and takes a bit-wise
combination of SWS_ flags.
See https://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=blob;f=lib-
swscale/swscale.h.
<o> Set AVFilterGraph options. These should be documented by
FFmpeg.
Example
'--vf=lavfi=yadif:o="threads=2,thread_type=slice"'
forces a specific threading configuration.
sub=[=bottom-margin:top-margin]
Moves subtitle rendering to an arbitrary point in the filter
chain, or force subtitle rendering in the video filter as opposed
to using video output OSD support.
<bottom-margin>
Adds a black band at the bottom of the frame. The SSA/ASS
renderer can place subtitles there (with --sub-use-mar-
gins).
<top-margin>
Black band on the top for toptitles (with --sub-use-mar-
gins).
Examples
--vf=sub,eq
Moves sub rendering before the eq filter. This will put
both subtitle colors and video under the influence of
the video equalizer settings.
vapoursynth=file:buffered-frames:concurrent-frames:user-data
Loads a VapourSynth filter script. This is intended for streamed
processing: mpv actually provides a source filter, instead of us-
ing a native VapourSynth video source. The mpv source will answer
frame requests only within a small window of frames (the size of
this window is controlled with the buffered-frames parameter),
and requests outside of that will return errors. As such, you
can't use the full power of VapourSynth, but you can use certain
filters.
WARNING:
Do not use this filter, unless you have expert knowledge in
VapourSynth, and know how to fix bugs in the mpv VapourSynth
wrapper code.
If you just want to play video generated by VapourSynth (i.e. us-
ing a native VapourSynth video source), it's better to use vspipe
and a pipe or FIFO to feed the video to mpv. The same applies if
the filter script requires random frame access (see
buffered-frames parameter).
file Filename of the script source. Currently, this is always a
python script (.vpy in VapourSynth convention).
The variable video_in is set to the mpv video source, and
it is expected that the script reads video from it. (Oth-
erwise, mpv will decode no video, and the video packet
queue will overflow, eventually leading to only audio
playing, or worse.)
The filter graph created by the script is also expected to
pass through timestamps using the _DurationNum and _Dura-
tionDen frame properties.
See the end of the option list for a full list of script
variables defined by mpv.
Example:
import vapoursynth as vs
from vapoursynth import core
core.std.AddBorders(video_in, 10, 10, 20, 20).set_output()
WARNING:
The script will be reloaded on every seek. This is done
to reset the filter properly on discontinuities.
buffered-frames
Maximum number of decoded video frames that should be
buffered before the filter (default: 4). This specifies
the maximum number of frames the script can request in
backward direction.
E.g. if buffered-frames=5, and the script just requested
frame 15, it can still request frame 10, but frame 9 is
not available anymore. If it requests frame 30, mpv will
decode 15 more frames, and keep only frames 25-30.
The only reason why this buffer exists is to serve the
random access requests the VapourSynth filter can make.
The VapourSynth API has a getFrameAsync function, which
takes an absolute frame number. Source filters must re-
spond to all requests. For example, a source filter can
request frame 2432, and then frame 3. Source filters
typically implement this by pre-indexing the entire file.
mpv on the other hand is stream oriented, and does not al-
low filters to seek. (And it would not make sense to allow
it, because it would ruin performance.) Filters get frames
sequentially in playback direction, and cannot request
them out of order.
To compensate for this mismatch, mpv allows the filter to
access frames within a certain window. buffered-frames
controls the size of this window. Most VapourSynth filters
happen to work with this, because mpv requests frames se-
quentially increasing from it, and most filters only re-
quire frames "close" to the requested frame.
If the filter requests a frame that has a higher frame
number than the highest buffered frame, new frames will be
decoded until the requested frame number is reached. Ex-
cessive frames will be flushed out in a FIFO manner (there
are only at most buffered-frames in this buffer).
If the filter requests a frame that has a lower frame num-
ber than the lowest buffered frame, the request cannot be
satisfied, and an error is returned to the filter. This
kind of error is not supposed to happen in a "proper"
VapourSynth environment. What exactly happens depends on
the filters involved.
Increasing this buffer will not improve performance.
Rather, it will waste memory, and slow down seeks (when
enough frames to fill the buffer need to be decoded at
once). It is only needed to prevent the error described in
the previous paragraph.
How many frames a filter requires depends on filter imple-
mentation details, and mpv has no way of knowing. A scale
filter might need only 1 frame, an interpolation filter
may require a small number of frames, and the Reverse fil-
ter will require an infinite number of frames.
If you want reliable operation to the full extend
VapourSynth is capable, use vspipe.
The actual number of buffered frames also depends on the
value of the concurrent-frames option. Currently, both op-
tion values are multiplied to get the final buffer size.
concurrent-frames
Number of frames that should be requested in parallel. The
level of concurrency depends on the filter and how quickly
mpv can decode video to feed the filter. This value should
probably be proportional to the number of cores on your
machine. Most time, making it higher than the number of
cores can actually make it slower.
Technically, mpv will call the VapourSynth getFrameAsync
function in a loop, until there are concurrent-frames
frames that have not been returned by the filter yet. This
also assumes that the rest of the mpv filter chain reads
the output of the vapoursynth filter quickly enough. (For
example, if you pause the player, filtering will stop very
soon, because the filtered frames are waiting in a queue.)
Actual concurrency depends on many other factors.
By default, this uses the special value auto, which sets
the option to the number of detected logical CPU cores.
user-data
Optional arbitrary string that is passed to the script.
Default to empty string if not set.
The following .vpy script variables are defined by mpv:
video_in
The mpv video source as vapoursynth clip. Note that this
has an incorrect (very high) length set, which confuses
many filters. This is necessary, because the true number
of frames is unknown. You can use the Trim filter on the
clip to reduce the length.
video_in_dw, video_in_dh
Display size of the video. Can be different from video
size if the video does not use square pixels (e.g. DVD).
container_fps
FPS value as reported by file headers. This value can be
wrong or completely broken (e.g. 0 or NaN). Even if the
value is correct, if another filter changes the real FPS
(by dropping or inserting frames), the value of this vari-
able will not be useful. Note that the --con-
tainer-fps-override command line option overrides this
value.
Useful for some filters which insist on having a FPS.
display_fps
Refresh rate of the current display. Note that this value
can be 0.
display_res
Resolution of the current display. This is an integer ar-
ray with the first entry corresponding to the width and
the second entry corresponding to the height. These values
can be 0. Note that this will not respond to monitor
changes and may not work on all platforms.
user_data
User data passed from the filter. This variable always ex-
ists, and defaults to empty string.
vavpp VA-API video post processing. Requires the system to support
VA-API, i.e. Linux/BSD only. Works with --vo=vaapi and --vo=gpu
only. Currently deinterlaces. This filter is automatically in-
serted if deinterlacing is requested (either using the d key, by
default mapped to the command cycle deinterlace, or the --dein-
terlace option).
deint=<method>
Select the deinterlacing algorithm.
no Don't perform deinterlacing.
auto Select the best quality deinterlacing algorithm
(default). This goes by the order of the options as
documented, with motion-compensated being consid-
ered best quality.
first-field
Show only first field.
bob bob deinterlacing.
weave, motion-adaptive, motion-compensated
Advanced deinterlacing algorithms. Whether these
actually work depends on the GPU hardware, the GPU
drivers, driver bugs, and mpv bugs.
<interlaced-only>
no Deinterlace all frames (default).
yes Only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced.
reversal-bug=<yes|no>
no Use the API as it was interpreted by older Mesa
drivers. While this interpretation was more obvious
and intuitive, it was apparently wrong, and not
shared by Intel driver developers.
yes Use Intel interpretation of surface forward and
backwards references (default). This is what Intel
drivers and newer Mesa drivers expect. Matters only
for the advanced deinterlacing algorithms.
vdpaupp
VDPAU video post processing. Works with --vo=vdpau and --vo=gpu
only. This filter is automatically inserted if deinterlacing is
requested (either using the d key, by default mapped to the com-
mand cycle deinterlace, or the --deinterlace option). When en-
abling deinterlacing, it is always preferred over software dein-
terlacer filters if the vdpau VO is used, and also if gpu is used
and hardware decoding was activated at least once (i.e. vdpau was
loaded).
sharpen=<-1-1>
For positive values, apply a sharpening algorithm to the
video, for negative values a blurring algorithm (default:
0).
denoise=<0-1>
Apply a noise reduction algorithm to the video (default:
0; no noise reduction).
deint=<yes|no>
Whether deinterlacing is enabled (default: no). If en-
abled, it will use the mode selected with deint-mode.
deint-mode=<first-field|bob|temporal|temporal-spatial>
Select deinterlacing mode (default: temporal).
Note that there's currently a mechanism that allows the
vdpau VO to change the deint-mode of auto-inserted vdpaupp
filters. To avoid confusion, it's recommended not to use
the --vo=vdpau suboptions related to filtering.
first-field
Show only first field.
bob Bob deinterlacing.
temporal
Motion-adaptive temporal deinterlacing. May lead to
A/V desync with slow video hardware and/or high
resolution.
temporal-spatial
Motion-adaptive temporal deinterlacing with
edge-guided spatial interpolation. Needs fast video
hardware.
chroma-deint
Makes temporal deinterlacers operate both on luma and
chroma (default). Use no-chroma-deint to solely use luma
and speed up advanced deinterlacing. Useful with slow
video memory.
pullup Try to apply inverse telecine, needs motion adaptive tem-
poral deinterlacing.
interlaced-only=<yes|no>
If yes, only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced (de-
fault: no).
hqscaling=<0-9>
0 Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9 Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable
hardware).
d3d11vpp
Direct3D 11 video post-processing. Requires a D3D11 context and
works best with hardware decoding. Software frames are automati-
cally uploaded to hardware for processing.
format Convert to the selected image format, e.g., nv12, p010,
etc. (default: don't change). Format names can be queried
with --vf=d3d11vpp=format=help. Note that only a limited
subset is supported, and actual support depends on your
hardware. Normally, this shouldn't be changed unless some
processing only works with a specific format, in which
case it can be selected here.
deint=<yes|no>
Whether deinterlacing is enabled (default: no).
scale Scaling factor for the video frames (default: 1.0).
scaling-mode=<standard,intel,nvidia>
Select the scaling mode to be used. Note that this only
enables the appropriate processing extensions; whether it
actually works or not depends on your hardware and the
settings in your GPU driver's control panel (default:
standard).
standard
Default scaling mode as decided by d3d11vpp imple-
mentation.
intel Intel Video Super Resolution.
nvidia NVIDIA RTX Super Resolution.
interlaced-only=<yes|no>
If yes, only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced (de-
fault: no).
mode=<blend|bob|adaptive|mocomp|ivctc|none>
Tries to select a video processor with the given process-
ing capability. If a video processor supports multiple
capabilities, it is not clear which algorithm is actually
selected. none always falls back. On most if not all hard-
ware, this option will probably do nothing, because a
video processor usually supports all modes or none.
nvidia-true-hdr
Enable NVIDIA RTX Video HDR processing.
fingerprint=...
Compute video frame fingerprints and provide them as metadata.
Actually, it currently barely deserved to be called fingerprint,
because it does not compute "proper" fingerprints, only tiny
downscaled images (but which can be used to compute image hashes
or for similarity matching).
The main purpose of this filter is to support the skip-logo.lua
script. If this script is dropped, or mpv ever gains a way to
load user-defined filters (other than VapourSynth), this filter
will be removed. Due to the "special" nature of this filter, it
will be removed without warning.
The intended way to read from the filter is using vf-metadata
(also see clear-on-query filter parameter). The property will re-
turn a list of key/value pairs as follows:
fp0.pts = 1.2345
fp0.hex = 1234abcdef...bcde
fp1.pts = 1.4567
fp1.hex = abcdef1234...6789
...
fpN.pts = ...
fpN.hex = ...
type = gray-hex-16x16
Each fp<N> entry is for a frame. The pts entry specifies the
timestamp of the frame (within the filter chain; in simple cases
this is the same as the display timestamp). The hex field is the
hex encoded fingerprint, whose size and meaning depend on the
type filter option. The type field has the same value as the op-
tion the filter was created with.
This returns the frames that were filtered since the last query
of the property. If clear-on-query=no was set, a query doesn't
reset the list of frames. In both cases, a maximum of 10 frames
is returned. If there are more frames, the oldest frames are dis-
carded. Frames are returned in filter order.
(This doesn't return a structured list for the per-frame details
because the internals of the vf-metadata mechanism suck. The re-
turned format may change in the future.)
This filter uses zimg for speed and profit. However, it will
fallback to libswscale in a number of situations: lesser pixel
formats, unaligned data pointers or strides, or if zimg fails to
initialize for unknown reasons. In these cases, the filter will
use more CPU. Also, it will output different fingerprints, be-
cause libswscale cannot perform the full range expansion we nor-
mally request from zimg. As a consequence, the filter may be
slower and not work correctly in random situations.
type=...
What fingerprint to compute. Available types are:
gray-hex-8x8
grayscale, 8 bit, 8x8 size
gray-hex-16x16
grayscale, 8 bit, 16x16 size (default)
Both types simply remove all colors, downscale the image,
concatenate all pixel values to a byte array, and convert
the array to a hex string.
clear-on-query=yes|no
Clear the list of frame fingerprints if the vf-metadata
property for this filter is queried (default: yes). This
requires some care by the user. Some types of accesses
might query the filter multiple times, which leads to lost
frames.
print=yes|no
Print computed fingerprints to the terminal (default: no).
This is mostly for testing and such. Scripts should use
vf-metadata to read information from this filter instead.
gpu=...
Convert video to RGB using the Vulkan or OpenGL renderer normally
used with --vo=gpu. In case of OpenGL, this requires that the EGL
implementation supports off-screen rendering on the default dis-
play. (This is the case with Mesa.)
Sub-options:
api=<type>
The value type selects the rendering API. You can also
pass help to get a complete list of compiled in backends.
egl EGL (default if available)
vulkan Vulkan
w=<pixels>, h=<pixels>
Size of the output in pixels (default: 0). If not posi-
tive, this will use the size of the first filtered input
frame.
WARNING:
This is highly experimental. Performance is bad, and it will
not work everywhere in the first place. Some features are not
supported.
WARNING:
This does not do OSD rendering. If you see OSD, then it has
been rendered by the VO backend. (Subtitles are rendered by
the gpu filter, if possible.)
WARNING:
If you use this with encoding mode, keep in mind that encoding
mode will convert the RGB filter's output back to yuv420p in
software, using the configured software scaler. Using zimg
might improve this, but in any case it might go against your
goals when using this filter.
WARNING:
Do not use this with --vo=gpu. It will apply filtering twice,
since most --vo=gpu options are unconditionally applied to the
gpu filter. There is no mechanism in mpv to prevent this.
ENCODING
You can encode files from one format/codec to another using this facil-
ity.
--o=<filename>
Enables encoding mode and specifies the output file name.
--of=<format>
Specifies the output format (overrides autodetection by the file
name extension of the file specified by --o). See --of=help for a
full list of supported formats.
--ofopts=<options>
Specifies the output format options for libavformat. See
--ofopts=help for a full list of supported options.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--ofopts-add=<option>
Appends the option given as an argument to the options
list. (Passing multiple options is currently still possi-
ble, but deprecated.)
--ofopts=""
Completely empties the options list.
--oac=<codec>
Specifies the output audio codec. See --oac=help for a full list
of supported codecs.
--oacopts=<options>
Specifies the output audio codec options for libavcodec. See
--oacopts=help for a full list of supported options.
Example
"--oac=libmp3lame --oacopts=b=128000"
selects 128 kbps MP3 encoding.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--oacopts-add=<option>
Appends the option given as an argument to the options
list. (Passing multiple options is currently still possi-
ble, but deprecated.)
--oacopts=""
Completely empties the options list.
--ovc=<codec>
Specifies the output video codec. See --ovc=help for a full list
of supported codecs.
--ovcopts=<options>
Specifies the output video codec options for libavcodec. See
--ovcopts=help for a full list of supported options.
Examples
"--ovc=mpeg4 --ovcopts=qscale=5"
selects constant quantizer scale 5 for MPEG-4 encoding.
"--ovc=libx264 --ovcopts=crf=23"
selects VBR quality factor 23 for H.264 encoding.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
--ovcopts-add=<option>
Appends the option given as an argument to the options
list. (Passing multiple options is currently still possi-
ble, but deprecated.)
--ovcopts=""
Completely empties the options list.
--orawts
Copies input pts to the output video (not supported by some out-
put container formats, e.g. AVI). In this mode, discontinuities
are not fixed and all pts are passed through as-is. Never seek
backwards or use multiple input files in this mode!
--ocopy-metadata=<yes|no>
Copy metadata from input files to output files when encoding (de-
fault: yes).
--oset-metadata=<metadata-tag[,metadata-tag,...]>
Specifies metadata to include in the output file. Supported keys
vary between output formats. For example, Matroska (MKV) and FLAC
allow almost arbitrary keys, while support in MP4 and MP3 is more
limited.
This is a key/value list option. See List Options for details.
Example
"--oset-metadata=title="Output title",comment="Another tag""
adds a title and a comment to the output file.
--oremove-metadata=<metadata-tag[,metadata-tag,...]>
Specifies metadata to exclude from the output file when copying
from the input file.
This is a string list option. See List Options for details.
Example
"--oremove-metadata=comment,genre"
excludes copying of the the comment and genre tags to
the output file.
COMMAND INTERFACE
The mpv core can be controlled with commands and properties. A number of
ways to interact with the player use them: key bindings (input.conf),
OSD (showing information with properties), JSON IPC, the client API
(libmpv), and the classic slave mode.
input.conf
The input.conf file consists of a list of key bindings, for example:
s screenshot # take a screenshot with the s key
LEFT seek 15 # map the left-arrow key to seeking forward by 15 seconds
Each line maps a key to an input command. Keys are specified with their
literal value (upper case if combined with Shift), or a name for special
keys. For example, a maps to the a key without shift, and A maps to a
with shift.
The file is located in the mpv configuration directory (normally at
~/.config/mpv/input.conf depending on platform). The default bindings
are defined here:
https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/etc/input.conf
A list of special keys can be obtained with
mpv --input-keylist
In general, keys can be combined with Shift, Ctrl and Alt:
ctrl+q quit
mpv can be started in input test mode, which displays key bindings and
the commands they're bound to on the OSD, instead of executing the com-
mands:
mpv --input-test --force-window --idle
(Only closing the window will make mpv exit, pressing normal keys will
merely display the binding, even if mapped to quit.)
Also see Key names.
input.conf syntax
[Shift+][Ctrl+][Alt+][Meta+]<key> [{<section>}] <command> ( ; <command>
)*
Note that by default, the right Alt key can be used to create special
characters, and thus does not register as a modifier. This can be
changed with --input-right-alt-gr option.
Newlines always start a new binding. # starts a comment (outside of
quoted string arguments). To bind commands to the # key, SHARP can be
used.
<key> is either the literal character the key produces (ASCII or Unicode
character), or a symbolic name (as printed by --input-keylist).
<section> (braced with { and }) is the input section for this command.
<command> is the command itself. It consists of the command name and
multiple (or none) arguments, all separated by whitespace. String argu-
ments should be quoted, typically with ". See Flat command syntax.
You can bind multiple commands to one key. For example:
a show-text "command 1" ; show-text "command 2"
It's also possible to bind a command to a sequence of keys:
a-b-c show-text "command run after a, b, c have been pressed"
(This is not shown in the general command syntax.)
If a or a-b or b are already bound, this will run the first command that
matches, and the multi-key command will never be called. Intermediate
keys can be remapped to ignore in order to avoid this issue. The maximum
number of (non-modifier) keys for combinations is currently 4.
Key names
All mouse and keyboard input is to converted to mpv-specific key names.
Key names are either special symbolic identifiers representing a physi-
cal key, or text key names, which are Unicode code points encoded as
UTF-8. These are what keyboard input would normally produce, for example
a for the A key. These are influenced by keyboard modifiers which af-
fect produced text, such as shift and caps lock. As a consequence, mpv
uses input translated by the current OS keyboard layout, rather than
physical scan codes.
Currently there is the hardcoded assumption that every text key can be
represented as a single Unicode code point (in NFKC form).
All key names can be combined with the modifiers Shift, Ctrl, Alt, Meta.
They must be prefixed to the actual key name, where each modifier is
followed by a + (for example ctrl+q).
NOTE:
The Shift modifier requires some attention. In general, when the
Shift modifier is combined with a key which produces text, the actual
produced text key name when shift is pressed should be used.
For instance, on the US keyboard layout, Shift+2 should usually be
specified as key-name @ at input.conf, and similarly the combination
Alt+Shift+2 is usually Alt+@, etc.
In general, the Shift modifier, when specified with text key names,
is ignored: for instance, mpv interprets Shift+2 as 2. The only ex-
ceptions are ASCII letters, which are normalized by mpv. For exam-
ple, Shift+a is interpreted as A.
Special key names like Shift+LEFT work as expected. If in doubt -
use --input-test to check how a key/combination is seen by mpv.
Symbolic key names and modifier names are case-insensitive. Unicode key
names are case-sensitive just like how keyboard text input would pro-
duce.
Another type of key names are hexadecimal key names, which start with
0x, followed by the hexadecimal value of the key. The hexadecimal value
can be either a Unicode code point value, or can serve as fallback for
special keys that do not have a special mpv defined name. They will
break as soon as mpv adds proper names for them, but can enable you to
use a key at all if that does not happen.
All symbolic names are listed by --input-keylist. --input-test is a spe-
cial mode that prints all input on the OSD.
Comments on some symbolic names:
KP* Keypad names. Behavior varies by backend (whether they implement
this, and on how they treat numlock), but typically, mpv tries to
map keys on the keypad to separate names, even if they produce
the same text as normal keys.
MOUSE_BTN*, MBTN*
Various mouse buttons.
Depending on backend, the mouse wheel might also be represented
as a button. In addition, MOUSE_BTN3 to MOUSE_BTN6 are depre-
cated aliases for WHEEL_UP, WHEEL_DOWN, WHEEL_LEFT, WHEEL_RIGHT.
MBTN* are aliases for MOUSE_BTN*.
WHEEL_*
Mouse wheels and touch pads (typically).
These key are scalable when used with scalable commands if the
underlying device supports high-resolution scrolling (e.g. touch
pads).
AXIS_* Deprecated aliases for WHEEL_*.
*_DBL Mouse button double clicks.
MOUSE_MOVE, MOUSE_ENTER, MOUSE_LEAVE
Emitted by mouse move events. Enter/leave happens when the mouse
enters or leave the mpv window (or the current mouse region, us-
ing the deprecated mouse region input section mechanism).
CLOSE_WIN
Pseudo key emitted when closing the mpv window using the OS win-
dow manager (for example, by clicking the close button in the
window title bar).
GAMEPAD_*
Keys emitted by the SDL gamepad backend.
UNMAPPED
Pseudo-key that matches any unmapped key. (You should probably
avoid this if possible, because it might change behavior or get
removed in the future.)
ANY_UNICODE
Pseudo-key that matches any key that produces text. (You should
probably avoid this if possible, because it might change behavior
or get removed in the future.)
Flat command syntax
This is the syntax used in input.conf, and referred to "input.conf syn-
tax" in a number of other places.
<command> ::= [<prefixes>] <command_name> (<argument>)*
<argument> ::= (<unquoted> | " <double_quoted> " | ' <single_quoted> ' | `X <custom_quoted> X`)
command_name is an unquoted string with the command name itself. See
List of Input Commands for a list.
Arguments are separated by whitespaces even if the command expects only
one argument. Arguments with whitespaces or other special characters
must be quoted, or the command cannot be parsed correctly.
Double quotes interpret JSON/C-style escaping, like \t or \" or \\.
JSON escapes according to RFC 8259, minus surrogate pair escapes. This
is the only form which allows newlines at the value - as \n.
Single quotes take the content literally, and cannot include the sin-
gle-quote character at the value.
Custom quotes also take the content literally, but are more flexible
than single quotes. They start with ` (back-quote) followed by any ASCII
character, and end at the first occurrence of the same pair in reverse
order, e.g. `-foo-` or ``bar``. The final pair sequence is not allowed
at the value - in these examples -` and `` respectively. In the second
example the last character of the value also can't be a back-quote.
Mixed quoting at the same argument, like 'foo'"bar", is not supported.
Note that argument parsing and property expansion happen at different
stages. First, arguments are determined as described above, and then,
where applicable, properties are expanded - regardless of argument quot-
ing. However, expansion can still be prevented with the raw prefix or
$>. See Input Command Prefixes and Property Expansion.
Commands specified as arrays
This applies to certain APIs, such as mp.commandv() or mp.command_na-
tive() (with array parameters) in Lua scripting, or mpv_command() or
mpv_command_node() (with MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY) in the C libmpv client
API.
The command as well as all arguments are passed as a single array. Simi-
lar to the Flat command syntax, you can first pass prefixes as strings
(each as separate array item), then the command name as string, and then
each argument as string or a native value.
Since these APIs pass arguments as separate strings or native values,
they do not expect quotes, and do support escaping. Technically, there
is the input.conf parser, which first splits the command string into ar-
guments, and then invokes argument parsers for each argument. The in-
put.conf parser normally handles quotes and escaping. The array command
APIs mentioned above pass strings directly to the argument parsers, or
can sidestep them by the ability to pass non-string values.
Property expansion is disabled by default for these APIs. This can be
changed with the expand-properties prefix. See Input Command Prefixes.
Sometimes commands have string arguments, that in turn are actually
parsed by other components (e.g. filter strings with vf add) - in these
cases, you you would have to double-escape in input.conf, but not with
the array APIs.
For complex commands, consider using Named arguments instead, which
should give slightly more compatibility. Some commands do not support
named arguments and inherently take an array, though.
Named arguments
This applies to certain APIs, such as mp.command_native() (with tables
that have string keys) in Lua scripting, or mpv_command_node() (with
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP) in the C libmpv client API.
The name of the command is provided with a name string field. The name
of each command is defined in each command description in the List of
Input Commands. --input-cmdlist also lists them. See the subprocess com-
mand for an example.
Some commands do not support named arguments (e.g. run command). You
need to use APIs that pass arguments as arrays.
Named arguments are not supported in the "flat" input.conf syntax, which
means you cannot use them for key bindings in input.conf at all.
Property expansion is disabled by default for these APIs. This can be
changed with the expand-properties prefix. See Input Command Prefixes.
List of Input Commands
Commands with parameters have the parameter name enclosed in < / >.
Don't add those to the actual command. Optional arguments are enclosed
in [ / ]. If you don't pass them, they will be set to a default value.
Remember to quote string arguments in input.conf (see Flat command syn-
tax).
Playback Control
seek <target> [<flags>]
Change the playback position. By default, seeks by a relative
amount of seconds.
The second argument consists of flags controlling the seek mode:
relative (default)
Seek relative to current position (a negative value seeks
backwards).
absolute
Seek to a given time (a negative value starts from the end
of the file).
absolute-percent
Seek to a given percent position.
relative-percent
Seek relative to current position in percent.
keyframes
Always restart playback at keyframe boundaries (fast).
exact Always do exact/hr/precise seeks (slow).
Multiple flags can be combined, e.g.: absolute+keyframes.
By default, keyframes is used for relative, relative-percent, and
absolute-percent seeks, while exact is used for absolute seeks.
Before mpv 0.9, the keyframes and exact flags had to be passed as
3rd parameter (essentially using a space instead of +). The 3rd
parameter is still parsed, but is considered deprecated.
This is a scalable command. See the documentation of nonscalable
input command prefix in Input Command Prefixes for details.
revert-seek [<flags>]
Undoes the seek command, and some other commands that seek (but
not necessarily all of them). Calling this command once will jump
to the playback position before the seek. Calling it a second
time undoes the revert-seek command itself. This only works
within a single file.
The first argument is optional, and can change the behavior:
mark Mark the current time position. The next normal re-
vert-seek command will seek back to this point, no matter
how many seeks happened since last time.
mark-permanent
If set, mark the current position, and do not change the
mark position before the next revert-seek command that has
mark or mark-permanent set (or playback of the current
file ends). Until this happens, revert-seek will always
seek to the marked point. This flag cannot be combined
with mark.
Using it without any arguments gives you the default behavior.
sub-seek <skip> [<flags>]
Change video and audio position such that the subtitle event af-
ter <skip> subtitle events is displayed. For example, sub-seek 1
skips to the next subtitle, sub-seek -1 skips to the previous
subtitles, and sub-seek 0 seeks to the beginning of the current
subtitle.
This is similar to sub-step, except that it seeks video and audio
instead of adjusting the subtitle delay.
Secondary argument:
primary (default)
Seeks through the primary subtitles.
secondary
Seeks through the secondary subtitles.
For embedded subtitles (like with Matroska), this works only with
subtitle events that have already been displayed, or are within a
short prefetch range. See Cache for details on how to control the
available prefetch range.
frame-step [<frames>] [<flags>]
Go forward or backwards by a given amount of frames. If <frames>
is omitted, the value is assumed to be 1.
The second argument consists of flags controlling the frameskip
mode:
play (default)
Play the video forward by the desired amount of frames and
then pause. This only works with a positive value (i.e.
frame stepping forwards).
seek Perform a very exact seek that attempts to seek by the de-
sired amount of frames. If <frames> is -1, this will go
exactly to the previous frame.
mute The same as play but mutes the audio stream if there is
any during the duration of the frame step.
Note that the default frameskip mode, play, is more accurate but
can be slow depending on how many frames you are skipping (i.e.
skipping forward 100 frames will play 100 frames of video before
stopping). This mode only works when going forwards. Frame step-
ping back always performs a seek.
When using seek mode, this can still be very slow (it tries to be
precise, not fast), and sometimes fails to behave as expected.
How well this works depends on whether precise seeking works cor-
rectly (e.g. see the --hr-seek-demuxer-offset option). Video fil-
ters or other video post-processing that modifies timing of
frames (e.g. deinterlacing) should usually work, but might make
framestepping silently behave incorrectly in corner cases. Using
--hr-seek-framedrop=no should help, although it might make pre-
cise seeking slower. Also if the video is VFR, framestepping us-
ing seeks will probably not work correctly except for the -1
case.
This does not work with audio-only playback.
frame-back-step
Calls frame-step with a value of -1 and the seek flag.
This does not work with audio-only playback.
stop [<flags>]
Stop playback and clear playlist. With default settings, this is
essentially like quit. Useful for the client API: playback can be
stopped without terminating the player.
The first argument is optional, and supports the following flags:
keep-playlist
Do not clear the playlist.
Property Manipulation
set <name> <value>
Set the given property or option to the given value.
del <name>
Delete the given property. Most properties cannot be deleted.
add <name> [<value>]
Add the given value to the property or option. On overflow or un-
derflow, clamp the property to the maximum. If <value> is omit-
ted, assume 1.
Whether or not key-repeat is enabled by default depends on the
property. Currently properties with continuous values are re-
peatable by default (like volume), while discrete values are not
(like osd-level).
This is a scalable command. See the documentation of nonscalable
input command prefix in Input Command Prefixes for details.
multiply <name> <value>
Similar to add, but multiplies the property or option with the
numeric value.
cycle <name> [<value>]
Cycle the given property or option. The second argument can be up
or down to set the cycle direction. On overflow, set the property
back to the minimum, on underflow set it to the maximum. If up or
down is omitted, assume up.
Whether or not key-repeat is enabled by default depends on the
property. Currently properties with continuous values are re-
peatable by default (like volume), while discrete values are not
(like osd-level).
This is a scalable command. See the documentation of nonscalable
input command prefix in Input Command Prefixes for details.
cycle-values [<"!reverse">] <property> <value1> [<value2> [...]]
Cycle through a list of values. Each invocation of the command
will set the given property to the next value in the list. The
command will use the current value of the property/option, and
use it to determine the current position in the list of values.
Once it has found it, it will set the next value in the list
(wrapping around to the first item if needed).
This command has a variable number of arguments, and cannot be
used with named arguments.
The special argument !reverse can be used to cycle the value list
in reverse. The only advantage is that you don't need to reverse
the value list yourself when adding a second key binding for cy-
cling backwards.
change-list <name> <operation> <value>
This command changes list options as described in List Options.
The <name> parameter is the normal option name, while <operation>
is the suffix or action used on the option.
Some operations take no value, but the command still requires the
value parameter. In these cases, the value must be an empty
string.
Example
change-list glsl-shaders append file.glsl
Add a filename to the glsl-shaders list. The command
line equivalent is --glsl-shaders-append=file.glsl or
alternatively --glsl-shader=file.glsl.
Playlist Manipulation
playlist-next [<flags>]
Go to the next entry on the playlist.
First argument:
weak (default)
If the last file on the playlist is currently played, do
nothing.
force Terminate playback if there are no more files on the
playlist.
playlist-prev [<flags>]
Go to the previous entry on the playlist.
First argument:
weak (default)
If the first file on the playlist is currently played, do
nothing.
force Terminate playback if the first file is being played.
playlist-next-playlist
Go to the next entry on the playlist with a different
playlist-path.
playlist-prev-playlist
Go to the first of the previous entries on the playlist with a
different playlist-path.
playlist-play-index <integer|current|none>
Start (or restart) playback of the given playlist index. In addi-
tion to the 0-based playlist entry index, it supports the follow-
ing values:
<current>
The current playlist entry (as in playlist-current-pos)
will be played again (unload and reload). If none is set,
playback is stopped. (In corner cases, playlist-cur-
rent-pos can point to a playlist entry even if playback is
currently inactive,
<none> Playback is stopped. If idle mode (--idle) is enabled, the
player will enter idle mode, otherwise it will exit.
This command is similar to loadfile in that it only manipulates
the state of what to play next, without waiting until the current
file is unloaded, and the next one is loaded.
Setting playlist-pos or similar properties can have a similar ef-
fect to this command. However, it's more explicit, and guarantees
that playback is restarted if for example the new playlist entry
is the same as the previous one.
loadfile <url> [<flags> [<index> [<options>]]]
Load the given file or URL and play it. Technically, this is just
a playlist manipulation command (which either replaces the
playlist or adds an entry to it). Actual file loading happens in-
dependently. For example, a loadfile command that replaces the
current file with a new one returns before the current file is
stopped, and the new file even begins loading.
Second argument:
<replace> (default)
Stop playback of the current file, and play the new file
immediately.
<append>
Append the file to the playlist.
<append-play>
Append the file, and if nothing is currently playing,
start playback. (Always starts with the added file, even
if the playlist was not empty before running this com-
mand.)
<insert-next>
Insert the file into the playlist, directly after the cur-
rent entry.
<insert-next-play>
Insert the file next, and if nothing is currently playing,
start playback. (Always starts with the added file, even
if the playlist was not empty before running this com-
mand.)
<insert-at>
Insert the file into the playlist, at the index given in
the third argument.
<insert-at-play>
Insert the file at the index given in the third argument,
and if nothing is currently playing, start playback. (Al-
ways starts with the added file, even if the playlist was
not empty before running this command.)
The third argument is an insertion index, used only by the in-
sert-at and insert-at-play actions. When used with those actions,
the new item will be inserted at the index position in the
playlist, or appended to the end if index is less than 0 or
greater than the size of the playlist. This argument will be ig-
nored for all other actions. This argument is added in mpv
0.38.0.
The fourth argument is a list of options and values which should
be set while the file is playing. It is of the form
opt1=value1,opt2=value2,... When using the client API, this can
be a MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (or a Lua table), however the values
themselves must be strings currently. These options are set dur-
ing playback, and restored to the previous value at end of play-
back (see Per-File Options).
WARNING:
Since mpv 0.38.0, an insertion index argument is added as the
third argument. This breaks all existing uses of this command
which make use of the argument to include the list of options
to be set while the file is playing. To address this problem,
the third argument now needs to be set to -1 if the fourth ar-
gument needs to be used.
loadlist <url> [<flags> [<index>]]
Load the given playlist file or URL (like --playlist).
Second argument:
<replace> (default)
Stop playback and replace the internal playlist with the
new one.
<append>
Append the new playlist at the end of the current internal
playlist.
<append-play>
Append the new playlist, and if nothing is currently play-
ing, start playback. (Always starts with the new playlist,
even if the internal playlist was not empty before running
this command.)
<insert-next>
Insert the new playlist into the current internal
playlist, directly after the current entry.
<insert-next-play>
Insert the new playlist, and if nothing is currently play-
ing, start playback. (Always starts with the new playlist,
even if the internal playlist was not empty before running
this command.)
<insert-at>
Insert the new playlist at the index given in the third
argument.
<insert-at-play>
Insert the new playlist at the index given in the third
argument, and if nothing is currently playing, start play-
back. (Always starts with the new playlist, even if the
internal playlist was not empty before running this com-
mand.)
The third argument is an insertion index, used only by the in-
sert-at and insert-at-play actions. When used with those actions,
the new playlist will be inserted at the index position in the
internal playlist, or appended to the end if index is less than 0
or greater than the size of the internal playlist. This argument
will be ignored for all other actions.
playlist-clear
Clear the playlist, except the currently played file.
playlist-remove <index>
Remove the playlist entry at the given index. Index values start
counting with 0. The special value current removes the current
entry. Note that removing the current entry also stops playback
and starts playing the next entry.
playlist-move <index1> <index2>
Move the playlist entry at index1, so that it takes the place of
the entry index2. (Paradoxically, the moved playlist entry will
not have the index value index2 after moving if index1 was lower
than index2, because index2 refers to the target entry, not the
index the entry will have after moving.)
playlist-shuffle
Shuffle the playlist. This is similar to what is done on start if
the --shuffle option is used.
playlist-unshuffle
Attempt to revert the previous playlist-shuffle command. This
works only once (multiple successive playlist-unshuffle commands
do nothing). May not work correctly if new recursive playlists
have been opened since a playlist-shuffle command.
Track Manipulation
sub-add <url> [<flags> [<title> [<lang>]]]
Load the given subtitle file or stream. By default, it is se-
lected as current subtitle after loading.
The flags argument is one of the following values:
<select>
Select the subtitle immediately (default).
<auto>
Don't select the subtitle. (Or in some special situations, let
the default stream selection mechanism decide.)
<cached>
Select the subtitle. If a subtitle with the same filename was
already added, that one is selected, instead of loading a du-
plicate entry. (In this case, title/language are ignored, and
if the was changed since it was loaded, these changes won't be
reflected.)
Additionally the following flags can be added with a +:
<hearing-impaired>
Marks the track as suitable for the hearing impaired.
<visual-impaired>
Marks the track as suitable for the visually impaired.
<attached-picture> (only for video-add)
Marks the track as an attached picture, same as albumart argu-
ment for `video-add.
The title argument sets the track title in the UI.
The lang argument sets the track language, and can also influence
stream selection with flags set to auto.
sub-remove [<id>]
Remove the given subtitle track. If the id argument is missing,
remove the current track. (Works on external subtitle files
only.)
sub-reload [<id>]
Reload the given subtitle tracks. If the id argument is missing,
reload the current track. (Works on external subtitle files
only.)
This works by unloading and re-adding the subtitle track.
sub-step <skip> [<flags>]
Change subtitle timing such, that the subtitle event after the
next <skip> subtitle events is displayed. <skip> can be negative
to step backwards.
Secondary argument:
primary (default)
Steps through the primary subtitles.
secondary
Steps through the secondary subtitles.
audio-add <url> [<flags> [<title> [<lang>]]]
Load the given audio file. See sub-add command.
audio-remove [<id>]
Remove the given audio track. See sub-remove command.
audio-reload [<id>]
Reload the given audio tracks. See sub-reload command.
video-add <url> [<flags> [<title> [<lang> [<albumart>]]]]
Load the given video file. See sub-add command for common op-
tions.
albumart (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
If enabled, mpv will load the given video as album art.
video-remove [<id>]
Remove the given video track. See sub-remove command.
video-reload [<id>]
Reload the given video tracks. See sub-reload command.
rescan-external-files [<mode>]
Rescan external files according to the current --sub-auto, --au-
dio-file-auto and --cover-art-auto settings. This can be used to
auto-load external files after the file was loaded.
The mode argument is one of the following:
<reselect> (default)
Select the default audio and subtitle streams, which typi-
cally selects external files with the highest preference.
(The implementation is not perfect, and could be improved
on request.)
<keep-selection>
Do not change current track selections.
Text Manipulation
print-text <text>
Print text to stdout. The string can contain properties (see
Property Expansion). Take care to put the argument in quotes.
expand-text <text>
Property-expand the argument and return the expanded string. This
can be used only through the client API or from a script using
mp.command_native. (see Property Expansion).
expand-path <text>
Expand a path's double-tilde placeholders into a platform-spe-
cific path. As expand-text, this can only be used through the
client API or from a script using mp.command_native.
Example
mp.osd_message(mp.command_native({"expand-path",
"~~home/"}))
This line of Lua would show the location of the user's
mpv configuration directory on the OSD.
normalize-path <filename>
Return a canonical representation of the path filename by con-
verting it to an absolute path, removing consecutive slashes, re-
moving . components, resolving .. components, and converting
slashes to backslashes on Windows. Symlinks are not resolved un-
less the platform is Unix-like and one of the path components is
... If filename is a URL, it is returned unchanged. This can only
be used through the client API or from a script using mp.com-
mand_native.
Example
mp.osd_message(mp.command_native({"normalize-path",
"/foo//./bar"}))
This line of Lua prints "/foo/bar" on the OSD.
escape-ass <text>
Modify text so that commands and functions that interpret ASS
tags, such as osd-overlay and mp.create_osd_overlay, will display
it verbatim, and return it. This can only be used through the
client API or from a script using mp.command_native.
Example
mp.osd_message(mp.command_native({"escape-ass", "foo
{bar}"}))
This line of Lua prints "foo \{bar}" on the OSD.
Configuration Commands
apply-profile <name> [<mode>]
Apply the contents of a named profile. This is like using pro-
file=name in a config file, except you can map it to a key bind-
ing to change it at runtime.
The mode argument:
apply Apply the profile. Default if the argument is omitted.
restore
Restore options set by a previous apply-profile command
for this profile. Only works if the profile has pro-
file-restore set to a relevant mode. Prints a warning if
nothing could be done. See Runtime profiles for details.
load-config-file <filename>
Load a configuration file, similar to the --include option. If
the file was already included, its previous options are not reset
before it is reparsed.
write-watch-later-config
Write the resume config file that the quit-watch-later command
writes, but continue playback normally.
delete-watch-later-config [<filename>]
Delete any existing resume config file that was written by
quit-watch-later or write-watch-later-config. If a filename is
specified, then the deleted config is for that file; otherwise,
it is the same one as would be written by quit-watch-later or
write-watch-later-config in the current circumstance.
OSD Commands
show-text <text> [<duration>|-1 [<level>]]
Show text on the OSD. The string can contain properties, which
are expanded as described in Property Expansion. This can be used
to show playback time, filename, and so on. no-osd has no effect
on this command.
<duration>
The time in ms to show the message for. By default, it
uses the same value as --osd-duration.
<level>
The minimum OSD level to show the text at (see
--osd-level).
show-progress
Show the progress bar, the elapsed time and the total duration of
the file on the OSD. no-osd has no effect on this command.
overlay-add <id> <x> <y> <file> <offset> <fmt> <w> <h> <stride> <dw>
<dh>
Add an OSD overlay sourced from raw data. This might be useful
for scripts and applications controlling mpv, and which want to
display things on top of the video window.
Overlays are usually displayed in screen resolution, but with
some VOs, the resolution is reduced to that of the video's. You
can read the osd-width and osd-height properties. At least with
--vo-xv and anamorphic video (such as DVD), osd-par should be
read as well, and the overlay should be aspect-compensated.
This has the following named arguments. The order of them is not
guaranteed, so you should always call them with named arguments,
see Named arguments.
id is an integer between 0 and 63 identifying the overlay ele-
ment. The ID can be used to add multiple overlay parts, update a
part by using this command with an already existing ID, or to re-
move a part with overlay-remove. Using a previously unused ID
will add a new overlay, while reusing an ID will update it.
x and y specify the position where the OSD should be displayed.
file specifies the file the raw image data is read from. It can
be either a numeric UNIX file descriptor prefixed with @ (e.g.
@4), or a filename. The file will be mapped into memory with
mmap(), copied, and unmapped before the command returns (changed
in mpv 0.18.1).
It is also possible to pass a raw memory address for use as
bitmap memory by passing a memory address as integer prefixed
with an & character. Passing the wrong thing here will crash the
player. This mode might be useful for use with libmpv. The offset
parameter is simply added to the memory address (since mpv 0.8.0,
ignored before).
offset is the byte offset of the first pixel in the source file.
(The current implementation always mmap's the whole file from po-
sition 0 to the end of the image, so large offsets should be
avoided. Before mpv 0.8.0, the offset was actually passed di-
rectly to mmap, but it was changed to make using it easier.)
fmt is a string identifying the image format. Currently, only
bgra is defined. This format has 4 bytes per pixels, with 8 bits
per component. The least significant 8 bits are blue, and the
most significant 8 bits are alpha (in little endian, the compo-
nents are B-G-R-A, with B as first byte). This uses premultiplied
alpha: every color component is already multiplied with the alpha
component. This means the numeric value of each component is
equal to or smaller than the alpha component. (Violating this
rule will lead to different results with different VOs: numeric
overflows resulting from blending broken alpha values is consid-
ered something that shouldn't happen, and consequently implemen-
tations don't ensure that you get predictable behavior in this
case.)
w, h, and stride specify the size of the overlay. w is the visi-
ble width of the overlay, while stride gives the width in bytes
in memory. In the simple case, and with the bgra format,
stride==4*w. In general, the total amount of memory accessed is
stride * h. (Technically, the minimum size would be stride * (h
- 1) + w * 4, but for simplicity, the player will access all
stride * h bytes.)
dw and dh specify the (optional) display size of the overlay.
The overlay visible portion of the overlay (w and h) is scaled to
in display to dw and dh. If parameters are not present, the val-
ues for w and h are used.
NOTE:
Before mpv 0.18.1, you had to do manual "double buffering"
when updating an overlay by replacing it with a different mem-
ory buffer. Since mpv 0.18.1, the memory is simply copied and
doesn't reference any of the memory indicated by the command's
arguments after the command returns. If you want to use this
command before mpv 0.18.1, reads the old docs to see how to
handle this correctly.
overlay-remove <id>
Remove an overlay added with overlay-add and the same ID. Does
nothing if no overlay with this ID exists.
osd-overlay
Add/update/remove an OSD overlay.
(Although this sounds similar to overlay-add, osd-overlay is for
text overlays, while overlay-add is for bitmaps. Maybe over-
lay-add will be merged into osd-overlay to remove this oddity.)
You can use this to add text overlays in ASS format. ASS has ad-
vanced positioning and rendering tags, which can be used to ren-
der almost any kind of vector graphics.
This command accepts the following parameters:
id Arbitrary integer that identifies the overlay. Multiple
overlays can be added by calling this command with differ-
ent id parameters. Calling this command with the same id
replaces the previously set overlay.
There is a separate namespace for each libmpv client (i.e.
IPC connection, script), so IDs can be made up and as-
signed by the API user without conflicting with other API
users.
If the libmpv client is destroyed, all overlays associated
with it are also deleted. In particular, connecting via
--input-ipc-server, adding an overlay, and disconnecting
will remove the overlay immediately again.
format String that gives the type of the overlay. Accepts the
following values (HTML rendering of this is broken, view
the generated manpage instead, or the raw RST source):
ass-events
The data parameter is a string. The string is split
on the newline character. Every line is turned into
the Text part of a Dialogue ASS event. Timing is
unused (but behavior of timing dependent ASS tags
may change in future mpv versions).
Note that it's better to put multiple lines into
data, instead of adding multiple OSD overlays.
This provides 2 ASS Styles. OSD contains the text
style as defined by the current --osd-... options.
Default is similar, and contains style that OSD
would have if all options were set to the default.
In addition, the res_x and res_y options specify
the value of the ASS PlayResX and PlayResY header
fields. If res_y is set to 0, PlayResY is initial-
ized to an arbitrary default value (but note that
the default for this command is 720, not 0). If
res_x is set to 0, PlayResX is set based on res_y
such that a virtual ASS pixel has a square pixel
aspect ratio.
none Special value that causes the overlay to be re-
moved. Most parameters other than id and format are
mostly ignored.
data String defining the overlay contents according to the for-
mat parameter.
res_x, res_y
Used if format is set to ass-events (see description
there). Optional, defaults to 0/720.
z The Z order of the overlay. Optional, defaults to 0.
Note that Z order between different overlays of different
formats is static, and cannot be changed (currently, this
means that bitmap overlays added by overlay-add are always
on top of the ASS overlays added by osd-overlay). In addi-
tion, the builtin OSD components are always below any of
the custom OSD. (This includes subtitles of any kind as
well as text rendered by show-text.)
It's possible that future mpv versions will randomly
change how Z order between different OSD formats and
builtin OSD is handled.
hidden If set to true, do not display this (default: false).
compute_bounds
If set to true, attempt to determine bounds and write them
to the command's result value as x0, x1, y0, y1 rectangle
(default: false). If the rectangle is empty, not known, or
somehow degenerate, it is not set. x1/y1 is the coordinate
of the bottom exclusive corner of the rectangle.
The result value may depend on the VO window size, and is
based on the last known window size at the time of the
call. This means the results may be different from what is
actually rendered.
For ass-events, the result rectangle is recomputed to
PlayRes coordinates (res_x/res_y). If window size is not
known, a fallback is chosen.
You should be aware that this mechanism is very ineffi-
cient, as it renders the full result, and then uses the
bounding box of the rendered bitmap list (even if hidden
is set). It will flush various caches. Its results also
depend on the used libass version.
This feature is experimental, and may change in some way
again.
NOTE:
Always use named arguments (mpv_command_node()). Lua scripts
should use the mp.create_osd_overlay() helper instead of in-
voking this command directly.
Input and Keybind Commands
mouse <x> <y> [<button> [<mode>]]
Send a mouse event with given coordinate (<x>, <y>).
Second argument:
<button>
The button number of clicked mouse button. This should be
one of 0-19. If <button> is omitted, only the position
will be updated.
Third argument:
<single> (default)
The mouse event represents regular single click.
<double>
The mouse event represents double-click.
keypress <name> [<scale>]
Send a key event through mpv's input handler, triggering whatever
behavior is configured to that key. name uses the input.conf nam-
ing scheme for keys and modifiers. scale is used to scale numeri-
cal change effected by the bound command (same mechanism as pre-
cise scrolling). Useful for the client API: key events can be
sent to libmpv to handle internally.
keydown <name>
Similar to keypress, but sets the KEYDOWN flag so that if the key
is bound to a repeatable command, it will be run repeatedly with
mpv's key repeat timing until the keyup command is called.
keyup [<name>]
Set the KEYUP flag, stopping any repeated behavior that had been
triggered. name is optional. If name is not given or is an empty
string, KEYUP will be set on all keys. Otherwise, KEYUP will only
be set on the key specified by name.
keybind <name> <cmd> [<comment>]
Binds a key to an input command. cmd must be a complete command
containing all the desired arguments and flags. Both name and cmd
use the input.conf naming scheme. comment is an optional string
which can be read as the comment entry of input-bindings. This
is primarily useful for the client API.
enable-section <name> [<flags>]
This command is deprecated, except for mpv-internal uses.
Enable all key bindings in the named input section.
The enabled input sections form a stack. Bindings in sections on
the top of the stack are preferred to lower sections. This com-
mand puts the section on top of the stack. If the section was al-
ready on the stack, it is implicitly removed beforehand. (A sec-
tion cannot be on the stack more than once.)
The flags parameter can be a combination (separated by +) of the
following flags:
<exclusive>
All sections enabled before the newly enabled section are
disabled. They will be re-enabled as soon as all exclu-
sive sections above them are removed. In other words, the
new section shadows all previous sections.
<allow-hide-cursor>
This feature can't be used through the public API.
<allow-vo-dragging>
Same.
disable-section <name>
This command is deprecated, except for mpv-internal uses.
Disable the named input section. Undoes enable-section.
define-section <name> <contents> [<flags>]
This command is deprecated, except for mpv-internal uses.
Create a named input section, or replace the contents of an al-
ready existing input section. The contents parameter uses the
same syntax as the input.conf file (except that using the section
syntax in it is not allowed), including the need to separate
bindings with a newline character.
If the contents parameter is an empty string, the section is re-
moved.
The section with the name default is the normal input section.
In general, input sections have to be enabled with the en-
able-section command, or they are ignored.
The last parameter has the following meaning:
<default> (also used if parameter omitted)
Use a key binding defined by this section only if the user
hasn't already bound this key to a command.
<force>
Always bind a key. (The input section that was made active
most recently wins if there are ambiguities.)
This command can be used to dispatch arbitrary keys to a script
or a client API user. If the input section defines script-binding
commands, it is also possible to get separate events on key
up/down, and relatively detailed information about the key state.
The special key name unmapped can be used to match any unmapped
key.
load-input-conf <filename>
Load an input configuration file, similar to the --input-conf op-
tion. If the file was already included, its previous bindings are
not reset before it is reparsed.
Execution Commands
run <command> [<arg1> [<arg2> [...]]]
Run the given command. Unlike in MPlayer/mplayer2 and earlier
versions of mpv (0.2.x and older), this doesn't call the shell.
Instead, the command is run directly, with each argument passed
separately. Each argument is expanded like in Property Expansion.
This command has a variable number of arguments, and cannot be
used with named arguments.
The program is run in a detached way. mpv doesn't wait until the
command is completed, but continues playback right after spawning
it.
To get the old behavior, use /bin/sh and -c as the first two ar-
guments.
Example
run "/bin/sh" "-c" "echo ${title} > /tmp/playing"
This is not a particularly good example, because it
doesn't handle escaping, and a specially prepared file
might allow an attacker to execute arbitrary shell com-
mands. It is recommended to write a small shell script,
and call that with run.
subprocess
Similar to run, but gives more control about process execution to
the caller, and does not detach the process.
You can avoid blocking until the process terminates by running
this command asynchronously. (For example mp.command_na-
tive_async() in Lua scripting.)
This has the following named arguments. The order of them is not
guaranteed, so you should always call them with named arguments,
see Named arguments.
args (MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY[MPV_FORMAT_STRING])
Array of strings with the command as first argument, and
subsequent command line arguments following. This is just
like the run command argument list.
The first array entry is either an absolute path to the
executable, or a filename with no path components, in
which case the executable is searched in the directories
in the PATH environment variable. On Unix, this is equiva-
lent to posix_spawnp and execvp behavior.
playback_only (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
Boolean indicating whether the process should be killed
when playback of the current playlist entry terminates
(optional, default: true). If enabled, stopping playback
will automatically kill the process, and you can't start
it outside of playback.
capture_size (MPV_FORMAT_INT64)
Integer setting the maximum number of stdout plus stderr
bytes that can be captured (optional, default: 64MB). If
the number of bytes exceeds this, capturing is stopped.
The limit is per captured stream.
capture_stdout (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
Capture all data the process outputs to stdout and return
it once the process ends (optional, default: no).
capture_stderr (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
Same as capture_stdout, but for stderr.
detach (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
Whether to run the process in detached mode (optional, de-
fault: no). In this mode, the process is run in a new
process session, and the command does not wait for the
process to terminate. If neither capture_stdout nor cap-
ture_stderr have been set to true, the command returns im-
mediately after the new process has been started, other-
wise the command will read as long as the pipes are open.
env (MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY[MPV_FORMAT_STRING])
Set a list of environment variables for the new process
(default: empty). If an empty list is passed, the envi-
ronment of the mpv process is used instead. (Unlike the
underlying OS mechanisms, the mpv command cannot start a
process with empty environment. Fortunately, that is com-
pletely useless.) The format of the list is as in the exe-
cle() syscall. Each string item defines an environment
variable as in NAME=VALUE.
On Lua, you may use utils.get_env_list() to retrieve the
current environment if you e.g. simply want to add a new
variable.
stdin_data (MPV_FORMAT_STRING)
Feed the given string to the new process' stdin. Since
this is a string, you cannot pass arbitrary binary data.
If the process terminates or closes the pipe before all
data is written, the remaining data is silently discarded.
Probably does not work on win32.
passthrough_stdin (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
If enabled, wire the new process' stdin to mpv's stdin
(default: no). Before mpv 0.33.0, this argument did not
exist, but the behavior was as if this was set to true.
The command returns the following result (as MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE_MAP):
status (MPV_FORMAT_INT64)
Typically this is the process exit code (0 or positive) if
the process terminates normally, or negative for other er-
rors (failed to start, terminated by mpv, and others).
The meaning of negative values is undefined, other than
meaning error (and does not correspond to OS low level
exit status values).
On Windows, it can happen that a negative return value is
returned even if the process terminates normally, because
the win32 UINT exit code is assigned to an int variable
before being set as int64_t field in the result map. This
might be fixed later.
stdout (MPV_FORMAT_BYTE_ARRAY)
Captured stdout stream, limited to capture_size.
stderr (MPV_FORMAT_BYTE_ARRAY)
Same as stdout, but for stderr.
error_string (MPV_FORMAT_STRING)
Empty string if the process terminated normally. The
string killed if the process was terminated in an unusual
way. The string init if the process could not be started.
On Windows, killed is only returned when the process has
been killed by mpv as a result of playback_only being set
to true.
killed_by_us (MPV_FORMAT_FLAG)
Whether the process has been killed by mpv, for example as
a result of playback_only being set to true, aborting the
command (e.g. by mp.abort_async_command()), or if the
player is about to exit.
Note that the command itself will always return success as long
as the parameters are correct. Whether the process could be
spawned or whether it was somehow killed or returned an error
status has to be queried from the result value.
This command can be asynchronously aborted via API. Also see
Asynchronous command details. Only the run command can start
processes in a truly detached way.
NOTE:
The subprocess will always be terminated on player exit if it
wasn't started in detached mode, even if playback_only is
false.
WARNING:
Don't forget to set the playback_only field to false if you
want the command to run while the player is in idle mode, or
if you don't want the end of playback to kill the command.
Example
local r = mp.command_native({
name = "subprocess",
playback_only = false,
capture_stdout = true,
args = {"cat", "/proc/cpuinfo"},
})
if r.status == 0 then
print("result: " .. r.stdout)
end
This is a fairly useless Lua example, which demonstrates how
to run a process in a blocking manner, and retrieving its std-
out output.
quit [<code>]
Exit the player. If an argument is given, it's used as process
exit code.
quit-watch-later [<code>]
Exit player, and store current playback position. Playing that
file later will seek to the previous position on start. The (op-
tional) argument is exactly as in the quit command. See RESUMING
PLAYBACK.
Scripting Commands
script-message [<arg1> [<arg2> [...]]]
Send a message to all clients, and pass it the following list of
arguments. What this message means, how many arguments it takes,
and what the arguments mean is fully up to the receiver and the
sender. Every client receives the message, so be careful about
name clashes (or use script-message-to).
This command has a variable number of arguments, and cannot be
used with named arguments.
script-message-to <target> [<arg1> [<arg2> [...]]]
Same as script-message, but send it only to the client named
<target>. Each client (scripts etc.) has a unique name. For exam-
ple, Lua scripts can get their name via mp.get_script_name().
Note that client names only consist of alphanumeric characters
and _.
This command has a variable number of arguments, and cannot be
used with named arguments.
script-binding <name> [<arg>]
Invoke a script-provided key binding. This can be used to remap
key bindings provided by external Lua scripts.
<name> is the name of the binding. <arg> is a user-provided arbi-
trary string which can be used to provide extra information.
It can optionally be prefixed with the name of the script, using
/ as separator, e.g. script-binding scriptname/bindingname. Note
that script names only consist of alphanumeric characters and _.
For completeness, here is how this command works internally. The
details could change any time. On any matching key event,
script-message-to or script-message is called (depending on
whether the script name is included), with the following argu-
ments in string format:
1. The string key-binding.
2. The name of the binding (as established above).
3. The key state as string (see below).
4. The key name (since mpv 0.15.0).
5. The text the key would produce, or empty string if not applic-
able.
6. The scale of the key, such as the ones produced by WHEEL_*
keys. The scale is 1 if the key is nonscalable.
7. The user-provided string <arg>, or empty string if the argu-
ment is not used.
The 5th argument is only set if no modifiers are present (using
the shift key with a letter is normally not emitted as having a
modifier, and results in upper case text instead, but some back-
ends may mess up).
The key state consists of 3 characters:
1. One of d (key was pressed down), u (was released), r (key is
still down, and was repeated; only if key repeat is enabled
for this binding), p (key was pressed; happens if up/down
can't be tracked).
2. Whether the event originates from the mouse, either m (mouse
button) or - (something else).
3. Whether the event results from a cancellation (e.g. the key is
logically released but not physically released), either c
(canceled) or - (something else). Not all types of cancella-
tions set this flag.
Future versions can add more arguments and more key state charac-
ters to support more input peculiarities.
This is a scalable command. See the documentation of nonscalable
input command prefix in Input Command Prefixes for details.
load-script <filename>
Load a script, similar to the --script option. Whether this waits
for the script to finish initialization or not changed multiple
times, and the future behavior is left undefined.
On success, returns a mpv_node with a client_id field set to the
return value of the mpv_client_id() API call of the newly created
script handle.
Screenshot Commands
screenshot [<flags>]
Take a screenshot.
Multiple flags are available (some can be combined with +):
<subtitles> (default)
Save the video image, in its original resolution, and with
subtitles. Some video outputs may still include the OSD
in the output under certain circumstances.
<video>
Like subtitles, but typically without OSD or subtitles.
The exact behavior depends on the selected video output.
<window>
Save the contents of the mpv window. Typically scaled,
with OSD and subtitles. The exact behavior depends on the
selected video output.
<each-frame>
Take a screenshot each frame. Issue this command again to
stop taking screenshots. Note that you should disable
frame-dropping when using this mode - or you might receive
duplicate images in cases when a frame was dropped. This
flag can be combined with the other flags, e.g.
video+each-frame.
Older mpv versions required passing single and each-frame as sec-
ond argument (and did not have flags). This syntax is still un-
derstood, but deprecated and might be removed in the future.
If you combine this command with another one using ;, you can use
the async flag to make encoding/writing the image file asynchro-
nous. For normal standalone commands, this is always asynchro-
nous, and the flag has no effect. (This behavior changed with mpv
0.29.0.)
On success, returns a mpv_node with a filename field set to the
saved screenshot location.
screenshot-to-file <filename> [<flags>]
Take a screenshot and save it to a given file. The format of the
file will be guessed by the extension (and --screenshot-format is
ignored - the behavior when the extension is missing or unknown
is arbitrary).
The second argument is like the first argument to screenshot and
supports subtitles, video, window.
If the file already exists, it's overwritten.
Like all input command parameters, the filename is subject to
property expansion as described in Property Expansion.
screenshot-raw [<flags> [<format>]]
Return a screenshot in memory. This can be used only through the
client API. The MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP returned by this command has
the w, h, stride fields set to obvious contents.
The format field is set to the format of the screenshot image
data. This can be controlled by the format argument. The format
can be one of the following:
bgr0 (default)
This format is organized as B8G8R8X8 (where B is the LSB).
The contents of the padding X are undefined.
bgra This format is organized as B8G8R8A8 (where B is the LSB).
rgba This format is organized as R8G8B8A8 (where R is the LSB).
rgba64 This format is organized as R16G16B16A16 (where R is the
LSB). Each component occupies 2 bytes per pixel. When
this format is used, the image data will be high bit
depth, and --screenshot-high-bit-depth is ignored.
The data field is of type MPV_FORMAT_BYTE_ARRAY with the actual
image data. The image is freed as soon as the result mpv_node is
freed. As usual with client API semantics, you are not allowed to
write to the image data.
The stride is the number of bytes from a pixel at (x0, y0) to the
pixel at (x0, y0 + 1). This can be larger than w * bpp if the im-
age was cropped, or if there is padding. This number can be nega-
tive as well. You access a pixel with byte_index = y * stride +
x * bpp. Here, bpp is the number of bytes per pixel, which is 8
for rgba64 format and 4 for other formats.
The flags argument is like the first argument to screenshot and
supports subtitles, video, window.
Filter Commands
af <operation> <value>
Change audio filter chain. See vf command.
vf <operation> <value>
Change video filter chain.
The semantics are exactly the same as with option parsing (see
VIDEO FILTERS). As such the text below is a redundant and incom-
plete summary.
The first argument decides what happens:
<set> Overwrite the previous filter chain with the new one.
<add> Append the new filter chain to the previous one.
<toggle>
Check if the given filter (with the exact parameters) is
already in the video chain. If it is, remove the filter.
If it isn't, add the filter. (If several filters are
passed to the command, this is done for each filter.)
A special variant is combining this with labels, and using
@name without filter name and parameters as filter entry.
This toggles the enable/disable flag.
<remove>
Like toggle, but always remove the given filter from the
chain.
<clr> Remove all filters. Note that like the other sub-commands,
this does not control automatically inserted filters.
The argument is always needed. E.g. in case of clr use vf clr "".
You can assign labels to filter by prefixing them with @name:
(where name is a user-chosen arbitrary identifier). Labels can be
used to refer to filters by name in all of the filter chain modi-
fication commands. For add, using an already used label will re-
place the existing filter.
The vf command shows the list of requested filters on the OSD af-
ter changing the filter chain. This is roughly equivalent to
show-text ${vf}. Note that auto-inserted filters for format con-
version are not shown on the list, only what was requested by the
user.
Normally, the commands will check whether the video chain is
recreated successfully, and will undo the operation on failure.
If the command is run before video is configured (can happen if
the command is run immediately after opening a file and before a
video frame is decoded), this check can't be run. Then it can
happen that creating the video chain fails.
Example for input.conf
• a vf set vflip turn the video upside-down on the a key
• b vf set "" remove all video filters on b
• c vf toggle gradfun toggle debanding on c
Example how to toggle disabled filters at runtime
• Add something like vf-add=@deband:!gradfun to mpv.conf. The
@deband: is the label, an arbitrary, user-given name for
this filter entry. The ! before the filter name disables the
filter by default. Everything after this is the normal fil-
ter name and possibly filter parameters, like in the normal
--vf syntax.
• Add a vf toggle @deband to input.conf. This toggles the
"disabled" flag for the filter with the label deband when
the a key is hit.
vf-command <label> <command> <argument> [<target>]
Send a command to the filter. Note that currently, this only
works with the lavfi filter. Refer to the libavfilter documenta-
tion for the list of supported commands for each filter.
<label> is a mpv filter label, use all to send it to all filters
at once.
<command> and <argument> are filter-specific strings.
<target> is a filter or filter instance name and defaults to all.
Note that the target is an additional specifier for filters that
support them, such as complex lavfi filter chains.
af-command <label> <command> <argument> [<target>]
Same as vf-command, but for audio filters.
Miscellaneous Commands
ignore Use this to "block" keys that should be unbound, and do nothing.
Useful for disabling default bindings, without disabling all
bindings with --input-default-bindings=no.
drop-buffers
Drop audio/video/demuxer buffers, and restart from fresh. Might
help with unseekable streams that are going out of sync. This
command might be changed or removed in the future.
dump-cache <start> <end> <filename>
Dump the current cache to the given filename. The <filename> file
is overwritten if it already exists. <start> and <end> give the
time range of what to dump. If no data is cached at the given
time range, nothing may be dumped (creating a file with no pack-
ets).
Dumping a larger part of the cache will freeze the player. No ef-
fort was made to fix this, as this feature was meant mostly for
creating small excerpts.
See --stream-record for various caveats that mostly apply to this
command too, as both use the same underlying code for writing the
output file.
If <filename> is an empty string, an ongoing dump-cache is
stopped.
If <end> is no, then continuous dumping is enabled. Then, after
dumping the existing parts of the cache, anything read from net-
work is appended to the cache as well. This behaves similar to
--stream-record (although it does not conflict with that option,
and they can be both active at the same time).
If the <end> time is after the cache, the command will _not_ wait
and write newly received data to it.
The end of the resulting file may be slightly damaged or incom-
plete at the end. (Not enough effort was made to ensure that the
end lines up properly.)
Note that this command will finish only once dumping ends. That
means it works similar to the screenshot command, just that it
can block much longer. If continuous dumping is used, the command
will not finish until playback is stopped, an error happens, an-
other dump-cache command is run, or an API like
mp.abort_async_command was called to explicitly stop the command.
See Synchronous vs. Asynchronous.
NOTE:
This was mostly created for network streams. For local files,
there may be much better methods to create excerpts and such.
There are tons of much more user-friendly Lua scripts, that
will re-encode parts of a file by spawning a separate instance
of ffmpeg. With network streams, this is not that easily pos-
sible, as the stream would have to be downloaded again. Even
if --stream-record is used to record the stream to the local
filesystem, there may be problems, because the recorded file
is still written to.
This command is experimental, and all details about it may change
in the future.
ab-loop
Cycle through A-B loop states. The first command will set the A
point (the ab-loop-a property); the second the B point, and the
third will clear both points.
ab-loop-dump-cache <filename>
Essentially calls dump-cache with the current AB-loop points as
arguments. Like dump-cache, this will overwrite the file at
<filename>. Likewise, if the B point is set to no, it will enter
continuous dumping after the existing cache was dumped.
The author reserves the right to remove this command if enough
motivation is found to move this functionality to a trivial Lua
script.
ab-loop-align-cache
Re-adjust the A/B loop points to the start and end within the
cache the ab-loop-dump-cache command will (probably) dump. Basi-
cally, it aligns the times on keyframes. The guess might be off
especially at the end (due to granularity issues due to remux-
ing). If the cache shrinks in the meantime, the points set by the
command will not be the effective parameters either.
This command has an even more uncertain future than
ab-loop-dump-cache and might disappear without replacement if the
author decides it's useless.
begin-vo-dragging
Begin window dragging if supported by the current VO. This com-
mand should only be called while a mouse button is being pressed,
otherwise it will be ignored. The exact effect of this command
depends on the VO implementation of window dragging. For example,
on Windows and macOS only the left mouse button can begin window
dragging, while X11 and Wayland allow other mouse buttons.
context-menu
Show context menu on the video window. See Context Menu section
for details.
Undocumented commands: ao-reload (experimental/internal).
List of events
This is a partial list of events. This section describes what
mpv_event_to_node() returns, and which is what scripting APIs and the
JSON IPC sees. Note that the C API has separate C-level declarations
with mpv_event, which may be slightly different.
Note that events are asynchronous: the player core continues running
while events are delivered to scripts and other clients. In some cases,
you can use hooks to enforce synchronous execution.
All events can have the following fields:
event Name as the event (as returned by mpv_event_name()).
id The reply_userdata field (opaque user value). If reply_userdata
is 0, the field is not added.
error Set to an error string (as returned by mpv_error_string()). This
field is missing if no error happened, or the event type does not
report error. Most events leave this unset.
This list uses the event name field value, and the C API symbol in
brackets:
start-file (MPV_EVENT_START_FILE)
Happens right before a new file is loaded. When you receive this,
the player is loading the file (or possibly already done with
it).
This has the following fields:
playlist_entry_id
Playlist entry ID of the file being loaded now.
end-file (MPV_EVENT_END_FILE)
Happens after a file was unloaded. Typically, the player will
load the next file right away, or quit if this was the last file.
The event has the following fields:
reason Has one of these values:
eof The file has ended. This can (but doesn't have to)
include incomplete files or broken network connec-
tions under circumstances.
stop Playback was ended by a command.
quit Playback was ended by sending the quit command.
error An error happened. In this case, an error field is
present with the error string.
redirect
Happens with playlists and similar. Details see
MPV_END_FILE_REASON_REDIRECT in the C API.
unknown
Unknown. Normally doesn't happen, unless the Lua
API is out of sync with the C API. (Likewise, it
could happen that your script gets reason strings
that did not exist yet at the time your script was
written.)
playlist_entry_id
Playlist entry ID of the file that was being played or at-
tempted to be played. This has the same value as the
playlist_entry_id field in the corresponding start-file
event.
file_error
Set to mpv error string describing the approximate reason
why playback failed. Unset if no error known. (In Lua
scripting, this value was set on the error field directly.
This is deprecated since mpv 0.33.0. In the future, this
error field will be unset for this specific event.)
playlist_insert_id
If loading ended, because the playlist entry to be played
was for example a playlist, and the current playlist entry
is replaced with a number of other entries. This may hap-
pen at least with MPV_END_FILE_REASON_REDIRECT (other
event types may use this for similar but different pur-
poses in the future). In this case, playlist_insert_id
will be set to the playlist entry ID of the first inserted
entry, and playlist_insert_num_entries to the total number
of inserted playlist entries. Note this in this specific
case, the ID of the last inserted entry is playlist_in-
sert_id+num-1. Beware that depending on circumstances,
you may observe the new playlist entries before seeing the
event (e.g. reading the "playlist" property or getting a
property change notification before receiving the event).
If this is 0 in the C API, this field isn't added.
playlist_insert_num_entries
See playlist_insert_id. Only present if playlist_insert_id
is present.
file-loaded (MPV_EVENT_FILE_LOADED)
Happens after a file was loaded and begins playback.
seek (MPV_EVENT_SEEK)
Happens on seeking. (This might include cases when the player
seeks internally, even without user interaction. This includes
e.g. segment changes when playing ordered chapters Matroska
files.)
playback-restart (MPV_EVENT_PLAYBACK_RESTART)
Start of playback after seek or after file was loaded.
shutdown (MPV_EVENT_SHUTDOWN)
Sent when the player quits, and the script should terminate. Nor-
mally handled automatically. See Details on the script initial-
ization and lifecycle.
log-message (MPV_EVENT_LOG_MESSAGE)
Receives messages enabled with mpv_request_log_messages() (Lua:
mp.enable_messages).
This contains, in addition to the default event fields, the fol-
lowing fields:
prefix The module prefix, identifies the sender of the message.
This is what the terminal player puts in front of the mes-
sage text when using the --v option, and is also what is
used for --msg-level.
level The log level as string. See msg.log for possible log
level names. Note that later versions of mpv might add
new levels or remove (undocumented) existing ones.
text The log message. The text will end with a newline charac-
ter. Sometimes it can contain multiple lines.
Keep in mind that these messages are meant to be hints for hu-
mans. You should not parse them, and prefix/level/text of mes-
sages might change any time.
hook The event has the following fields:
hook_id
ID to pass to mpv_hook_continue(). The Lua scripting wrap-
per provides a better API around this with mp.add_hook().
get-property-reply (MPV_EVENT_GET_PROPERTY_REPLY)
See C API.
set-property-reply (MPV_EVENT_SET_PROPERTY_REPLY)
See C API.
command-reply (MPV_EVENT_COMMAND_REPLY)
This is one of the commands for which the `error field is mean-
ingful.
JSON IPC and Lua and possibly other backends treat this specially
and may not pass the actual event to the user. See C API.
The event has the following fields:
result The result (on success) of any mpv_node type, if any.
client-message (MPV_EVENT_CLIENT_MESSAGE)
Lua and possibly other backends treat this specially and may not
pass the actual event to the user.
The event has the following fields:
args Array of strings with the message data.
video-reconfig (MPV_EVENT_VIDEO_RECONFIG)
Happens on video output or filter reconfig.
audio-reconfig (MPV_EVENT_AUDIO_RECONFIG)
Happens on audio output or filter reconfig.
property-change (MPV_EVENT_PROPERTY_CHANGE)
Happens when a property that is being observed changes value.
The event has the following fields:
name The name of the property.
data The new value of the property.
The following events also happen, but are deprecated: idle, tick Use
mpv_observe_property() (Lua: mp.observe_property()) instead.
Hooks
Hooks are synchronous events between player core and a script or simi-
lar. This applies to client API (including the Lua scripting interface).
Normally, events are supposed to be asynchronous, and the hook API pro-
vides an awkward and obscure way to handle events that require stricter
coordination. There are no API stability guarantees made. Not following
the protocol exactly can make the player freeze randomly. Basically, no-
body should use this API.
The C API is described in the header files. The Lua API is described in
the Lua section.
Before a hook is actually invoked on an API clients, it will attempt to
return new values for all observed properties that were changed before
the hook. This may make it easier for an application to set defined
"barriers" between property change notifications by registering hooks.
(That means these hooks will have an effect, even if you do nothing and
make them continue immediately.)
The following hooks are currently defined:
on_load
Called when a file is to be opened, before anything is actually
done. For example, you could read and write the
stream-open-filename property to redirect an URL to something
else (consider support for streaming sites which rarely give the
user a direct media URL), or you could set per-file options with
by setting the property file-local-options/<option name>. The
player will wait until all hooks are run.
Ordered after start-file and before playback-restart.
on_load_fail
Called after after a file has been opened, but failed to. This
can be used to provide a fallback in case native demuxers failed
to recognize the file, instead of always running before the na-
tive demuxers like on_load. Demux will only be retried if
stream-open-filename was changed. If it fails again, this hook is
_not_ called again, and loading definitely fails.
Ordered after on_load, and before playback-restart and end-file.
on_preloaded
Called after a file has been opened, and before tracks are se-
lected and decoders are created. This has some usefulness if an
API users wants to select tracks manually, based on the set of
available tracks. It's also useful to initialize --lavfi-complex
in a specific way by API, without having to "probe" the available
streams at first.
Note that this does not yet apply default track selection. Which
operations exactly can be done and not be done, and what informa-
tion is available and what is not yet available yet, is all sub-
ject to change.
Ordered after on_load_fail etc. and before playback-restart.
on_unload
Run before closing a file, and before actually uninitializing
everything. It's not possible to resume playback in this state.
Ordered before end-file. Will also happen in the error case (then
after on_load_fail).
on_before_start_file
Run before a start-file event is sent. (If any client changes the
current playlist entry, or sends a quit command to the player,
the corresponding event will not actually happen after the hook
returns.) Useful to drain property changes before a new file is
loaded.
on_after_end_file
Run after an end-file event. Useful to drain property changes af-
ter a file has finished.
Input Command Prefixes
These prefixes are placed between key name and the actual command. Mul-
tiple prefixes can be specified. They are separated by whitespace.
osd-auto
Use the default behavior for this command. This is the default
for input.conf commands. Some libmpv/scripting/IPC APIs do not
use this as default, but use no-osd instead.
no-osd Do not use any OSD for this command.
osd-bar
If possible, show a bar with this command. Seek commands will
show the progress bar, property changing commands may show the
newly set value.
osd-msg
If possible, show an OSD message with this command. Seek command
show the current playback time, property changing commands show
the newly set value as text.
osd-msg-bar
Combine osd-bar and osd-msg.
raw Do not expand properties in string arguments. (Like "${prop-
erty-name}".) This is the default for some libmpv/scripting/IPC
APIs.
expand-properties
All string arguments are expanded as described in Property Expan-
sion. This is the default for input.conf commands.
repeatable
For some commands, keeping a key pressed doesn't run the command
repeatedly. This prefix forces enabling key repeat in any case.
For a list of commands: the first command determines the repeata-
bility of the whole list (up to and including version 0.33 - a
list was always repeatable).
nonrepeatable
For some commands, keeping a key pressed runs the command repeat-
edly. This prefix forces disabling key repeat in any case.
nonscalable
When some commands (e.g. add) are bound to scalable keys associ-
ated to a high-precision input device like a touchpad (e.g.
WHEEL_UP), the value specified in the command is scaled to
smaller steps based on the high resolution input data if avail-
able. This prefix forces disabling this behavior, so the value
is always changed in the discrete unit specified in the key bind-
ing.
async Allow asynchronous execution (if possible). Note that only a few
commands will support this (usually this is explicitly docu-
mented). Some commands are asynchronous by default (or rather,
their effects might manifest after completion of the command).
The semantics of this flag might change in the future. Set it
only if you don't rely on the effects of this command being fully
realized when it returns. See Synchronous vs. Asynchronous.
sync Allow synchronous execution (if possible). Normally, all commands
are synchronous by default, but some are asynchronous by default
for compatibility with older behavior.
All of the osd prefixes are still overridden by the global --osd-level
settings.
Synchronous vs. Asynchronous
The async and sync prefix matter only for how the issuer of the command
waits on the completion of the command. Normally it does not affect how
the command behaves by itself. There are the following cases:
• Normal input.conf commands are always run asynchronously. Slow running
commands are queued up or run in parallel.
• "Multi" input.conf commands (1 key binding, concatenated with ;) will
be executed in order, except for commands that are async (either pre-
fixed with async, or async by default for some commands). The async
commands are run in a detached manner, possibly in parallel to the re-
maining sync commands in the list.
• Normal Lua and libmpv commands (e.g. mpv_command()) are run in a
blocking manner, unless the async prefix is used, or the command is
async by default. This means in the sync case the caller will block,
even if the core continues playback. Async mode runs the command in a
detached manner.
• Async libmpv command API (e.g. mpv_command_async()) never blocks the
caller, and always notify their completion with a message. The sync
and async prefixes make no difference.
• Lua also provides APIs for running async commands, which behave simi-
lar to the C counterparts.
• In all cases, async mode can still run commands in a synchronous man-
ner, even in detached mode. This can for example happen in cases when
a command does not have an asynchronous implementation. The async
libmpv API still never blocks the caller in these cases.
Before mpv 0.29.0, the async prefix was only used by screenshot com-
mands, and made them run the file saving code in a detached manner. This
is the default now, and async changes behavior only in the ways men-
tioned above.
Currently the following commands have different waiting characteristics
with sync vs. async: sub-add, audio-add, sub-reload, audio-reload, res-
can-external-files, screenshot, screenshot-to-file, dump-cache,
ab-loop-dump-cache.
Asynchronous command details
On the API level, every asynchronous command is bound to the context
which started it. For example, an asynchronous command started by
mpv_command_async is bound to the mpv_handle passed to the function.
Only this mpv_handle receives the completion notification
(MPV_EVENT_COMMAND_REPLY), and only this handle can abort a still run-
ning command directly. If the mpv_handle is destroyed, any still running
async. commands started by it are terminated.
The scripting APIs and JSON IPC give each script/connection its own im-
plicit mpv_handle.
If the player is closed, the core may abort all pending async. commands
on its own (like a forced mpv_abort_async_command() call for each pend-
ing command on behalf of the API user). This happens at the same time
MPV_EVENT_SHUTDOWN is sent, and there is no way to prevent this.
Input Sections
Input sections group a set of bindings, and enable or disable them at
once. In input.conf, each key binding is assigned to an input section,
rather than actually having explicit text sections.
See also: enable-section and disable-section commands.
Predefined bindings:
default
Bindings without input section are implicitly assigned to this
section. It is enabled by default during normal playback.
encode Section which is active in encoding mode. It is enabled exclu-
sively, so that bindings in the default sections are ignored.
Properties
Properties are used to set mpv options during runtime, or to query arbi-
trary information. They can be manipulated with the set/add/cycle com-
mands, and retrieved with show-text, or anything else that uses property
expansion. (See Property Expansion.)
If an option is referenced, the property will normally take/return ex-
actly the same values as the option. In these cases, properties are
merely a way to change an option at runtime.
Note that many properties are unavailable at startup. See Details on the
script initialization and lifecycle.
Property list
NOTE:
Most options can be set at runtime via properties as well. Just re-
move the leading -- from the option name. These are not documented
below, see OPTIONS instead. Only properties which do not exist as op-
tion with the same name, or which have very different behavior from
the options are documented below.
Properties marked as (RW) are writeable, while those that aren't are
read-only.
audio-speed-correction, video-speed-correction
Factor multiplied with speed at which the player attempts to play
the file. Usually it's exactly 1. (Display sync mode will make
this useful.)
OSD formatting will display it in the form of +1.23456%, with the
number being (raw - 1) * 100 for the given raw property value.
display-sync-active
Whether --video-sync=display is actually active.
filename
Currently played file, with path stripped. If this is an URL, try
to undo percent encoding as well. (The result is not necessarily
correct, but looks better for display purposes. Use the path
property to get an unmodified filename.)
This has a sub-property:
filename/no-ext
Like the filename property, but if the text contains a .,
strip all text after the last .. Usually this removes the
file extension.
file-size
Length in bytes of the source file/stream. (This is the same as
${stream-end}. For segmented/multi-part files, this will return
the size of the main or manifest file, whatever it is.)
estimated-frame-count
Total number of frames in current file.
NOTE:
This is only an estimate. (It's computed from two unreliable
quantities: fps and stream length.)
estimated-frame-number
Number of current frame in current stream.
NOTE:
This is only an estimate. (It's computed from two unreliable
quantities: fps and possibly rounded timestamps.)
pid Process-id of mpv.
path Full absolute path of the currently played file.
stream-open-filename
The full path to the currently played media. This is different
from path only in special cases. In particular, if --ytdl=yes is
used, and the URL is detected by youtube-dl, then the script will
set this property to the actual media URL. This property should
be set only during the on_load or on_load_fail hooks, otherwise
it will have no effect (or may do something implementation de-
fined in the future). The property is reset if playback of the
current media ends.
media-title
If the currently played file has a title tag, use that.
Otherwise, return the filename property.
file-format
Symbolic name of the file format. In some cases, this is a
comma-separated list of format names, e.g. mp4 is
mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 (the list may grow in the future for any
format).
current-demuxer
Name of the current demuxer. (This is useless.)
(Renamed from demuxer.)
stream-path
Filename (full path) of the stream layer filename. (This is prob-
ably useless and is almost never different from path.)
stream-pos
Raw byte position in source stream. Technically, this returns the
position of the most recent packet passed to a decoder.
stream-end
Raw end position in bytes in source stream.
duration
Duration of the current file in seconds. If the duration is un-
known, the property is unavailable. Note that the file duration
is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.
This replaces the length property, which was deprecated after the
mpv 0.9 release. (The semantics are the same.)
This has a sub-property:
duration/full
duration with milliseconds.
avsync Last A/V synchronization difference. Unavailable if audio or
video is disabled.
total-avsync-change
Total A-V sync correction done. Unavailable if audio or video is
disabled.
decoder-frame-drop-count
Video frames dropped by decoder, because video is too far behind
audio (when using --framedrop=decoder). Sometimes, this may be
incremented in other situations, e.g. when video packets are dam-
aged, or the decoder doesn't follow the usual rules. Unavailable
if video is disabled.
frame-drop-count
Frames dropped by VO (when using --framedrop=vo).
mistimed-frame-count
Number of video frames that were not timed correctly in dis-
play-sync mode for the sake of keeping A/V sync. This does not
include external circumstances, such as video rendering being too
slow or the graphics driver somehow skipping a vsync. It does not
include rounding errors either (which can happen especially with
bad source timestamps). For example, using the display-desync
mode should never change this value from 0.
vsync-ratio
For how many vsyncs a frame is displayed on average. This is
available if display-sync is active only. For 30 FPS video on a
60 Hz screen, this will be 2. This is the moving average of what
actually has been scheduled, so 24 FPS on 60 Hz will never remain
exactly on 2.5, but jitter depending on the last frame displayed.
vo-delayed-frame-count
Estimated number of frames delayed due to external circumstances
in display-sync mode. Note that in general, mpv has to guess that
this is happening, and the guess can be inaccurate.
percent-pos (RW)
Position in current file (0-100). The advantage over using this
instead of calculating it out of other properties is that it
properly falls back to estimating the playback position from the
byte position, if the file duration is not known.
time-pos (RW)
Position in current file in seconds.
This has a sub-property:
time-pos/full
time-pos with milliseconds.
time-start
Deprecated. Always returns 0. Before mpv 0.14, this used to re-
turn the start time of the file (could affect e.g. transport
streams). See --rebase-start-time option.
time-remaining
Remaining length of the file in seconds. Note that the file dura-
tion is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.
This has a sub-property:
time-remaining/full
time-remaining with milliseconds.
audio-pts
Current audio playback position in current file in seconds. Un-
like time-pos, this updates more often than once per frame. This
is mostly equivalent to time-pos for audio-only files however it
also takes into account the audio driver delay. This can lead to
negative values in certain cases, so in general you probably want
to simply use time-pos.
This has a sub-property:
audio-pts/full
audio-pts with milliseconds.
playtime-remaining
time-remaining scaled by the current speed.
This has a sub-property:
playtime-remaining/full
playtime-remaining with milliseconds.
playback-time (RW)
Alias for time-pos.
Prior to mpv 0.39.0, time-pos and playback-time could report dif-
ferent values in certain edge cases.
This has a sub-property:
playback-time/full
playback-time with milliseconds.
remaining-file-loops
How many more times the current file is going to be looped. This
is initialized from the value of --loop-file. This counts the
number of times it causes the player to seek to the beginning of
the file, so it is 0 the last the time is played. -1 corresponds
to infinity.
remaining-ab-loops
How many more times the current A-B loop is going to be looped,
if one is active. This is initialized from the value of
--ab-loop-count. This counts the number of times it causes the
player to seek to --ab-loop-a, so it is 0 the last the time the
loop is played. -1 corresponds to infinity.
chapter (RW)
Current chapter number. The number of the first chapter is 0. A
value of -1 indicates that the current playback position is be-
fore the start of the first chapter,
Setting this property results in an absolute seek to the start of
the chapter. However, if the property is changed with add or cy-
cle command which results in a decrement in value, it may go to
the start of the current chapter instead of the previous chapter.
See --chapter-seek-threshold for details.
edition (RW)
Current edition number. Setting this property to a different
value will restart playback. The number of the first edition is
0.
For Matroska files, this is the edition. For DVD/Blu-ray, this is
the title.
Before mpv 0.31.0, this showed the actual edition selected at
runtime, if you didn't set the option or property manually. With
mpv 0.31.0 and later, this strictly returns the user-set option
or property value, and the current-edition property was added to
return the runtime selected edition (this matters with --edi-
tion=auto, the default).
current-edition
Currently selected edition. This property is unavailable if no
file is loaded, or the file has no editions. (Matroska files make
a difference between having no editions and a single edition,
which will be reflected by the property, although in practice it
does not matter.)
chapters
Number of chapters.
editions
Number of editions.
edition-list
List of editions, current entry marked.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based
edition index.
edition-list/count
Number of editions. If there are no editions, this can be
0 or 1 (1 if there's a useless dummy edition).
edition-list/N/id
Edition ID as integer. Currently, this is the same as the
edition index.
edition-list/N/default
Whether this is the default edition.
edition-list/N/title
Edition title as stored in the file. Not always available.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each edition)
"id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"title" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"default" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
metadata
Metadata key/value pairs.
If the property is accessed with Lua's mp.get_property_native,
this returns a table with metadata keys mapping to metadata val-
ues. If it is accessed with the client API, this returns a
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP, with tag keys mapping to tag values.
For OSD, it returns a formatted list. Trying to retrieve this
property as a raw string doesn't work.
This has a number of sub-properties:
metadata/by-key/<key>
Value of metadata entry <key>.
metadata/list/count
Number of metadata entries.
metadata/list/N/key
Key name of the Nth metadata entry. (The first entry is
0).
metadata/list/N/value
Value of the Nth metadata entry.
metadata/<key>
Old version of metadata/by-key/<key>. Use is discouraged,
because the metadata key string could conflict with other
sub-properties.
The layout of this property might be subject to change. Sugges-
tions are welcome how exactly this property should work.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
(key and string value for each metadata entry)
filtered-metadata
Like metadata, but includes only fields listed in the --dis-
play-tags option. This is the same set of tags that is printed to
the terminal.
chapter-metadata
Metadata of current chapter. Works similar to metadata property.
It also allows the same access methods (using sub-properties).
Per-chapter metadata is very rare. Usually, only the chapter name
(title) is set.
For accessing other information, like chapter start, see the
chapter-list property.
vf-metadata/<filter-label>
Metadata added by video filters. Accessed by the filter label,
which, if not explicitly specified using the @filter-label: syn-
tax, will be <filter-name>.NN.
Works similar to metadata property. It allows the same access
methods (using sub-properties).
An example of this kind of metadata are the cropping parameters
added by --vf=lavfi=cropdetect.
af-metadata/<filter-label>
Equivalent to vf-metadata/<filter-label>, but for audio filters.
deinterlace-active
Returns yes/true if mpv's deinterlacing filter is active. Note
that it will not detect any manually inserted deinterlacing fil-
ters done via --vf.
idle-active
Returns yes/true if no file is loaded, but the player is staying
around because of the --idle option.
(Renamed from idle.)
core-idle
Whether the playback core is paused. This can differ from pause
in special situations, such as when the player pauses itself due
to low network cache.
This also returns yes/true if playback is restarting or if noth-
ing is playing at all. In other words, it's only no/false if
there's actually video playing. (Behavior since mpv 0.7.0.)
cache-speed
Current I/O read speed between the cache and the lower layer
(like network). This gives the number bytes per seconds over a 1
second window (using the type MPV_FORMAT_INT64 for the client
API).
This is the same as demuxer-cache-state/raw-input-rate.
demuxer-cache-duration
Approximate duration of video buffered in the demuxer, in sec-
onds. The guess is very unreliable, and often the property will
not be available at all, even if data is buffered.
demuxer-cache-time
Approximate time of video buffered in the demuxer, in seconds.
Same as demuxer-cache-duration but returns the last timestamp of
buffered data in demuxer.
demuxer-cache-idle
Whether the demuxer is idle, which means that the demuxer cache
is filled to the requested amount, and is currently not reading
more data.
demuxer-cache-state
Each entry in seekable-ranges represents a region in the demuxer
cache that can be seeked to, with a start and end fields contain-
ing the respective timestamps. If there are multiple demuxers ac-
tive, this only returns information about the "main" demuxer, but
might be changed in future to return unified information about
all demuxers. The ranges are in arbitrary order. Often, ranges
will overlap for a bit, before being joined. In broken corner
cases, ranges may overlap all over the place.
The end of a seek range is usually smaller than the value re-
turned by the demuxer-cache-time property, because that property
returns the guessed buffering amount, while the seek ranges rep-
resent the buffered data that can actually be used for cached
seeking.
bof-cached indicates whether the seek range with the lowest time-
stamp points to the beginning of the stream (BOF). This implies
you cannot seek before this position at all. eof-cached indicates
whether the seek range with the highest timestamp points to the
end of the stream (EOF). If both bof-cached and eof-cached are
true, and there's only 1 cache range, the entire stream is
cached.
fw-bytes is the number of bytes of packets buffered in the range
starting from the current decoding position. This is a rough es-
timate (may not account correctly for various overhead), and
stops at the demuxer position (it ignores seek ranges after it).
file-cache-bytes is the number of bytes stored in the file cache.
This includes all overhead, and possibly unused data (like pruned
data). This member is missing if the file cache wasn't enabled
with --cache-on-disk=yes.
cache-end is demuxer-cache-time. Missing if unavailable.
reader-pts is the approximate timestamp of the start of the
buffered range. Missing if unavailable.
cache-duration is demuxer-cache-duration. Missing if unavailable.
raw-input-rate is the estimated input rate of the network layer
(or any other byte-oriented input layer) in bytes per second. May
be inaccurate or missing.
ts-per-stream is an array containing an entry for each stream
type: video, audio, and subtitle. For each stream type, the de-
tails for the demuxer cache for that stream type are available as
cache-duration, reader-pts and cache-end.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"seekable-ranges" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"start" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"end" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"bof-cached" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"eof-cached" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"fw-bytes" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"file-cache-bytes" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"cache-end" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"reader-pts" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"cache-duration" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"raw-input-rate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"ts-per-stream" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"type" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"cache-duration" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"reader-pts" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"cache-end" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
Other fields (might be changed or removed in the future):
eof Whether the reader thread has hit the end of the file.
underrun
Whether the reader thread could not satisfy a decoder's
request for a new packet.
idle Whether the thread is currently not reading.
total-bytes
Sum of packet bytes (plus some overhead estimation) of the
entire packet queue, including cached seekable ranges.
demuxer-via-network
Whether the stream demuxed via the main demuxer is most likely
played via network. What constitutes "network" is not always
clear, might be used for other types of untrusted streams, could
be wrong in certain cases, and its definition might be changing.
Also, external files (like separate audio files or streams) do
not influence the value of this property (currently).
demuxer-start-time
The start time reported by the demuxer in fractional seconds.
paused-for-cache
Whether playback is paused because of waiting for the cache.
cache-buffering-state
The percentage (0-100) of the cache fill status until the player
will unpause (related to paused-for-cache).
eof-reached
Whether the end of playback was reached. Note that this is usu-
ally interesting only if --keep-open is enabled, since otherwise
the player will immediately play the next file (or exit or enter
idle mode), and in these cases the eof-reached property will log-
ically be cleared immediately after it's set.
seeking
Whether the player is currently seeking, or otherwise trying to
restart playback. (It's possible that it returns yes/true while a
file is loaded. This is because the same underlying code is used
for seeking and resyncing.)
mixer-active
Whether the audio mixer is active.
This option is relatively useless. Before mpv 0.18.1, it could be
used to infer behavior of the volume property.
ao-volume (RW)
System volume. This property is available only if mpv audio out-
put is currently active, and only if the underlying implementa-
tion supports volume control. What this option does, or how the
value is interpreted depends on the API. For example, on ALSA
this usually changes system-wide audio volume on a linear curve,
while with PulseAudio this controls per-application volume on a
cubic curve.
ao-mute (RW)
Similar to ao-volume, but controls the mute state. May be unim-
plemented even if ao-volume works.
audio-params
Audio format as output by the audio decoder. This has a number
of sub-properties:
audio-params/format
The sample format as string. This uses the same names as
used in other places of mpv.
audio-params/samplerate
Samplerate.
audio-params/channels
The channel layout as a string. This is similar to what
the --audio-channels accepts.
audio-params/hr-channels
As channels, but instead of the possibly cryptic actual
layout sent to the audio device, return a hopefully more
human readable form. (Usually only au-
dio-out-params/hr-channels makes sense.)
audio-params/channel-count
Number of audio channels. This is redundant to the chan-
nels field described above.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"format" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"samplerate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"channels" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"channel-count" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"hr-channels" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
audio-out-params
Same as audio-params, but the format of the data written to the
audio API.
colormatrix
Redirects to video-params/colormatrix. This parameter (as well as
similar ones) can be overridden with the format video filter.
colormatrix-input-range
See colormatrix.
colormatrix-primaries
See colormatrix.
hwdec (RW)
Reflects the --hwdec option.
Writing to it may change the currently used hardware decoder, if
possible. (Internally, the player may reinitialize the decoder,
and will perform a seek to refresh the video properly.) You can
watch the other hwdec properties to see whether this was success-
ful.
Unlike in mpv 0.9.x and before, this does not return the cur-
rently active hardware decoder. Since mpv 0.18.0, hwdec-current
is available for this purpose.
hwdec-current
The current hardware decoding in use. If decoding is active, re-
turn one of the values used by the hwdec option/property.
no/false indicates software decoding. If no decoder is loaded,
the property is unavailable.
hwdec-interop
This returns the currently loaded hardware decoding/output in-
terop driver. This is known only once the VO has opened (and
possibly later). With some VOs (like gpu), this might be never
known in advance, but only when the decoder attempted to create
the hw decoder successfully. (Using --gpu-hwdec-interop can load
it eagerly.) If there are multiple drivers loaded, they will be
separated by ,.
If no VO is active or no interop driver is known, this property
is unavailable.
This does not necessarily use the same values as hwdec. There can
be multiple interop drivers for the same hardware decoder, de-
pending on platform and VO.
width, height
Video size. This uses the size of the video as decoded, or if no
video frame has been decoded yet, the (possibly incorrect) con-
tainer indicated size.
video-params
Video parameters, as output by the decoder (with overrides like
aspect etc. applied). This has a number of sub-properties:
video-params/pixelformat
The pixel format as string. This uses the same names as
used in other places of mpv.
video-params/hw-pixelformat
The underlying pixel format as string. This is relevant
for some cases of hardware decoding and unavailable other-
wise.
video-params/average-bpp
Average bits-per-pixel as integer. Subsampled planar for-
mats use a different resolution, which is the reason this
value can sometimes be odd or confusing. Can be unavail-
able with some formats.
video-params/w, video-params/h
Video size as integers, with no aspect correction applied.
video-params/dw, video-params/dh
Video size as integers, scaled for correct aspect ratio.
video-params/crop-x, video-params/crop-y
Crop offset of the source video frame.
video-params/crop-w, video-params/crop-h
Video size after cropping.
video-params/aspect
Display aspect ratio as double.
video-params/aspect-name
Display aspect ratio name as string. The name corresponds
to motion picture film format that introduced given aspect
ratio in film.
video-params/par
Pixel aspect ratio.
video-params/sar
Storage aspect ratio.
video-params/sar-name
Storage aspect ratio name as string.
video-params/colormatrix
The colormatrix in use as string. (Exact values subject to
change.)
video-params/colorlevels
The colorlevels as string. (Exact values subject to
change.)
video-params/primaries
The primaries in use as string. (Exact values subject to
change.)
video-params/gamma
The gamma function in use as string. (Exact values subject
to change.)
video-params/sig-peak (deprecated)
The video file's tagged signal peak as float.
video-params/light
The light type in use as a string. (Exact values subject
to change.)
video-params/chroma-location
Chroma location as string. (Exact values subject to
change.)
video-params/rotate
Intended display rotation in degrees (clockwise).
video-params/stereo-in
Source file stereo 3D mode. (See the format video filter's
stereo-in option.)
video-params/alpha
Alpha type. If the format has no alpha channel, this will
be unavailable (but in future releases, it could change to
no). If alpha is present, this is set to straight or
premul.
video-params/min-luma
Minimum luminance, as reported by HDR10 metadata (in
cd/m²)
video-params/max-luma
Maximum luminance, as reported by HDR10 metadata (in
cd/m²)
video-params/max-cll
Maximum content light level, as reported by HDR10 metadata
(in cd/m²)
video-params/max-fall
Maximum frame average light level, as reported by HDR10
metadata (in cd/m²)
video-params/scene-max-r
MaxRGB of a scene for R component, as reported by HDR10+
metadata (in cd/m²)
video-params/scene-max-g
MaxRGB of a scene for G component, as reported by HDR10+
metadata (in cd/m²)
video-params/scene-max-b
MaxRGB of a scene for B component, as reported by HDR10+
metadata (in cd/m²)
video-params/max-pq-y
Maximum PQ luminance of a frame, as reported by peak de-
tection (in PQ, 0-1)
video-params/avg-pq-y
Average PQ luminance of a frame, as reported by peak de-
tection (in PQ, 0-1)
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"pixelformat" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"hw-pixelformat" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"w" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"h" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"dw" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"dh" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"aspect" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"par" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"colormatrix" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"colorlevels" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"primaries" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"gamma" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"sig-peak" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"light" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"chroma-location" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"rotate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"stereo-in" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"average-bpp" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"alpha" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"min-luma" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"max-luma" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"max-cll" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"max-fall" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"scene-max-r" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"scene-max-g" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"scene-max-b" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"max-pq-y" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"avg-pq-y" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
dwidth, dheight
Video display size. This is the video size after filters and as-
pect scaling have been applied. The actual video window size can
still be different from this, e.g. if the user resized the video
window manually.
These have the same values as video-out-params/dw and
video-out-params/dh.
video-dec-params
Exactly like video-params, but no overrides applied.
video-out-params
Same as video-params, but after video filters have been applied.
If there are no video filters in use, this will contain the same
values as video-params. Note that this is still not necessarily
what the video window uses, since the user can change the window
size, and all real VOs do their own scaling independently from
the filter chain.
Has the same sub-properties as video-params.
video-target-params
Same as video-params, but with the target properties that VO out-
puts to.
Has the same sub-properties as video-params.
video-frame-info
Approximate information of the current frame. Note that if any of
these are used on OSD, the information might be off by a few
frames due to OSD redrawing and frame display being somewhat dis-
connected, and you might have to pause and force a redraw.
This has a number of sub-properties:
video-frame-info/picture-type
The type of the picture. It can be "I" (intra), "P" (pre-
dicted), "B" (bi-dir predicted) or unavailable.
video-frame-info/interlaced
Whether the content of the frame is interlaced.
video-frame-info/tff
If the content is interlaced, whether the top field is
displayed first.
video-frame-info/repeat
Whether the frame must be delayed when decoding.
video-frame-info/gop-timecode
String with the GOP timecode encoded in the frame.
video-frame-info/smpte-timecode
String with the SMPTE timecode encoded in the frame.
video-frame-info/estimated-smpte-timecode
Estimated timecode based on the current playback position
and frame count.
container-fps
Container FPS. This can easily contain bogus values. For videos
that use modern container formats or video codecs, this will of-
ten be incorrect.
(Renamed from fps.)
estimated-vf-fps
Estimated/measured FPS of the video filter chain output. (If no
filters are used, this corresponds to decoder output.) This uses
the average of the 10 past frame durations to calculate the FPS.
It will be inaccurate if frame-dropping is involved (such as when
framedrop is explicitly enabled, or after precise seeking). Files
with imprecise timestamps (such as Matroska) might lead to unsta-
ble results.
current-window-scale (RW)
The window-scale value calculated from the current window size.
This has the same value as window-scale if the window size was
not changed since setting the option, and the window size was not
restricted in other ways. If the window is fullscreened, this
will return the scale value calculated from the last
non-fullscreen size of the window. The property is unavailable if
no video is active.
It is also possible to write to this property. This has the same
behavior as writing window-scale. Note that writing to cur-
rent-window-scale will not affect the value of window-scale.
focused
Whether the window has focus. Might not be supported by all VOs.
ambient-light
Ambient lighting condition in lux. (macOS only)
display-names
Names of the displays that the mpv window covers. On X11, these
are the xrandr names (LVDS1, HDMI1, DP1, VGA1, etc.). On Windows,
these are the GDI names (\.DISPLAY1, \.DISPLAY2, etc.) and the
first display in the list will be the one that Windows considers
associated with the window (as determined by the MonitorFromWin-
dow API.) On macOS these are the Display Product Names as used in
the System Information with a serial number in parentheses and
only one display name is returned since a window can only be on
one screen. On Wayland, these are the wl_output names if protocol
version >= 4 is used (LVDS-1, HDMI-A-1, X11-1, etc.), or the
wl_output model reported by the geometry event if protocol ver-
sion < 4 is used.
display-fps
The refresh rate of the current display. Currently, this is the
lowest FPS of any display covered by the video, as retrieved by
the underlying system APIs (e.g. xrandr on X11). It is not the
measured FPS. It's not necessarily available on all platforms.
Note that any of the listed facts may change any time without a
warning.
estimated-display-fps
The actual rate at which display refreshes seem to occur, mea-
sured by system time. Only available if display-sync mode (as se-
lected by --video-sync) is active.
vsync-jitter
Estimated deviation factor of the vsync duration.
display-width, display-height
The current display's horizontal and vertical resolution in pix-
els. Whether or not these values update as the mpv window changes
displays depends on the windowing backend. It may not be avail-
able on all platforms.
display-hidpi-scale
The HiDPI scale factor as reported by the windowing backend. If
no VO is active, or if the VO does not report a value, this prop-
erty is unavailable. It may be saner to report an absolute DPI,
however, this is the way HiDPI support is implemented on most OS
APIs. See also --hidpi-window-scale.
osd-width, osd-height
Last known OSD width (can be 0). This is needed if you want to
use the overlay-add command. It gives you the actual OSD/window
size (not including decorations drawn by the OS window manager).
Alias to osd-dimensions/w and osd-dimensions/h.
osd-par
Last known OSD display pixel aspect (can be 0).
Alias to osd-dimensions/osd-par.
osd-dimensions
Last known OSD dimensions.
Has the following sub-properties (which can be read as MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE or Lua table with mp.get_property_native):
osd-dimensions/w
Size of the VO window in OSD render units (usually pixels,
but may be scaled pixels with VOs like xv).
osd-dimensions/h
Size of the VO window in OSD render units,
osd-dimensions/par
Pixel aspect ratio of the OSD (usually 1).
osd-dimensions/aspect
Display aspect ratio of the VO window. (Computing from the
properties above.)
osd-dimensions/mt, osd-dimensions/mb, osd-dimensions/ml, osd-di-
mensions/mr
OSD to video margins (top, bottom, left, right). This de-
scribes the area into which the video is rendered.
Any of these properties may be unavailable or set to dummy values
if the VO window is not created or visible.
term-size
The current terminal size.
This has two sub-properties.
term-size/w
width of the terminal in cells
term-size/h
height of the terminal in cells
This property is not observable. Reacting to size changes re-
quires polling.
window-id
Read-only - mpv's window id. May not always be available, i.e due
to window not being opened yet or not being supported by the VO.
mouse-pos
Read-only - last known mouse position, normalized to OSD dimen-
sions.
Has the following sub-properties (which can be read as MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE or Lua table with mp.get_property_native):
mouse-pos/x, mouse-pos/y
Last known coordinates of the mouse pointer.
mouse-pos/hover
Boolean - whether the mouse pointer hovers the video win-
dow. The coordinates should be ignored when this value is
false, because the video backends update them only when
the pointer hovers the window.
touch-pos
Read-only - last known touch point positions, normalized to OSD
dimensions.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based
touch point index. Whenever a new finger touches the screen, a
new touch point is added to the list of touch points with the
smallest unused N available.
touch-pos/count
Number of active touch points.
touch-pos/N/x, touch-pos/N/y
Position of the Nth touch point.
touch-pos/N/id
Unique identifier of the touch point. This can be used to
identify individual touch points when their indexes
change.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each touch point)
"x" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"y" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
sub-ass-extradata
The current ASS subtitle track's extradata. There is no format-
ting done. The extradata is returned as a string as-is. This
property is not available for non-ASS subtitle tracks.
sub-text
The current subtitle text regardless of sub visibility. Format-
ting is stripped. If the subtitle is not text-based (i.e. DVD/BD
subtitles), an empty string is returned.
This has sub-properties for different formats:
sub-text/ass
Like sub-text, but return the text in ASS format. Text
subtitles in other formats are converted. For native ASS
subtitles, events that do not contain any text (but vector
drawings etc.) are not filtered out. If multiple events
match with the current playback time, they are concate-
nated with line breaks. Contains only the "Text" part of
the events.
This property is not enough to render ASS subtitles cor-
rectly, because ASS header and per-event metadata are not
returned. Use /ass-full for that.
sub-text/ass-full
Like sub-text-ass, but return the full event with all
fields, formatted as lines in a .ass text file. Use with
sub-ass-extradata for style information.
sub-text-ass (deprecated)
Deprecated alias for sub-text/ass.
secondary-sub-text
Same as sub-text (with the same sub-properties), but for the sec-
ondary subtitles.
sub-start
The current subtitle start time (in seconds). If there's multiple
current subtitles, returns the first start time. If no current
subtitle is present null is returned instead.
This has a sub-property:
sub-start/full
sub-start with milliseconds.
secondary-sub-start
Same as sub-start, but for the secondary subtitles.
sub-end
The current subtitle end time (in seconds). If there's multiple
current subtitles, return the last end time. If no current subti-
tle is present, or if it's present but has unknown or incorrect
duration, null is returned instead.
This has a sub-property:
sub-end/full
sub-end with milliseconds.
secondary-sub-end
Same as sub-end, but for the secondary subtitles.
playlist-pos (RW)
Current position on playlist. The first entry is on position 0.
Writing to this property may start playback at the new position.
In some cases, this is not necessarily the currently playing
file. See explanation of current and playing flags in playlist.
If there the playlist is empty, or if it's non-empty, but no en-
try is "current", this property returns -1. Likewise, writing -1
will put the player into idle mode (or exit playback if idle mode
is not enabled). If an out of range index is written to the prop-
erty, this behaves as if writing -1. (Before mpv 0.33.0, instead
of returning -1, this property was unavailable if no playlist en-
try was current.)
Writing the current value back to the property will have no ef-
fect. Use playlist-play-index to restart the playback of the
current entry if desired.
playlist-pos-1 (RW)
Same as playlist-pos, but 1-based.
playlist-current-pos (RW)
Index of the "current" item on playlist. This usually, but not
necessarily, the currently playing item (see playlist-play-
ing-pos). Depending on the exact internal state of the player, it
may refer to the playlist item to play next, or the playlist item
used to determine what to play next.
For reading, this is exactly the same as playlist-pos.
For writing, this only sets the position of the "current" item,
without stopping playback of the current file (or starting play-
back, if this is done in idle mode). Use -1 to remove the current
flag.
This property is only vaguely useful. If set during playback, it
will typically cause the playlist entry after it to be played
next. Another possibly odd observable state is that if
playlist-next is run during playback, this property is set to the
playlist entry to play next (unlike the previous case). There is
an internal flag that decides whether the current playlist entry
or the next one should be played, and this flag is currently in-
accessible for API users. (Whether this behavior will kept is
possibly subject to change.)
playlist-playing-pos
Index of the "playing" item on playlist. A playlist item is
"playing" if it's being loaded, actually playing, or being un-
loaded. This property is set during the MPV_EVENT_START_FILE
(start-file) and the MPV_EVENT_START_END (end-file) events. Out-
side of that, it returns -1. If the playlist entry was somehow
removed during playback, but playback hasn't stopped yet, or is
in progress of being stopped, it also returns -1. (This can hap-
pen at least during state transitions.)
In the "playing" state, this is usually the same as playlist-pos,
except during state changes, or if playlist-current-pos was writ-
ten explicitly.
playlist-count
Number of total playlist entries.
playlist-path
The original path of the playlist for the current entry before
mpv expanded the entries. Unavailable if the file was not origi-
nally associated with a playlist in some way.
playlist
Playlist, current entry marked. Currently, the raw property value
is useless.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based
playlist entry index.
playlist/count
Number of playlist entries (same as playlist-count).
playlist/N/filename
Filename of the Nth entry.
playlist/N/playing
yes/true if the playlist-playing-pos property points to
this entry, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
playlist/N/current
yes/true if the playlist-current-pos property points to
this entry, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
playlist/N/title
Name of the Nth entry. Available if the playlist file con-
tains such fields and mpv's parser supports it for the
given playlist format, or if the playlist entry has been
opened before and a media-title other than filename has
been acquired.
playlist/N/id
Unique ID for this entry. This is an automatically as-
signed integer ID that is unique for the entire life time
of the current mpv core instance. Other commands, events,
etc. use this as playlist_entry_id fields.
playlist/N/playlist-path
The original path of the playlist for this entry before
mpv expanded it. Unavailable if the file was not origi-
nally associated with a playlist in some way.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each playlist entry)
"filename" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"current" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG (might be missing; since mpv 0.7.0)
"playing" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG (same)
"title" MPV_FORMAT_STRING (optional)
"id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
track-list
List of audio/video/sub tracks, current entry marked.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based
track index.
track-list/count
Total number of tracks.
track-list/video
The list of video tracks. This is only usable for printing
and its value can't be retrieved.
track-list/audio
The list of audio tracks. This is only usable for printing
and its value can't be retrieved.
track-list/sub
The list of sub tracks. This is only usable for printing
and its value can't be retrieved.
track-list/N/id
The ID as it's used for --sid/--aid/--vid. This is unique
within tracks of the same type (sub/audio/video), but oth-
erwise not.
track-list/N/type
String describing the media type. One of audio, video,
sub.
track-list/N/src-id
Track ID as used in the source file. Not always available.
(It is missing if the format has no native ID, if the
track is a pseudo-track that does not exist in this way in
the actual file, or if the format is handled by libavfor-
mat, and the format was not whitelisted as having track
IDs.)
track-list/N/title
Track title as it is stored in the file. Not always avail-
able.
track-list/N/lang
Track language as identified by the file. Not always
available.
track-list/N/image
yes/true if this is a video track that consists of a sin-
gle picture, no/false or unavailable otherwise. The
heuristic used to determine if a stream is an image
doesn't attempt to detect images in codecs normally used
for videos. Otherwise, it is reliable.
track-list/N/albumart
yes/true if this is an image embedded in an audio file or
external cover art, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/default
yes/true if the track has the default flag set in the
file, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/forced
yes/true if the track has the forced flag set in the file,
no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/dependent
yes/true if the track has the dependent flag set in the
file, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/visual-impaired
yes/true if the track has the visual impaired flag set in
the file, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/hearing-impaired
yes/true if the track has the hearing impaired flag set in
the file, no/false or unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/hls-bitrate
The bitrate of the HLS stream, if available.
track-list/N/program-id
The program ID of the HLS stream, if available.
track-list/N/codec
The codec name used by this track, for example h264. Un-
available in some rare cases.
track-list/N/codec-desc
The codec descriptive name used by this track.
track-list/N/codec-profile
The codec profile used by this track. Available only if
the track has been already decoded.
track-list/N/external
yes/true if the track is an external file, no/false or un-
available otherwise. This is set for separate subtitle
files.
track-list/N/external-filename
The filename if the track is from an external file, un-
available otherwise.
track-list/N/selected
yes/true if the track is currently decoded, no/false or
unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/main-selection
It indicates the selection order of tracks for the same
type. If a track is not selected, or is selected by the
--lavfi-complex, it is not available. For subtitle tracks,
0 represents the sid, and 1 represents the secondary-sid.
track-list/N/ff-index
The stream index as usually used by the FFmpeg utilities.
Note that this can be potentially wrong if a demuxer other
than libavformat (--demuxer=lavf) is used. For mkv files,
the index will usually match even if the default (builtin)
demuxer is used, but there is no hard guarantee.
track-list/N/decoder
If this track is being decoded, the short decoder name,
track-list/N/decoder-desc
If this track is being decoded, the human-readable decoder
name,
track-list/N/demux-w, track-list/N/demux-h
Video size hint as indicated by the container. (Not always
accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-crop-x, track-list/N/demux-crop-y
Crop offset of the source video frame.
track-list/N/demux-crop-w, track-list/N/demux-crop-h
Video size after cropping.
track-list/N/demux-channel-count
Number of audio channels as indicated by the container.
(Not always accurate - in particular, the track could be
decoded as a different number of channels.)
track-list/N/demux-channels
Channel layout as indicated by the container. (Not always
accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-samplerate
Audio sample rate as indicated by the container. (Not al-
ways accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-fps
Video FPS as indicated by the container. (Not always accu-
rate.)
track-list/N/demux-bitrate
Audio average bitrate, in bits per second. (Not always ac-
curate.)
track-list/N/demux-rotation
Video clockwise rotation metadata, in degrees.
track-list/N/demux-par
Pixel aspect ratio.
track-list/N/format-name
Short name for format from ffmpeg. If the track is audio,
this will be the name of the sample format. If the track
is video, this will be the name of the pixel format.
track-list/N/audio-channels (deprecated)
Deprecated alias for track-list/N/demux-channel-count.
track-list/N/replaygain-track-peak, track-list/N/replay-
gain-track-gain
Per-track replaygain values. Only available for audio
tracks with corresponding information stored in the source
file.
track-list/N/replaygain-album-peak, track-list/N/replaygain-al-
bum-gain
Per-album replaygain values. If the file has per-track but
no per-album information, the per-album values will be
copied from the per-track values currently. It's possible
that future mpv versions will make these properties un-
available instead in this case.
track-list/N/dolby-vision-profile, track-list/N/dolby-vi-
sion-level
Dolby Vision profile and level. May not be available if
the container does not provide this information.
track-list/N/metadata,
Works like the metadata property, but it accesses metadata
that is set per track/stream instead of global values for
the entire file.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each track)
"id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"type" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"src-id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"title" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"lang" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"image" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"albumart" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"default" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"forced" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"dependent" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"visual-impaired" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"hearing-impaired" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"hls-bitrate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"program-id" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"selected" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"main-selection" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"external" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"external-filename" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"codec" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"codec-desc" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"codec-profile" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"ff-index" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"decoder" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"decoder-desc" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"demux-w" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-h" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-crop-x" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-crop-y" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-crop-w" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-crop-h" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-channel-count" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-channels" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"demux-samplerate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-fps" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"demux-bitrate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-rotation" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"demux-par" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"format-name" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"audio-channels" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"replaygain-track-peak" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"replaygain-track-gain" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"replaygain-album-peak" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"replaygain-album-gain" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
"dolby-vision-profile" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"dolby-vision-level" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"metadata" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
(key and string value for each metadata entry)
current-tracks/...
This gives access to currently selected tracks. It redirects to
the correct entry in track-list.
The following sub-entries are defined: video, audio, sub, sub2
For example, current-tracks/audio/lang returns the current audio
track's language field (the same value as track-list/N/lang).
If tracks of the requested type are selected via --lavfi-complex,
the first one is returned.
chapter-list (RW)
List of chapters, current entry marked.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based
chapter index.
chapter-list/count
Number of chapters.
chapter-list/N/title
Chapter title as stored in the file. Not always available.
chapter-list/N/time
Chapter start time in seconds as float.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each chapter)
"title" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"time" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
af, vf (RW)
See --vf/--af and the vf/af command.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each filter entry)
"name" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"label" MPV_FORMAT_STRING [optional]
"enabled" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG [optional]
"params" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP [optional]
"key" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"value" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
It's also possible to write the property using this format.
seekable
Whether it's generally possible to seek in the current file.
partially-seekable
Whether the current file is considered seekable, but only because
the cache is active. This means small relative seeks may be fine,
but larger seeks may fail anyway. Whether a seek will succeed or
not is generally not known in advance.
If this property returns yes/true, so will seekable.
playback-abort
Whether playback is stopped or is to be stopped. (Useful in ob-
scure situations like during on_load hook processing, when the
user can stop playback, but the script has to explicitly end pro-
cessing.)
cursor-autohide (RW)
See --cursor-autohide. Setting this to a new value will always
update the cursor, and reset the internal timer.
term-clip-cc
Inserts the symbol to force line truncation to the current termi-
nal width. This can be used for show-text and other OSD mes-
sages. It must be the first character in the line. It takes ef-
fect until the end of the line.
osd-sym-cc
Inserts the current OSD symbol as opaque OSD control code (cc).
This makes sense only with the show-text command or options which
set OSD messages. The control code is implementation specific
and is useless for anything else.
osd-ass-cc
${osd-ass-cc/0} disables escaping ASS sequences of text in OSD,
${osd-ass-cc/1} enables it again. By default, ASS sequences are
escaped to avoid accidental formatting, and this property can
disable this behavior. Note that the properties return an opaque
OSD control code, which only makes sense for the show-text com-
mand or options which set OSD messages.
Example
• --osd-msg3='This is ${osd-ass-cc/0}{\\b1}bold text'
• show-text "This is ${osd-ass-cc/0}{\\b1}bold text"
Any ASS override tags as understood by libass can be used.
Note that you need to escape the \ character, because the string
is processed for C escape sequences before passing it to the OSD
code. See Flat command syntax for details.
A list of tags can be found here:
<https://aegisub.org/docs/latest/ass_tags/>
vo-configured
Whether the VO is configured right now. Usually this corresponds
to whether the video window is visible. If the --force-window op-
tion is used, this usually always returns yes/true.
vo-passes
Contains introspection about the VO's active render passes and
their execution times. Not implemented by all VOs.
This is further subdivided into two frame types, vo-passes/fresh
for fresh frames (which have to be uploaded, scaled, etc.) and
vo-passes/redraw for redrawn frames (which only have to be
re-painted). The number of passes for any given subtype can
change from frame to frame, and should not be relied upon.
Each frame type has a number of further sub-properties. Replace
TYPE with the frame type, N with the 0-based pass index, and M
with the 0-based sample index.
vo-passes/TYPE/count
Number of passes.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/desc
Human-friendy description of the pass.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/last
Last measured execution time, in nanoseconds.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/avg
Average execution time of this pass, in nanoseconds. The
exact timeframe varies, but it should generally be a hand-
ful of seconds.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/peak
The peak execution time (highest value) within this aver-
aging range, in nanoseconds.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/count
The number of samples for this pass.
vo-passes/TYPE/N/samples/M
The raw execution time of a specific sample for this pass,
in nanoseconds.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"TYPE" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP
"desc" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"last" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"avg" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"peak" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"count" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
"samples" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MP_FORMAT_INT64
Note that directly accessing this structure via subkeys is not
supported, the only access is through aforementioned MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE.
perf-info
Further performance data. Querying this property triggers inter-
nal collection of some data, and may slow down the player. Each
query will reset some internal state. Property change notifica-
tion doesn't and won't work. All of this may change in the fu-
ture, so don't use this. The builtin stats script is supposed to
be the only user; since it's bundled and built with the source
code, it can use knowledge of mpv internal to render the informa-
tion properly. See stats script description for some details.
video-bitrate, audio-bitrate, sub-bitrate
Bitrate values calculated on the packet level. This works by di-
viding the bit size of all packets between two keyframes by their
presentation timestamp distance. (This uses the timestamps are
stored in the file, so e.g. playback speed does not influence the
returned values.) In particular, the video bitrate will update
only per keyframe, and show the "past" bitrate. To make the prop-
erty more UI friendly, updates to these properties are throttled
in a certain way.
The unit is bits per second. OSD formatting turns these values in
kilobits (or megabits, if appropriate), which can be prevented by
using the raw property value, e.g. with ${=video-bitrate}.
Note that the accuracy of these properties is influenced by a few
factors. If the underlying demuxer rewrites the packets on de-
muxing (done for some file formats), the bitrate might be
slightly off. If timestamps are bad or jittery (like in Ma-
troska), even constant bitrate streams might show fluctuating bi-
trate.
How exactly these values are calculated might change in the fu-
ture.
In earlier versions of mpv, these properties returned a static
(but bad) guess using a completely different method.
audio-device-list
The list of discovered audio devices. This is mostly for use with
the client API, and reflects what --audio-device=help with the
command line player returns.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each device entry)
"name" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"description" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
The name is what is to be passed to the --audio-device option
(and often a rather cryptic audio API-specific ID), while de-
scription is human readable free form text. The description is
set to the device name (minus mpv-specific <driver>/ prefix) if
no description is available or the description would have been an
empty string.
The special entry with the name set to auto selects the default
audio output driver and the default device.
The property can be watched with the property observation mecha-
nism in the client API and in Lua scripts. (Technically, change
notification is enabled the first time this property is read.)
audio-device (RW)
Set the audio device. This directly reads/writes the --audio-de-
vice option, but on write accesses, the audio output will be
scheduled for reloading.
Writing this property while no audio output is active will not
automatically enable audio. (This is also true in the case when
audio was disabled due to reinitialization failure after a previ-
ous write access to audio-device.)
This property also doesn't tell you which audio device is actu-
ally in use.
How these details are handled may change in the future.
current-vo
Current video output driver (name as used with --vo).
current-gpu-context
Current GPU context of video output driver (name as used with
--gpu-context). Valid for --vo=gpu and --vo=gpu-next.
current-ao
Current audio output driver (name as used with --ao).
user-data (RW)
This is a recursive key/value map of arbitrary nodes shared be-
tween clients for general use (i.e. scripts, IPC clients, host
applications, etc). The player itself does not use any data in
it (although some builtin scripts may). The property is not pre-
served across player restarts.
Sub-paths can be accessed directly; e.g.
user-data/my-script/state/a can be read, written, or observed.
The top-level object itself cannot be written directly; write to
sub-paths instead.
Converting this property or its sub-properties to strings will
give a JSON representation. If converting a leaf-level object
(i.e. not a map or array) and not using raw mode, the underlying
content will be given (e.g. strings will be printed directly,
rather than quoted and JSON-escaped).
The following sub-paths are reserved for internal uses or have
special semantics: user-data/osc, user-data/mpv. Unless noted
otherwise, the semantics of any properties under these sub-paths
can change at any time and may not be relied upon, and writing to
these properties may prevent builtin scripts from working prop-
erly.
Currently, the following properties have defined special seman-
tics:
user-data/osc/margins
This property is written by an OSC implementation to indi-
cate the margins that it occupies. Its sub-properties l,
r, t, and b should all be set to the left, right, top, and
bottom margins respectively. Values are between 0.0 and
1.0, normalized to window width/height.
user-data/mpv/ytdl
Data shared by the builtin ytdl hook script.
user-data/mpv/ytdl/path
Path to the ytdl executable, if found, or an empty
string otherwise. The property is not set until
the script attempts to find the ytdl executable,
i.e. until an URL is being loaded by the script.
user-data/mpv/ytdl/json-subprocess-result
Result of executing ytdl to retrieve the JSON data
of the URL being loaded. The format is the same as
subprocess's result, capturing stdout and stderr.
user-data/mpv/console/open
Whether the console is open.
menu-data (RW)
This property stores the raw menu definition. See Context Menu
section for details.
type Menu item type. Can be: separator, submenu, or empty.
title Menu item title. Required if type is not separator.
cmd Command to execute when the menu item is clicked.
shortcut
Menu item shortcut key which appears to the right of the
menu item. A shortcut key does not have to be functional;
it's just a visual hint.
state Menu item state. Can be: checked, disabled, hidden, or
empty.
submenu
Submenu items, which is required if type is submenu.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (menu item)
"type" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"title" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"cmd" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"shortcut" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"state" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY[MPV_FORMAT_STRING]
"submenu" MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY[menu item]
Writing to this property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE or with Lua mp.set_property_native will trigger an imme-
diate update of the menu if mpv video output is currently active.
You may observe the current-vo property to check if this is the
case.
working-directory
The working directory of the mpv process. Can be useful for JSON
IPC users, because the command line player usually works with
relative paths.
current-watch-later-dir
The directory in which watch later config files are stored. This
returns --watch-later-dir, or the default directory if
--watch-later-dir has not been modified, with tilde placeholders
expanded.
protocol-list
List of protocol prefixes potentially recognized by the player.
They are returned without trailing :// suffix (which is still al-
ways required). In some cases, the protocol will not actually be
supported (consider https if ffmpeg is not compiled with TLS sup-
port).
decoder-list
List of decoders supported. This lists decoders which can be
passed to --vd and --ad.
codec Canonical codec name, which identifies the format the de-
coder can handle.
driver The name of the decoder itself. Often, this is the same as
codec. Sometimes it can be different. It is used to dis-
tinguish multiple decoders for the same codec.
description
Human readable description of the decoder and codec.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FOR-
MAT_NODE, or with Lua mp.get_property_native, this will return a
mpv_node with the following contents:
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP (for each decoder entry)
"codec" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"driver" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"description" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
encoder-list
List of libavcodec encoders. This has the same format as de-
coder-list. The encoder names (driver entries) can be passed to
--ovc and --oac (without the lavc: prefix required by --vd and
--ad).
demuxer-lavf-list
List of available libavformat demuxers' names. This can be used
to check for support for a specific format or use with --de-
muxer-lavf-format.
input-key-list
List of Key names, same as output by --input-keylist.
mpv-version
The mpv version/copyright string. Depending on how the binary was
built, it might contain either a release version, or just a git
hash.
mpv-configuration
The configuration arguments that were passed to the build system.
If the meson version used to compile mpv is older than 1.1.0,
then a hardcoded string of a few, arbitrary options is displayed
instead.
ffmpeg-version
The contents of the av_version_info() API call. This is a string
which identifies the build in some way, either through a release
version number, or a git hash. This property is unavailable if
mpv is linked against older FFmpeg versions.
libass-version
The value of ass_library_version(). This is an integer, encoded
in a somewhat weird form (apparently "hex BCD"), indicating the
release version of the libass library linked to mpv.
platform
Returns a string describing what target platform mpv was built
for. The value of this is dependent on what the underlying build
system detects. Some of the most common values are: windows, dar-
win (macos or ios), linux, android, and freebsd. Note that this
is not a complete listing.
options/<name> (RW)
The value of option --<name>. Most options can be changed at run-
time by writing to this property. Note that many options require
reloading the file for changes to take effect. If there is an
equivalent property, prefer setting the property instead.
There shouldn't be any reason to access options/<name> instead of
<name>, except in situations in which the properties have differ-
ent behavior or conflicting semantics.
file-local-options/<name> (RW)
Similar to options/<name>, but when setting an option through
this property, the option is reset to its old value once the cur-
rent file has stopped playing. Trying to write an option while no
file is playing (or is being loaded) results in an error.
(Note that if an option is marked as file-local, even options/
will access the local value, and the old value, which will be re-
stored on end of playback, cannot be read or written until end of
playback.)
option-info/<name>
Additional per-option information.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace <name> with the name
of a top-level option. No guarantee of stability is given to any
of these sub-properties - they may change radically in the fu-
ture.
option-info/<name>/name
The name of the option.
option-info/<name>/type
The name of the option type, like String or Integer. For
many complex types, this isn't very accurate.
option-info/<name>/set-from-commandline
Whether the option was set from the mpv command line. What
this is set to if the option is e.g. changed at runtime is
left undefined (meaning it could change in the future).
option-info/<name>/set-locally
Whether the option was set per-file. This is the case with
automatically loaded profiles, file-dir configs, and other
cases. It means the option value will be restored to the
value before playback start when playback ends.
option-info/<name>/expects-file
Whether the option takes file paths as arguments.
option-info/<name>/default-value
The default value of the option. May not always be avail-
able.
option-info/<name>/min, option-info/<name>/max
Integer minimum and maximum values allowed for the option.
Only available if the options are numeric, and the mini-
mum/maximum has been set internally. It's also possible
that only one of these is set.
option-info/<name>/choices
If the option is a choice option, the possible choices.
Choices that are integers may or may not be included (they
can be implied by min and max). Note that options which
behave like choice options, but are not actual choice op-
tions internally, may not have this info available.
property-list
The list of top-level properties.
profile-list
The list of profiles and their contents. This is highly implemen-
tation-specific, and may change any time. Currently, it returns
an array of options for each profile. Each option has a name and
a value, with the value currently always being a string. Note
that the options array is not a map, as order matters and dupli-
cate entries are possible. Recursive profiles are not expanded,
and show up as special profile options.
The profile-restore field is currently missing if it holds the
default value (either because it was not set, or set explicitly
to default), but in the future it might hold the value default.
command-list
The list of input commands. This returns an array of maps, where
each map node represents a command. This map currently only has a
single entry: name for the name of the command. (This property is
supposed to be a replacement for --input-cmdlist. The option
dumps some more information, but it's a valid feature request to
extend this property if needed.)
input-bindings
The list of current input key bindings. This returns an array of
maps, where each map node represents a binding for a single
key/command. This map has the following entries:
key The key name. This is normalized and may look slightly
different from how it was specified in the source (e.g. in
input.conf).
cmd The command mapped to the key. (Currently, this is exactly
the same string as specified in the source, other than
stripping whitespace and comments. It's possible that it
will be normalized in the future.)
is_weak
If set to true, any existing and active user bindings will
take priority.
owner If this entry exists, the name of the script (or similar)
which added this binding.
section
Name of the section this binding is part of. This is a
rarely used mechanism. This entry may be removed or change
meaning in the future.
priority
A number. Bindings with a higher value are preferred over
bindings with a lower value. If the value is negative,
this binding is inactive and will not be triggered by in-
put. Note that mpv does not use this value internally, and
matching of bindings may work slightly differently in some
cases. In addition, this value is dynamic and can change
around at runtime.
comment
If available, the comment following the command on the
same line. (For example, the input.conf entry f cycle bla
# toggle bla would result in an entry with comment = "tog-
gle bla", cmd = "cycle bla".)
This property is read-only, and change notification is not sup-
ported.
clipboard
The clipboard contents, only works when native clipboard (--clip-
board-enable) is supported on the platform. Depending on the
platform, some sub-properties, writing to properties, or change
notifications are not currently functional.
This has a number of sub-properties:
clipboard/text (RW)
The text content in the clipboard (Windows, Wayland and
macOS only). Writing to this property sets the text clip-
board content (Windows only).
clipboard/text-primary
The text content in the primary selection (Wayland only).
NOTE:
On Wayland with the vo clipboard backend, the clipboard con-
tent is only updated when the compositor sends a selection
data offer (typically when VO window is focused). The wayland
backend typically does not have this limitation. See cur-
rent-clipboard-backend property for more details.
current-clipboard-backend
A string containing the currently active clipboard backend. See
--clipboard-backends option for the list of available backends.
clock The current local time in hour:minutes format.
Inconsistencies between options and properties
You can access (almost) all options as properties, though there are some
caveats with some properties (due to historical reasons):
vid, aid, sid
While playback is active, these return the actually active
tracks. For example, if you set aid=5, and the currently played
file contains no audio track with ID 5, the aid property will re-
turn no.
Before mpv 0.31.0, you could set existing tracks at runtime only.
display-fps
This inconsistent behavior is deprecated. Post-deprecation, the
reported value and the option value are cleanly separated (over-
ride-display-fps for the option value).
vf, af If you set the properties during playback, and the filter chain
fails to reinitialize, the option will be set, but the runtime
filter chain does not change. On the other hand, the next video
to be played will fail, because the initial filter chain cannot
be created.
This behavior changed in mpv 0.31.0. Before this, the new value
was rejected iff a video (for vf) or an audio (for af) track was
active. If playback was not active, the behavior was the same as
the current one.
playlist
The property is read-only and returns the current internal
playlist. The option is for loading playlist during command line
parsing. For client API uses, you should use the loadlist command
instead.
profile, include
These are write-only, and will perform actions as they are writ-
ten to, exactly as if they were used on the mpv CLI commandline.
Their only use is when using libmpv before mpv_initialize(),
which in turn is probably only useful in encoding mode. Normal
libmpv users should use other mechanisms, such as the apply-pro-
file command, and the mpv_load_config_file API function. Avoid
these properties.
Property Expansion
All string arguments to input commands as well as certain options (like
--term-playing-msg) are subject to property expansion. Note that prop-
erty expansion does not work in places where e.g. numeric parameters are
expected. (For example, the add command does not do property expansion.
The set command is an exception and not a general rule.)
Example for input.conf
i show-text "Filename: ${filename}"
shows the filename of the current file when pressing the i key
Whether property expansion is enabled by default depends on which API is
used (see Flat command syntax, Commands specified as arrays and Named
arguments), but it can always be enabled with the expand-properties pre-
fix or disabled with the raw prefix, as described in Input Command Pre-
fixes.
The following expansions are supported:
${NAME}
Expands to the value of the property NAME. If retrieving the
property fails, expand to an error string. (Use ${NAME:} with a
trailing : to expand to an empty string instead.) If NAME is
prefixed with =, expand to the raw value of the property (see
section below).
${NAME:STR}
Expands to the value of the property NAME, or STR if the property
cannot be retrieved. STR is expanded recursively.
${?NAME:STR}
Expands to STR (recursively) if the property NAME is available.
${!NAME:STR}
Expands to STR (recursively) if the property NAME cannot be re-
trieved.
${?NAME==VALUE:STR}
Expands to STR (recursively) if the property NAME expands to a
string equal to VALUE. You can prefix NAME with = in order to
compare the raw value of a property (see section below). If the
property is unavailable, or other errors happen when retrieving
it, the value is never considered equal. Note that VALUE can't
contain any of the characters : or }. Also, it is possible that
escaping with " or % might be added in the future, should the
need arise.
${!NAME==VALUE:STR}
Same as with the ? variant, but STR is expanded if the value is
not equal. (Using the same semantics as with ?.)
$$ Expands to $.
$} Expands to }. (To produce this character inside recursive expan-
sion.)
$> Disable property expansion and special handling of $ for the rest
of the string.
In places where property expansion is allowed, C-style escapes are often
accepted as well. Example:
• \n becomes a newline character
• \\ expands to \
Raw and Formatted Properties
Normally, properties are formatted as human-readable text, meant to be
displayed on OSD or on the terminal. It is possible to retrieve an un-
formatted (raw) value from a property by prefixing its name with =.
These raw values can be parsed by other programs and follow the same
conventions as the options associated with the properties. Additionally,
there is a > prefix to format human-readable text, with fixed precision
for floating-point values. This is useful for printing values where a
constant width is important.
Examples
• ${time-pos} expands to 00:14:23 (if playback position is at 14 min-
utes 23 seconds)
• ${=time-pos} expands to 863.4 (same time, plus 400 milliseconds -
milliseconds are normally not shown in the formatted case)
• ${avsync} expands to +0.003
• ${>avsync} expands to +0.0030
• ${=avsync} expands to 0.003028
Sometimes, the difference in amount of information carried by raw and
formatted property values can be rather big. In some cases, raw values
have more information, like higher precision than seconds with time-pos.
Sometimes it is the other way around, e.g. aid shows track title and
language in the formatted case, but only the track number if it is raw.
ON SCREEN CONTROLLER
The On Screen Controller (short: OSC) is a minimal GUI integrated with
mpv to offer basic mouse-controllability. It is intended to make inter-
action easier for new users and to enable precise and direct seeking.
The OSC is enabled by default if mpv was compiled with Lua support. It
can be disabled entirely using the --osc=no option.
Using the OSC
By default, the OSC will show up whenever the mouse is moved inside the
player window and will hide if the mouse is not moved outside the OSC
for 0.5 seconds or if the mouse leaves the window.
The Interface
+------+---------+---------+-----------------------------------------------+
| menu | pl prev | pl next | title cache |
+------+------+------+---------+-----------+------+-------+-----+-----+----+
| play | skip | skip | time | seekbar | time | audio | sub | vol | fs |
| | back | frwd | elapsed | | left | | | | |
+------+------+------+---------+-----------+------+-------+-----+-----+----+
menu
┌────────────┬───────────────┐
│ left-click │ open the menu │
└────────────┴───────────────┘
pl prev
┌───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ play previous file in │
│ │ playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ show the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ show the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the playlist menu │
└───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
pl next
┌───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ play next file in playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ show the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ show the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the playlist menu │
└───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
title
Displays the current playlist position and media-title, filename or custom
title, or the target chapter name while hovering the seekbar.
┌───────────────┬──────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ show file and track info │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ show the path │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ show the path │
├───────────────┼──────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the history menu │
└───────────────┴──────────────────────────┘
cache
Shows current cache fill status
play
┌───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ toggle play/pause │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ toggle infinite looping of │
│ │ the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ toggle infinite looping of │
│ │ the playlist │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ toggle infinite looping of │
│ │ the current file │
└───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
skip back
┌───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ go to beginning of chapter │
│ │ / previous chapter │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ show chapters │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ show chapters │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the chapter menu │
└───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
skip frwd
┌───────────────┬───────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ go to next chapter │
├───────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ show chapters │
├───────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ show chapters │
├───────────────┼───────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the chapter menu │
└───────────────┴───────────────────────┘
time elapsed
Shows current playback position timestamp
┌────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ toggle displaying time- │
│ │ codes with milliseconds │
└────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
seekbar
Indicates current playback position and position of chapters
┌─────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ seek to position │
├─────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ seek to the nearest chap- │
│ │ ter │
├─────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ mouse wheel │ seek forward/backward │
└─────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
time left
Shows remaining playback time timestamp
┌────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ toggle between total and │
│ │ remaining time │
└────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
audio and sub
Displays selected track and amount of available tracks
┌───────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ cycle audio/sub tracks │
│ │ forward │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ shift+L-click │ cycle audio/sub tracks │
│ │ backwards │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ middle-click │ cycle audio/sub tracks │
│ │ backwards │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the audio/sub track │
│ │ menu │
├───────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ mouse wheel │ cycle audio/sub tracks │
│ │ forward/backwards │
└───────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
vol
┌─────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ toggle mute │
├─────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ open the audio device menu │
├─────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ mouse wheel │ volume up/down │
└─────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
fs
┌─────────────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ left-click │ toggle fullscreen │
├─────────────┼────────────────────────────┤
│ right-click │ toggle whether the window │
│ │ is maximized │
└─────────────┴────────────────────────────┘
Since mpv 0.40.0, it is possible to configure the commands to run with
mouse actions on some interface elements, and the default behaviors of
several elements were changed. If you miss some older behaviors, look at
etc/restore-osc-bindings.conf in the mpv git repository.
Key Bindings
These key bindings are active by default if nothing else is already
bound to these keys. In case of collision, the function needs to be
bound to a different key. See the Script Commands section.
┌─────┬────────────────────────────┐
│ del │ Cycles visibility between │
│ │ never / auto (mouse-move) │
│ │ / always │
└─────┴────────────────────────────┘
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file script-opts/osc.conf
placed in mpv's user directory and through the --script-opts com-
mand-line option. The configuration syntax is described in mp.options
functions.
Command-line Syntax
To avoid collisions with other scripts, all options need to be prefixed
with osc-.
Example:
--script-opts=osc-optionA=value1,osc-optionB=value2
Configurable Options
layout Default: bottombar
The layout for the OSC. Currently available are: box, slimbox,
bottombar, topbar, slimbottombar and slimtopbar. Default
pre-0.21.0 was 'box'.
seekbarstyle
Default: bar
Sets the style of the playback position marker and overall shape
of the seekbar: bar, diamond or knob.
seekbarhandlesize
Default: 0.6
Size ratio of the seek handle if seekbarstyle is set to diamond
or knob. This is relative to the full height of the seekbar.
seekbarkeyframes
Default: yes
Controls the mode used to seek when dragging the seekbar. If set
to yes, default seeking mode is used (usually keyframes, but
player defaults and heuristics can change it to exact). If set to
no, exact seeking on mouse drags will be used instead. Keyframes
are preferred, but exact seeks may be useful in cases where
keyframes cannot be found. Note that using exact seeks can poten-
tially make mouse dragging much slower.
seekrangestyle
Default: inverted
Display seekable ranges on the seekbar. bar shows them on the
full height of the bar, line as a thick line and inverted as a
thin line that is inverted over playback position markers. none
will hide them. Additionally, slider will show a permanent handle
inside the seekbar with cached ranges marked inside. Note that
these will look differently based on the seekbarstyle option.
Also, slider does not work with seekbarstyle set to bar.
seekrangeseparate
Default: yes
Controls whether to show line-style seekable ranges on top of the
seekbar or separately if seekbarstyle is set to bar.
seekrangealpha
Default: 20
Alpha of the seekable ranges, 0 (opaque) to 255 (fully transpar-
ent).
scrollcontrols
Default: yes
By default, going up or down with the mouse wheel can trigger
certain actions (such as seeking) if the mouse is hovering an OSC
element. Set to no to disable any special mouse wheel behavior.
deadzonesize
Default: 0.5
Size of the deadzone. The deadzone is an area that makes the
mouse act like leaving the window. Movement there won't make the
OSC show up and it will hide immediately if the mouse enters it.
The deadzone starts at the window border opposite to the OSC and
the size controls how much of the window it will span. Values be-
tween 0.0 and 1.0, where 0 means the OSC will always popup with
mouse movement in the window, and 1 means the OSC will only show
up when the mouse hovers it. Default pre-0.21.0 was 0.
minmousemove
Default: 0
Minimum amount of pixels the mouse has to move between ticks to
make the OSC show up. Default pre-0.21.0 was 3.
showwindowed
Default: yes
Enable the OSC when windowed
showfullscreen
Default: yes
Enable the OSC when fullscreen
idlescreen
Default: yes
Show the mpv logo and message when idle
scalewindowed
Default: 1.0
Scale factor of the OSC when windowed.
scalefullscreen
Default: 1.0
Scale factor of the OSC when fullscreen
vidscale
Default: auto
Scale the OSC with the video. no tries to keep the OSC size con-
stant as much as the window size allows. auto scales the OSC
with the OSD, which is scaled with the window or kept at a con-
stant size, depending on the --osd-scale-by-window option.
valign Default: 0.8
Vertical alignment in box and slimbox layouts, -1 (top) to 1
(bottom).
halign Default: 0.0
Horizontal alignment in box and slimbox layouts, -1 (left) to 1
(right).
barmargin
Default: 0
Margin from bottom (bottombar, slimbottombar) or top (topbar,
slimtopbar), in pixels.
boxalpha
Default: 80
Alpha of the background box, 0 (opaque) to 255 (fully transpar-
ent)
hidetimeout
Default: 500
Duration in ms until the OSC hides if no mouse movement, must not
be negative
fadeduration
Default: 200
Duration of fade effects in ms, 0 = no fade.
fadein Default: no
Enable fade-in.
title Default:
${!playlist-count==1:[${playlist-pos-1}/${playlist-count}] }${me-
dia-title}
String that supports property expansion that will be displayed as
OSC title. ASS tags are escaped and newlines are converted to
spaces.
tooltipborder
Default: 1
Size of the tooltip outline when using bottombar or topbar lay-
outs
timetotal
Default: no
Show total time instead of time remaining
remaining_playtime
Default: yes
Whether the time-remaining display takes speed into account. yes
- how much playback time remains at the current speed. no - how
much video-time remains.
timems Default: no
Display timecodes with milliseconds
tcspace
Default: 100 (allowed: 50-200)
Adjust space reserved for timecodes (current time and time re-
maining) in the bottombar and topbar layouts. The timecode width
depends on the font, and with some fonts the spacing near the
timecodes becomes too small. Use values above 100 to increase
that spacing, or below 100 to decrease it.
visibility
Default: auto (auto hide/show on mouse move)
Also supports never and always
visibility_modes
Default: never_auto_always
The list of visibility modes to cycle through when calling the
osc-visibility cycle script message. Modes are separated by _.
boxmaxchars
Default: 80
Max chars for the osc title at the box layout. mpv does not mea-
sure the text width on screen and so it needs to limit it by num-
ber of chars. The default is conservative to allow wide fonts to
be used without overflow. However, with many common fonts a big-
ger number can be used. YMMV.
boxvideo
Default: no
Whether to overlay the osc over the video (no), or to box the
video within the areas not covered by the osc (yes). If this op-
tion is set, the osc may overwrite the --video-margin-ratio-* op-
tions, even if the user has set them. (It will not overwrite them
if all of them are set to default values.) Additionally, visibil-
ity must be set to always. Otherwise, this option does nothing.
Currently, this is supported for the bottombar, slimbottombar,
topbar and slimtopbar layouts only. The other layouts do not
change if this option is set. Separately, if window controls are
present (see below), they will be affected regardless of which
osc layout is in use.
The border is static and appears even if the OSC is configured to
appear only on mouse interaction. If the OSC is invisible, the
border is simply filled with the background color (black by de-
fault).
This currently still makes the OSC overlap with subtitles (if the
--sub-use-margins option is set to yes, the default). This may be
fixed later.
This does not work correctly with video outputs like --vo=xv,
which render OSD into the unscaled video.
windowcontrols
Default: auto (Show window controls if there is no window border)
Whether to show window management controls over the video, and if
so, which side of the window to place them. This may be desirable
when the window has no decorations, either because they have been
explicitly disabled (border=no) or because the current platform
doesn't support them (eg: gnome-shell with wayland).
The set of window controls is fixed, offering minimize, maximize,
and quit. Not all platforms implement minimize and maximize, but
quit will always work.
windowcontrols_alignment
Default: right
If window controls are shown, indicates which side should they be
aligned to.
Supports left and right which will place the controls on those
respective sides.
windowcontrols_title
Default: ${media-title}
String that supports property expansion that will be displayed as
the windowcontrols title. ASS tags are escaped, and newlines and
trailing slashes are stripped.
greenandgrumpy
Default: no
Set to yes to reduce festivity (i.e. disable santa hat in Decem-
ber.)
livemarkers
Default: yes
Update chapter markers positions on duration changes, e.g. live
streams. The updates are unoptimized - consider disabling it on
very low-end systems.
chapter_fmt
Default: Chapter: %s
Template for the chapter-name display when hovering the seekbar.
Use no to disable chapter display on hover. Otherwise it's a lua
string.format template and %s is replaced with the actual name.
unicodeminus
Default: no
Use a Unicode minus sign instead of an ASCII hyphen when display-
ing the remaining playback time.
background_color
Default: #000000
Sets the background color of the OSC.
timecode_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the color of the timecode and seekbar, of the OSC.
title_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the color of the video title. Formatted as #RRGGBB.
time_pos_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the color of the timecode at hover position in the seekbar.
time_pos_outline_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the color of the timecode's outline at hover position in the
seekbar. Also affects the timecode in the slimbox layout.
buttons_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the colors of the big buttons.
top_buttons_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the colors of the top buttons.
small_buttonsL_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the colors of the small buttons on the left in the box lay-
out.
small_buttonsR_color
Default: #FFFFFF
Sets the colors of the small buttons on the right in the box lay-
out.
held_element_color
Default: #999999
Sets the colors of the elements that are being pressed or held
down.
tick_delay
Default: 1/60
Sets the minimum interval between OSC redraws in seconds. This
can be decreased on fast systems to make OSC rendering smoother.
Ignored if tick_delay_follow_display_fps is set to yes and the VO
supports the display-fps property.
tick_delay_follow_display_fps
Default: no
Use display fps to calculate the interval between OSC redraws.
The following options configure what commands are run when the buttons
are clicked. mbtn_mid commands are also triggered with shift+mbtn_left.
menu_mbtn_left_command=script-binding select/menu; script-message-to osc
osc-hide
menu_mbtn_mid_command=
menu_mbtn_right_command=
playlist_prev_mbtn_left_command=playlist-prev; show-text ${playlist}
3000
playlist_prev_mbtn_mid_command=show-text ${playlist} 3000
playlist_prev_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-playlist;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
playlist_next_mbtn_left_command=playlist-next; show-text ${playlist}
3000
playlist_next_mbtn_mid_command=show-text ${playlist} 3000
playlist_next_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-playlist;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
title_mbtn_left_command=script-binding stats/display-page-5
title_mbtn_mid_command=show-text ${path}
title_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-watch-history;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
play_pause_mbtn_left_command=cycle pause
play_pause_mbtn_mid_command=cycle-values loop-playlist inf no
play_pause_mbtn_right_command=cycle-values loop-file inf no
chapter_prev_mbtn_left_command=osd-msg add chapter -1
chapter_prev_mbtn_mid_command=show-text ${chapter-list} 3000
chapter_prev_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-chapter;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
chapter_next_mbtn_left_command=osd-msg add chapter 1
chapter_next_mbtn_mid_command=show-text ${chapter-list} 3000
chapter_next_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-chapter;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
audio_track_mbtn_left_command=cycle audio
audio_track_mbtn_mid_command=cycle audio down
audio_track_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-aid;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
audio_track_wheel_down_command=cycle audio
audio_track_wheel_up_command=cycle audio down
sub_track_mbtn_left_command=cycle sub
sub_track_mbtn_mid_command=cycle sub down
sub_track_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-sid;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
sub_track_wheel_down_command=cycle sub
sub_track_wheel_up_command=cycle sub down
volume_mbtn_left_command=no-osd cycle mute
volume_mbtn_mid_command=
volume_mbtn_right_command=script-binding select/select-audio-device;
script-message-to osc osc-hide
volume_wheel_down_command=add volume -5
volume_wheel_up_command=add volume 5
fullscreen_mbtn_left_command="cycle fullscreen"
fullscreen_mbtn_mid_command=
fullscreen_mbtn_right_command="cycle window-maximized"
Custom Buttons
Additional script-opts are available to define custom buttons in bot-
tombar and topbar layouts.
Example to add loop and shuffle buttons
custom_button_1_content=🔁 custom_button_1_mbtn_left_com-
mand=cycle-values loop-file inf no custom_but-
ton_1_mbtn_right_command=cycle-values loop-playlist inf no
custom_button_2_content=🔀 custom_button_2_mbtn_left_com-
mand=playlist-shuffle
custom_button_3_content=⏱ custom_button_3_mbtn_left_com-
mand=add speed 1 custom_button_3_mbtn_right_command=set speed
1 custom_button_3_wheel_up_command=add speed 0.25 custom_but-
ton_3_wheel_down_command=add speed -0.25
Script Commands
The OSC script listens to certain script commands. These commands can
bound in input.conf, or sent by other scripts.
osc-visibility
Controls visibility mode never / auto (on mouse move) / always
and also cycle to cycle between the modes. If a second argument
is passed (any value), then the output on the OSD will be si-
lenced.
osc-show
Triggers the OSC to show up, just as if user moved mouse.
osc-hide
Hide the OSC when visibility is auto.
Example
You could put this into input.conf to hide the OSC with the a key and to
set auto mode (the default) with b:
a script-message osc-visibility never
b script-message osc-visibility auto
osc-idlescreen
Controls the visibility of the mpv logo on idle. Valid arguments
are yes, no, and cycle to toggle between yes and no. If a second
argument is passed (any value), then the output on the OSD will
be silenced.
STATS
This builtin script displays information and statistics for the cur-
rently played file. It is enabled by default if mpv was compiled with
Lua support. It can be disabled entirely using the --load-stats-over-
lay=no option.
Usage
The following key bindings are active by default unless something else
is already bound to them:
┌───┬────────────────────────────┐
│ i │ Show stats for a fixed du- │
│ │ ration │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ I │ Toggle stats (shown until │
│ │ toggled again) │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ ? │ Toggle displaying the key │
│ │ bindings │
└───┴────────────────────────────┘
While the stats are visible on screen the following key bindings are ac-
tive, regardless of existing bindings. They allow you to switch between
pages of stats:
┌───┬────────────────────────────┐
│ 1 │ Show usual stats │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 2 │ Show frame timings │
│ │ (scroll) │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 3 │ Input cache stats │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 4 │ Active key bindings │
│ │ (scroll) │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 5 │ Selected Tracks Info │
│ │ (scroll) │
├───┼────────────────────────────┤
│ 0 │ Internal stuff (scroll) │
└───┴────────────────────────────┘
If stats were displayed by toggling, these key bindings are also active:
┌─────┬─────────────────┐
│ ESC │ Close the stats │
└─────┴─────────────────┘
On pages which support scroll, these key bindings are also active:
┌──────┬──────────────────────┐
│ UP │ Scroll one line up │
├──────┼──────────────────────┤
│ DOWN │ Scroll one line down │
└──────┴──────────────────────┘
On page 4, these key bindings are also active:
┌───┬─────────────────────┐
│ / │ Search key bindings │
└───┴─────────────────────┘
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file
script-opts/stats.conf placed in mpv's user directory and through the
--script-opts command-line option. The configuration syntax is described
in mp.options functions.
Configurable Options
key_page_1
Default: 1
key_page_2
Default: 2
key_page_3
Default: 3
key_page_4
Default: 4
key_page_5
Default: 5
key_page_0
Default: 0
key_exit
Default: ESC
Key bindings for page switching while stats are displayed.
key_scroll_up
Default: UP
key_scroll_down
Default: DOWN
key_scroll_search
Default: /
scroll_lines
Default: 1
Scroll key bindings and number of lines to scroll on pages which
support it.
duration
Default: 4
How long the stats are shown in seconds (oneshot).
redraw_delay
Default: 1
How long it takes to refresh the displayed stats in seconds (tog-
gling).
persistent_overlay
Default: no
When no, other scripts printing text to the screen can overwrite
the displayed stats. When yes, displayed stats are persistently
shown for the respective duration. This can result in overlapping
text when multiple scripts decide to print text at the same time.
file_tag_max_length
Default: 128
Only show file tags shorter than this length, in bytes.
file_tag_max_count
Default: 16
Only show the first specified amount of file tags.
term_clip
Default: yes
Whether to clip lines to the terminal width.
plot_perfdata
Default: yes
Show graphs for performance data (page 2).
plot_vsync_ratio
Default: yes
plot_vsync_jitter
Default: yes
Show graphs for vsync and jitter values (page 1). Only when tog-
gled.
plot_tonemapping_lut
Default: no
Enable tone-mapping LUT visualization automatically. Only when
toggled.
flush_graph_data
Default: yes
Clear data buffers used for drawing graphs when toggling.
font Default: same as osd-font
Font name. Should support as many font weights as possible for
optimal visual experience.
font_mono
Default: monospace
Font name for parts where monospaced characters are necessary to
align text. Currently, monospaced digits are sufficient.
font_size
Default: 20
Font size used to render text.
font_color
Default: same as osd-color
Color of the text.
border_size
Default: 1.65
Size of border drawn around the font.
border_color
Default: same as osd-border-color
Color of the text border.
shadow_x_offset
Default: same as --osd-shadow-offset
The horizontal distance from the text to position the shadow at.
shadow_y_offset
Default: same as --osd-shadow-offset
The vertical distance from the text to position the shadow at.
shadow_color
Default: same as osd-shadow-color
Color of the text shadow.
alpha Default: 11
Transparency of text when font_color is specified, of text bor-
ders when border_color is specified, and of text shadows when
shadow_color is specified.
plot_bg_border_color
Default: 0000FF
Border color used for drawing graphs.
plot_bg_border_width
Default: 1.25
Border width used for drawing graphs.
plot_bg_color
Default: 262626
Background color used for drawing graphs.
plot_color
Default: FFFFFF
Color used for drawing graphs.
vidscale
Default: auto
Scale the text and graphs with the video. no tries to keep the
sizes constant. auto scales the text and graphs with the OSD,
which is scaled with the window or kept at a constant size, de-
pending on the --osd-scale-by-window option.
Note: colors are given as hexadecimal values and use ASS tag order: BBG-
GRR (blue green red).
Different key bindings
Additional keys can be configured in input.conf to display the stats:
e script-binding stats/display-stats
E script-binding stats/display-stats-toggle
And to display a certain page directly:
i script-binding stats/display-page-1
h script-binding stats/display-page-4-toggle
Active key bindings page
Lists the active key bindings and the commands they're bound to, exclud-
ing the interactive keys of the stats script itself. See also --in-
put-test for more detailed view of each binding.
The keys are grouped automatically using a simple analysis of the com-
mand string, and one should not expect documentation-level grouping ac-
curacy, however, it should still be reasonably useful.
Using --idle --script-opt=stats-bindlist=yes will print the list to the
terminal and quit immediately. Long lines are clipped to the terminal
width unless this is disabled with --script-opt=stats-term_clip=no. Es-
cape sequences can be disabled by adding - before yes, i.e.
--script-opt=stats-bindlist=-yes.
Like with --input-test, the list includes bindings from input.conf and
from user scripts. Use --no-config to list only built-in bindings.
Internal stuff page
Most entries shown on this page have rather vague meaning. Likely none
of this is useful for you. Don't attempt to use it. Forget its exis-
tence.
Selecting this for the first time will start collecting some internal
performance data. That means performance will be slightly lower than
normal for the rest of the time the player is running (even if the stats
page is closed). Note that the stats page itself uses a lot of CPU and
even GPU resources, and may have a heavy impact on performance.
The displayed information is accumulated over the redraw delay (shown as
poll-time field).
This adds entries for each Lua script. If there are too many scripts
running, parts of the list will simply be out of the screen, but it can
be scrolled.
If the underlying platform does not support pthread per thread times,
the displayed times will be 0 or something random (I suspect that at
time of this writing, only Linux provides the correct via pthread APIs
for per thread times).
Most entries are added lazily and only during data collection, which is
why entries may pop up randomly after some time. It's also why the mem-
ory usage entries for scripts that have been inactive since the start of
data collection are missing.
Memory usage is approximate and does not reflect internal fragmentation.
JS scripts memory reporting is disabled by default because collecting
the data at the JS side has an overhead and will increase memory usage.
It can be enabled by setting the --js-memory-report option before start-
ing mpv.
If entries have /time and /cpu variants, the former gives the real time
(monotonic clock), while the latter the thread CPU time (only if the
corresponding pthread API works and is supported).
CONSOLE
This script provides the ability to process the user's textual input to
other scripts through the mp.input API. It can be displayed on both the
video window and the terminal. It can be disabled entirely using the
--load-console=no option.
Console can either process free-form text or select from a predefined
list of items.
Free-form text mode keybindings
ESC and Ctrl+[
Hide the console.
ENTER, Ctrl+j and Ctrl+m
Select the first completion if one wasn't already manually se-
lected, and run the typed command.
Shift+ENTER
Type a literal newline character.
LEFT and Ctrl+b
Move the cursor to the previous character.
RIGHT and Ctrl+f
Move the cursor to the next character.
Ctrl+LEFT and Alt+b
Move the cursor to the beginning of the current word, or if be-
tween words, to the beginning of the previous word.
Ctrl+RIGHT and Alt+f
Move the cursor to the end of the current word, or if between
words, to the end of the next word.
HOME and Ctrl+a
Move the cursor to the start of the current line.
END and Ctrl+e
Move the cursor to the end of the current line.
BACKSPACE and Ctrl+h
Delete the previous character.
Ctrl+d Hide the console if the current line is empty, otherwise delete
the next character.
Ctrl+BACKSPACE and Ctrl+w
Delete text from the cursor to the beginning of the current word,
or if between words, to the beginning of the previous word.
Ctrl+DEL and Alt+d
Delete text from the cursor to the end of the current word, or if
between words, to the end of the next word.
Ctrl+u Delete text from the cursor to the beginning of the current line.
Ctrl+k Delete text from the cursor to the end of the current line.
Ctrl+c Clear the current line.
UP and Ctrl+p
Move back in the command history.
DOWN and Ctrl+n
Move forward in the command history.
PGUP Go to the first command in the history.
PGDN Stop navigating the command history.
Ctrl+r Search the command history. See SELECT for the key bindings in
this mode.
INSERT Toggle insert mode.
Ctrl+v Paste text (uses the clipboard on X11 and Wayland).
Shift+INSERT
Paste text (uses the primary selection on X11 and Wayland).
TAB and Ctrl+i
Cycle through completions.
Shift+TAB
Cycle through the completions backwards.
Ctrl+l Clear all log messages from the console.
MBTN_MID
Paste text (uses the primary selection on X11 and Wayland).
WHEEL_UP
Move back in the command history.
WHEEL_DOWN
Move forward in the command history.
Known issues
• Non-ASCII keyboard input has restrictions
• The cursor keys move between Unicode code-points, not grapheme clus-
ters
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file script-opts/con-
sole.conf placed in mpv's user directory and through the --script-opts
command-line option. The configuration syntax is described in mp.options
functions.
Configurable Options
font The font name.
When necessary to align completions in a grid, a monospace font
depending on the platform is the default. When there are no com-
pletions, --osd-font is the default.
font_size
Default: 24
The font size. This will be multiplied by display-hidpi-scale
when the console is not scaled with the window.
border_size
Default: 1.65
The font border size.
background_alpha
Default: 80
The transparency of the menu's background. Ranges from 0 (opaque)
to 255 (fully transparent).
padding
Default: 10
The padding of the menu.
menu_outline_size
Default: 0
The size of the menu's border.
menu_outline_color
Default: #FFFFFF
The color of the menu's border.
corner_radius
Default: 8
The radius of the menu's corners.
margin_x
Default: same as --osd-margin-x
The margin from the left of the window.
margin_y
Default: same as --osd-margin-y
The margin from the bottom of the window.
scale_with_window
Default: auto
Whether to scale the console with the window height. Can be yes,
no, or auto, which follows the value of --osd-scale-by-window.
selected_color
Default: #222222
The color of the selected item.
selected_back_color
Default: #FFFFFF
The background color of the selected item.
match_color
Default: #0088FF
The color of characters that match the searched string.
case_sensitive
Default: no on Windows, yes on other platforms.
Whether autocompletion is case sensitive. Only works with ASCII
characters.
history_dedup
Default: true
Remove duplicate entries in history as to only keep the latest
one.
font_hw_ratio
Default: auto
The ratio of font height to font width. Adjusts grid width of
completions. Values in the range 1.8..2.5 make sense for common
monospace fonts.
COMMANDS
This script allows running and completing input commands in the console
interactively, and also adds mpv's log to the console's log.
Keybindings
` Open the console to enter commands.
Commands
script-binding commands/open
Open the console to enter commands.
script-message-to commands type <text> [<cursor_pos>]
Show the console and pre-fill it with the provided text, option-
ally specifying the initial cursor position as a positive integer
starting from 1. The console is automatically closed after run-
ning the command.
Examples for input.conf
% script-message-to commands type "seek absolute-percent" 6
Enter a percent position to seek to.
Ctrl+o script-message-to console type "loadfile ''" 11
Enter a file or URL to play, with autocompletion of
paths in the filesystem.
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file script-opts/com-
mands.conf placed in mpv's user directory and through the --script-opts
command-line option. The configuration syntax is described in mp.options
functions.
Configurable Options
persist_history
Default: no
Whether to save the command history to a file and load it.
history_path
Default: ~~state/command_history.txt
The file path for persist_history (see PATHS).
SELECT
console can present a list of items to browse and select from with the
mp.input.select API. select.lua is a builtin client of this API provid-
ing script bindings that gather and format the data to be selected in
the console and do operations on the selected item. It can be disabled
using the --load-select=no option.
Key bindings
When using mp.input.select, typing printable characters does a fuzzy
search of the presented items, and key bindings listed in CONSOLE are
extended with the following:
ENTER, Ctrl+j and Ctrl+m
Confirm the selection of the highlighted item.
UP and Ctrl+p
Select the item above, or the last one when the first item is se-
lected.
DOWN and Ctrl+n
Select the item below, or the first one when the last item is se-
lected.
PGUP and Ctrl+b
Scroll up one page.
PGDN and Ctrl+f
Scroll down one page.
MBTN_LEFT
Confirm the selection of the highlighted item, or close the con-
sole if clicking outside of the menu rectangle.
WHEEL_UP
Scroll up.
WHEEL_DOWN
Scroll down.
Script bindings
By default select.lua's script bindings are bound to key sequences
starting with g listed in Keyboard Control. The names of the script
bindings listed below can be used to bind them to different keys.
Example to rebind playlist selection in input.conf
Ctrl+p script-binding select/select-playlist
Available script bindings are:
select-playlist
Select a playlist entry. --osd-playlist-entry determines how
playlist entries are formatted.
select-sid
Select a subtitle track, or disable the current one.
select-secondary-sid
Select a secondary subtitle track, or disable the current one.
select-aid
Select an audio track, or disable the current one.
select-vid
Select a video track, or disable the current one.
select-track
Select a track of any type, or disable a selected track.
select-chapter
Select a chapter.
select-edition
Select an MKV edition or DVD/Blu-ray title.
select-subtitle-line
Select a subtitle line to seek to. This doesn't work with image
subtitles.
This currently requires ffmpeg in PATH, or in the same folder as
mpv on Windows.
select-audio-device
Select an audio device.
select-watch-history
Select a file from the watch history. Requires --save-watch-his-
tory.
If you don't already use --autocreate-playlist, it is recommended
to enable it with this script binding to populate the playlist
with the other files in the entry's directory.
Example for input.conf to play files adjacent to the history
entry
g-h script-binding select/select-watch-history; no-osd
set autocreate-playlist filter
select-watch-later
Select a file from watch later config files (see RESUMING PLAY-
BACK) to resume playing. Requires --write-file-
name-in-watch-later-config. This doesn't work with --ig-
nore-path-in-watch-later-config.
If you don't already use --autocreate-playlist, it is recommended
to enable it with this script binding to populate the playlist
with the other files in the entry's directory.
Example for input.conf to play files adjacent to the watch
later entry
g-w script-binding select/select-watch-later; no-osd
set autocreate-playlist filter
select-binding
List the defined input bindings. You can also select one to run
the associated command.
show-properties
List the names and values of all properties. You can also select
one to print its value on the OSD, which is useful for long val-
ues that get clipped.
menu Show a menu with miscellaneous entries.
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file script-opts/se-
lect.conf placed in mpv's user directory and through the --script-opts
command-line option. The configuration syntax is described in mp.options
functions.
Configurable options
history_date_format
Default: %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S
The format of dates of history entries. This is passed to Lua's
os.date, which uses the same formats as strftime(3).
hide_history_duplicates
Default: yes
Whether to show only the last of history entries with the same
path.
POSITIONING
This script provides script bindings to pan videos and images. It can be
disabled using the --load-positioning=no option.
Script bindings
pan-x <amount>
Adjust --video-align-x relatively to the OSD width, rather than
relatively to the video width like the option. This is useful to
pan large images consistently.
amount is a number such that an amount of 1 scrolls as much as
the OSD width.
pan-y <amount>
Adjust --video-align-y relatively to the OSD height, rather than
relatively to the video height like the option.
amount is a number such that an amount of 1 scrolls as much as
the OSD height.
drag-to-pan
Pan the video while holding a mouse button, keeping the clicked
part of the video under the cursor.
align-to-cursor
Pan through the whole video while holding a mouse button, or af-
ter clicking once if toggle_align_to_cursor is yes.
cursor-centric-zoom <amount>
Increase --video-zoom by amount while keeping the part of the
video hovered by the cursor under it, or the average position of
touch points if known.
Configuration
This script can be customized through a config file script-opts/posi-
tioning.conf placed in mpv's user directory and through the
--script-opts command-line option. The configuration syntax is described
in mp.options functions.
Configurable Options
toggle_align_to_cursor
Default: no
Whether align-to-cursor requires holding down a mouse button to
pan. If no, dragging pans. If yes, clicking the first time makes
pan follow the cursor, and clicking a second time disables this.
suppress_osd
Default: no
Whether to not print the new value of --video-zoom when using
cursor-centric-zoom.
LUA SCRIPTING
mpv can load Lua scripts. (See Script location.)
mpv provides the built-in module mp, which contains functions to send
commands to the mpv core and to retrieve information about playback
state, user settings, file information, and so on.
These scripts can be used to control mpv in a similar way to slave mode.
Technically, the Lua code uses the client API internally.
Example
A script which leaves fullscreen mode when the player is paused:
function on_pause_change(name, value)
if value == true then
mp.set_property("fullscreen", "no")
end
end
mp.observe_property("pause", "bool", on_pause_change)
Script location
Scripts can be passed to the --script option, and are automatically
loaded from the scripts subdirectory of the mpv configuration directory
(usually ~/.config/mpv/scripts/).
A script can be a single file. The file extension is used to select the
scripting backend to use for it. For Lua, it is .lua. If the extension
is not recognized, an error is printed. (If an error happens, the exten-
sion is either mistyped, or the backend was not compiled into your mpv
binary.)
mpv internally loads the script's name by stripping the .lua extension
and replacing all nonalphanumeric characters with _. E.g., my-tools.lua
becomes my_tools. If there are several scripts with the same name, it is
made unique by appending a number. This is the name returned by
mp.get_script_name().
Entries with .disable extension are always ignored.
If a script is a directory (either if a directory is passed to --script,
or any sub-directories in the script directory, such as for example
~/.config/mpv/scripts/something/), then the directory represents a sin-
gle script. The player will try to load a file named main.x, where x is
replaced with the file extension. For example, if main.lua exists, it is
loaded with the Lua scripting backend.
You must not put any other files or directories that start with main.
into the script's top level directory. If the script directory contains
for example both main.lua and main.js, only one of them will be loaded
(and which one depends on mpv internals that may change any time). Like-
wise, if there is for example main.foo, your script will break as soon
as mpv adds a backend that uses the .foo file extension.
mpv also appends the top level directory of the script to the start of
Lua's package path so you can import scripts from there too. Be aware
that this will shadow Lua libraries that use the same package path.
(Single file scripts do not include mpv specific directories in the Lua
package path. This was silently changed in mpv 0.32.0.)
Using a script directory is the recommended way to package a script that
consists of multiple source files, or requires other files (you can use
mp.get_script_directory() to get the location and e.g. load data files).
Making a script a git repository, basically a repository which contains
a main.lua file in the root directory, makes scripts easily updateable
(without the dangers of auto-updates). Another suggestion is to use git
submodules to share common files or libraries.
Details on the script initialization and lifecycle
Your script will be loaded by the player at program start from the
scripts configuration subdirectory, or from a path specified with the
--script option. Some scripts are loaded internally (like --osc). Each
script runs in its own thread. Your script is first run "as is", and
once that is done, the event loop is entered. This event loop will dis-
patch events received by mpv and call your own event handlers which you
have registered with mp.register_event, or timers added with
mp.add_timeout or similar. Note that since the script starts execution
concurrently with player initialization, some properties may not be pop-
ulated with meaningful values until the relevant subsystems have ini-
tialized. Rather than retrieving these properties at the top of scripts,
you should use mp.observe_property or read them within event handlers.
When the player quits, all scripts will be asked to terminate. This hap-
pens via a shutdown event, which by default will make the event loop re-
turn. If your script got into an endless loop, mpv will probably behave
fine during playback, but it won't terminate when quitting, because it's
waiting on your script.
Internally, the C code will call the Lua function mp_event_loop after
loading a Lua script. This function is normally defined by the default
prelude loaded before your script (see player/lua/defaults.lua in the
mpv sources). The event loop will wait for events and dispatch events
registered with mp.register_event. It will also handle timers added with
mp.add_timeout and similar (by waiting with a timeout).
Since mpv 0.6.0, the player will wait until the script is fully loaded
before continuing normal operation. The player considers a script as
fully loaded as soon as it starts waiting for mpv events (or it exits).
In practice this means the player will more or less hang until the
script returns from the main chunk (and mp_event_loop is called), or the
script calls mp_event_loop or mp.dispatch_events directly. This is done
to make it possible for a script to fully setup event handlers etc. be-
fore playback actually starts. In older mpv versions, this happened
asynchronously. With mpv 0.29.0, this changes slightly, and it merely
waits for scripts to be loaded in this manner before starting playback
as part of the player initialization phase. Scripts run though initial-
ization in parallel. This might change again.
mp functions
The mp module is preloaded, although it can be loaded manually with re-
quire 'mp'. It provides the core client API.
mp.command(string)
Run the given command. This is similar to the commands used in
input.conf. See List of Input Commands.
By default, this will show something on the OSD (depending on the
command), as if it was used in input.conf. See Input Command Pre-
fixes how to influence OSD usage per command.
Returns true on success, or nil, error on error.
mp.commandv(arg1, arg2, ...)
Similar to mp.command, but pass each command argument as separate
parameter. This has the advantage that you don't have to care
about quoting and escaping in some cases.
Example:
mp.command("loadfile " .. filename .. " append")
mp.commandv("loadfile", filename, "append")
These two commands are equivalent, except that the first version
breaks if the filename contains spaces or certain special charac-
ters.
Note that properties are not expanded. You can use either
mp.command, the expand-properties prefix, or the mp.get_property
family of functions.
Unlike mp.command, this will not use OSD by default either (ex-
cept for some OSD-specific commands).
mp.command_native(table [,def])
Similar to mp.commandv, but pass the argument list as table. This
has the advantage that in at least some cases, arguments can be
passed as native types. It also allows you to use named argument.
If the table is an array, each array item is like an argument in
mp.commandv() (but can be a native type instead of a string).
If the table contains string keys, it's interpreted as command
with named arguments. This requires at least an entry with the
key name to be present, which must be a string, and contains the
command name. The special entry _flags is optional, and if
present, must be an array of Input Command Prefixes to apply. All
other entries are interpreted as arguments.
Returns a result table on success (usually empty), or def, error
on error. def is the second parameter provided to the function,
and is nil if it's missing.
mp.command_native_async(table [,fn])
Like mp.command_native(), but the command is ran asynchronously
(as far as possible), and upon completion, fn is called. fn has
three arguments: fn(success, result, error):
success
Always a Boolean and is true if the command was
successful, otherwise false.
result The result value (can be nil) in case of success, nil
otherwise (as returned by mp.command_native()).
error The error string in case of an error, nil otherwise.
Returns a table with undefined contents, which can be used as ar-
gument for mp.abort_async_command.
If starting the command failed for some reason, nil, error is re-
turned, and fn is called indicating failure, using the same error
value.
fn is always called asynchronously, even if the command failed to
start.
mp.abort_async_command(t)
Abort a mp.command_native_async call. The argument is the return
value of that command (which starts asynchronous execution of the
command). Whether this works and how long it takes depends on
the command and the situation. The abort call itself is asynchro-
nous. Does not return anything.
mp.del_property(name)
Delete the given property. See mp.get_property and Properties for
more information about properties. Most properties cannot be
deleted.
Returns true on success, or nil, error on error.
mp.get_property(name [,def])
Return the value of the given property as string. These are the
same properties as used in input.conf. See Properties for a list
of properties. The returned string is formatted similar to
${=name} (see Property Expansion).
Returns the string on success, or def, error on error. def is the
second parameter provided to the function, and is nil if it's
missing.
mp.get_property_osd(name [,def])
Similar to mp.get_property, but return the property value format-
ted for OSD. This is the same string as printed with ${name} when
used in input.conf.
Returns the string on success, or def, error on error. def is the
second parameter provided to the function, and is an empty string
if it's missing. Unlike get_property(), assigning the return
value to a variable will always result in a string.
mp.get_property_bool(name [,def])
Similar to mp.get_property, but return the property value as
Boolean.
Returns a Boolean on success, or def, error on error.
mp.get_property_number(name [,def])
Similar to mp.get_property, but return the property value as num-
ber.
Note that while Lua does not distinguish between integers and
floats, mpv internals do. This function simply request a double
float from mpv, and mpv will usually convert integer property
values to float.
Returns a number on success, or def, error on error.
mp.get_property_native(name [,def])
Similar to mp.get_property, but return the property value using
the best Lua type for the property. Most time, this will return a
string, Boolean, or number. Some properties (for example chap-
ter-list) are returned as tables.
Returns a value on success, or def, error on error. Note that nil
might be a possible, valid value too in some corner cases.
mp.set_property(name, value)
Set the given property to the given string value. See
mp.get_property and Properties for more information about proper-
ties.
Returns true on success, or nil, error on error.
mp.set_property_bool(name, value)
Similar to mp.set_property, but set the given property to the
given Boolean value.
mp.set_property_number(name, value)
Similar to mp.set_property, but set the given property to the
given numeric value.
Note that while Lua does not distinguish between integers and
floats, mpv internals do. This function will test whether the
number can be represented as integer, and if so, it will pass an
integer value to mpv, otherwise a double float.
mp.set_property_native(name, value)
Similar to mp.set_property, but set the given property using its
native type.
Since there are several data types which cannot represented na-
tively in Lua, this might not always work as expected. For exam-
ple, while the Lua wrapper can do some guesswork to decide
whether a Lua table is an array or a map, this would fail with
empty tables. Also, there are not many properties for which it
makes sense to use this, instead of set_property, set_prop-
erty_bool, set_property_number. For these reasons, this function
should probably be avoided for now, except for properties that
use tables natively.
mp.get_time()
Return the current mpv internal time in seconds as a number. This
is basically the system time, with an arbitrary offset.
mp.add_key_binding(key, name|fn [,fn [,flags]])
Register callback to be run on a key binding. The binding will be
mapped to the given key, which is a string describing the physi-
cal key. This uses the same key names as in input.conf, and also
allows combinations (e.g. ctrl+a). If the key is empty or nil, no
physical key is registered, but the user still can create own
bindings (see below).
After calling this function, key presses will cause the function
fn to be called (unless the user remapped the key with another
binding). However, if the key binding is canceled , the function
will not be called, unless complex flag is set to true, where the
function will be called with the canceled entry set to true.
For example, a canceled key binding can happen in the following
situations:
• If key A is pressed while key B is being held down, key B is
logically released ("canceled" by key A), which stops the cur-
rent autorepeat action key B has.
• If key A is pressed while a mouse button is being held down,
the mouse button is logically released, but the mouse button's
action will not be called, unless complex flag is set to true.
The name argument should be a short symbolic string. It allows
the user to remap the key binding via input.conf using the
script-message command, and the name of the key binding (see be-
low for an example). The name should be unique across other bind-
ings in the same script - if not, the previous binding with the
same name will be overwritten. You can omit the name, in which
case a random name is generated internally. (Omitting works as
follows: either pass nil for name, or pass the fn argument in
place of the name. The latter is not recommended and is handled
for compatibility only.)
The flags argument is used for optional parameters. This is a ta-
ble, which can have the following entries:
repeatable
If set to true, enables key repeat for this specific
binding. This option only makes sense when complex is
not set to true.
scalable
If set to true, enables key scaling for this specific
binding. This option only makes sense when complex is
set to true. Note that this has no effect if the key
binding is invoked by script-binding command, where the
scalability of the command takes precedence.
complex
If set to true, then fn is called on key down, repeat
and up events, with the first argument being a table.
This table has the following entries (and may contain
undocumented ones):
event Set to one of the strings down, repeat, up
or press (the latter if key up/down/repeat
can't be tracked), which indicates the key's
logical state.
is_mouse
Boolean: Whether the event was caused by a
mouse button.
canceled
Boolean: Whether the event was canceled.
Not all types of cancellations set this
flag.
key_name
The name of they key that triggered this, or
nil if invoked artificially. If the key name
is unknown, it's an empty string.
key_text
Text if triggered by a text key, otherwise
nil. See description of script-binding com-
mand for details (this field is equivalent
to the 5th argument).
scale The scale of the key, such as the ones pro-
duced by WHEEL_* keys. The scale is 1 if the
key is nonscalable.
arg User-provided string in the arg argument in
the script-binding command if the key bind-
ing is invoked by that command.
Internally, key bindings are dispatched via the script-message-to
or script-binding input commands and mp.register_script_message.
Trying to map multiple commands to a key will essentially prefer
a random binding, while the other bindings are not called. It is
guaranteed that user defined bindings in the central input.conf
are preferred over bindings added with this function (but see
mp.add_forced_key_binding).
Example:
function something_handler()
print("the key was pressed")
end
mp.add_key_binding("x", "something", something_handler)
This will print the message the key was pressed when x was
pressed.
The user can remap these key bindings. Then the user has to put
the following into their input.conf to remap the command to the y
key:
y script-binding something
This will print the message when the key y is pressed. (x will
still work, unless the user remaps it.)
You can also explicitly send a message to a named script only.
Assume the above script was using the filename fooscript.lua:
y script-binding fooscript/something
mp.add_forced_key_binding(...)
This works almost the same as mp.add_key_binding, but registers
the key binding in a way that will overwrite the user's custom
bindings in their input.conf. (mp.add_key_binding overwrites de-
fault key bindings only, but not those by the user's input.conf.)
mp.remove_key_binding(name)
Remove a key binding added with mp.add_key_binding or
mp.add_forced_key_binding. Use the same name as you used when
adding the bindings. It's not possible to remove bindings for
which you omitted the name.
mp.register_event(name, fn)
Call a specific function when an event happens. The event name is
a string, and the function fn is a Lua function value.
Some events have associated data. This is put into a Lua table
and passed as argument to fn. The Lua table by default contains a
name field, which is a string containing the event name. If the
event has an error associated, the error field is set to a string
describing the error, on success it's not set.
If multiple functions are registered for the same event, they are
run in registration order, which the first registered function
running before all the other ones.
Returns true if such an event exists, false otherwise.
See Events and List of events for details.
mp.unregister_event(fn)
Undo mp.register_event(..., fn). This removes all event handlers
that are equal to the fn parameter. This uses normal Lua == com-
parison, so be careful when dealing with closures.
mp.observe_property(name, type, fn)
Watch a property for changes. If the property name is changed,
then the function fn(name) will be called. type can be nil, or be
set to one of none, native, bool, string, or number. none is the
same as nil. For all other values, the new value of the property
will be passed as second argument to fn, using mp.get_prop-
erty_<type> to retrieve it. This means if type is for example
string, fn is roughly called as in fn(name, mp.get_prop-
erty_string(name)).
If possible, change events are coalesced. If a property is
changed a bunch of times in a row, only the last change triggers
the change function. (The exact behavior depends on timing and
other things.)
If a property is unavailable, or on error, the value argument to
fn is nil. (The observe_property() call always succeeds, even if
a property does not exist.)
In some cases the function is not called even if the property
changes. This depends on the property, and it's a valid feature
request to ask for better update handling of a specific property.
If the type is none or nil, the change function fn will be called
sporadically even if the property doesn't actually change. You
should therefore avoid using these types.
You always get an initial change notification. This is meant to
initialize the user's state to the current value of the property.
mp.unobserve_property(fn)
Undo mp.observe_property(..., fn). This removes all property han-
dlers that are equal to the fn parameter. This uses normal Lua ==
comparison, so be careful when dealing with closures.
mp.add_timeout(seconds, fn [, disabled])
Call the given function fn when the given number of seconds has
elapsed. Note that the number of seconds can be fractional. For
now, the timer's resolution may be as low as 50 ms, although this
will be improved in the future.
If the disabled argument is set to true or a truthy value, the
timer will wait to be manually started with a call to its re-
sume() method.
This is a one-shot timer: it will be removed when it's fired.
Returns a timer object. See mp.add_periodic_timer for details.
mp.add_periodic_timer(seconds, fn [, disabled])
Call the given function periodically. This is like mp.add_time-
out, but the timer is re-added after the function fn is run.
Returns a timer object. The timer object provides the following
methods:
stop() Disable the timer. Does nothing if the timer is al-
ready disabled. This will remember the current
elapsed time when stopping, so that resume() essen-
tially unpauses the timer.
kill() Disable the timer. Resets the elapsed time. re-
sume() will restart the timer.
resume()
Restart the timer. If the timer was disabled with
stop(), this will resume at the time it was
stopped. If the timer was disabled with kill(), or
if it's a previously fired one-shot timer (added
with add_timeout()), this starts the timer from the
beginning, using the initially configured timeout.
is_enabled()
Whether the timer is currently enabled or was pre-
viously disabled (e.g. by stop() or kill()).
timeout (RW)
This field contains the current timeout period.
This value is not updated as time progresses. It's
only used to calculate when the timer should fire
next when the timer expires.
If you write this, you can call t:kill() ; t:re-
sume() to reset the current timeout to the new one.
(t:stop() won't use the new timeout.)
oneshot (RW)
Whether the timer is periodic (false) or fires just
once (true). This value is used when the timer ex-
pires (but before the timer callback function fn is
run).
Note that these are methods, and you have to call them using :
instead of . (Refer to <https://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/man-
ual.html#3.4.9> .)
Example:
seconds = 0
timer = mp.add_periodic_timer(1, function()
print("called every second")
-- stop it after 10 seconds
seconds = seconds + 1
if seconds >= 10 then
timer:kill()
end
end)
mp.get_opt(key)
Return a setting from the --script-opts option. It's up to the
user and the script how this mechanism is used. Currently, all
scripts can access this equally, so you should be careful about
collisions.
mp.get_script_name()
Return the name of the current script. The name is usually made
of the filename of the script, with directory and file extension
removed. If there are several scripts which would have the same
name, it's made unique by appending a number. Any nonalphanumeric
characters are replaced with _.
Example
The script /path/to/foo-script.lua becomes foo_script.
mp.get_script_directory()
Return the directory if this is a script packaged as directory
(see Script location for a description). Return nothing if this
is a single file script.
mp.osd_message(text [,duration])
Show an OSD message on the screen. duration is in seconds, and is
optional (uses --osd-duration by default).
Advanced mp functions
These also live in the mp module, but are documented separately as they
are useful only in special situations.
mp.get_wakeup_pipe()
Calls mpv_get_wakeup_pipe() and returns the read end of the
wakeup pipe. This is deprecated, but still works. (See client.h
for details.)
mp.get_next_timeout()
Return the relative time in seconds when the next timer
(mp.add_timeout and similar) expires. If there is no timer, re-
turn nil.
mp.dispatch_events([allow_wait])
This can be used to run custom event loops. If you want to have
direct control what the Lua script does (instead of being called
by the default event loop), you can set the global variable
mp_event_loop to your own function running the event loop. From
your event loop, you should call mp.dispatch_events() to dequeue
and dispatch mpv events.
If the allow_wait parameter is set to true, the function will
block until the next event is received or the next timer expires.
Otherwise (and this is the default behavior), it returns as soon
as the event loop is emptied. It's strongly recommended to use
mp.get_next_timeout() and mp.get_wakeup_pipe() if you're inter-
ested in properly working notification of new events and working
timers.
mp.register_idle(fn)
Register an event loop idle handler. Idle handlers are called be-
fore the script goes to sleep after handling all new events. This
can be used for example to delay processing of property change
events: if you're observing multiple properties at once, you
might not want to act on each property change, but only when all
change notifications have been received.
mp.unregister_idle(fn)
Undo mp.register_idle(fn). This removes all idle handlers that
are equal to the fn parameter. This uses normal Lua == compari-
son, so be careful when dealing with closures.
mp.enable_messages(level)
Set the minimum log level of which mpv message output to receive.
These messages are normally printed to the terminal. By calling
this function, you can set the minimum log level of messages
which should be received with the log-message event. See the de-
scription of this event for details. The level is a string, see
msg.log for allowed log levels.
mp.register_script_message(name, fn)
This is a helper to dispatch script-message or script-message-to
invocations to Lua functions. fn is called if script-message or
script-message-to (with this script as destination) is run with
name as first parameter. The other parameters are passed to fn.
If a message with the given name is already registered, it's
overwritten.
Used by mp.add_key_binding, so be careful about name collisions.
mp.unregister_script_message(name)
Undo a previous registration with mp.register_script_message.
Does nothing if the name wasn't registered.
mp.create_osd_overlay(format)
Create an OSD overlay. This is a very thin wrapper around the
osd-overlay command. The function returns a table, which mostly
contains fields that will be passed to osd-overlay. The format
parameter is used to initialize the format field. The data field
contains the text to be used as overlay. For details, see the
osd-overlay command.
In addition, it provides the following methods:
update()
Commit the OSD overlay to the screen, or in other words,
run the osd-overlay command with the current fields of the
overlay table. Returns the result of the osd-overlay com-
mand itself.
remove()
Remove the overlay from the screen. A update() call will
add it again.
Example:
ov = mp.create_osd_overlay("ass-events")
ov.data = "{\\an5}{\\b1}hello world!"
ov:update()
The advantage of using this wrapper (as opposed to running
osd-overlay directly) is that the id field is allocated automati-
cally.
mp.get_osd_size()
Returns a tuple of osd_width, osd_height, osd_par. The first two
give the size of the OSD in pixels (for video outputs like
--vo=xv, this may be "scaled" pixels). The third is the display
pixel aspect ratio.
May return invalid/nonsense values if OSD is not initialized yet.
exit() (global)
Make the script exit at the end of the current event loop itera-
tion. This does not terminate mpv itself or other scripts.
This can be polyfilled to support mpv versions older than 0.40
with:
if not _G.exit then
function exit()
mp.keep_running = false
end
end
mp.msg functions
This module allows outputting messages to the terminal, and can be
loaded with require 'mp.msg'.
msg.log(level, ...)
The level parameter is the message priority. It's a string and
one of fatal, error, warn, info, v, debug, trace. The user's set-
tings will determine which of these messages will be visible.
Normally, all messages are visible, except v, debug and trace.
The parameters after that are all converted to strings. Spaces
are inserted to separate multiple parameters.
You don't need to add newlines.
msg.fatal(...), msg.error(...), msg.warn(...), msg.info(...), msg.ver-
bose(...), msg.debug(...), msg.trace(...)
All of these are shortcuts and equivalent to the corresponding
msg.log(level, ...) call.
mp.options functions
mpv comes with a built-in module to manage options from config-files and
the command-line. All you have to do is to supply a table with default
options to the read_options function. The function will overwrite the
default values with values found in the config-file and the command-line
(in that order).
options.read_options(table [, identifier [, on_update]])
A table with key-value pairs. The type of the default values is
important for converting the values read from the config file or
command-line back. Do not use nil as a default value!
The identifier is used to identify the config-file and the com-
mand-line options. These needs to unique to avoid collisions with
other scripts. Defaults to mp.get_script_name() if the parameter
is nil or missing.
The on_update parameter enables run-time updates of all matching
option values via the script-opts option/property. If any of the
matching options changes, the values in the table (which was
originally passed to the function) are changed, and on_up-
date(list) is called. list is a table where each updated option
has a list[option_name] = true entry. There is no initial on_up-
date() call. This never re-reads the config file. script-opts is
always applied on the original config file, ignoring previous
script-opts values (for example, if an option is removed from
script-opts at runtime, the option will have the value in the
config file). table entries are only written for option values
whose values effectively change (this is important if the script
changes table entries independently).
Example implementation:
local options = {
optionA = "defaultvalueA",
optionB = -0.5,
optionC = true,
}
require "mp.options".read_options(options, "myscript")
print(options.optionA)
The config file will be stored in script-opts/identifier.conf in mpv's
user folder. Comment lines can be started with # and stray spaces are
not removed. Boolean values will be represented with yes/no.
Example config:
# comment
optionA=Hello World
optionB=9999
optionC=no
Command-line options are read from the --script-opts parameter. To avoid
collisions, all keys have to be prefixed with identifier-.
Example command-line:
--script-opts=myscript-optionA=TEST,myscript-optionB=0,myscript-optionC=yes
mp.utils functions
This built-in module provides generic helper functions for Lua, and have
strictly speaking nothing to do with mpv or video/audio playback. They
are provided for convenience. Most compensate for Lua's scarce standard
library.
Be warned that any of these functions might disappear any time. They are
not strictly part of the guaranteed API.
utils.getcwd()
Returns the directory that mpv was launched from. On error, nil,
error is returned.
utils.readdir(path [, filter])
Enumerate all entries at the given path on the filesystem, and
return them as array. Each entry is a directory entry (without
the path). The list is unsorted (in whatever order the operating
system returns it).
If the filter argument is given, it must be one of the following
strings:
files List regular files only. This excludes directories,
special files (like UNIX device files or FIFOs), and
dead symlinks. It includes UNIX symlinks to regular
files.
dirs List directories only, or symlinks to directories. .
and .. are not included.
normal Include the results of both files and dirs. (This is
the default.)
all List all entries, even device files, dead symlinks, FI-
FOs, and the . and .. entries.
On error, nil, error is returned.
utils.file_info(path)
Stats the given path for information and returns a table with the
following entries:
mode protection bits (on Windows, always 755 (octal) for di-
rectories and 644 (octal) for files)
size size in bytes
atime time of last access
mtime time of last modification
ctime time of last metadata change
is_file
Whether path is a regular file (boolean)
is_dir Whether path is a directory (boolean)
mode and size are integers. Timestamps (atime, mtime and ctime)
are integer seconds since the Unix epoch (Unix time). The
booleans is_file and is_dir are provided as a convenience; they
can be and are derived from mode.
On error (e.g. path does not exist), nil, error is returned.
utils.split_path(path)
Split a path into directory component and filename component, and
return them. The first return value is always the directory. The
second return value is the trailing part of the path, the direc-
tory entry.
utils.join_path(p1, p2)
Return the concatenation of the 2 paths. Tries to be clever. For
example, if p2 is an absolute path, p2 is returned without
change.
utils.subprocess(t)
Runs an external process and waits until it exits. Returns
process status and the captured output. This is a legacy wrapper
around calling the subprocess command with mp.command_native. It
does the following things:
• copy the table t
• rename cancellable field to playback_only
• rename max_size to capture_size
• set capture_stdout field to true if unset
• set name field to subprocess
• call mp.command_native(copied_t)
• if the command failed, create a dummy result table
• copy error_string to error field if the string is non-empty
• return the result table
It is recommended to use mp.command_native or mp.command_na-
tive_async directly, instead of calling this legacy wrapper. It
is for compatibility only.
See the subprocess documentation for semantics and further para-
meters.
utils.subprocess_detached(t)
Runs an external process and detaches it from mpv's control.
The parameter t is a table. The function reads the following en-
tries:
args Array of strings of the same semantics as the args used
in the subprocess function.
The function returns nil.
This is a legacy wrapper around calling the run command with
mp.commandv and other functions.
utils.getpid()
Returns the process ID of the running mpv process. This can be
used to identify the calling mpv when launching (detached) sub-
processes.
utils.get_env_list()
Returns the C environment as a list of strings. (Do not confuse
this with the Lua "environment", which is an unrelated concept.)
utils.parse_json(str [, trail])
Parses the given string argument as JSON, and returns it as a Lua
table. On error, returns nil, error. (Currently, error is just a
string reading error, because there is no fine-grained error re-
porting of any kind.)
The returned value uses similar conventions as mp.get_prop-
erty_native() to distinguish empty objects and arrays.
If the trail parameter is true (or any value equal to true), then
trailing non-whitespace text is tolerated by the function, and
the trailing text is returned as 3rd return value. (The 3rd re-
turn value is always there, but with trail set, no error is
raised.)
utils.format_json(v)
Format the given Lua table (or value) as a JSON string and return
it. On error, returns nil, error. (Errors usually only happen on
value types incompatible with JSON.)
The argument value uses similar conventions as mp.set_prop-
erty_native() to distinguish empty objects and arrays.
utils.to_string(v)
Turn the given value into a string. Formats tables and their con-
tents. This doesn't do anything special; it is only needed be-
cause Lua is terrible.
mp.input functions
This module lets scripts get textual input from the user using the con-
sole REPL.
input.get(table)
Show the console to let the user enter text.
The following entries of table are read:
prompt The string to be displayed before the input field.
submit A callback invoked when the user presses Enter. The first
argument is the text in the console.
keep_open
Whether to keep the console open on submit. Defaults to
false.
opened A callback invoked when the console is shown. This can be
used to present a list of options with input.set_log().
edited A callback invoked when the text changes. The first argu-
ment is the text in the console.
complete
A callback invoked when the user edits the text or moves
the cursor. The first argument is the text before the cur-
sor. The callback should return a table of the string can-
didate completion values and the 1-based cursor position
from which the completion starts. console will show the
completions that fuzzily match the text between this posi-
tion and the cursor and allow selecting them.
The third and optional return value is a string that will
be appended to the input line without displaying it in the
completions.
autoselect_completion
Whether to automatically select the first completion on
submit if one wasn't already manually selected. Defaults
to false.
closed A callback invoked when the console is hidden, either be-
cause input.terminate() was invoked from the other call-
backs, or because the user closed it with a key binding.
The first argument is the text in the console, and the
second argument is the cursor position.
default_text
A string to pre-fill the input field with.
cursor_position
The initial cursor position, starting from 1.
history_path
If specified, the path to save and load the history of the
entered lines.
id An identifier that determines which input history and log
buffer to use among the ones stored for input.get() calls.
Defaults to the calling script name with prompt appended.
input.terminate()
Close the console.
input.log(message, style, terminal_style)
Add a line to the log buffer. style can contain additional ASS
tags to apply to message, and terminal_style can contain escape
sequences that are used when the console is displayed in the ter-
minal.
input.log_error(message)
Helper to add a line to the log buffer with the same color as the
one used for commands that error. Useful when the user submits
invalid input.
input.set_log(log)
Replace the entire log buffer.
log is a table of strings, or tables with text, style and termi-
nal_style keys.
Example:
input.set_log({
"regular text",
{
text = "error text",
style = "{\\c&H7a77f2&}",
terminal_style = "\027[31m",
}
})
input.select(table)
Specify a list of items that are presented to the user for selec-
tion.
The following entries of table are read:
prompt The string to be displayed before the input field.
items The table of the entries to choose from.
default_item
The 1-based integer index of the preselected item.
submit The callback invoked when the user presses Enter. The
first argument is the 1-based index of the selected item.
keep_open
Whether to keep the console open on submit. Defaults to
false.
Example:
input.select({
items = {
"First playlist entry",
"Second playlist entry",
},
submit = function (id)
mp.commandv("playlist-play-index", id - 1)
end,
})
Events
Events are notifications from player core to scripts. You can register
an event handler with mp.register_event.
Note that all scripts (and other parts of the player) receive events
equally, and there's no such thing as blocking other scripts from re-
ceiving events.
Example:
function my_fn(event)
print("start of playback!")
end
mp.register_event("file-loaded", my_fn)
For the existing event types, see List of events.
Extras
This documents experimental features, or features that are "too special"
to guarantee a stable interface.
mp.add_hook(type, priority, fn)
Add a hook callback for type (a string identifying a certain kind
of hook). These hooks allow the player to call script functions
and wait for their result (normally, the Lua scripting interface
is asynchronous from the point of view of the player core). pri-
ority is an arbitrary integer that allows ordering among hooks of
the same kind. Using the value 50 is recommended as neutral de-
fault value.
fn(hook) is the function that will be called during execution of
the hook. The parameter passed to it (hook) is a Lua object that
can control further aspects about the currently invoked hook. It
provides the following methods:
defer()
Returning from the hook function should not automati-
cally continue the hook. Instead, the API user wants to
call hook:cont() on its own at a later point in time
(before or after the function has returned).
cont() Continue the hook. Doesn't need to be called unless de-
fer() was called.
See Hooks for currently existing hooks and what they do - only
the hook list is interesting; handling hook execution is done by
the Lua script function automatically.
JAVASCRIPT
JavaScript support in mpv is near identical to its Lua support. Use this
section as reference on differences and availability of APIs, but other-
wise you should refer to the Lua documentation for API details and gen-
eral scripting in mpv.
Example
JavaScript code which leaves fullscreen mode when the player is paused:
function on_pause_change(name, value) {
if (value == true)
mp.set_property("fullscreen", "no");
}
mp.observe_property("pause", "bool", on_pause_change);
Similarities with Lua
mpv tries to load a script file as JavaScript if it has a .js extension,
but otherwise, the documented Lua options, script directories, loading,
etc apply to JavaScript files too.
Script initialization and lifecycle is the same as with Lua, and most of
the Lua functions in the modules mp, mp.utils, mp.msg, mp.options and
mp.input are available to JavaScript with identical APIs - including
running commands, getting/setting properties, registering
events/key-bindings/hooks, etc.
Differences from Lua
No need to load modules. mp, mp.utils, mp.msg, mp.options and mp.input
are preloaded, and you can use e.g. var cwd = mp.utils.getcwd(); without
prior setup.
Errors are slightly different. Where the Lua APIs return nil for error,
the JavaScript ones return undefined. Where Lua returns something, error
JavaScript returns only something - and makes error available via
mp.last_error(). Note that only some of the functions have this addi-
tional error value - typically the same ones which have it in Lua.
Standard APIs are preferred. For instance setTimeout and JSON.stringify
are available, but mp.add_timeout and mp.utils.format_json are not.
No standard library. This means that interaction with anything outside
of mpv is limited to the available APIs, typically via mp.utils. How-
ever, some file functions were added, and CommonJS require is available
too - where the loaded modules have the same privileges as normal
scripts.
Language features - ECMAScript 5
The scripting backend which mpv currently uses is MuJS - a compatible
minimal ES5 interpreter. As such, String.substring is implemented for
instance, while the common but non-standard String.substr is not. Please
consult the MuJS pages on language features and platform support -
<https://mujs.com> .
Unsupported Lua APIs and their JS alternatives
mp.add_timeout(seconds, fn) JS: id = setTimeout(fn, ms)
mp.add_periodic_timer(seconds, fn) JS: id = setInterval(fn, ms)
utils.parse_json(str [, trail]) JS: JSON.parse(str)
utils.format_json(v) JS: JSON.stringify(v)
utils.to_string(v) see dump below.
mp.get_next_timeout() see event loop below.
mp.dispatch_events([allow_wait]) see event loop below.
Scripting APIs - identical to Lua
(LE) - Last-Error, indicates that mp.last_error() can be used after the
call to test for success (empty string) or failure (non empty reason
string). Where the Lua APIs use nil to indicate error, JS APIs use un-
defined.
mp.command(string) (LE)
mp.commandv(arg1, arg2, ...) (LE)
mp.command_native(table [,def]) (LE)
id = mp.command_native_async(table [,fn]) (LE) Notes: id is true-thy on
success, error is empty string on success.
mp.abort_async_command(id)
mp.del_property(name) (LE)
mp.get_property(name [,def]) (LE)
mp.get_property_osd(name [,def]) (LE)
mp.get_property_bool(name [,def]) (LE)
mp.get_property_number(name [,def]) (LE)
mp.get_property_native(name [,def]) (LE)
mp.set_property(name, value) (LE)
mp.set_property_bool(name, value) (LE)
mp.set_property_number(name, value) (LE)
mp.set_property_native(name, value) (LE)
mp.get_time()
mp.add_key_binding(key, name|fn [,fn [,flags]])
mp.add_forced_key_binding(...)
mp.remove_key_binding(name)
mp.register_event(name, fn)
mp.unregister_event(fn)
mp.observe_property(name, type, fn)
mp.unobserve_property(fn)
mp.get_opt(key)
mp.get_script_name()
mp.get_script_directory()
mp.osd_message(text [,duration])
mp.get_wakeup_pipe()
mp.register_idle(fn)
mp.unregister_idle(fn)
mp.enable_messages(level)
mp.register_script_message(name, fn)
mp.unregister_script_message(name)
mp.create_osd_overlay(format)
mp.get_osd_size() (returned object has properties: width, height, as-
pect)
mp.msg.log(level, ...)
mp.msg.fatal(...)
mp.msg.error(...)
mp.msg.warn(...)
mp.msg.info(...)
mp.msg.verbose(...)
mp.msg.debug(...)
mp.msg.trace(...)
mp.utils.getcwd() (LE)
mp.utils.readdir(path [, filter]) (LE)
mp.utils.file_info(path) (LE) Note: like lua - this does NOT expand
meta-paths like ~~/foo (other JS file functions do expand meta paths).
mp.utils.split_path(path)
mp.utils.join_path(p1, p2)
mp.utils.subprocess(t)
mp.utils.subprocess_detached(t)
mp.utils.get_env_list()
mp.utils.getpid() (LE)
mp.add_hook(type, priority, fn(hook))
mp.options.read_options(obj [, identifier [, on_update]]) (types:
string/boolean/number)
mp.input.get(obj)
mp.input.select(obj)
mp.input.terminate()
mp.input.log(message, style)
mp.input.log_error(message)
mp.input.set_log(log)
exit() (global)
Additional utilities
mp.last_error()
If used after an API call which updates last error, returns an
empty string if the API call succeeded, or a non-empty error rea-
son string otherwise.
Error.stack (string)
When using try { ... } catch(e) { ... }, then e.stack is the
stack trace of the error - if it was created using the Error(...)
constructor.
print (global)
A convenient alias to mp.msg.info.
dump (global)
Like print but also expands objects and arrays recursively.
mp.utils.getenv(name)
Returns the value of the host environment variable name, or unde-
fined if the variable is not defined.
mp.utils.get_user_path(path)
Trivial wrapper of the expand-path mpv command, returns a string.
read_file, write_file, append_file and require already expand the
path internally and accept mpv meta-paths like ~~desktop/foo.
mp.utils.read_file(fname [,max])
Returns the content of file fname as string. If max is provided
and not negative, limit the read to max bytes.
mp.utils.write_file(fname, str)
(Over)write file fname with text content str. fname must be pre-
fixed with file:// as simple protection against accidental argu-
ments switch, e.g. mp.utils.write_file("file://~/abc.txt", "hello
world").
mp.utils.append_file(fname, str)
Same as mp.utils.write_file if the file fname does not exist. If
it does exist then append instead of overwrite.
Note: read_file, write_file and append_file throw on errors, allow text
content only.
mp.get_time_ms()
Same as mp.get_time() but in ms instead of seconds.
mp.get_script_file()
Returns the file name of the current script.
mp.utils.compile_js(fname, content_str)
Compiles the JS code content_str as file name fname (without
loading anything from the filesystem), and returns it as a func-
tion. Very similar to a Function constructor, but shows at stack
traces as fname.
mp.module_paths
Global modules search paths array for the require function (see
below).
Timers (global)
The standard HTML/node.js timers are available:
id = setTimeout(fn [,duration [,arg1 [,arg2...]]])
id = setTimeout(code_string [,duration])
clearTimeout(id)
id = setInterval(fn [,duration [,arg1 [,arg2...]]])
id = setInterval(code_string [,duration])
clearInterval(id)
setTimeout and setInterval return id, and later call fn (or execute
code_string) after duration ms. Interval also repeat every duration.
duration has a minimum and default value of 0, code_string is a plain
string which is evaluated as JS code, and [,arg1 [,arg2..]] are used as
arguments (if provided) when calling back fn.
The clear...(id) functions cancel timer id, and are irreversible.
Note: timers always call back asynchronously, e.g. setTimeout(fn) will
never call fn before returning. fn will be called either at the end of
this event loop iteration or at a later event loop iteration. This is
true also for intervals - which also never call back twice at the same
event loop iteration.
Additionally, timers are processed after the event queue is empty, so
it's valid to use setTimeout(fn) as a one-time idle observer.
CommonJS modules and require(id)
CommonJS Modules are a standard system where scripts can export common
functions for use by other scripts. Specifically, a module is a script
which adds properties (functions, etc) to its pre-existing exports ob-
ject, which another script can access with require(module-id). This runs
the module and returns its exports object. Further calls to require for
the same module will return its cached exports object without running
the module again.
Modules and require are supported, standard compliant, and generally
similar to node.js. However, most node.js modules won't run due to miss-
ing modules such as fs, process, etc, but some node.js modules with min-
imal dependencies do work. In general, this is for mpv modules and not a
node.js replacement.
A .js file extension is always added to id, e.g. require("./foo") will
load the file ./foo.js and return its exports object.
An id which starts with ./ or ../ is relative to the script or module
which require it. Otherwise it's considered a top-level id (CommonJS
term).
Top-level id is evaluated as absolute filesystem path if possible, e.g.
/x/y or ~/x. Otherwise it's considered a global module id and searched
according to mp.module_paths in normal array order, e.g. require("x")
tries to load x.js at one of the array paths, and id foo/x tries to load
x.js inside dir foo at one of the paths.
The mp.module_paths array is empty by default except for scripts which
are loaded as a directory where it contains one item - <directory>/mod-
ules/ . The array may be updated from a script (or using custom init -
see below) which will affect future calls to require for global module
id's which are not already loaded/cached.
No global variable, but a module's this at its top lexical scope is the
global object - also in strict mode. If you have a module which needs
global as the global object, you could do this.global = this; before re-
quire.
Functions and variables declared at a module don't pollute the global
object.
Custom initialization
After mpv initializes the JavaScript environment for a script but before
it loads the script - it tries to run the file init.js at the root of
the mpv configuration directory. Code at this file can update the envi-
ronment further for all scripts. E.g. if it contains mp.mod-
ule_paths.push("/foo") then require at all scripts will search global
module id's also at /foo (do NOT do mp.module_paths = ["/foo"]; because
this will remove existing paths - like <script-dir>/modules for scripts
which load from a directory).
The custom-init file is ignored if mpv is invoked with --no-config.
Before mpv 0.34, the file name was .init.js (with dot) at the same dir.
The event loop
The event loop poll/dispatch mpv events as long as the queue is not
empty, then processes the timers, then waits for the next event, and re-
peats this forever.
You could put this code at your script to replace the built-in event
loop, and also print every event which mpv sends to your script:
function mp_event_loop() {
var wait = 0;
do {
var e = mp.wait_event(wait);
dump(e); // there could be a lot of prints...
if (e.event != "none") {
mp.dispatch_event(e);
wait = 0;
} else {
wait = mp.process_timers() / 1000;
if (wait != 0) {
mp.notify_idle_observers();
wait = mp.peek_timers_wait() / 1000;
}
}
} while (mp.keep_running);
}
mp_event_loop is a name which mpv tries to call after the script loads.
The internal implementation is similar to this (without dump though..).
e = mp.wait_event(wait) returns when the next mpv event arrives, or af-
ter wait seconds if positive and no mpv events arrived. wait value of 0
returns immediately (with e.event == "none" if the queue is empty).
mp.dispatch_event(e) calls back the handlers registered for e.event, if
there are such (event handlers, property observers, script messages,
etc).
mp.process_timers() calls back the already-added, non-canceled due
timers, and returns the duration in ms till the next due timer (possibly
0), or -1 if there are no pending timers. Must not be called recur-
sively.
mp.notify_idle_observers() calls back the idle observers, which we do
when we're about to sleep (wait != 0), but the observers may add timers
or take non-negligible duration to complete, so we re-calculate wait af-
terwards.
mp.peek_timers_wait() returns the same values as mp.process_timers() but
without doing anything. Invalid result if called from a timer callback.
Note: exit() is also registered for the shutdown event, and its imple-
mentation is a simple mp.keep_running = false.
JSON IPC
mpv can be controlled by external programs using the JSON-based IPC pro-
tocol. It can be enabled by specifying the path to a unix socket or a
named pipe using the option --input-ipc-server, or the file descriptor
number of a unix socket or a named pipe using --input-ipc-client.
Clients can connect to this socket and send commands to the player or
receive events from it.
WARNING:
This is not intended to be a secure network protocol. It is explic-
itly insecure: there is no authentication, no encryption, and the
commands themselves are insecure too. For example, the run command is
exposed, which can run arbitrary system commands. The use-case is
controlling the player locally. This is not different from the
MPlayer slave protocol.
Socat example
You can use the socat tool to send commands (and receive replies) from
the shell. Assuming mpv was started with:
mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket
Then you can control it using socat:
> echo '{ "command": ["get_property", "playback-time"] }' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket
{"data":190.482000,"error":"success"}
In this case, socat copies data between stdin/stdout and the mpv socket
connection.
See the --idle option how to make mpv start without exiting immediately
or playing a file.
It's also possible to send input.conf style text-only commands:
> echo 'show-text ${playback-time}' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket
But you won't get a reply over the socket. (This particular command
shows the playback time on the player's OSD.)
Command Prompt example
Unfortunately, it's not as easy to test the IPC protocol on Windows,
since Windows ports of socat (in Cygwin and MSYS2) don't understand
named pipes. In the absence of a simple tool to send and receive from
bidirectional pipes, the echo command can be used to send commands, but
not receive replies from the command prompt.
Assuming mpv was started with:
mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=\\.\pipe\mpvsocket
You can send commands from a command prompt:
echo show-text ${playback-time} >\\.\pipe\mpvsocket
To be able to simultaneously read and write from the IPC pipe, like on
Linux, it's necessary to write an external program that uses overlapped
file I/O (or some wrapper like .NET's NamedPipeClientStream.)
You can open the pipe in PuTTY as "serial" device. This is not very com-
fortable, but gives a way to test interactively without having to write
code.
Protocol
The protocol uses UTF-8-only JSON as defined by RFC-8259. Unlike stan-
dard JSON, "u" escape sequences are not allowed to construct surrogate
pairs. To avoid getting conflicts, encode all text characters including
and above codepoint U+0020 as UTF-8. mpv might output broken UTF-8 in
corner cases (see "UTF-8" section below).
Clients can execute commands on the player by sending JSON messages of
the following form:
{ "command": ["command_name", "param1", "param2", ...] }
where command_name is the name of the command to be executed, followed
by a list of parameters. Parameters must be formatted as native JSON
values (integers, strings, booleans, ...). Every message must be termi-
nated with \n. Additionally, \n must not appear anywhere inside the mes-
sage. In practice this means that messages should be minified before be-
ing sent to mpv.
mpv will then send back a reply indicating whether the command was run
correctly, and an additional field holding the command-specific return
data (it can also be null).
{ "error": "success", "data": null }
mpv will also send events to clients with JSON messages of the following
form:
{ "event": "event_name" }
where event_name is the name of the event. Additional event-specific
fields can also be present. See List of events for a list of all sup-
ported events.
Because events can occur at any time, it may be difficult at times to
determine which response goes with which command. Commands may option-
ally include a request_id which, if provided in the command request,
will be copied verbatim into the response. mpv does not interpret the
request_id in any way; it is solely for the use of the requester. The
only requirement is that the request_id field must be an integer (a num-
ber without fractional parts in the range -2^63..2^63-1). Using other
types is deprecated and will currently show a warning. In the future,
this will raise an error.
For example, this request:
{ "command": ["get_property", "time-pos"], "request_id": 100 }
Would generate this response:
{ "error": "success", "data": 1.468135, "request_id": 100 }
If you don't specify a request_id, command replies will set it to 0.
All commands, replies, and events are separated from each other with a
line break character (\n).
If the first character (after skipping whitespace) is not {, the command
will be interpreted as non-JSON text command, as they are used in in-
put.conf (or mpv_command_string() in the client API). Additionally,
lines starting with # and empty lines are ignored.
Currently, embedded 0 bytes terminate the current line, but you should
not rely on this.
Data flow
Currently, the mpv-side IPC implementation does not service the socket
while a command is executed and the reply is written. It is for example
not possible that other events, that happened during the execution of
the command, are written to the socket before the reply is written.
This might change in the future. The only guarantee is that replies to
IPC messages are sent in sequence.
Also, since socket I/O is inherently asynchronous, it is possible that
you read unrelated event messages from the socket, before you read the
reply to the previous command you sent. In this case, these events were
queued by the mpv side before it read and started processing your com-
mand message.
If the mpv-side IPC implementation switches away from blocking writes
and blocking command execution, it may attempt to send events at any
time.
You can also use asynchronous commands, which can return in any order,
and which do not block IPC protocol interaction at all while the command
is executed in the background.
Asynchronous commands
Command can be run asynchronously. This behaves exactly as with normal
command execution, except that execution is not blocking. Other commands
can be sent while it's executing, and command completion can be arbi-
trarily reordered.
The async field controls this. If present, it must be a boolean. If
missing, false is assumed.
For example, this initiates an asynchronous command:
{ "command": ["screenshot"], "request_id": 123, "async": true }
And this is the completion:
{"request_id":123,"error":"success","data":null}
By design, you will not get a confirmation that the command was started.
If a command is long running, sending the message will not lead to any
reply until much later when the command finishes.
Some commands execute synchronously, but these will behave like asyn-
chronous commands that finished execution immediately.
Cancellation of asynchronous commands is available in the libmpv API,
but has not yet been implemented in the IPC protocol.
Commands with named arguments
If the command field is a JSON object, named arguments are expected.
This is described in the C API mpv_command_node() documentation (the
MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP case). In some cases, this may make commands more
readable, while some obscure commands basically require using named ar-
guments.
Currently, only "proper" commands (as listed by List of Input Commands)
support named arguments.
Commands
In addition to the commands described in List of Input Commands, a few
extra commands can also be used as part of the protocol:
client_name
Return the name of the client as string. This is the string ipc-N
with N being an integer number.
get_time_us
Return the current mpv internal time in microseconds as a number.
This is basically the system time, with an arbitrary offset.
get_property
Return the value of the given property. The value will be sent in
the data field of the replay message.
Example:
{ "command": ["get_property", "volume"] }
{ "data": 50.0, "error": "success" }
get_property_string
Like get_property, but the resulting data will always be a
string.
Example:
{ "command": ["get_property_string", "volume"] }
{ "data": "50.000000", "error": "success" }
set_property
Set the given property to the given value. See Properties for
more information about properties.
Example:
{ "command": ["set_property", "pause", true] }
{ "error": "success" }
set_property_string
Alias for set_property. Both commands accept native values and
strings.
observe_property
Watch a property for changes. If the given property is changed,
then an event of type property-change will be generated
Example:
{ "command": ["observe_property", 1, "volume"] }
{ "error": "success" }
{ "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": 52.0, "name": "volume" }
WARNING:
If the connection is closed, the IPC client is destroyed in-
ternally, and the observed properties are unregistered. This
happens for example when sending commands to a socket with
separate socat invocations. This can make it seem like prop-
erty observation does not work. You must keep the IPC connec-
tion open to make it work.
observe_property_string
Like observe_property, but the resulting data will always be a
string.
Example:
{ "command": ["observe_property_string", 1, "volume"] }
{ "error": "success" }
{ "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": "52.000000", "name": "volume" }
unobserve_property
Undo observe_property or observe_property_string. This requires
the numeric id passed to the observed command as argument.
Example:
{ "command": ["unobserve_property", 1] }
{ "error": "success" }
request_log_messages
Enable output of mpv log messages. They will be received as
events. The parameter to this command is the log-level (see
mpv_request_log_messages C API function).
Log message output is meant for humans only (mostly for debug-
ging). Attempting to retrieve information by parsing these mes-
sages will just lead to breakages with future mpv releases. In-
stead, make a feature request, and ask for a proper event that
returns the information you need.
enable_event, disable_event
Enables or disables the named event. Mirrors the mpv_re-
quest_event C API function. If the string all is used instead of
an event name, all events are enabled or disabled.
By default, most events are enabled, and there is not much use
for this command.
get_version
Returns the client API version the C API of the remote mpv in-
stance provides.
See also: DOCS/client-api-changes.rst.
UTF-8
Normally, all strings are in UTF-8. Sometimes it can happen that strings
are in some broken encoding (often happens with file tags and such, and
filenames on many Unixes are not required to be in UTF-8 either). This
means that mpv sometimes sends invalid JSON. If that is a problem for
the client application's parser, it should filter the raw data for in-
valid UTF-8 sequences and perform the desired replacement, before feed-
ing the data to its JSON parser.
mpv will not attempt to construct invalid UTF-8 with broken "u" escape
sequences. This includes surrogate pairs.
JSON extensions
The following non-standard extensions are supported:
• a list or object item can have a trailing ","
• object syntax accepts "=" in addition of ":"
• object keys can be unquoted, if they start with a character in
"A-Za-z_" and contain only characters in "A-Za-z0-9_"
• byte escapes with "xAB" are allowed (with AB being a 2 digit hex
number)
Example:
{ objkey = "value\x0A" }
Is equivalent to:
{ "objkey": "value\n" }
Alternative ways of starting clients
You can create an anonymous IPC connection without having to set --in-
put-ipc-server. This is achieved through a mpv pseudo scripting backend
that starts processes.
You can put .run file extension in the mpv scripts directory in its
config directory (see the FILES section for details), or load them
through other means (see Script location). These scripts are simply exe-
cuted with the OS native mechanism (as if you ran them in the shell).
They must have a proper shebang and have the executable bit set.
When executed, a socket (the IPC connection) is passed to them through
file descriptor inheritance. The file descriptor is indicated as the
special command line argument --mpv-ipc-fd=N, where N is the numeric
file descriptor.
The rest is the same as with a normal --input-ipc-server IPC connection.
mpv does not attempt to observe or other interact with the started
script process.
This does not work in Windows yet.
CHANGELOG
There is no real changelog, but you can look at the following things:
• The release changelog, which should contain most user-visible changes,
including new features and bug fixes:
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases>
• The git log, which is the "real" changelog
• The file <https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/inter-
face-changes.rst> documents changes to the command and user interface,
such as options and properties.
• C API changes are listed in
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/mas-
ter/DOCS/client-api-changes.rst>
• The file mplayer-changes.rst in the DOCS sub directory on the git
repository, which used to be in place of this section. It documents
some changes that happened since mplayer2 forked off MPlayer. (Not up-
dated anymore.)
EMBEDDING INTO OTHER PROGRAMS (LIBMPV)
mpv can be embedded into other programs as video/audio playback backend.
The recommended way to do so is using libmpv. See include/mpv/client.h
in the mpv source code repository. This provides a C API. Bindings for
other languages might be available (see wiki).
Since libmpv merely allows access to underlying mechanisms that can con-
trol mpv, further documentation is spread over a few places:
•
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/include/mpv/client.h>
•
<https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options>
•
<https://mpv.io/manual/master/#list-of-input-commands>
•
<https://mpv.io/manual/master/#properties>
•
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-examples/tree/master/libmpv>
C PLUGINS
You can write C plugins for mpv. These use the libmpv API, although they
do not use the libmpv library itself.
They are enabled by default if compiler supports linking with the -rdy-
namic flag on Linux/BSD platforms. On Windows the are always enabled.
C plugins location
C plugins are put into the mpv scripts directory in its config directory
(see the FILES section for details). They must have a .so or .dll file
extension. They can also be explicitly loaded with the --script option.
API
A C plugin must export the following function:
int mpv_open_cplugin(mpv_handle *handle)
The plugin function will be called on loading time. This function does
not return as long as your plugin is loaded (it runs in its own thread).
The handle will be deallocated as soon as the plugin function returns.
The return value is interpreted as error status. A value of 0 is inter-
preted as success, while -1 signals an error. In the latter case, the
player prints an uninformative error message that loading failed.
Return values other than 0 and -1 are reserved, and trigger undefined
behavior.
Within the plugin function, you can call libmpv API functions. The han-
dle is created by mpv_create_client() (or actually an internal equiva-
lent), and belongs to you. You can call mpv_wait_event() to wait for
things happening, and so on.
Note that the player might block until your plugin calls
mpv_wait_event() for the first time. This gives you a chance to install
initial hooks etc. before playback begins.
The details are quite similar to Lua scripts.
Linkage to libmpv
The current implementation requires that your plugins are not linked
against libmpv. What your plugins use are not symbols from a libmpv bi-
nary, but symbols from the mpv host binary.
On Windows to make symbols from the host binary available, you have to
define MPV_CPLUGIN_DYNAMIC_SYM when compiling cplugin. This will load
symbols dynamically, before calling mpv_open_cplugin().
Examples
See:
•
<https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-examples/tree/master/cplugins>
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
There are a number of environment variables that can be used to control
the behavior of mpv.
HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME
Used to determine mpv config directory. If XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not
set, $HOME/.config/mpv is used.
$HOME/.mpv is always added to the list of config search paths
with a lower priority.
MPV_HOME
Directory where mpv looks for user settings. Overrides HOME, and
mpv will try to load the config file as $MPV_HOME/mpv.conf.
MPV_VERBOSE (see also -v and --msg-level)
Set the initial verbosity level across all message modules (de-
fault: 0). This is an integer, and the resulting verbosity cor-
responds to the number of --v options passed to the command line.
MPV_LEAK_REPORT
If set to 1, enable internal talloc leak reporting. If set to an-
other value, disable leak reporting.
LADSPA_PATH
Specifies the search path for LADSPA plugins. If it is unset,
fully qualified path names must be used.
DISPLAY
Standard X11 display name to use.
FFmpeg:
This library accesses various environment variables. However,
they are not centrally documented, and documenting them is not
our job. Therefore, this list is incomplete.
Notable environment variables:
http_proxy
URL to proxy for http:// and https:// URLs.
no_proxy
List of domain patterns for which no proxy should be used.
List entries are separated by ,. Patterns can include *.
libdvdcss:
DVDCSS_CACHE
Specify a directory in which to store title key values.
This will speed up descrambling of DVDs which are in the
cache. The DVDCSS_CACHE directory is created if it does
not exist, and a subdirectory is created named after the
DVD's title or manufacturing date. If DVDCSS_CACHE is not
set or is empty, libdvdcss will use the default value
which is ${HOME}/.dvdcss/ under Unix and the roaming ap-
plication data directory (%APPDATA%) under Windows. The
special value "off" disables caching.
DVDCSS_METHOD
Sets the authentication and decryption method that libdvd-
css will use to read scrambled discs. Can be one of title,
key or disc.
key is the default method. libdvdcss will use a set of
calculated player keys to try to get the disc key.
This can fail if the drive does not recognize any
of the player keys.
disc is a fallback method when key has failed. Instead
of using player keys, libdvdcss will crack the disc
key using a brute force algorithm. This process is
CPU intensive and requires 64 MB of memory to store
temporary data.
title is the fallback when all other methods have failed.
It does not rely on a key exchange with the DVD
drive, but rather uses a crypto attack to guess the
title key. On rare cases this may fail because
there is not enough encrypted data on the disc to
perform a statistical attack, but on the other hand
it is the only way to decrypt a DVD stored on a
hard disc, or a DVD with the wrong region on an
RPC2 drive.
DVDCSS_RAW_DEVICE
Specify the raw device to use. Exact usage will depend on
your operating system, the Linux utility to set up raw de-
vices is raw(8) for instance. Please note that on most op-
erating systems, using a raw device requires highly
aligned buffers: Linux requires a 2048 bytes alignment
(which is the size of a DVD sector).
DVDCSS_VERBOSE
Sets the libdvdcss verbosity level.
0 Outputs no messages at all.
1 Outputs error messages to stderr.
2 Outputs error messages and debug messages to
stderr.
DVDREAD_NOKEYS
Skip retrieving all keys on startup. Currently disabled.
HOME FIXME: Document this.
EXIT CODES
Normally mpv returns 0 as exit code after finishing playback success-
fully. If errors happen, the following exit codes can be returned:
1 Error initializing mpv. This is also returned if unknown op-
tions are passed to mpv.
2 The file passed to mpv couldn't be played. This is somewhat
fuzzy: currently, playback of a file is considered to be suc-
cessful if initialization was mostly successful, even if play-
back fails immediately after initialization.
3 There were some files that could be played, and some files
which couldn't (using the definition of success from above).
4 Quit due to a signal, Ctrl+c in a VO window (by default), or
from the default quit key bindings in encoding mode.
Note that quitting the player manually will always lead to exit code 0,
overriding the exit code that would be returned normally. Also, the quit
input command can take an exit code: in this case, that exit code is re-
turned.
OPTICAL DRIVES
Depending on the OS, mpv will choose a different disc device by default.
This applies for all optical disc playback (CDDA, DVD, and BD).
┌─────────┬───────────────┐
│ OS │ Default Drive │
├─────────┼───────────────┤
│ Linux │ /dev/sr0 │
├─────────┼───────────────┤
│ Windows │ D: │
├─────────┼───────────────┤
│ macOS │ /dev/disk1 │
├─────────┼───────────────┤
│ FreeBSD │ /dev/cd0 │
├─────────┼───────────────┤
│ OpenBSD │ /dev/rcd0c │
└─────────┴───────────────┘
FILES
Note that this section assumes Linux/BSD. On other platforms the paths
may be different. For Windows-specifics, see FILES ON WINDOWS section.
All configuration files should be encoded in UTF-8.
/usr/local/etc/mpv/mpv.conf
mpv system-wide settings (depends on --prefix passed to configure
- mpv in default configuration will use /usr/local/etc/mpv/ as
config directory, while most Linux distributions will set it to
/etc/mpv/).
~/.cache/mpv
The standard cache directory. Certain options within mpv may
cause it to write cache files to disk. This can be overridden by
environment variables, in ascending order:
1 If $XDG_CACHE_HOME is set, then the derived cache direc-
tory will be $XDG_CACHE_HOME/mpv.
2 If $MPV_HOME is set, then the derived cache directory will
be $MPV_HOME.
If the directory does not exist, mpv will try to create it auto-
matically.
~/.config/mpv
The standard configuration directory. This can be overridden by
environment variables, in ascending order:
1 If $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is set, then the derived configuration
directory will be $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/mpv.
2 If $MPV_HOME is set, then the derived configuration direc-
tory will be $MPV_HOME.
If this directory, nor the original configuration directory (see
below) do not exist, mpv tries to create this directory automati-
cally.
~/.mpv/
The original (pre 0.5.0) configuration directory. It will con-
tinue to be read if present. If this directory is present and the
standard configuration directory is not present, then cache files
and watch later config files will also be written to this direc-
tory.
If both this directory and the standard configuration directory
are present, configuration will be read from both with the stan-
dard configuration directory content taking precedence. However,
you should fully migrate to the standard directory and a warning
will be shown in this situation.
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
mpv user settings (see CONFIGURATION FILES section)
~/.config/mpv/input.conf
key bindings (see INPUT.CONF section)
~/.config/mpv/fonts.conf
Fontconfig fonts.conf that is customized for mpv. You should in-
clude system fonts.conf in this file or mpv would not know about
fonts that you already have in the system.
Only available when libass is built with fontconfig.
~/.config/mpv/subfont.ttf
fallback subtitle font
~/.config/mpv/fonts/
Default location for --sub-fonts-dir (see Subtitles) and
--osd-fonts-dir (see OSD).
~/.config/mpv/scripts/
All files in this directory are loaded as if they were passed to
the --script option. They are loaded in alphabetical order.
The --load-scripts=no option disables loading these files.
See Script location for details.
~/.local/state/mpv/watch_later/
Contains temporary config files needed for resuming playback of
files with the watch later feature. See for example the Q key
binding, or the quit-watch-later input command.
This can be overridden by environment variables, in ascending or-
der:
1 If $XDG_STATE_HOME is set, then the derived watch later
directory will be $XDG_STATE_HOME/mpv/watch_later.
2 If $MPV_HOME is set, then the derived watch later direc-
tory will be $MPV_HOME/watch_later.
Each file is a small config file which is loaded if the corre-
sponding media file is loaded. It contains the playback position
and some (not necessarily all) settings that were changed during
playback. The filenames are hashed from the full paths of the me-
dia files. It's in general not possible to extract the media
filename from this hash. However, you can set the --write-file-
name-in-watch-later-config option, and the player will add the
media filename to the contents of the resume config file.
~/.config/mpv/script-opts/osc.conf
This is loaded by the OSC script. See the ON SCREEN CONTROLLER
docs for details.
Other files in this directory are specific to the corresponding
scripts as well, and the mpv core doesn't touch them.
FILES ON WINDOWS
On win32 (if compiled with MinGW, but not Cygwin), the default config
file locations are different. They are generally located under %APP-
DATA%/mpv/. For example, the path to mpv.conf is %APP-
DATA%/mpv/mpv.conf, which maps to a system and user-specific path, for
example
C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\mpv\mpv.conf
You can find the exact path by running echo %APPDATA%\mpv\mpv.conf in
cmd.exe.
Other config files (such as input.conf) are in the same directory. See
the FILES section above.
The cache directory is located at %LOCALAPPDATA%/mpv/cache.
The watch_later directory is located at %LOCALAPPDATA%/mpv/watch_later.
The environment variable $MPV_HOME completely overrides these, like on
UNIX.
If a directory named portable_config next to the mpv.exe exists, all
config will be loaded from this directory only. Watch later config files
and cache files are written to this directory as well. (This exists on
Windows only and is redundant with $MPV_HOME. However, since Windows is
very scripting unfriendly, a wrapper script just setting $MPV_HOME, like
you could do it on other systems, won't work. portable_config is pro-
vided for convenience to get around this restriction.)
Config files located in the same directory as mpv.exe are loaded with
lower priority. Some config files are loaded only once, which means that
e.g. of 2 input.conf files located in two config directories, only the
one from the directory with higher priority will be loaded.
A third config directory with the lowest priority is the directory named
mpv in the same directory as mpv.exe. This used to be the directory with
the highest priority, but is now discouraged to use and might be removed
in the future.
Note that mpv likes to mix / and \ path separators for simplicity. ker-
nel32.dll accepts this, but cmd.exe does not.
FILES ON MACOS
On macOS the watch later directory is located at ~/.con-
fig/mpv/watch_later/ and the cache directory is set to ~/Li-
brary/Caches/io.mpv/. These directories can't be overwritten by environ-
ment variables. Everything else is the same as FILES.
COPYRIGHT
GPLv2+
MPV(1)
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