mpv is an open source media player originally based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types.
mpv includes a technique called smoothmotion, which is a form of video processing in which frames that lie on the transition between source frames are blended together from the two conflicting source frames by means of interpolation. The smoothmotion approach is to display each frame exactly 2.5 times, where we display frames for 0.5 times by blending two adjacent frames together.
mpv has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control mpv using keyboard, mouse, or remote control. mpv was forked because the developers wanted to modernize MPlayer. This includes removing cruft, and adding modern features.
Key Features
- High quality video output, supports video scaling with popular high quality algorithms, color management, and more.
- OpenGL based video output that is capable of many features loved by videophiles, such as video scaling with popular high quality algorithms, color management, frame timing, interpolation, and more.
- Small controller that is triggered by mouse movement.
- Supports VDPAU, VAAPI, DXVA2, VDA and VideoToolbox video decode acceleration.
- Wayland support.
- Support for libavfilter.
- Encoding functionality.
- High-quality image resamplers.
- Precise seeking support.
- Support for Lua scripting.
- Straightforward C API was designed from the ground up to make mpv usable as a library and facilitate easy integration into other applications.
- Support for gapless audio.
Website: mpv.io
Support: Reference Manual, GitHub
Developer: mpv team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
mpv is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Media Players | |
|---|---|
| VLC | Cross-platform multimedia player and framework |
| mpv | Media player for the command line. libmpv is used by many front-ends |
| QMPlay2 | Qt based video and audio player |
| MPlayer | Movie player which runs on many systems |
| SMPlayer | Qt based MPlayer front-end |
| GridPlayer | Play multiple videos simultaneously |
| Parole | Modern simple media player based on the GStreamer framework |
| MPC-QT | Clone of Media Player Classic |
| clapper | GNOME media player built using GJS with GTK4 toolkit |
| Totem | Movie player for the GNOME desktop based on GStreamer |
| Dragon Player | Multimedia player with a focus on simplicity rather than features |
| xine | Video player for playing CDs, DVDs, BluRays and VCDs. |
| Showtime | GNOME media player |
| Glide | Simple and minimalistic media player |
| Phantom Player | Simple video player |
| Daikhan | Media player for the modern desktop |
| QtAV | Cross-platform multimedia framework based on Qt and FFmpeg |
| Rage | Simple video and audio player |
| Kaffeine | Simple, easy to use, full featured media player |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Video Converters | |
|---|---|
| HandBrake | Multithreaded cross-platform media transcoding application |
| FFmpeg | Multimedia player, server and encoder |
| Shutter Encoder | Graphical frontend to FFmpeg with editing features |
| FastFlix | GUI for H.264, HEVC and AV1 hardware and software encoding |
| Videomass | Cross-platform GUI for FFmpeg and youtube-dl |
| avconv | Part of libav-tools; fork of FFmpeg |
| VLC | Vdeo player which also converts multimedia to different formats |
| mpv | Cross-platform media player with video encoding support |
| MEncoder | MEncoder is included in MPlayer |
| FFQueue | Graphical frontend to FFmpeg written in C++ |
| transcode | Utility to encode raw video/audio streams |
| MystiQ | GUI for FFmpeg, a powerful media converter |
| Ciano | Easy way to convert your multimedia files to the most popular formats |
| Constrict | Compress videos to target sizes |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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