A media player
mpv [options] [file|URL|-] mpv [options] --playlist=PLAYLIST mpv [options] files
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 variety 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.
mpv has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control mpv using keyboard, mouse, joystick or remote control (with LIRC). See the --input- options for ways to customize it.
LEFT and RIGHT
Seek backward/forward 5 seconds. Shift+arrow does a 1 second exact seek (see --hr-seek).
UP and DOWN
Seek forward/backward 1 minute. Shift+arrow does a 5 second exact seek (see --hr-seek).
[ and ]
Decrease/increase current playback speed by 10%.
{ and }
Halve/double current playback speed.
BACKSPACE
Reset playback speed to normal.
< and >
Go backward/forward in the playlist.
ENTER
Go forward in the playlist, even over the end.
p / 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.
/ and *
Decrease/increase volume.
9 and 0
Decrease/increase volume.
m
Mute sound.
_
Cycle through the available video tracks.
#
Cycle through the available audio tracks.
f
Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).
ESC
Exit fullscreen mode.
T
Toggle stay-on-top (see also --ontop).
w and e
Decrease/increase pan-and-scan range.
o (also P)
Show progression bar, elapsed time and total duration on the OSD.
O
Toggle OSD states: none / seek / seek + timer / seek + timer + total time.
d
Toggle frame dropping states: none / skip display / skip decoding (see --framedrop).
v
Toggle subtitle visibility.
j and J
Cycle through the available subtitles.
x and z
Adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
Ctrl + and Ctrl -
Adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
V
Toggle subtitle VSFilter aspect compatibility mode. See --ass-vsfilter-aspect-compat for more info.
r and t
Move subtitles up/down.
s
Take a screenshot.
S
Take a screenshot, without subtitles. (Whether this works depends on VO driver support.)
I
Show filename on the OSD.
PGUP and PGDWN
Seek to the beginning of the previous/next chapter. In most cases, "previous" will actually go to the beginning of the current 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.)
D
Activate/deactivate deinterlacer.
(The following keys are valid only when using a video output that supports the corresponding adjustment, or the software equalizer (--vf=eq).)
1 and 2
Adjust contrast.
3 and 4
Adjust brightness.
5 and 6
Adjust gamma.
7 and 8
Adjust saturation.
(The following keys are valid only on OS X.)
command + 0
Resize video window to half its original size. (On other platforms, you can bind keys to change the window-scale property.)
command + 1
Resize video window to its original size.
command + 2
Resize video window to double its original size.
command + f
Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).
command + [ and command + ]
Set video window alpha.
(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.
(The following keys are only valid if you compiled with TV or DVB input support.)
h and k
Select previous/next channel.
button 3 and button 4
Seek backward/forward 1 minute.
button 5 and button 6
Decrease/increase volume.
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.
NOTE: The suboption parser (used for example for --ao=pcm suboptions) supports a special kind of string-escaping intended for use with external GUIs.
It has the following format:
%n%string_of_length_n
mpv --ao=pcm:file=%10%C:test.wav test.avi
Or in a script:
mpv --ao=pcm:file=%\(gaexpr length "$NAME"\(ga%"$NAME" test.avi
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 relative paths with ./.
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.)
For paths passed to suboptions, the situation is further complicated by the need to escape special characters. To work this around, the path can be additionally wrapped in the %n%string_of_length_n syntax (see above).
Some mpv options interpret paths starting with ~. Currently, the prefix ~~/ expands to the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv/). ~/ expands to the user's home directory. (The trailing / is always required.)
When playing multiple files, any option given on the command line usually 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.
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 (/etc/mpv), the user-specific one is ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf. User-specific options override system-wide options and options given on the command line override either. 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. Even suboptions can be specified in this way.
# Use opengl video output by default.
vo=opengl
# Use quotes for text that can contain spaces:
status-msg="Time: ${time-pos}"
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" |
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, as long as you give 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.
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.
[vo.vdpau] # Use hardware decoding (might break playback of some h264 files) hwdec=vdpau [protocol.dvd] profile-desc="profile for dvd:// streams" vf=pp=hb/vb/dr/al/fd alang=en [extension.flv] profile-desc="profile for .flv files" vf=flip [ao.alsa] device=spdif
Screenshots of the currently played file can be taken using the 'screenshot' input mode command, which is by default bound to the s key. Files named shotNNNN.jpg will be saved in the working directory, using the first available number - no files will be overwritten.
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.
The screenshot video filter is not required when using a recommended GUI video output driver. It should normally not be added to the config file, as taking screenshots is handled by the VOs, and adding the screenshot filter will break hardware decoding. (The filter may still be useful for taking screenshots at a certain point within the video chain when using multiple video filters.)
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 (or 00:00:00 if unknown) (length property)
Playback speed, e.g. \(ga\(ga x2.0\(ga\(ga. 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 property.)
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 available. (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.
Decoder-dropped video frames, e.g. SD: 2. Shows up only if the count is not 0. Normally should never show up, unless --framedrop is set to enable this mode, and your CPU is too slow. (drop-frame-count property.)
VO-dropped video frames, e.g. D: 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. Also can be incremented on "hiccups" and when the video frame couldn't be displayed on time. (vo-drop-frame-count property.)
Cache state, e.g. Cache: 2s+134KB. Visible if the stream cache is enabled. The first value shows the amount of video buffered in the demuxer in seconds, the second value shows additional data buffered in the stream cache in kilobytes. (demuxer-cache-duration and cached-used properties.)
http://..., https://, ...
Many network protocols are supported, but the protocol prefix must always be specified. mpv will never attempt to guess whether a filename is actually a network address. A protocol prefix is always required.
-
Play data from stdin.
smb://PATH
Play a path from Samba share.
bd://[title][/device] --bluray-device=PATH
Play a Blu-Ray disc. Currently, this does not accept ISO files. Instead, you must mount the ISO file as filesystem, and point --bluray-device to the mounted directly.
bdnav://[title][/device]
Play a Blu-Ray disc, with navigation features enabled. This feature is permanently experimental.
dvd://[title|[starttitle]-endtitle][/device] --dvd-device=PATH
Play a DVD. If you want dvdnav menus, use dvd://menu. If no title is given, the longest title is auto-selected.
dvdnav:// is an old alias for dvd:// and does exactly the same thing.
dvdread://...:
Play a DVD using the old libdvdread code. This is what MPlayer and older mpv versions use for dvd://. Use is discouraged. It's provided only for compatibility and for transition.
tv://[channel][/input_id] --tv-...
Analogue TV via V4L. Also useful for webcams. (Linux only.)
pvr:// --pvr-...
PVR. (Linux only.)
dvb://[cardnumber@]channel --dvbin-...
Digital TV via DVB. (Linux only.)
mf://[filemask|@listfile] --mf-...
Play a series of images as video.
cdda://track[-endtrack][:speed][/device] --cdrom-device=PATH --cdda-...
Play CD.
lavf://...
Access any FFmpeg/Libav 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 libavdevice demuxer name, and options is the (pseudo-)filename passed to the demuxer.
For example, mpv av://lavfi:mandelbrot makes use of the libavfilter wrapper included in libavdevice, and will use the mandelbrot source filter to generate input data.
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 absolute path.
edl://[edl specification as in edl-mpv.rst]
Stitch together parts of multiple files and play them.
null://
Simulate an empty file.
memory://data
Use the data part as source data.
--alang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>
Specify a priority list of audio languages to use. Different container formats employ different language codes. DVDs use ISO 639-1 two-letter language codes, Matroska, MPEG-TS and NUT use ISO 639-2 three-letter language codes, while OGM uses a free-form identifier. See also --aid.
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 in Japanese.
--slang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>
Specify a priority list of subtitle languages to use. Different container formats employ different language codes. DVDs use ISO 639-1 two letter language codes, Matroska uses ISO 639-2 three letter language codes while OGM uses a free-form identifier. See also --sid.
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.
--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.
--sid=<ID|auto|no>
Display the subtitle stream specified by <ID>. auto selects the default, no disables subtitles.
See also --slang, --no-sub.
--vid=<ID|auto|no>
Select video channel. auto selects the default, no disables video.
--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.
--start=<relative time>
Seek to given time position.
The general format for absolute times is [[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]. If the time is given with a prefix of + or -, the seek is relative from the start or end of the file.
pp% seeks to percent position pp (0-100).
#c seeks to chapter number c. (Chapters start from 1.)
--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=<time>
Stop at given absolute 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.
--speed=<0.01-100>
Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given as parameter.
--loop=<N|inf|no>
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 disables looping. If several files are specified on command line, the entire playlist is looped.
--pause
Start the player in paused state.
--shuffle
Play files in random order.
--chapter=<start[-end]>
Specify which chapter to start playing at. Optionally specify which chapter to end playing at. Also see --start.
--playlist=<filename>
Play files according to a playlist file (Supports some common formats.If no format is detected, t will be treated as list of files, separated by newline characters. Note that XML playlist formats are not supported.)
WARNING: The way mpv uses playlist files is not safe against maliciously constructed files. Such files may trigger harmful actions. This has been the case for all mpv and MPlayer versions, but unfortunately this fact was not well documented earlier, and some people have even misguidedly recommended use of --playlist with untrusted sources. Do NOT use --playlist with random internet sources or files you do not trust!
The main problem is that playlists can point to arbitrary network addresses (including local addresses inside of your LAN), and thus can't be considered secure. Playlists also can contain entries using other protocols, such as local files, or (most severely), special protocols like avdevice://, 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>
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 depending 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 slave mode 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).
yes
Use precise seeks whenever possible.
--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 instead. 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 erroneously 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 seeking skipping the target frame. This e.g. can break frame backstepping 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 seeking (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.
Note that --playlist always loads all entries, so you use that instead if you really have the need for this functionality.
--loop-file=<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 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.
--ordered-chapters, --no-ordered-chapters
Enabled by default. Disable support for Matroska ordered chapters. mpv will not load or search for video segments from other files, and will also ignore any chapter order specified for the main file.
--ordered-chapters-files=<playlist-file>
Loads the given file as playlist, and tries to use the files contained 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 filenames separated by newlines.
--sstep=<sec>
Skip <sec> seconds after every frame.
NOTE: Without --hr-seek, skipping will snap to keyframes.
--help
Show short summary of 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 files. This prevents loading of both the user-level and system-wide mpv.conf and input.conf files. Other configuration files are blocked as well, such as resume playback files.
NOTE: Files explicitly requested by command line options, like --include or --use-filedir-conf, will still be loaded.
Also see --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.
--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 directories are ignored, and overrides through environment variables (MPV_HOME) are also ignored.
Note that the --no-config option takes precedence over this option.
--save-position-on-quit
Always save the current playback position on quit. 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 any other way than quitting. For example, going to the next file in the playlist will not save the position, and 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.
--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 timestamp. 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
Makes mpv wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to play. Mostly useful in slave mode, where mpv can be controlled through input commands (see also --slave-broken).
--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 lua configuration subdirectory (usually ~/.config/mpv/lua/). (Default: yes)
--lua=<filename>
Load a Lua script. You can load multiple scripts by separating them with commas (,).
--lua-opts=key1=value1,key2=value2,...
Set options for scripts. A Lua script can query an option by key. If an option is used and what semantics the option value has depends entirely on the loaded Lua scripts. Values not claimed by any scripts are ignored.
--merge-files
Pretend that all files passed to mpv are concatenated into a single, big file. This uses timeline/EDL support internally. Note that this won't work for ordered chapter files or quvi-resolved URLs (such as YouTube links).
This option is interpreted at program start, and doesn't affect for example files or playlists loaded with the loadfile or loadlist commands.
--no-resume-playback
Do not restore playback position from the watch_later configuration subdirectory (usually ~/.config/mpv/watch_later/). See quit_watch_later input command.
--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 during 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 options, and mpv will reset the value of these options on playback start to the initial value. The initial value is either the default value, or as set by the config file or command line.
In some cases, this might not work as expected. For example, --volume will only be reset if it is explicitly set in the config file or the command line.
The special name all resets as many options as possible.
--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 playback.
--reset-on-next-file=all Try to reset all settings that were changed during playback.
--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.
--show-profile=<profile>
Show the description and content of a profile.
--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.
--vo=<driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used. For interactive use, one would normally specify a single one to use, but in configuration files, specifying a list of fallbacks may make sense. See VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS for details and descriptions of available drivers.
--vd=<[+|-]family1:(*|decoder1),[+|-]family2:(*|decoder2),...[-]>
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 difference 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 filters. The option variants --vf-add, --vf-pre, --vf-del and --vf-clr exist to modify a previously specified list, but you should not need these for typical use.
--no-video
Do not play video. With some demuxers this may not work. In those cases you can try --vo=null instead.
--untimed
Do not sleep when outputting video frames. Useful for benchmarks when used with --no-audio.
--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 upper framerate limit.
The argument selects the drop methods, and can be one of the following:
<no>
Disable any framedropping.
<vo>
Drop late frames on video output (default). This still decodes and filters all frames, but doesn't render them on the VO. It tries to query the display FPS (X11 only, not correct on multi-monitor systems), or assumes infinite display FPS if that fails. Drops are indicated in the terminal status line as D: field. 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.
<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 produce unwatchably choppy output, or even freeze the display complete. Not recommended. The --vd-lavc-framedrop option controls what frames to drop.
<decoder+vo>
Enable both modes. Not recommended.
NOTE: --vo=vdpau has its own code for the vo framedrop mode. Slight differences to other VOs are possible.
--display-fps=<fps>
Set the maximum assumed display FPS used with --framedrop. By default a detected value is used (X11 only, not correct on multi-monitor systems), or infinite display FPS if that fails. Infinite FPS means only frames too late are dropped. If a correct FPS is provided, frames that are predicted to be too late are dropped too.
--hwdec=<api>
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.
<api> can be one of the following:
no
always use software decoding (default)
auto
see below
vdpau
requires --vo=vdpau or --vo=opengl (Linux only)
vaapi
requires --vo=opengl or --vo=vaapi (Linux with Intel GPUs only)
vaapi-copy
copies video back into system RAM (Linux with Intel GPUs only)
vda
requires --vo=opengl (OS X only)
auto tries to automatically enable hardware decoding using the first available method. This still depends what VO you are using. For example, if you are not using --vo=vdpau, vdpau decoding will never be enabled. Also note that if the first found method doesn't actually work, it will always fall back to software decoding, instead of trying the next method.
The vaapi-copy function allows you to use vaapi with any VO. Because this copies the decoded video back to system RAM, it's quite inefficient.
NOTE: When using this switch, hardware decoding is still only done for some codecs. See --hwdec-codecs to enable hardware decoding for more codecs.
--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.
--video-aspect=<ratio>
Override video aspect ratio, in case aspect information is incorrect or missing in the file being played. See also --no-video-aspect.
Two values have special meaning:
0
disable aspect ratio handling, pretend the video has square pixels
-1
use the video stream or container aspect (default)
But note that handling of these special values might change in the future.
--video-aspect=4:3 or --video-aspect=1.3333
--video-aspect=16:9 or --video-aspect=1.7777
--no-video-aspect
Ignore aspect ratio information from video file and assume the video has square pixels. See also --video-aspect.
--video-unscaled
Disable scaling of the video. If the window is larger than the video, black bars are added. Otherwise, the video is cropped. The video still can be influenced by the other --video-... options. (If the --video-zoom option is set to a value other than 1, scaling is enabled, but the video isn't automatically scaled to the window size.)
The video and monitor aspects aspect will be ignored. Aspect correction would require to scale the video in the X or Y direction, but this option disables scaling, disabling all aspect correction.
Note that the scaler algorithm may still be used, even if the video isn't scaled. For example, this can influence chroma conversion.
This option is disabled if the --no-keepaspect option 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 1280x720 video fullscreen on a 1680x1050 screen with --video-pan-x=-0.1 would move the video 168 pixels to the left (making 128 pixels of the source video invisible).
This option is disabled if the --no-keepaspect option is used.
--video-rotate=<0-359|no>
Rotate the video clockwise, in degrees. Currently supports 90° steps only. 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 metadata.)
--video-stereo-mode=<mode>
Set the stereo 3D output mode (default: mono). This is done by inserting the stereo3d conversion filter.
The mode mono is an alias to ml, which refers to the left frame in 2D. This is the default, which means mpv will try to show 3D movies in 2D, instead of the mangled 3D image not intended for consumption (such as showing the left and right frame side by side, etc.).
The pseudo-mode none disables automatic conversion completely.
Use --video-stereo-mode=help to list all available modes. Check with the stereo3d filter documentation to see what the names mean. Note that some names refer to modes not supported by stereo3d - these modes can appear in files, but can't be handled properly by mpv.
--video-zoom=<value>
Adjust the video display scale factor by the given value. The unit is in fractions of the (scaled) window video size.
For example, given a 1280x720 video shown in a 1280x720 window, --video-zoom=-0.1 would make the video by 128 pixels smaller in X direction, and 72 pixels in Y direction.
This option is disabled if the --no-keepaspect option is used.
--video-align-x=<-1-1>, --video-align-y=<-1-1>
Moves the video rectangle within the black borders, which are usually added to pad the video to screen if video and screen aspect ratios are different. --video-align-y=-1 would move the video to the top of the screen (leaving a border only on the bottom), a value of 0 centers it (default), and a value of 1 would put the video at the bottom of the screen.
If video and screen aspect match perfectly, these options do nothing.
This option is disabled if the --no-keepaspect option is used.
--correct-pts, --no-correct-pts
--no-correct-pts switches mpv to a mode where video timing is determined using a fixed framerate value (either using the --fps option, or using file information). Sometimes, files with very broken timestamps can be played somewhat well in this mode. Note that video filters, subtitle rendering and audio synchronization can be completely broken in this mode.
--fps=<float>
Override video framerate. Useful if the original value is wrong or missing.
NOTE: Works in --no-correct-pts mode only.
--deinterlace=<yes|no|auto>
Enable or disable interlacing (default: auto, which usually means no). Interlaced video shows ugly comb-like artifacts, which are visible on fast movement. Enabling this typically inserts the yadif video filter in order to deinterlace the video, or lets the video output apply deinterlacing if supported.
This behaves exactly like the deinterlace input property (usually mapped to Shift+D).
auto is a technicality. Strictly speaking, the default for this option is deinterlacing disabled, but the auto case is needed if yadif was added to the filter chain manually with --vf. Then the core shouldn't disable deinterlacing just because the --deinterlace was not set.
--field-dominance=<auto|top|bottom>
Set first field for interlaced content. Useful for deinterlacers that double the framerate: --vf=yadif=field and --vo=vdpau:deint.
auto
(default) If the decoder does not export the appropriate information, it falls back on top (top field first).
top
top field first
bottom
bottom field first
--frames=<number>
Play/convert only first <number> video frames, then quit.
--frames=0 loads the file, but immediately quits before initializing 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 playback immediately after initialization. The value 0 works as with video.
--hwdec-codecs=<codec1,codec2,...|all>
Allow hardware decoding for a given list of codecs only. The special 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,wmv3. Note that the hardware acceleration special codecs like h264_vdpau are not relevant anymore, and in fact have been removed from Libav 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.
mpv --hwdec=vdpau --vo=vdpau --hwdec-codecs=h264,mpeg2video
Enable vdpau decoding for h264 and mpeg2 only.
--quvi-format=<best|default|...>
Video format/quality that is directly passed to libquvi (default: best). This is used when opening links to streaming sites like YouTube. The interpretation of this value is highly specific to the streaming site and the video.
libquvi 0.4.x: The only well-defined values that work on all sites are best (best quality/highest bandwidth, default), and default (lowest quality).
The quvi command line tool can be used to find out which formats are supported for a given URL: quvi --query-formats URL.
libquvi 0.9.x: The following explanations are relevant: http://quvi.sourceforge.net/r/api/0.9/glossary_termino.html#m_stream_id
--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 selected, 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 somehow incorrect.
--vd-lavc-bitexact
Only use bit-exact algorithms in all decoding steps (for codec testing).
--vd-lavc-fast (MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and H.264 only)
Enable optimizations which do not comply with the format specification and potentially cause problems, like simpler dequantization, 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.
--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 decoded before an initial keyframe was decoded, or frames that are recognized as corrupted.
--vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=<skipvalue> (H.264 only)
Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during H.264 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 doing deblocking on e.g. MPEG-2 video. But at least for high bitrate HDTV, this provides a big speedup with little visible quality loss.
<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 decoding 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 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 motion and sometimes bad artifacts (see skiploopfilter for available skip values).
--vd-lavc-framedrop=<skipvalue>
Set framedropping mode used with --framedrop (see skiploopfilter for available skip values).
--vd-lavc-threads=<0-16>
Number of threads to use for decoding. Whether threading is actually supported depends on codec. 0 means autodetect number of cores on the machine and use that, up to the maximum of 16 (default: 0).
--ao=<driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],driver2,...[,]>
Specify a priority list of audio output drivers to be used. For interactive use one would normally specify a single one to use, but in configuration files specifying a list of fallbacks may make sense. 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 filters. The option variants --af-add, --af-pre, --af-del and --af-clr exist to modify a previously specified list, but you should not need these for typical use.
--ad=<[+|-]family1:(*|decoder1),[+|-]family2:(*|decoder2),...[-]>
Specify a priority list of audio decoders to be used, according to their family and decoder name. Entries like family:* prioritize all decoders of the given family. 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. + in front of an entry forces the decoder. Both of these should not normally be used, because they break normal decoder auto-selection!
- in front of an entry disables selection of the decoder.
--ad=lavc:mp3float
Prefer the FFmpeg/Libav mp3float decoder over all other MP3 decoders.
--ad=spdif:ac3,lavc:*
Always prefer spdif AC3 over FFmpeg/Libav over anything else.
--ad=help
List all available decoders.
--volume=<-1-100>
Set the startup volume. A value of -1 (the default) will not change the volume. See also --softvol.
--audio-delay=<sec>
Audio delay in seconds (positive or negative float value). Positive values delay the audio, and negative values delay the video.
--no-audio
Do not play sound. With some demuxers this may not work. In those cases you can try --ao=null instead.
--mute=<auto|yes|no>
Set startup audio mute status. auto (default) will not change the mute status. Also see --volume.
--softvol=<mode>
Control whether to use the volume controls of the audio output driver or the internal mpv volume filter.
no
prefer audio driver controls, use the volume filter only if absolutely needed
yes
always use the volume filter
auto
prefer the volume filter if the audio driver uses the system mixer (default)
The intention of auto is to avoid changing system mixer settings from within mpv with default settings. mpv is a video player, not a mixer panel. On the other hand, mixer controls are enabled for sound servers like PulseAudio, which provide per-application 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 and 1 (which is the default) means full compression (make loud passages more silent and vice versa). Values up to 2 are also accepted, but are purely experimental. This option only shows an effect if the AC-3 stream contains the required range compression information.
--ad-lavc-downmix=<yes|no>
Whether to request audio channel downmixing from the decoder (default: yes). Some decoders, like AC-3, AAC and DTS, can remix audio 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 actually supported depends on codec. As of this writing, it's supported 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.
--ad-spdif-dtshd=<yes|no>, --dtshd, --no-dtshd
When using DTS pass-through, output any DTS-HD track as-is. With ad-spdif-dtshd=no (the default), only the DTS Core parts will be output.
DTS-HD tracks can be sent over HDMI but not over the original coax/TOSLINK S/PDIF system.
Some receivers don't accept DTS core-only when --ad-spdif-dtshd=yes is used, even though they accept DTS-HD.
--dtshd and --no-dtshd are deprecated aliases.
--audio-channels=<number|layout>
Request a channel layout for audio output (default: stereo). This will ask the AO to open a device with the given channel layout. It's up to the AO to accept this layout, or to pick a fallback or to error out if the requested layout is not supported.
The --audio-channels option either takes a channel number or an explicit channel layout. Channel 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 arbitrary channel layouts (e.g. fl-fr-lfe is 2.1).
You can use --audio-channels=empty to disable this. In this case, the AO use the channel layout as the audio filter chain indicates.
This will also request the channel layout from the decoder. If the decoder does not support the layout, it will fall back to its native channel layout. (You can use --ad-lavc-downmix=no to make the decoder always output its native layout.) Note that only some decoders support remixing audio. Some that do include AC-3, AAC or DTS audio.
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.
--audio-display=<no|attachment>
Setting this option to attachment (default) will display image attachments when playing audio files. It will display the first image found, and additional images are available as video tracks.
Setting this option to no disables display of video entirely when playing audio files.
This option has no influence on files with normal video tracks.
--audio-file=<filename>
Play audio from an external file while viewing a video. 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 different from that of the current media, the lavrresample 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 according to the first file played and is then kept open for gapless playback. This means that if the first file for example has a low sample rate, then the following files may get resampled to the same low sample rate, resulting in reduced sound quality. If you play files with different parameters, 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 reopened. This means that you will normally get gapless audio with files that were encoded using the same settings, but might not be gapless in other cases. (Unlike with yes, you don't have to worry about corner cases like the first file setting a very low quality output format, and ruining the playback of higher quality files that follow.)
NOTE: This feature is implemented in a simple manner and relies on audio output device buffering to continue playback while moving 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, --no-initial-audio-sync
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 differ, and then video timing is gradually adjusted if necessary to reach correct synchronization later.
--softvol-max=<10.0-10000.0>
Set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 200). A value of 200 will allow you to adjust the volume up to a maximum of double the current level. With values below 100 the initial volume (which is 100%) will be above the maximum, which e.g. the OSD cannot display correctly.
The maximum value of --volume as well as the volume property is always 100. Likewise, the volume OSD bar always goes from 0 to 100. This means that with --softvol-max=200, --volume=100 sets maximum amplification, i.e. amplify by 200%. The default volume (no change in volume) will be 50 in this case.
--volume-restore-data=<string>
Used internally for use by playback resume (e.g. with quit_watch_later). Restoring value has to be done carefully, because different AOs as well as softvol can have different value ranges, and we don't want to restore volume if setting the volume changes it system wide. The normal options (like --volume) would always set the volume. This option was added for restoring volume in a safer way (by storing the method used to set the volume), and is not generally useful. Its semantics are considered private to mpv.
Do not use.
--audio-buffer=<seconds>
Set the audio output minimum buffer. The audio device might actually 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 will 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 contacted.
Default: 0.2 (200 ms).
--no-sub
Do not select any subtitle when the file is loaded.
--sub-demuxer=<[+]name>
Force subtitle demuxer type for --sub-file. Give the demuxer name as printed by --sub-demuxer=help.
--sub-delay=<sec>
Delays subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be negative.
--sub-file=subtitlefile
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 subtitle 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.)
--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, 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 --no-sub-ass 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 --no-sub-ass 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-text-font-size instead.
--sub-scale-with-window=yes|no
Make the subtitle font size relative to the window, instead of the video. This is useful if you always want the same font size, even if the video doesn't covert the window fully, e.g. because screen aspect and window aspect mismatch (and the player adds black bars).
Like --sub-scale, this can break ASS subtitles.
--embeddedfonts, --no-embeddedfonts
Use fonts embedded in Matroska container files and ASS scripts (default: enabled). These fonts can be used for SSA/ASS subtitle rendering.
--sub-pos=<0-100>
Specify the position of subtitles on the screen. The value is the vertical position of the subtitle in % of the screen height.
NOTE: This affects ASS subtitles as well, and may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering. Use with care, or use --sub-text-margin-y instead.
--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 formats. Works for external text subtitles only.
--sub-speed=25/23.976\(ga plays frame based subtitles which have been loaded assuming a framerate of 23.976 at 25 FPS.
--ass-force-style=<[Style.]Param=Value[,...]>
Override some style or script info parameters.
--ass-force-style=FontName=Arial,Default.Bold=1
--ass-force-style=PlayResY=768
NOTE: Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.
--ass-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
Enabling hinting can lead to mispositioned text (in situations it's supposed to match up with 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.
--ass-line-spacing=<value>
Set line spacing value for SSA/ASS renderer.
--ass-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.
--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.
--ass-style-override=<yes|no|force>
Control whether user style overrides should be applied.
yes
Apply all the --ass-* style override options. Changing the default for any of these options can lead to incorrect subtitle rendering (default).
signfs
like yes, but apply --sub-scale only to signs
no
Render subtitles as forced by subtitle scripts.
force
Try to force the font style as defined by the --sub-text-* options. Requires a modified libass, can break rendering easily. Probably more reliable than force.
--ass-use-margins
Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are available.
--ass-vsfilter-aspect-compat=<yes|no>
Stretch SSA/ASS subtitles when playing anamorphic videos for compatibility with traditional VSFilter behavior. This switch has no effect when the video is stored with square pixels.
The renderer historically most commonly used for the SSA/ASS subtitle formats, VSFilter, had questionable behavior that resulted in subtitles being stretched too if the video was stored in anamorphic format that required scaling for display. This behavior is usually undesirable and newer VSFilter versions may behave differently. However, many existing scripts compensate for the stretching by modifying things in the opposite direction. Thus, if such scripts are displayed "correctly", they will not appear as intended. This switch enables emulation of the old VSFilter behavior (undesirable but expected by many existing scripts).
Enabled by default.
--ass-vsfilter-blur-compat=<yes|no>
Scale \blur tags by video resolution instead of script resolution (enabled by default). This is bug in VSFilter, which according to some, can't be fixed anymore in the name of compatibility.
Note that this uses the actual video resolution for calculating the offset scale factor, not what the video filter chain or the video output use.
--ass-vsfilter-color-compat=<basic|full|force-601|no>
Mangle colors like (xy-)vsfilter do (default: basic). Historically, 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 converting 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 control 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 default.
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 depend on the video color space, and it's for example in theory not possible to reuse a subtitle script with another video file. The --ass-style-override option doesn't affect how this option is interpreted.
--quvi-fetch-subtitles=<yes|no>
Toggles fetching of subtitles from streaming sites with libquvi. Disabled by default, because it's unreliable and slow. Note that when enabled, subtitles will always be fetched, even if subtitles are explicitly disabled with --no-sub (because you might want to enable subtitles at runtime).
Supported when using libquvi 0.9.x.
--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 playback on DVD players. This option fixes them, however at the price of possibly misaligning some subtitles (e.g. sign translations).
Disabled by default.
--sub-ass, --no-sub-ass
Render ASS subtitles natively (enabled by default).
If --no-sub-ass 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-text- options instead.
NOTE: Using --no-sub-ass 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.
NOTE: Try using --ass-style-override=force instead.
--sub-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>, --no-sub-auto
Load additional subtitle files matching the video filename. The parameter specifies how external subtitle files are matched. exact is enabled by default.
no
Don't automatically load external subtitle files.
exact
Load the media filename with subtitle file extension (default).
fuzzy
Load all subs containing media filename.
all
Load all subs in the current and --sub-paths directories.
--sub-codepage=<codepage>
If your system supports iconv(3), you can use this option to specify the subtitle codepage. By default, ENCA will be used to guess the charset. If mpv is not compiled with ENCA, UTF-8:UTF-8-BROKEN is the default, which means it will try to use UTF-8, otherwise the UTF-8-BROKEN pseudo codepage (see below).
The default value for this option is auto, whose actual effect depends on whether ENCA is compiled.
If you force the charset, even subtitles that are known to be UTF-8 will be recoded, which is perhaps not what you expect. Prefix codepages with utf8: if you want the codepage to be used only if the input is not valid UTF-8.
--sub-codepage=utf8: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. When it is the codepage, subtitles are interpreted as UTF-8 with "Latin 1" as fallback for bytes which are not valid UTF-8 sequences. iconv is never involved in this mode.
If the player was compiled with ENCA support, you can control it with the following syntax:
--sub-codepage=enca:<language>:<fallback codepage>
Language is specified using a two letter code to help ENCA detect the codepage automatically. If an invalid language code is entered, mpv will complain and list valid languages. (Note however that this list will only be printed when the conversion code is actually called, for example when loading an external subtitle). The fallback codepage is used if autodetection fails. If no fallback is specified, UTF-8-BROKEN is used.
--sub-codepage=enca:pl:cp1250 guess the encoding, assuming the subtitles are Polish, fall back on cp1250
--sub-codepage=enca:pl guess the encoding for Polish, fall back on UTF-8.
--sub-codepage=enca try universal detection, fall back on UTF-8.
If the player was compiled with libguess support, you can use it with:
--sub-codepage=guess:<language>:<fallback codepage>
libguess always needs a language. There is no universal detection mode. Use --sub-codepage=guess:help to get a list of languages subject to the same caveat as with ENCA above.
--sub-fix-timing, --no-sub-fix-timing
By default, external text subtitles are preprocessed to remove minor gaps or overlaps between subtitles (if the difference is smaller than 200 ms, the gap or overlap is removed). This does not affect image subtitles, subtitles muxed with audio/video, or subtitles in the ASS format.
--sub-forced-only
Display only forced subtitles for the DVD subtitle stream selected by e.g. --slang.
--sub-fps=<rate>
Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: video fps).
NOTE: <rate> > video fps speeds the subtitles up for frame-based subtitle files and slows them down for time-based ones.
Also see --sub-speed option.
--sub-gauss=<0.0-3.0>
Apply Gaussian blur to image subtitles (default: 0). This can help making 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 making yellow DVD/Vobsubs look nicer.
NOTE: Never applied to text subtitles.
--sub-paths=<path1:path2:...>
Specify extra directories to search for subtitles matching the video. Multiple directories can be separated by ":" (";" on Windows). Paths can be relative or absolute. Relative paths are interpreted relative to video file directory.
Assuming that /path/to/video/video.avi is played and --sub-paths=sub:subtitles:/tmp/subs is specified, mpv searches for subtitle files in these directories:
/path/to/video/
/path/to/video/sub/
/path/to/video/subtitles/
/tmp/subs/
the sub configuration subdirectory (usually ~/.config/mpv/sub/)
--sub-visibility, --no-sub-visibility
Can be used to disable display of 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.
--title=<string>
Set the window title. Properties are expanded on playback start. (See Property Expansion.)
WARNING: There is a danger of this causing significant CPU usage, depending on the properties used and the window manager. 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.
This option does not work properly with all window managers. 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.
See also --fs-screen.
--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 default is provided mpv will fallback on using the behavior depending on what the user provided with the screen option.
This option does works properly only with window managers which understand the EWMH _NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS hint.
all does not work on OS X and will behave like current.
See also --screen.
--keep-open
Do not terminate when playing or seeking beyond the end of the file, and there is not 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 pause at an arbitrary playback position (or, in corner cases, not redraw the window at all).
NOTE: This option is not respected when using --frames, --end, --length, or when passing a chapter range to --chapter. Explicitly skipping to the next file or skipping beyond the last chapter will terminate playback as well, even if --keep-open is given.
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).
--force-window
Create a video output window even if there is no video. This can be useful when pretending that mpv is a GUI application. Currently, the window always has the size 640x480, 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 different 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 broken video files.
--ontop
Makes the player window stay on top of other windows.
--border, --no-border
Play video with window border and decorations. Since this is on by default, use --no-border to disable the standard window decorations.
--geometry=<[W[xH]][+-x+-y]>, --geometry=<x:y>
Adjust the initial window position or size. W and H set the window 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 similar 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 beyond the right and 10 pixels beyond the top border".
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.
This option does not work properly with all window managers.
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 ration (with most VOs and without --no-keepaspect).
50%+10+10
Sets the window to half the screen widths, and positions it 10 pixels below/left of the top left corner of the screen.
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 differently 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 maximum 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.
70%
Make the window width 70% of the screen size, keeping aspect ratio.
1000
Set the window width to 1000 pixels, keeping aspect ratio.
70%:60%
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 the window size is only changed if the window would be larger than the specified size.
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.
--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 --autosync=1 will do the same, but will subtly change the A/V correction algorithm. An uneven video framerate in a video which plays fine with --no-audio 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 --no-audio. Try --autosync=30 to smooth out problems with sound drivers which do not implement a perfect audio 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 drivers.
--cursor-autohide=<number|no|always>
Make mouse cursor automatically hide after given number of milliseconds. 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.
--no-fixed-vo, --fixed-vo
--no-fixed-vo enforces closing and reopening the video window for multiple files (one (un)initialization for each file).
--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 rendering (like vdpau, opengl, direct3d), this can be slightly faster or slower, depending on GPU drivers and hardware. For other VOs, this just makes rendering slower.
--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 affects X11 VOs.
--fs-missioncontrol
(OS X only) Use OS X Mission Control's fullscreen feature instead of the custom one provided by mpv. This can potentially break a lot of stuff like --geometry and is disabled by default. On the other hand it provides a more 'OS X-like' user experience.
--heartbeat-cmd=<command>
Command that is executed every 30 seconds during playback via system() - i.e. using the shell. The time between the commands can be customized with the --heartbeat-interval option. The command is not run while playback is paused.
NOTE: mpv uses this command without any checking. It is your responsibility to ensure it does not cause security problems (e.g. make sure to use full paths if "." is in your path like on Windows). It also only works when playing video (i.e. not with --no-video but works with -vo=null).
This can be "misused" to disable screensavers that do not support the proper X API (see also --stop-screensaver). If you think this is too complicated, ask the author of the screensaver program to support the proper X APIs. Note that the --stop-screensaver does not influence the heartbeat code at all.
mpv --heartbeat-cmd="xscreensaver-command -deactivate" file
mpv --heartbeat-cmd="gnome-screensaver-command -p" file
--heartbeat-interval=<sec>
Time between --heartbeat-cmd invocations in seconds (default: 30).
NOTE: This does not affect the normal screensaver operation in any way.
--no-keepaspect, --keepaspect
--no-keepaspect will always stretch the video to window size, and will disable the window manager hints that force the window aspect ratio. (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.
--monitoraspect=4:3 or --monitoraspect=1.3333
--monitoraspect=16:9 or --monitoraspect=1.7777
--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 (almost?) all LCDs). See also --monitoraspect and --video-aspect.
--stop-screensaver, --no-stop-screensaver
Turns off the screensaver (or screen blanker and similar mechanisms) at startup and turns it on again on exit (default: yes). The screensaver is always re-enabled when the player is paused.
This is not supported on all video outputs or platforms. Sometimes it is implemented, but does not work (happens often on GNOME). You might be able to to work this around using --heartbeat-cmd instead.
--wid=<ID>
(X11 and Windows only) This tells mpv to attach to an existing window. The ID is interpreted as "Window" on X11, and as HWND on Windows. If a VO is selected that supports this option, a new window will be created and the given window will be set as parent. The window will always be resized to cover the parent window fully, and will add black bars to compensate for the video aspect ratio.
See also --slave-broken.
--no-window-dragging
Don't move the window when clicking on it and moving the mouse pointer.
--x11-name
Set the window class name for X11-based video output methods.
--x11-netwm=no
(X11 only) Disable use of the NetWM protocol when switching to or from fullscreen. This may or may not help with broken window managers. This provides 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.
By default, NetWM support is autodetected, and using this option forces autodetection to fail.
--cdrom-device=<path>
Specify the CD-ROM device (default: /dev/cdrom).
--dvd-device=<path>
Specify the DVD device or .iso filename (default: /dev/dvd). You can also specify a directory that contains files previously copied directly from a DVD (with e.g. vobcopy).
mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/path/to/dvd/
--bluray-device=<path>
(Blu-ray only) Specify the Blu-ray disc location. Must be a directory with Blu-ray structure.
mpv bd:// --bluray-device=/path/to/bd/
--bluray-angle=<ID>
Some Blu-ray discs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles. This option tells mpv which angle to use (default: 1).
--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> sectors.
--cdda-toc-bias
Assume that the beginning offset of track 1 as reported in the TOC will be addressed as LBA 0. Some discs need this for getting track boundaries correctly.
--cdda-toc-offset=<value>
Add <value> sectors to the values reported when addressing tracks. May be negative.
--cdda-skip=<es|no
(Never) accept imperfect data reconstruction.
--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).
--brightness=<-100-100>
Adjust the brightness of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported by all video output drivers.
--contrast=<-100-100>
Adjust the contrast of the video signal (default: 0). Not supported 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.
--colormatrix=<colorspace>
Controls the YUV to RGB color space conversion when playing 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 results in slightly under or over saturated and shifted colors.
The color space conversion is additionally influenced by the related options --colormatrix-input-range and --colormatrix-output-range.
These options are not always supported. Different video outputs provide varying degrees of support. The opengl and vdpau video output drivers usually offer full support. The xv output can set the color space if the system video driver 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 unset, the color space will be selected automatically. This is done using a simple heuristic that attempts to distinguish 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 BT.601 (SD)
BT.709
ITU-R BT.709 (HD)
BT.2020-NCL
ITU-R BT.2020 non-constant luminance system
BT.2020-CL
ITU-R BT.2020 constant luminance system
SMPTE-240M
SMPTE-240M
--colormatrix-input-range=<color-range>
YUV color levels used with YUV to RGB conversion. This option 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) (default)
limited
limited range (16-235 for luma, 16-240 for chroma)
full
full range (0-255 for both luma and chroma)
--colormatrix-output-range=<color-range>
RGB color levels used with YUV to RGB conversion. Normally, output devices such as PC monitors use full range color levels. However, some TVs and video monitors expect studio RGB levels. Providing 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.
The same limitations as with --colormatrix apply.
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 option instead, if available.
--colormatrix-primaries=<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. By default, when unset, BT.709 is used for all files except those tagged with a BT.2020 color matrix.
This option only affects video output drivers that perform color management, for example opengl with the srgb 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 unset, 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 primaries 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)
--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 --demuxer=help.
--demuxer-lavf-analyzeduration=<value>
Maximum length in seconds to analyze the stream properties.
--demuxer-lavf-probescore=<1-100>
Minimum required libavformat probe score. Lower values will require 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-genpts-mode=<no|lavf>
Mode for deriving missing packet PTS values from packet DTS. lavf enables libavformat's genpts option. no disables it. This used to be enabled by default, but then it was deemed as not needed anymore. Enabling this might help with timestamp problems, or make them worse.
--demuxer-lavf-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]
Pass AVOptions to libavformat demuxer.
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. Note that some options may conflict with mpv options.
--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-cryptokey=<hexstring>
Encryption key the demuxer should use. This is the raw binary data of the key converted to a hexadecimal string.
--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll, --mkv-subtitle-preroll
Try harder to show embedded soft subtitles when seeking somewhere. Normally, it can happen that the subtitle at the seek target is not shown due to how some container file formats are designed. The subtitles appear only if seeking before or exactly to the position a subtitle first appears. To make this worse, subtitles are often timed to appear a very small amount before the associated video frame, so that seeking to the video frame typically 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 relative or imprecise seeks only.
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.
--mkv-subtitle-preroll is a deprecated alias.
--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 --demuxer-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.
Play a raw YUV sample:
mpv sample-720x576.yuv --demuxer=rawvideo \ --demuxer-rawvideo=w=720:h=576
--demuxer-rawvideo-format=<value>
Color space (fourcc) in hex or string for --demuxer=rawvideo (default: 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-thread=<yes|no>
Run the demuxer in a separate thread, and let it prefetch a certain amount of packets (default: yes). Having this enabled may lead to smoother playback, but on the other hand can add delays to seeking or track switching.
--demuxer-readahead-secs=N
If --demuxer-thread is enabled, this controls how much the demuxer should buffer ahead in seconds (default: 0.2). 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.
(This value tends to be fuzzy, because many file formats don't store linear timestamps.)
--demuxer-readahead-packets=N
If --demuxer-thread is enabled, this controls how much the demuxer should buffer ahead. As long as the number of packets in the packet queue doesn't exceed --demuxer-readahead-packets, and the total number of bytes doesn't exceed --demuxer-readahead-bytes, the thread keeps reading ahead.
Note that if you set these options near the maximum, you might get a packet queue overflow warning.
See --list-options for defaults and value range.
--demuxer-readahead-bytes=N
See --demuxer-readahead-packets.
--native-keyrepeat
Use system settings for keyrepeat delay and rate, instead of --input-ar-delay and --input-ar-rate. (Whether this applies depends on the VO backend and how it handles keyboard input. Does not apply to terminal input.)
--input-ar-delay
Delay in milliseconds before we start to autorepeat a key (0 to disable).
--input-ar-rate
Number of key presses to generate per second on autorepeat.
--input-conf=<filename>
Specify input configuration file other than the default location in the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv/input.conf).
--no-input-default-bindings
Disable mpv default (built-in) key bindings.
--input-cmdlist
Prints all commands that can be bound to keys.
--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 disadvantage 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 commands.
--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-file=<filename>
Read commands from the given file. Mostly useful with a FIFO. See also --slave-broken.
NOTE: When the given file is a FIFO mpv opens both ends, so you can do several echo "seek 10" > mp_pipe and the pipe will stay valid.
--input-terminal, --no-input-terminal
--no-input-terminal prevents the player from reading key events from standard input. Useful when reading data from standard input. 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 slave commands.
--input-appleremote, --no-input-appleremote
Enable/disable AppleIR remote support. Enabled by default.
--input-cursor, --no-input-cursor
Permit mpv to receive pointer events reported by the video output driver. Necessary to use the OSC, or to select the buttons in DVD menus. Support depends on the VO in use.
--input-joystick, --no-input-joystick
Enable/disable joystick support. Disabled by default.
--input-js-dev
Specifies the joystick device to use (default: /dev/input/js0).
--input-lirc, --no-input-lirc
Enable/disable LIRC support. Enabled by default.
--input-lirc-conf=<filename>
(LIRC only) Specifies a configuration file for LIRC (default: ~/.lircrc).
--input-media-keys, --no-input-media-keys
OS X only: Enabled by default. Enables/disable media keys support.
--input-right-alt-gr, --no-input-right-alt-gr
(Cocoa and Windows only) Use the right Alt key as Alt Gr to produce special characters. If disabled, count the right Alt as an Alt modifier key. Enabled by default.
--input-x11-keyboard=<yes|no>
Disable all keyboard input on the X11 VO window. Generally 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. The 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 outside of the mpv window, even though mpv has focus. Modern toolkits work around this weird X11 behavior, but naively embedding foreign windows breaks it.
The only way to handle this reasonably is using the XEmbed protocol, which was designed to solve these problems. But Qt has questionable support, and mpv doesn't implement it yet.
As a workaround, this option is disabled by default in libmpv. (Note that input-default-bindings is disabled by default in libmpv as well.)
--osc, --no-osc
Whether to load the on-screen-controller (default: yes).
--no-osd-bar, --osd-bar
Disable display of the OSD bar. This will make some things (like seeking) use OSD text messages instead of the bar.
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-duration=<time>
Set the duration of the OSD messages in ms (default: 1000).
--osd-font=<pattern>, --sub-text-font=<pattern>
Specify font to use for OSD and for subtitles that do not themselves specify a particular font. The default is sans-serif.
--osd-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'
--osd-font='Bitstream Vera Sans:style=Bold' (fontconfig pattern)
NOTE: The --sub-text-font option (and most other --sub-text- options) are ignored when ASS-subtitles are rendered, unless the --no-sub-ass option is specified.
--osd-font-size=<size>, --sub-text-font-size=<size>
Specify the OSD/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: 45.
--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 no other message covers it, and the OSD level isn't changed (see --osd-level). Expands properties; see Property Expansion.
--osd-msg2=<string>
Similar as --osd-msg1, but for OSD level 2. If this is an empty string (default), then the playback time is shown.
--osd-msg3=<string>
Similar as --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 also used for the show_progress command (by default mapped to P), or in some non-default cases when seeking.
--osd-status-msg is a legacy equivalent (but with a minor difference).
--osd-status-msg=<string>
Show a custom string during playback instead of the standard status text. This overrides the status text used for --osd-level=3, when using the show_progress command (by default mapped to P), or in some non-default cases when seeking. Expands properties. See Property Expansion.
This option has been replaced with --osd-msg3. The only difference 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 expanded 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-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 (default: 3.125).
--osd-back-color=<color>, --sub-text-back-color=<color>
See --osd-color. Color used for OSD/sub text background.
--osd-blur=<0..20.0>, --sub-text-blur=<0..20.0>
Gaussian blur factor. 0 means no blur applied (default).
--osd-border-color=<color>, --sub-text-border-color=<color>
See --osd-color. Color used for the OSD/sub font border.
NOTE: ignored when --osd-back-color/--sub-text-back-color is specified (or more exactly: when that option is not set to completely transparent).
--osd-border-size=<size>, --sub-text-border-size=<size>
Size of the OSD/sub font border in scaled pixels (see --osd-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables borders.
Default: 2.5.
--osd-color=<color>, --sub-text-color=<color>
Specify the color used for OSD/unstyled text subtitles.
The color is specified in the form r/g/b, where each color component 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 OSD to gray, and the form gray/a lets you specify alpha additionally.
--osd-color=1.0/0.0/0.0 set OSD to opaque red
--osd-color=1.0/0.0/0.0/0.75 set OSD to opaque red with 75% alpha
--osd-color=0.5/0.75 set OSD 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. This is similar to web colors.
--osd-color='#FF0000' set OSD to opaque red
--osd-color='#C0808080' set OSD to 50% gray with 75% alpha
--osd-fractions
Show OSD times with fractions of seconds.
--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 default)
--osd-margin-x=<size>, --sub-text-margin-x=<size>
Left and right screen margin for the OSD/subs in scaled pixels (see --osd-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: 25.
--osd-margin-y=<size>, --sub-text-margin-y=<size>
Top and bottom screen margin for the OSD/subs in scaled pixels (see --osd-font-size for details).
This option specifies the vertical margins of the OSD. This is also used for unstyled text subtitles. If you just want to raise the vertical subtitle position, use --sub-pos.
Default: 10.
--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.
--osd-shadow-color=<color>, --sub-text-shadow-color=<color>
See --osd-color. Color used for OSD/sub text shadow.
--osd-shadow-offset=<size>, --sub-text-shadow-offset=<size>
Displacement of the OSD/sub text shadow in scaled pixels (see --osd-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables shadows.
Default: 0.
--osd-spacing=<size>, --sub-text-spacing=<size>
Horizontal OSD/sub font spacing in scaled pixels (see --osd-font-size for details). This value is added to the normal letter spacing. Negative values are allowed.
Default: 0.
--screenshot-format=<type>
Set the image file type used for saving screenshots.
Available choices:
png
PNG
ppm
PPM
pgm
PGM
pgmyuv
PGM with YV12 pixel format
tga
TARGA
jpg
JPEG (default)
jpeg
JPEG (same as jpg, but with .jpeg file ending)
--screenshot-template=<template>
Specify the filename template used to save screenshots. The template specifies the filename without file extension, and can contain format specifiers, which will be substituted when taking a screenshot. By default the template is shot%n, which results in filenames like 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 either 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 example, 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 filesystem, 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 milliseconds. 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 timestamps. Frame numbers would be more intuitive, but are not easily implementable because container formats usually 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 slave 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, unless a fallback is specified.
%%
Replaced with the % character itself.
--screenshot-jpeg-quality=<0-100>
Set the JPEG quality level. Higher means better quality. The default is 90.
--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.
--sws-scaler=<name>
Specify the software scaler algorithm to be used with --vf=scale. This also affects video output drivers which lack hardware acceleration, 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.
--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).
Also see --really-quiet and --msg-level.
--really-quiet
Display even less output and status messages than with --quiet.
--no-terminal, --terminal
Disable any use of the terminal and stdin/stdout/stderr. This completely silences any message output.
Unlike --really-quiet, this disables input and terminal initialization as well.
--no-msg-color
Disable colorful console output on terminals.
--msg-level=<module1=level1:module2=level2:...>
Control verbosity directly for each module. The all module changes the verbosity of all the modules not explicitly specified on the command line.
Run mpv with --msg-level=all=trace to see all messages mpv outputs. You can use the module names printed in the output (prefixed to each line in [...]) to limit the output to interesting modules.
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
--term-osd, --no-term-osd, --term-osd=force
Display OSD messages on the console when no video output is available. Enabled by default.
force enables terminal OSD even if a video window is created.
--term-osd-bar, --no-term-osd-bar
Enable printing a progress bar under the status line on the terminal. (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 expanded for properties, e.g. --term-playing-msg='file: ${filename}' 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.
--msg-module
Prepend module name to each console message.
--msg-time
Prepend timing information to each console message.
--tv-...
These options tune various properties of the TV capture module. For watching TV with mpv, use tv:// or tv://<channel_number> or even tv://<channel_name> (see option tv-channels for channel_name below) as a media URL. You can also use tv:///<input_id> to start watching a video from a composite or S-Video input (see option input for details).
--tv-device=<value>
Specify TV device (default: /dev/video0).
--tv-channel=<value>
Set tuner to <value> channel.
--no-tv-audio
no sound
--tv-automute=<0-255> (v4l and v4l2 only)
If signal strength reported by device is less than this value, audio and video will be muted. In most cases automute=100 will be enough. Default is 0 (automute disabled).
--tv-driver=<value>
See --tv=driver=help for a list of compiled-in TV input drivers. available: dummy, v4l2 (default: autodetect)
--tv-input=<value>
Specify input (default: 0 (TV), see console output for available inputs).
--tv-freq=<value>
Specify the frequency to set the tuner to (e.g. 511.250). Not compatible with the channels parameter.
--tv-outfmt=<value>
Specify the output format of the tuner with a preset value supported by the V4L driver (YV12, UYVY, YUY2, I420) or an arbitrary format given as hex value.
--tv-width=<value>
output window width
--tv-height=<value>
output window height
--tv-fps=<value>
framerate at which to capture video (frames per second)
--tv-buffersize=<value>
maximum size of the capture buffer in megabytes (default: dynamical)
--tv-norm=<value>
See the console output for a list of all available norms, also see the normid option below.
--tv-normid=<value> (v4l2 only)
Sets the TV norm to the given numeric ID. The TV norm depends on the capture card. See the console output for a list of available TV norms.
--tv-chanlist=<value>
available: argentina, australia, china-bcast, europe-east, europe-west, france, ireland, italy, japan-bcast, japan-cable, newzealand, russia, southafrica, us-bcast, us-cable, us-cable-hrc
--tv-channels=<chan>-<name>[=<norm>],<chan>-<name>[=<norm>],...
Set names for channels.
NOTE: If <chan> is an integer greater than 1000, it will be treated as frequency (in kHz) rather than channel name from frequency table. Use _ for spaces in names (or play with quoting ;-) ). The channel names will then be written using OSD, and the slave commands tv_step_channel, tv_set_channel and tv_last_channel will be usable for a remote control (see LIRC). Not compatible with the frequency parameter.
NOTE: The channel number will then be the position in the 'channels' list, beginning with 1.
tv://1, tv://TV1, tv_set_channel 1, tv_set_channel TV1
--tv-[brightness|contrast|hue|saturation]=<-100-100>
Set the image equalizer on the card.
--tv-audiorate=<value>
Set input audio sample rate.
--tv-forceaudio
Capture audio even if there are no audio sources reported by v4l.
--tv-alsa
Capture from ALSA.
--tv-amode=<0-3>
Choose an audio mode:
0
mono
1
stereo
2
language 1
3
language 2
--tv-forcechan=<1-2>
By default, the count of recorded audio channels is determined automatically by querying the audio mode from the TV card. This option allows forcing stereo/mono recording regardless of the amode option and the values returned by v4l. This can be used for troubleshooting when the TV card is unable to report the current audio mode.
--tv-adevice=<value>
Set an audio device. <value> should be /dev/xxx for OSS and a hardware ID for ALSA. You must replace any ':' by a '.' in the hardware ID for ALSA.
--tv-audioid=<value>
Choose an audio output of the capture card, if it has more than one.
--tv-[volume|bass|treble|balance]=<0-100>
These options set parameters of the mixer on the video capture card. They will have no effect, if your card does not have one. For v4l2 50 maps to the default value of the control, as reported by the driver.
--tv-gain=<0-100>
Set gain control for video devices (usually webcams) to the desired value and switch off automatic control. A value of 0 enables automatic control. If this option is omitted, gain control will not be modified.
--tv-immediatemode=<bool>
A value of 0 means capture and buffer audio and video together. A value of 1 (default) means to do video capture only and let the audio go through a loopback cable from the TV card to the sound card.
--tv-mjpeg
Use hardware MJPEG compression (if the card supports it). When using this option, you do not need to specify the width and height of the output window, because mpv will determine it automatically from the decimation value (see below).
--tv-decimation=<1|2|4>
choose the size of the picture that will be compressed by hardware MJPEG compression:
1
full size
704x576 PAL
704x480 NTSC
2
medium size
352x288 PAL
352x240 NTSC
4
small size
176x144 PAL
176x120 NTSC
--tv-quality=<0-100>
Choose the quality of the JPEG compression (< 60 recommended for full size).
--tv-scan-autostart
Begin channel scanning immediately after startup (default: disabled).
--tv-scan-period=<0.1-2.0>
Specify delay in seconds before switching to next channel (default: 0.5). Lower values will cause faster scanning, but can detect inactive TV channels as active.
--tv-scan-threshold=<1-100>
Threshold value for the signal strength (in percent), as reported by the device (default: 50). A signal strength higher than this value will indicate that the currently scanning channel is active.
--cache=<kBytes|no|auto>
Set the size of the cache in kilobytes, disable it with no, or automatically enable it if needed with auto (default: auto). With auto, the cache will usually be enabled for network streams, using the size set by --cache-default.
May be useful when playing files from slow media, but can also have negative effects, especially with file formats that require a lot of seeking, such as MP4.
Note that half the cache size will be used to allow fast seeking back. This is also the reason why a full cache is usually reported as 50% full. The cache fill display does not include the part of the cache reserved for seeking back. Likewise, when starting a file the cache will be at 100%, because no space is reserved for seeking back yet.
--cache-default=<kBytes|no>
Set the size of the cache in kilobytes (default: 25000 KB). Using no will not automatically enable the cache e.g. when playing from a network stream. Note that using --cache will always override this option.
--cache-initial=<kBytes>
Playback will start when the cache has been filled up with this many kilobytes of data (default: 0).
--cache-seek-min=<kBytes>
If a seek is to be made to a position within <kBytes> of the cache size from the current position, mpv will wait for the cache to be filled to this position rather than performing a stream seek (default: 500).
This matters for small forward seeks. With slow streams (especially HTTP streams) there is a tradeoff between skipping the data between current position and seek destination, or performing an actual seek. Depending on the situation, either of these might be slower than the other method. This option allows control over this.
--cache-file=<TMP|path>
Create a cache file on the filesystem.
There are two ways of using this:
Passing a path (a filename). The file will always be overwritten. When the general cache is enabled, this file cache will be used to store whatever is read from the source stream.
This will always overwrite the cache file, and you can't use an existing cache file to resume playback of a stream. (Technically, mpv wouldn't even know which blocks in the file are valid and which not.)
The resulting file will not necessarily contain all data of the source stream. For example, if you seek, the parts that were skipped over are never read and consequently are not written to the cache. The skipped over parts are filled with zeros. This means that the cache file doesn't necessarily correspond to a full download of the source stream.
Both of these issues could be improved if there is any user interest.
WARNING: Causes random corruption when used with ordered chapters or with --audio-file.
Passing the string TMP. This will not be interpreted as filename. Instead, an invisible temporary file is created. It depends on your C library where this file is created (usually /tmp/), and whether filename is visible (the tmpfile() function is used). On some systems, automatic deletion of the cache file might not be guaranteed.
If you want to use a file cache, this mode is recommended, because it doesn't break ordered chapters or --audio-file. These modes open multiple cache streams, and using the same file for them obviously clashes.
Also see --cache-file-size.
--cache-file-size=<kBytes>
Maximum size of the file created with --cache-file. For read accesses above this size, the cache is simply not used.
Keep in mind that some use-cases, like playing ordered chapters with cache enabled, will actually create multiple cache files, each of which will use up to this much disk space.
(Default: 1048576, 1 GB.)
--no-cache
Turn off input stream caching. See --cache.
--cache-secs=<seconds>
How many seconds of audio/video to prefetch if the cache is active. This overrides the --demuxer-readahead-secs option if and only if the cache is enabled. (Default: 2.)
--cache-pause, --no-cache-pause
Whether the player should automatically pause when the cache runs low, and unpause once more data is available ("buffering").
--user-agent=<string>
Use <string> as user agent for HTTP streaming.
--cookies, --no-cookies
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.
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
--tls-ca-file=<filename>
Certificate authority database file for use with TLS. (Silently fails with older FFmpeg or Libav versions.)
--tls-verify
Verify peer certificates when using TLS (e.g. with https://...). (Silently fails with older FFmpeg or Libav versions.)
--referrer=<string>
Specify a referrer path or URL for HTTP requests.
--rtsp-transport=<lavf|udp|tcp|http>
Select RTSP transport method (default: tcp). This selects the underlying network transport when playing rtsp://... URLs. The value lavf leaves the decision to libavformat.
--hls-bitrate=<no|min|max>
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. (Default.)
min
Pick the streams with the lowest bitrate.
max
Same, but highest bitrate.
The bitrate as used is sent by the server, and there's no guarantee it's actually meaningful.
--dvbin-card=<1-4>
Specifies using card number 1-4 (default: 1).
--dvbin-file=<filename>
Instructs mpv to read the channels list from <filename>. The default is in the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv) with the filename channels.conf.{sat,ter,cbl,atsc} (based on your card type) or channels.conf as a last resort.
--dvbin-timeout=<1-30>
Maximum number of seconds to wait when trying to tune a frequency before giving up (default: 30).
--pvr-...
These options tune various encoding properties of the PVR capture module. It has to be used with any hardware MPEG encoder based card supported by the V4L2 driver. The Hauppauge WinTV PVR-150/250/350/500 and all IVTV based cards are known as PVR capture cards. Be aware that only Linux 2.6.18 kernel and above is able to handle MPEG stream through V4L2 layer. For hardware capture of an MPEG stream and watching it with mpv, use pvr:// as media URL.
--pvr-aspect=<0-3>
Specify input aspect ratio:
0
1:1
1
4:3 (default)
2
16:9
3
2.21:1
--pvr-arate=<32000-48000>
Specify encoding audio rate (default: 48000 Hz, available: 32000, 44100 and 48000 Hz).
--pvr-alayer=<1-3>
Specify MPEG audio layer encoding (default: 2).
--pvr-abitrate=<32-448>
Specify audio encoding bitrate in kbps (default: 384).
--pvr-amode=<value>
Specify audio encoding mode. Available preset values are 'stereo', 'joint_stereo', 'dual' and 'mono' (default: stereo).
--pvr-vbitrate=<value>
Specify average video bitrate encoding in Mbps (default: 6).
--pvr-vmode=<value>
Specify video encoding mode:
vbr
Variable Bit Rate (default)
cbr
Constant Bit Rate
--pvr-vpeak=<value>
Specify peak video bitrate encoding in Mbps (only useful for VBR encoding, default: 9.6).
--pvr-fmt=<value>
Choose an MPEG format for encoding:
ps
MPEG-2 Program Stream (default)
ts
MPEG-2 Transport Stream
mpeg1
MPEG-1 System Stream
vcd
Video CD compatible stream
svcd
Super Video CD compatible stream
dvd
DVD compatible stream
--mc=<seconds/frame>
Maximum A-V sync correction per frame (in seconds)
--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-capture=<filename>
Allows capturing the primary stream (not additional audio tracks or other kind of streams) into the given file. Capturing can also be started and stopped by changing the filename with the stream-capture slave property. Generally this will not produce usable results for anything else than MPEG or raw streams, unless capturing includes the file headers and is not interrupted. Note that, due to cache latencies, captured data may begin and end somewhat delayed compared to what you see displayed.
--stream-dump=<filename>
Same as --stream-capture, but do not start playback. Instead, the entire file is dumped.
--stream-lavf-o=opt1=value1,opt2=value2,...
Set AVOptions on streams opened with libavformat. Unknown or misspelled 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.)
--priority=<prio>
(Windows only.) Set process priority for mpv according to the predefined priorities available under Windows.
Possible values of <prio>: idle|belownormal|normal|abovenormal|high|realtime
WARNING: Using realtime priority can cause system lockup.
--pts-association-mode=<decode|sort|auto>
Select the method used to determine which container packet timestamp corresponds to a particular output frame from the video decoder. Normally you should not need to change this option.
decoder
Use decoder reordering functionality. Unlike in classic MPlayer and mplayer2, this includes a dTS fallback. (Default.)
sort
Maintain a buffer of unused pts values and use the lowest value for the frame.
auto
Try to pick a working mode from the ones above automatically.
You can also try to use --no-correct-pts for files with completely broken timestamps.
--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.
--slave-broken
Switches on the old slave mode. This is for testing only, and incompatible to the removed --slave switch.
ATTENTION!: Changes incompatible to slave mode applications have been made. In particular, the status line output was changed, which is used by some applications to determine the current playback position. This switch has been renamed to prevent these applications from working with this version of mpv, because it would lead to buggy and confusing behavior only. Moreover, the slave mode protocol is so horribly bad that it should not be used for new programs, nor should existing programs attempt to adapt to the changed output and use the --slave-broken switch. Instead, a new, saner protocol should be developed (and will be, if there is enough interest).
This affects most third-party GUI frontends.
Audio output drivers are interfaces to different audio output facilities. The syntax is:
--ao=<driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],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 contained in the list. Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
You can also set defaults for each driver. The defaults are applied before the normal driver parameters.
--ao-defaults=<driver1[:parameter1:parameter2:...],driver2,...>
Set defaults for each driver.
NOTE: See --ao=help for a list of compiled-in audio output drivers. The driver --ao=alsa is preferred. --ao=pulse is preferred on systems where PulseAudio is used. On Windows, --ao=wasapi is preferred, though it might cause trouble sometimes, in which case --ao=dsound should be used. On BSD systems, --ao=oss or --ao=sndio\(ga may work (the latter being experimental). On OS X systems, use --ao=coreaudio.
--ao=alsa,oss, Try the ALSA driver, then the OSS driver, then others.
--ao=alsa:no-block:device=[hw:0,3] Sets noblock-mode and the device-name as first card, fourth device.
Available audio output drivers are:
alsa (Linux only)
ALSA audio output driver
device=<device>
Sets the device name. For ac3 output via S/PDIF, use an "iec958" or "spdif" device, unless you really know how to set it correctly.
no-block
Sets noblock-mode.
resample=yes
Enable ALSA resampling plugin. (This is disabled by default, because some drivers report incorrect audio delay in some cases.)
mixer-device=<device>
Set the mixer device used with --no-softvol (default: default).
mixer-name=<name>
Set the name of the mixer element (default: Master). This is for example PCM or Master.
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.
non-interleaved
Allow output of non-interleaved formats (if the audio decoder uses this format). Currently disabled by default, because some popular ALSA plugins are utterly broken with non-interleaved formats.
NOTE: MPlayer and mplayer2 required you to replace any ',' with '.' and any ':' with '=' in the ALSA device name. mpv does not do this anymore. Instead, quote the device name: --ao=alsa:device=[plug:surround50]
Note that the [ and ] simply quote the device name. With some shells (like zsh), you have to quote the option string to prevent the shell from interpreting the brackets instead of passing them to mpv.
oss
OSS audio output driver
<dsp-device>
Sets the audio output device (default: /dev/dsp).
<mixer-device>
Sets the audio mixer device (default: /dev/mixer).
<mixer-channel>
Sets the audio mixer channel (default: pcm). Other valid values include vol, pcm, line. For a complete list of options look for SOUND_DEVICE_NAMES in /usr/include/linux/soundcard.h.
jack
JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit) audio output driver
port=<name>
Connects to the ports with the given name (default: physical ports).
name=<client>
Client name that is passed to JACK (default: mpv). Useful if you want to have certain connections established automatically.
(no-)autostart
Automatically start jackd if necessary (default: disabled). Note that this tends to be unreliable and will flood stdout with server messages.
(no-)connect
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.
std-channel-layout=alsa|waveext|any
Select the standard channel layout (default: alsa). JACK itself has no notion of channel layouts (i.e. assigning 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. alsa uses the old MPlayer layout, which is inspired by ALSA's standard layouts. In this mode, ao_jack will refuse to play 3 or 7 channels (because these do not really have a defined meaning in MPlayer). 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 probably not very useful, other than for debugging or when used with fixed setups.
coreaudio (Mac OS X only)
Native Mac OS X audio output driver using the AudioUnits and the CoreAudio sound server.
device_id=<id>
ID of output device to use (0 = default device)
help
List all available output devices with their IDs.
coreaudio_device (Mac OS X only)
Native Mac OS X audio output driver using direct device access and exclusive mode (bypasses the sound server).
Supports only compressed formats (AC3 and DTS).
device_id=<id>
ID of output device to use (0 = default device)
help
List all available output devices with their IDs.
openal
Experimental OpenAL audio output driver
NOTE: This driver is not very useful. Playing multi-channel audio with it is slow.
pulse
PulseAudio audio output driver
[<host>][:<output sink>]
Specify the host and optionally output sink to use. An empty <host> string uses a local connection, "localhost" uses network transfer (most likely not what you want).
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. Default: 250.
latency-hacks=<yes|no>
Enable hacks to workaround PulseAudio timing bugs (default: yes). If enabled, mpv will do elaborate latency calculations on its own. If disabled, it will use PulseAudio automatically updated timing information. Disabling this might help with e.g. networked audio.
portaudio
PortAudio audio output driver. This works on all platforms, and has extensive MS Windows support.
NOTE: This driver is not very useful. It was added in the hope of providing portable audio API across all platforms, but turned out semi-broken and underfeatured.
device
Specify the subdevice to use. Giving help as device name lists all devices found by PortAudio. Devices can be given as numeric values, starting from 1.
dsound (Windows only)
DirectX DirectSound audio output driver
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with old systems.
device=<devicenum>
Sets the device number to use. Playing a file with -v will show a list of available devices.
buffersize=<ms>
DirectSound buffer size in milliseconds (default: 200).
sdl
SDL 1.2+ audio output driver. Should work on any platform supported by SDL 1.2, but may require the SDL_AUDIODRIVER environment variable to be set appropriately for your system.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with extremely foreign environments, such as systems where none of the other drivers are available.
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.
bufcnt=<count>
Sets the number of extra audio buffers in mpv. Usually needs not be changed.
null
Produces no audio output but maintains video playback speed. Use --ao=null:untimed for benchmarking.
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.
buffer
Simulated buffer length in seconds.
outburst
Simulated chunk size in samples.
speed
Simulated audio playback speed as a multiplier. Usually, a real audio device will not go exactly as fast as the system clock. It will deviate just a little, and this option helps simulating this.
latency
Simulated device latency. This is additional to EOF.
broken-eof
Simulate broken audio drivers, which always add the fixed device latency to the reported audio playback position.
pcm
Raw PCM/WAVE file writer audio output
(no-)waveheader
Include or do not include the WAVE header (default: included). When not included, raw PCM will be generated.
file=<filename>
Write the sound to <filename> instead of the default audiodump.wav. If no-waveheader is specified, the default is audiodump.pcm.
rsound
Audio output to an RSound daemon
NOTE: Completely useless, unless you intend to run RSound. Not to be confused with RoarAudio, which is something completely different.
host=<name/path>
Set the address of the server (default: localhost). Can be either a network hostname for TCP connections or a Unix domain socket path starting with '/'.
port=<number>
Set the TCP port used for connecting to the server (default: 12345). Not used if connecting to a Unix domain socket.
sndio
Audio output to the OpenBSD sndio sound system
NOTE: Experimental. There are known bugs and issues.
(Note: only supports mono, stereo, 4.0, 5.1 and 7.1 channel layouts.)
device=<device>
sndio device to use (default: $AUDIODEVICE, resp. snd0).
wasapi
Audio output to the Windows Audio Session API.
device=<id>
Uses the requested endpoint instead of the system's default audio endpoint. Both the number and the ID String are valid; the ID String is guaranteed to not change unless the driver is uninstalled.
Also supports searching active devices by name. If more than one device matches the name, refuses loading it.
To get a list of the valid devices, give help as the id. The list is the same as the list suboption, but stops the player initialization.
exclusive
Requests exclusive, direct hardware access. By definition prevents sound playback of any other program until mpv exits.
list
Lists all audio endpoints (output devices) present in the system.
Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facilities. The syntax is:
--vo=<driver1[:suboption1[=value]:...],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 contained in the list. Suboptions are optional and can mostly be omitted.
You can also set defaults for each driver. The defaults are applied before the normal driver parameters.
--vo-defaults=<driver1[:parameter1:parameter2:...],driver2,...>
Set defaults for each driver.
NOTE: See --vo=help for a list of compiled-in video output drivers.
The recommended output drivers are --vo=vdpau and --vo=opengl-hq. All other drivers are just for compatibility or special purposes.
--vo=opengl,xv,
Try the opengl driver, then the xv driver, then others.
Available video output drivers are:
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.
adaptor=<number>
Select a specific XVideo adapter (check xvinfo results).
port=<number>
Select a specific XVideo port.
ck=<cur|use|set>
Select the source from which the color key is taken (default: 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.
ck-method=<man|bg|auto>
Sets the color key drawing method (default: man).
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.
colorkey=<number>
Changes the color key to an RGB value of your choice. 0x000000 is black and 0xffffff is white.
no-colorkey
Disables color-keying.
x11 (X11 only)
Shared memory video output driver without hardware acceleration that works whenever X11 is present.
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: 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.
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).
denoise=<0-1>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Apply a noise reduction algorithm to the video (default: 0; no noise reduction).
deint=<-4-4>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Select deinterlacing mode (default: 0). In older versions (as well as MPlayer/mplayer2) you could use this option to enable deinterlacing. This doesn't work anymore, and deinterlacing is enabled with either the D key (by default mapped to the command cycle deinterlace), or the --deinterlace option. Also, to select the default deint mode, you should use something like --vf-defaults=vdpaupp:deint-mode=temporal instead of this sub-option.
0
Pick the vdpaupp video filter default, which corresponds to 3.
1
Show only first field.
2
Bob deinterlacing.
3
Motion-adaptive temporal deinterlacing. May lead to A/V desync with slow video hardware and/or high resolution.
4
Motion-adaptive temporal deinterlacing with edge-guided spatial interpolation. Needs fast video hardware.
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.
pullup
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
Try to apply inverse telecine, needs motion adaptive temporal deinterlacing.
hqscaling=<0-9>
(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)
0
Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9
Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable hardware).
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 framedrop logic.
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 option enabled, the player tries to detect whether a compositing 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 input). 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 no-composite-detect to disable.
queuetime_windowed=<number> and queuetime_fs=<number>
Use VDPAU's presentation queue functionality to queue future video frame changes at most this many milliseconds in advance (default: 50). See below for additional information.
output_surfaces=<2-15>
Allocate this many output surfaces to display video frames (default: 3). See below for additional information.
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).
force-yuv
Never accept RGBA input. This means mpv will insert a filter 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 individual slow-to-decode frames. However, the NVIDIA graphics drivers 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 values 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 downsides 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 driver implementation may also have limits on the length of maximum queuing time or number of queued surfaces that work well or at all.
direct3d_shaders (Windows only)
Video output driver that uses the Direct3D interface.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with systems that don't provide proper OpenGL drivers.
prefer-stretchrect
Use IDirect3DDevice9::StretchRect over other methods if possible.
disable-stretchrect
Never render the video using IDirect3DDevice9::StretchRect.
disable-textures
Never render the video using D3D texture rendering. Rendering with textures + shader will still be allowed. Add disable-shaders to completely disable video rendering with textures.
disable-shaders
Never use shaders when rendering video.
only-8bit
Never render YUV video with more than 8 bits per component. Using this flag will force software conversion to 8-bit.
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 developers if you actually need any of these for performance or proper operation.
force-power-of-2
Always force textures to power of 2, even if the device reports non-power-of-2 texture sizes as supported.
texture-memory=N
Only affects operation with shaders/texturing enabled, and (E)OSD. Values for N:
0
default, will often use an additional shadow texture + copy
1
use D3DPOOL_MANAGED
2
use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT
3
use D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM, but without shadow texture
swap-discard
Use D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD, which might be faster. Might be slower too, as it must(?) clear every frame.
exact-backbuffer
Always resize the backbuffer to window size.
direct3d (Windows only)
Same as direct3d_shaders, but with the options disable-textures and disable-shaders forced.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with old systems.
opengl
OpenGL video output driver. It supports extended scaling methods, dithering and color management.
By default, it tries to use fast and fail-safe settings. Use the alias opengl-hq to use this driver with defaults set to high quality rendering.
Requires at least OpenGL 2.1 and the GL_ARB_texture_rg extension. For older drivers, opengl-old may work.
Some features are available with OpenGL 3 capable graphics drivers only (or if the necessary extensions are available).
Hardware decoding over OpenGL-interop is supported to some degree. Note that in this mode, some corner case might not be gracefully handled, and color space conversion and chroma upsampling is generally in the hand of the hardware decoder APIs.
lscale=<filter>
bilinear
Bilinear hardware texture filtering (fastest, mid-quality). This is the default.
lanczos2
Lanczos scaling with radius=2. Provides good quality and speed.
lanczos3
Lanczos with radius=3.
lanczos
Generic Lanczos scaling filter. Set radius with lradius.
spline36
This is the default when using opengl-hq.
bicubic_fast
Bicubic filter. Has a blurring effect on the image, even if no scaling is done.
sharpen3
Unsharp masking (sharpening) with radius=3 and a default strength of 0.5 (see lparam1).
sharpen5
Unsharp masking (sharpening) with radius=5 and a default strength of 0.5 (see lparam1).
mitchell
Mitchell-Netravali. The b and c parameters can be set with lparam1 and lparam2. Both are set to 1/3 by default.
gaussian
Gaussian filter with a parameter p for sharpness control. p can be set to float number between 1(blurry) and 100(sharp) and has a default value of about 28.8 (see lparam1).
Note that for extremely small value of p, a large filter radius might be required to avoid unintended artifacts (see lradius).
There are some more filters. For a complete list, pass help as value, e.g.:
mpv --vo=opengl:lscale=help
lparam1=<value>
Set filter parameters. Ignored if the filter is not tunable. These are unset by default, and use the filter specific default if applicable.
lparam2=<value>
See lparam1.
lradius=<r>
Set radius for filters listed below, must be a float number between 1.0 and 8.0. Defaults to be 2.0 if not specified. sinc, lanczos, blackman, gaussian
Note that depending on filter implementation details and video scaling ratio, the radius that actually being used might be different (most likely being increased a bit).
scaler-resizes-only
Disable the scaler if the video image is not resized. In that case, bilinear is used instead whatever is set with lscale. Bilinear will reproduce the source image perfectly if no scaling is performed. Note that this option never affects cscale, although the different processing chain might do chroma scaling differently if lscale is disabled.
stereo=<value>
Select a method for stereo display. You may have to use --video-aspect to fix the aspect value. Experimental, do not expect too much from it.
no
Normal 2D display
red-cyan
Convert side by side input to full-color red-cyan stereo.
green-magenta
Convert side by side input to full-color green-magenta stereo.
quadbuffer
Convert side by side input to quad buffered stereo. Only supported by very few OpenGL cards.
srgb
Convert and color correct the output to sRGB before displaying it on the screen. This option enables linear light scaling. It also forces the options indirect and gamma.
This option is equivalent to using icc-profile with an sRGB ICC profile, but it is implemented without a 3DLUT and does not require LittleCMS 2. If both srgb and icc-profile are present, the latter takes precedence, as they are somewhat redundant.
Note: When playing back BT.2020 content with this option enabled, out of gamut colors will be numerically clipped, which can potentially change the hue and/or luminance. If this is not desired, it is recommended to use icc-profile with an sRGB ICC profile instead, when playing back wide-gamut BT.2020 content.
pbo
Enable use of PBOs. This is slightly faster, but can sometimes lead to sporadic and temporary image corruption (in theory, because reupload is not retried when it fails), and perhaps actually triggers slower paths with drivers that don't support PBOs properly.
dither-depth=<N|no|auto>
Set dither target depth to N. Default: no.
no
Disable any dithering done by mpv.
auto
Automatic selection. If output bit depth cannot be detected, 8 bits per component are assumed.
8
Dither to 8 bit output.
Note that the depth of the connected video display device can not be detected. Often, LCD panels will do dithering on their own, which conflicts with opengl's dithering and leads to ugly output.
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|no>
Select dithering algorithm (default: fruit).
temporal-dither
Enable temporal dithering. (Only active if dithering is enabled in general.) This changes between 8 different dithering pattern 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.
debug
Check for OpenGL errors, i.e. call glGetError(). Also request a debug OpenGL context (which does nothing with current graphics drivers as of this writing).
swapinterval=<n>
Interval in displayed frames between two buffer swaps. 1 is equivalent to enable VSYNC, 0 to disable VSYNC.
no-scale-sep
When using a separable scale filter for luma, usually two filter passes are done. This is often faster. However, it forces conversion to RGB in an extra pass, so it can actually be slower if used with fast filters on small screen resolutions. Using this options will make rendering a single operation. Note that chroma scalers are always done as 1-pass filters.
cscale=<n>
As lscale, but for chroma (2x slower with little visible effect). Note that with some scaling filters, upscaling is always done in RGB. If chroma is not subsampled, this option is ignored, and the luma scaler is used instead. Setting this option is often useless.
cparam1, cparam2, cradius
Set filter parameters and radius for cscale.
See lparam1, lparam2 and lradius.
fancy-downscaling
When using convolution based filters, extend the filter size when downscaling. Trades quality for reduced downscaling performance.
no-npot
Force use of power-of-2 texture sizes. For debugging only. Borders will be distorted due to filtering.
glfinish
Call glFinish() before and after swapping buffers (default: disabled). Slower, but might help getting better results when doing framedropping. The details depend entirely on the OpenGL driver.
waitvsync
Call glXWaitVideoSyncSGI after each buffer swap (default: disabled). 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 only.
sw
Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
backend=<sys>
The value auto (the default) selects the windowing backend. You can also pass help to get a complete list of compiled in backends (sorted by autoprobe order).
auto
auto-select (default)
cocoa
Cocoa/OS X
win
Win32/WGL
x11
X11/GLX
wayland
Wayland/EGL
indirect
Do YUV conversion and scaling as separate passes. This will first render the video into a video-sized RGB texture, and draw the result on screen. The luma scaler is used to scale the RGB image when rendering to screen. The chroma scaler is used only on YUV conversion, and only if the video is chroma-subsampled (usually the case). This mechanism is disabled on RGB input. Specifying this option directly is generally useful for debugging only.
fbo-format=<fmt>
Selects the internal format of textures used for FBOs. The format can influence performance and quality of the video output. (FBOs are not always used, and typically only when using extended scalers.) fmt can be one of: rgb, rgba, rgb8, rgb10, rgb10_a2, rgb16, rgb16f, rgb32f, rgba12, rgba16, rgba16f, rgba32f. Default: rgb.
gamma=<0.0..10.0>
Set a gamma value. If gamma is adjusted in other ways (like with the --gamma option or key bindings and the gamma property), the value is multiplied with the other gamma value.
Setting this value to 1.0 can be used to always enable gamma control. (Disables delayed enabling.)
icc-profile=<file>
Load an ICC profile and use it to transform linear RGB to screen output. Needs LittleCMS 2 support compiled in. This option overrides the srgb property, as using both is somewhat redundant. It also enables linear light scaling.
icc-profile-auto
Automatically select the ICC display profile currently specified by the display settings of the operating system.
NOTE: Only implemented on OS X with Cocoa.
icc-cache=<file>
Store and load the 3D LUT created from the ICC profile in this file. This can be used to speed up loading, since LittleCMS 2 can take a while to create the 3D LUT. Note that this file contains an uncompressed LUT. Its size depends on the 3dlut-size, and can be very big.
icc-intent=<value>
Specifies the ICC Intent used for transformations between color spaces. This affects the rendering when using icc-profile or srgb and also affects the way DCP XYZ content gets converted to RGB.
0
perceptual
1
relative colorimetric (default)
2
saturation
3
absolute colorimetric
approx-gamma
Approximate the actual gamma function as a pure power curve of 1.95. A number of video editing programs and studios apparently use this for mastering instead of the true curve. Most notably, anything in the Apple ecosystem uses this approximation - including all programs compatible with it. It's a sound idea to try enabling this flag first when watching videos and shows to see if things look better that way.
This only affects the output when using either icc-profile or srgb.
3dlut-size=<r>x<g>x<b>
Size of the 3D LUT generated from the ICC profile in each dimension. Default is 128x256x64. Sizes must be a power of two, and 512 at most.
alpha=<blend|yes|no>
Decides what to do if the input has an alpha component (default: blend).
blend
Blend the frame against a black background.
yes
Try to create a framebuffer with alpha component. This only makes sense if the video contains alpha information (which is extremely rare). May not be supported on all platforms. If alpha framebuffers are unavailable, it silently falls back on a normal framebuffer. Note that when using FBO indirections (such as with opengl-hq), an FBO format with alpha must be specified with the fbo-format option.
no
Ignore alpha component.
chroma-location=<auto|center|left>
Set the YUV chroma sample location. auto means use the bitstream flags (default: auto).
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.
opengl-hq
Same as opengl, but with default settings for high quality rendering.
This is equivalent to:
--vo=opengl:lscale=spline36:dither-depth=auto:fbo-format=rgba16
Note that some cheaper LCDs do dithering that gravely interferes with opengl's dithering. Disabling dithering with dither-depth=no helps.
Unlike opengl, opengl-hq makes use of FBOs by default. Sometimes you can achieve better quality or performance by changing the fbo-format suboption to rgb16f, rgb32f or rgb. Known problems include Mesa/Intel not accepting rgb16, Mesa sometimes not being compiled with float texture support, and some OS X setups being very slow with rgb16 but fast with rgb32f.
opengl-old
OpenGL video output driver, old version. Video size must be smaller than the maximum texture size of your OpenGL implementation. Intended to work even with the most basic OpenGL implementations, but also makes use of newer extensions which allow support for more color spaces.
The code performs very few checks, so if a feature does not work, this might be because it is not supported by your card and/or OpenGL implementation, even if you do not get any error message. Use glxinfo or a similar tool to display the supported OpenGL extensions.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with old systems.
(no-)ati-hack
ATI drivers may give a corrupted image when PBOs are used (when using force-pbo). This option fixes this, at the expense of using a bit more memory.
(no-)force-pbo
Always uses PBOs to transfer textures even if this involves an extra copy. Currently this gives a little extra speed with NVIDIA drivers and a lot more speed with ATI drivers. May need the ati-hack suboption to work correctly.
(no-)scaled-osd
Scales the OSD and subtitles instead of rendering them at display size (default: disabled).
rectangle=<0,1,2>
Select usage of rectangular textures, which saves video RAM, but often is slower (default: 0).
0
Use power-of-two textures (default).
1
Use the GL_ARB_texture_rectangle extension.
2
Use the GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two extension. In some cases only supported in software and thus very slow.
swapinterval=<n>
Minimum interval between two buffer swaps, counted in displayed frames (default: 1). 1 is equivalent to enabling VSYNC, 0 to disabling VSYNC. Values below 0 will leave it at the system default. This limits the framerate to (horizontal refresh rate / n). Requires GLX_SGI_swap_control support to work. With some (most/all?) implementations this only works in fullscreen mode.
ycbcr
Use the GL_MESA_ycbcr_texture extension to convert YUV to RGB. In most cases this is probably slower than doing software conversion to RGB.
yuv=<n>
Select the type of YUV to RGB conversion. The default is auto-detection deciding between values 0 and 2.
0
Use software conversion. Compatible with all OpenGL versions. Provides brightness, contrast and saturation control.
1
Same as 2. This used to use NVIDIA-specific extensions, which did not provide any advantages over using fragment programs, except possibly on very ancient graphics cards. It produced a gray-ish output, which is why it has been removed.
2
Use a fragment program. Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at least three texture units. Provides brightness, contrast, saturation and hue control.
3
Use a fragment program using the POW instruction. Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at least three texture units. Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control. Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue. Method 4 is usually faster.
4
Use a fragment program with additional lookup. Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at least four texture units. Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control. Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue.
5
Use ATI-specific method (for older cards). This uses an ATI-specific extension (GL_ATI_fragment_shader - not GL_ARB_fragment_shader!). At least three texture units are needed. Provides saturation and hue control. This method is fast but inexact.
6
Use a 3D texture to do conversion via lookup. Needs the GL_ARB_fragment_program extension and at least four texture units. Extremely slow (software emulation) on some (all?) ATI cards since it uses a texture with border pixels. Provides brightness, contrast, saturation, hue and gamma control. Gamma can also be set independently for red, green and blue. Speed depends more on GPU memory bandwidth than other methods.
lscale=<n>
Select the scaling function to use for luminance scaling. Only valid for yuv modes 2, 3, 4 and 6.
0
Use simple linear filtering (default).
1
Use bicubic B-spline filtering (better quality). Needs one additional texture unit. Older cards will not be able to handle this for chroma at least in fullscreen mode.
2
Use cubic filtering in horizontal, linear filtering in vertical direction. Works on a few more cards than method 1.
3
Same as 1 but does not use a lookup texture. Might be faster on some cards.
4
Use experimental unsharp masking with 3x3 support and a default strength of 0.5 (see filter-strength).
5
Use experimental unsharp masking with 5x5 support and a default strength of 0.5 (see filter-strength).
cscale=<n>
Select the scaling function to use for chrominance scaling. For details see lscale.
filter-strength=<value>
Set the effect strength for the lscale/cscale filters that support it.
stereo=<value>
Select a method for stereo display. You may have to use --video-aspect to fix the aspect value. Experimental, do not expect too much from it.
0
Normal 2D display
1
Convert side by side input to full-color red-cyan stereo.
2
Convert side by side input to full-color green-magenta stereo.
3
Convert side by side input to quad buffered stereo. Only supported by very few OpenGL cards.
The following options are only useful if writing your own fragment programs.
customprog=<filename>
Load a custom fragment program from <filename>.
customtex=<filename>
Load a custom "gamma ramp" texture from <filename>. This can be used in combination with yuv=4 or with the customprog option.
(no-)customtlin
If enabled (default) use GL_LINEAR interpolation, otherwise use GL_NEAREST for customtex texture.
(no-)customtrect
If enabled, use texture_rectangle for the customtex texture. Default is disabled.
(no-)mipmapgen
If enabled, mipmaps for the video are automatically generated. This should be useful together with the customprog and the TXB instruction to implement blur filters with a large radius. For most OpenGL implementations, this is very slow for any non-RGB formats. Default is disabled.
Normally there is no reason to use the following options; they mostly exist for testing purposes.
(no-)glfinish
Call glFinish() before swapping buffers. Slower but in some cases more correct output (default: disabled).
(no-)manyfmts
Enables support for more (RGB and BGR) color formats (default: enabled). Needs OpenGL version >= 1.2.
slice-height=<0-...>
Number of lines copied to texture in one piece (default: 0). 0 for whole image.
sw
Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
backend=<sys>
auto
auto-select (default)
cocoa
Cocoa/OS X
win
Win32/WGL
x11
X11/GLX
wayland
Wayland/EGL
sdl
SDL 2.0+ Render video output driver, depending on system with or without hardware acceleration. Should work on all platforms supported 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 provide proper graphics drivers, or which support GLES only.
sw
Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
switch-mode
Instruct SDL to switch the monitor video mode when going fullscreen.
vaapi
Intel VA API video output driver with support for hardware decoding. Note that there is absolutely no reason to use this, other than wanting to use hardware decoding to save power on laptops, or possibly preventing video tearing with some setups.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with crappy systems. You can use vaapi hardware decoding with --vo=opengl too.
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
deint-mode=<mode>
Select deinterlacing algorithm. Note that by default deinterlacing is initially always off, and needs to be enabled with the D key (default key binding for cycle deinterlace).
This option doesn't apply if libva supports video post processing (vpp). In this case, the default for deint-mode is no, and enabling deinterlacing via user interaction using the methods mentioned above actually inserts the vavpp video filter. If vpp is not actually supported with the libva backend in use, you can use this option to forcibly enable VO based deinterlacing.
no
Don't allow deinterlacing (default for newer libva).
first-field
Show only first field (going by --field-dominance).
bob
bob deinterlacing (default for older libva).
scaled-osd=<yes|no>
If enabled, then the OSD is rendered at video resolution and scaled to display resolution. By default, this is disabled, and the OSD is rendered at display resolution if the driver supports it.
null
Produces no video output. Useful for benchmarking.
caca
Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.
NOTE: This driver is a joke.
image
Output each frame into an image file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.
format=<format>
Select the image file format.
jpg
JPEG files, extension .jpg. (Default.)
jpeg
JPEG files, extension .jpeg.
png
PNG files.
ppm
Portable bitmap format.
pgm
Portable graymap format.
pgmyuv
Portable graymap format, using the YV12 pixel format.
tga
Truevision TGA.
png-compression=<0-9>
PNG compression factor (speed vs. file size tradeoff) (default: 7)
png-filter=<0-5>
Filter applied prior to PNG compression (0 = none; 1 = sub; 2 = up; 3 = average; 4 = Paeth; 5 = mixed) (default: 5)
jpeg-quality=<0-100>
JPEG quality factor (default: 90)
(no-)jpeg-progressive
Specify standard or progressive JPEG (default: no).
(no-)jpeg-baseline
Specify use of JPEG baseline or not (default: yes).
jpeg-optimize=<0-100>
JPEG optimization factor (default: 100)
jpeg-smooth=<0-100>
smooth factor (default: 0)
jpeg-dpi=<1->
JPEG DPI (default: 72)
outdir=<dirname>
Specify the directory to save the image files to (default: ./).
wayland (Wayland only)
Wayland shared memory video output as fallback for opengl.
NOTE: This driver is for compatibility with systems that don't provide working OpenGL drivers.
alpha
Use a buffer format that supports videos and images with alpha information
rgb565
Use RGB565 as buffer format. This format is implemented on most platforms, especially on embedded where it is far more efficient then RGB8888.
triple-buffering
Use 3 buffers instead of 2. This can lead to more fluid playback, but uses more memory.
Audio filters allow you to modify the audio stream and its properties. The syntax is:
--af=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Setup a chain of audio filters.
NOTE: To get a full list of available audio filters, see --af=help.
You can also set defaults for each filter. The defaults are applied before the normal filter parameters.
--af-defaults=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Set defaults for each filter.
Audio filters are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the filter list:
--af-add=<filter1[,filter2,...]>
Appends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
--af-pre=<filter1[,filter2,...]>
Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
--af-del=<index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the filters at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).
--af-clr
Completely empties the filter list.
Available filters are:
lavrresample[=option1:option2:...]
This filter uses libavresample (or libswresample, depending on the build) to change sample rate, sample format, or channel layout of the audio stream. This filter is automatically enabled if the audio output does not support the audio configuration of the file being played.
It supports only the following sample formats: u8, s16, s32, float.
filter-size=<length>
Length of the filter with respect to the lower sampling rate. (default: 16)
phase-shift=<count>
Log2 of the number of polyphase entries. (..., 10->1024, 11->2048, 12->4096, ...) (default: 10->1024)
cutoff=<cutoff>
Cutoff frequency (0.0-1.0), default set depending upon filter length.
linear
If set then filters will be linearly interpolated between polyphase entries. (default: no)
no-detach
Do not detach if input and output audio format/rate/channels match. (If you just want to set defaults for this filter that will be used even by automatically inserted lavrresample instances, you should prefer setting them with --af-defaults=lavrresample:....)
o=<string>
Set AVOptions on the SwrContext or AVAudioResampleContext. These should be documented by FFmpeg or Libav.
lavcac3enc[=tospdif[:bitrate[:minchn]]]
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, native-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
minchn=<n>
If the input channel number is less than <minchn>, the filter will detach itself (default: 3).
sweep[=speed]
Produces a sine sweep.
<0.0-1.0>
Sine function delta, use very low values to hear the sweep.
sinesuppress[=freq:decay]
Remove a sine at the specified frequency. Useful to get rid of the 50/60 Hz noise on low quality audio equipment. It only works on mono input.
<freq>
The frequency of the sine which should be removed (in Hz) (default: 50)
<decay>
Controls the adaptivity (a larger value will make the filter adapt to amplitude and phase changes quicker, a smaller value will make the adaptation slower) (default: 0.0001). Reasonable values are around 0.001.
bs2b[=option1:option2:...]
Bauer stereophonic to binaural transformation using libbs2b. Improves the headphone listening experience by making the sound similar to that from loudspeakers, allowing each ear to hear both channels and taking into account the distance difference and the head shadowing effect. It is applicable only to 2-channel audio.
fcut=<300-1000>
Set cut frequency in Hz.
feed=<10-150>
Set feed level for low frequencies in 0.1*dB.
profile=<value>
Several profiles are available for convenience:
default
will be used if nothing else was specified (fcut=700, feed=45)
cmoy
Chu Moy circuit implementation (fcut=700, feed=60)
jmeier
Jan Meier circuit implementation (fcut=650, feed=95)
If fcut or feed options are specified together with a profile, they will be applied on top of the selected profile.
hrtf[=flag]
Head-related transfer function: Converts multichannel audio to 2-channel output for headphones, preserving the spatiality of the sound.
| Flag |
|---|
| Meaning |
| m |
| matrix decoding of the rear channel |
| s |
| 2-channel matrix decoding |
| 0 |
| no matrix decoding (default) |
equalizer=g1:g2:g3:...:g10
10 octave band graphic equalizer, implemented using 10 IIR band-pass filters. This means that it works regardless of what type of audio is being played back. The center frequencies for the 10 bands are:
| No. |
|---|
| frequency |
| 0 |
| 31.25 Hz |
| 1 |
| 62.50 Hz |
| 2 |
| 125.00 Hz |
| 3 |
| 250.00 Hz |
| 4 |
| 500.00 Hz |
| 5 |
| 1.00 kHz |
| 6 |
| 2.00 kHz |
| 7 |
| 4.00 kHz |
| 8 |
| 8.00 kHz |
| 9 |
| 16.00 kHz |
If the sample rate of the sound being played is lower than the center frequency for a frequency band, then that band will be disabled. A known bug with this filter is that the characteristics for the uppermost band are not completely symmetric if the sample rate is close to the center frequency of that band. This problem can be worked around by upsampling the sound using a resampling filter before it reaches this filter.
<g1>:<g2>:<g3>:...:<g10>
floating point numbers representing the gain in dB for each frequency band (-12-12)
mpv --af=equalizer=11:11:10:5:0:-12:0:5:12:12 media.avi
Would amplify the sound in the upper and lower frequency region while canceling it almost completely around 1 kHz.
channels=nch[:routes]
Can be used for adding, removing, routing and copying audio channels. If only <nch> is given, the default routing is used. It works as follows: If the number of output channels is greater than the number of input channels, empty channels are inserted (except when mixing from mono to stereo; then the mono channel is duplicated). If the number of output channels is less than the number of input channels, the exceeding channels are truncated.
<nch>
number of output channels (1-8)
<routes>
List of , separated routes, in the form from1-to1,from2-to2,.... Each pair defines where to route each channel. There can be at most 8 routes. Without this argument, the default routing is used. Since , is also used to separate filters, you must quote this argument with [...] or similar.
mpv --af=channels=4:[0-1,1-0,0-2,1-3] media.avi
Would change the number of channels to 4 and set up 4 routes that swap channel 0 and channel 1 and leave channel 2 and 3 intact. Observe that if media containing two channels were played back, channels 2 and 3 would contain silence but 0 and 1 would still be swapped.
mpv --af=channels=6:[0-0,0-1,0-2,0-3] media.avi
Would change the number of channels to 6 and set up 4 routes that copy channel 0 to channels 0 to 3. Channel 4 and 5 will contain silence.
NOTE: You should probably not use this filter. If you want to change the output channel layout, try the format filter, which can make mpv automatically up- and downmix standard channel layouts.
format=format:srate:channels:out-format:out-srate:out-channels
Force a specific audio format/configuration without actually changing the audio data. Keep in mind that the filter system might auto-insert actual conversion filters before or after this filter if needed.
All parameters are optional. The first 3 parameters restrict what the filter accepts as input. The out- parameters change the audio format, without actually doing a conversion. The data will be 'reinterpreted' by the filters or audio outputs following this filter.
<format>
Force conversion to this format. Use --af=format=format=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 --audio-channels option for possible values.
<out-format>
<out-srate>
<out-channels>
See also --audio-format, --audio-samplerate, and --audio-channels for related options. Keep in mind that --audio-channels does not actually force the number of channels in most cases, while this filter can do this.
NOTE: this filter used to be named force. Also, unlike the old format filter, this does not do any actual conversion anymore. Conversion is done by other, automatically inserted filters.
convert24
Filter for internal use only. Converts between 24-bit and 32-bit sample formats.
convertsign
Filter for internal use only. Converts between signed/unsigned formats.
volume[=<volumedb>[:...]]
Implements software volume control. Use this filter with caution since it can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the sound. In most cases it is best to use the Master volume control of your sound card or the volume knob on your amplifier.
NOTE: This filter is not reentrant and can therefore only be enabled once for every audio stream.
<volumedb>
Sets the desired gain in dB for all channels in the stream from -200 dB to +60 dB, where -200 dB mutes the sound completely and +60 dB equals a gain of 1000 (default: 0).
replaygain-track
Adjust volume gain according to the track-gain replaygain value stored in the file metadata.
replaygain-album
Like replaygain-track, but using the album-gain value instead.
replaygain-preamp
Pre-amplification gain in dB to apply to the selected replaygain gain (default: 0).
replaygain-clip=yes|no
Prevent clipping caused by replaygain by automatically lowering the gain (default). Use replaygain-clip=no to disable this.
softclip
Turns soft clipping on. Soft-clipping can make the sound more smooth if very high volume levels are used. Enable this option if the dynamic range of the loudspeakers is very low.
WARNING: This feature creates distortion and should be considered a last resort.
s16
Force S16 sample format if set. Lower quality, but might be faster in some situations.
detach
Remove the filter if the volume is not changed at audio filter config time. Useful with replaygain: if the current file has no replaygain tags, then the filter will be removed if this option is enabled. (If --softvol=yes is used and the player volume controls are used during playback, a different volume filter will be inserted.)
mpv --af=volume=10.1 media.avi
Would amplify the sound by 10.1 dB and hard-clip if the sound level is too high.
pan=n:[<matrix>]
Mixes channels arbitrarily. Basically a combination of the volume and the channels filter that can be used to down-mix many channels to only a few, e.g. stereo to mono, or vary the "width" of the center speaker in a surround sound system. This filter is hard to use, and will require some tinkering before the desired result is obtained. The number of options for this filter depends on the number of output channels. An example how to downmix a six-channel file to two channels with this filter can be found in the examples section near the end.
<n>
Number of output channels (1-8).
<matrix>
A list of values [L00,L01,L02,...,L10,L11,L12,...,Ln0,Ln1,Ln2,...], where each element Lij means how much of input channel i is mixed into output channel j (range 0-1). So in principle you first have n numbers saying what to do with the first input channel, then n numbers that act on the second input channel etc. If you do not specify any numbers for some input channels, 0 is assumed. Note that the values are separated by ,, which is already used by the option parser to separate filters. This is why you must quote the value list with [...] or similar.
mpv --af=pan=1:[0.5,0.5] media.avi
Would downmix from stereo to mono.
mpv --af=pan=3:[1,0,0.5,0,1,0.5] media.avi
Would give 3 channel output leaving channels 0 and 1 intact, and mix channels 0 and 1 into output channel 2 (which could be sent to a subwoofer for example).
NOTE: If you just want to force remixing to a certain output channel layout, it is easier to use the format filter. For example, mpv '--af=format=channels=5.1' '--audio-channels=5.1' would always force remixing audio to 5.1 and output it like this.
sub[=fc:ch]
Adds a subwoofer channel to the audio stream. The audio data used for creating the subwoofer channel is an average of the sound in channel 0 and channel 1. The resulting sound is then low-pass filtered by a 4th order Butterworth filter with a default cutoff frequency of 60Hz and added to a separate channel in the audio stream.
WARNING: Disable this filter when you are playing media with an LFE channel (e.g. 5.1 surround sound), otherwise this filter will disrupt the sound to the subwoofer.
<fc>
cutoff frequency in Hz for the low-pass filter (20 Hz to 300 Hz) (default: 60 Hz) For the best result try setting the cutoff frequency as low as possible. This will improve the stereo or surround sound experience.
<ch>
Determines the channel number in which to insert the sub-channel audio. Channel number can be between 0 and 7 (default: 5). Observe that the number of channels will automatically be increased to <ch> if necessary.
mpv --af=sub=100:4 --audio-channels=5 media.avi
Would add a subwoofer channel with a cutoff frequency of 100 Hz to output channel 4.
center
Creates a center channel from the front channels. May currently be low quality as it does not implement a high-pass filter for proper extraction yet, but averages and halves the channels instead.
<ch>
Determines the channel number in which to insert the center channel. Channel number can be between 0 and 7 (default: 5). Observe that the number of channels will automatically be increased to <ch> if necessary.
surround[=delay]
Decoder for matrix encoded surround sound like Dolby Surround. Some files with 2-channel audio actually contain matrix encoded surround sound.
<delay>
delay time in ms for the rear speakers (0 to 1000) (default: 20) This delay should be set as follows: If d1 is the distance from the listening position to the front speakers and d2 is the distance from the listening position to the rear speakers, then the delay should be set to 15ms if d1 <= d2 and to 15 + 5*(d1-d2) if d1 > d2.
mpv --af=surround=15 --audio-channels=4 media.avi
Would add surround sound decoding with 15 ms delay for the sound to the rear speakers.
delay[=[ch1,ch2,...]]
Delays the sound to the loudspeakers such that the sound from the different channels arrives at the listening position simultaneously. It is only useful if you have more than 2 loudspeakers.
[ch1,ch2,...]
The delay in ms that should be imposed on each channel (floating point number between 0 and 1000).
To calculate the required delay for the different channels, do as follows:
Measure the distance to the loudspeakers in meters in relation to your listening position, giving you the distances s1 to s5 (for a 5.1 system). There is no point in compensating for the subwoofer (you will not hear the difference anyway).
Subtract the distances s1 to s5 from the maximum distance, i.e. s[i] = max(s) - s[i]; i = 1...5.
Calculate the required delays in ms as d[i] = 1000*s[i]/342; i = 1...5.
mpv --af=delay=[10.5,10.5,0,0,7,0] media.avi
Would delay front left and right by 10.5 ms, the two rear channels and the subwoofer by 0 ms and the center channel by 7 ms.
export=mmapped_file:nsamples]
Exports the incoming signal to other processes using memory mapping (mmap()). Memory mapped areas contain a header:
int nch /* number of channels */
int size /* buffer size */
unsigned long long counter /* Used to keep sync, updated every time
new data is exported. */
The rest is payload (non-interleaved) 16-bit data.
<mmapped_file>
File to map data to (required)
<nsamples>
number of samples per channel (default: 512).
mpv --af=export=/tmp/mpv-af_export:1024 media.avi
Would export 1024 samples per channel to /tmp/mpv-af_export.
extrastereo[=mul]
(Linearly) increases the difference between left and right channels which adds some sort of "live" effect to playback.
<mul>
Sets the difference coefficient (default: 2.5). 0.0 means mono sound (average of both channels), with 1.0 sound will be unchanged, with -1.0 left and right channels will be swapped.
drc[=method:target]
Applies dynamic range compression. This maximizes the volume by compressing the audio signal's dynamic range. (Formerly called volnorm.)
<method>
Sets the used method.
1
Use a single sample to smooth the variations via the standard weighted mean over past samples (default).
2
Use several samples to smooth the variations via the standard weighted mean over past samples.
<target>
Sets the target amplitude as a fraction of the maximum for the sample type (default: 0.25).
NOTE: This filter can cause distortion with audio signals that have a very large dynamic range.
ladspa=file:label:[<control0>,<control1>,...]
Load a LADSPA (Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API) plugin. This filter is reentrant, so multiple LADSPA plugins can be used at once.
<file>
Specifies the LADSPA plugin library file.
NOTE: See also the note about the LADSPA_PATH variable in the ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES section.
<label>
Specifies the filter within the library. Some libraries contain only one filter, but others contain many of them. Entering 'help' here will list all available filters within the specified library, which eliminates the use of 'listplugins' from the LADSPA SDK.
[<control0>,<control1>,...]
Controls are zero or more , separated floating point values that determine the behavior of the loaded plugin (for example delay, threshold or gain). In verbose mode (add -v to the mpv command line), all available controls and their valid ranges are printed. This eliminates the use of 'analyseplugin' from the LADSPA SDK. Note that , is already used by the option parser to separate filters, so you must quote the list of values with [...] or similar.
mpv --af=ladspa='/usr/lib/ladspa/delay.so':delay_5s:[0.5,0.2] media.avi
Does something.
karaoke
Simple voice removal filter exploiting the fact that voice is usually recorded with mono gear and later 'center' mixed onto the final audio stream. Beware that this filter will turn your signal into mono. Works well for 2 channel tracks; do not bother trying it on anything but 2 channel stereo.
scaletempo[=option1:option2:...]
Scales audio tempo without altering pitch, optionally synced to playback speed (default).
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 addition 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 alter pitch. Increasing improves performance. (default: 60)
overlap=<percent>
Percentage of stride to overlap. Decreasing improves performance. (default: .20)
search=<amount>
Length in milliseconds to search for best overlap position. Decreasing improves performance greatly. On slow systems, you will probably want to set this very low. (default: 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 altering tempo. Add [ speed_mult 0.9438743126816935 and ] speed_mult 1.059463094352953 to your input.conf to step by musical semi-tones.
WARNING: Loses sync with video.
both
Scale both tempo and pitch.
none
Ignore speed changes.
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 audio 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=format=float,scaletempo media.ogg
Would make scaletempo use float code. Maybe faster on some platforms.
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.
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.
Video filters allow you to modify the video stream and its properties. The syntax is:
--vf=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Setup a chain of video filters.
You can also set defaults for each filter. The defaults are applied before the normal filter parameters.
--vf-defaults=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>
Set defaults for each filter.
NOTE: To get a full list of available video filters, see --vf=help.
Video filters are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the filter list.
--vf-add=<filter1[,filter2,...]>
Appends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
--vf-pre=<filter1[,filter2,...]>
Prepends the filters given as arguments to the filter list.
--vf-del=<index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the filters at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).
--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 particular filter.
--vf=<filter=named_parameter1=value1[:named_parameter2=value2:...]>
Sets a named parameter to the given value. Use on and off or yes and no to set flag parameters.
Available filters are:
crop[=w:h:x:y]
Crops the given part of the image and discards the rest. Useful to remove black bands from widescreen videos.
<w>,<h>
Cropped width and height, defaults to original width and height.
<x>,<y>
Position of the cropped picture, defaults to center.
expand[=w:h:x:y:aspect:round]
Expands (not scales) video resolution to the given value and places the unscaled original at coordinates x, y.
<w>,<h>
Expanded width,height (default: original width,height). Negative values for w and h are treated as offsets to the original size.
expand=0:-50:0:0
Adds a 50 pixel border to the bottom of the picture.
<x>,<y>
position of original image on the expanded image (default: center)
<aspect>
Expands to fit an aspect instead of a resolution (default: 0).
expand=800::::4/3
Expands to 800x600, unless the source is higher resolution, in which case it expands to fill a 4/3 aspect.
<round>
Rounds up to make both width and height divisible by <r> (default: 1).
flip
Flips the image upside down.
mirror
Mirrors the image on the Y axis.
rotate[=0|90|180|270]
Rotates the image by a multiple of 90 degrees clock-wise.
scale[=w:h:param:param2:chr-drop:noup:arnd
Scales the image with the software scaler (slow) and performs a YUV<->RGB color space conversion (see also --sws).
All parameters are optional.
<w>,<h>
scaled width/height (default: original width/height)
0
scaled d_width/d_height
-1
original width/height
-2
Calculate w/h using the other dimension and the prescaled aspect ratio.
-3
Calculate w/h using the other dimension and the original aspect ratio.
-(n+8)
Like -n above, but rounding the dimension to the closest multiple of 16.
<param>[:<param2>] (see also --sws)
Set some scaling parameters depending on the type of scaler selected with --sws:
--sws=2 (bicubic): B (blurring) and C (ringing)
0.00:0.60 default
0.00:0.75 VirtualDub's "precise bicubic"
0.00:0.50 Catmull-Rom spline
0.33:0.33 Mitchell-Netravali spline
1.00:0.00 cubic B-spline
--sws=7 (Gaussian): sharpness (0 (soft) - 100 (sharp))
--sws=9 (Lanczos): filter length (1-10)
<chr-drop>
chroma skipping
0
Use all available input lines for chroma (default).
1
Use only every 2. input line for chroma.
2
Use only every 4. input line for chroma.
3
Use only every 8. input line for chroma.
<noup>
Disallow upscaling past the original dimensions.
0
Allow upscaling (default).
1
Disallow upscaling if one dimension exceeds its original value.
2
Disallow upscaling if both dimensions exceed their original values.
<arnd>
Accurate rounding for the vertical scaler, which may be faster or slower than the default rounding.
0
Disable accurate rounding (default).
1
Enable accurate rounding.
dsize[=w:h:aspect-method:r:aspect]
Changes the intended display size/aspect at an arbitrary point in the filter chain. Aspect can be given as a fraction (4/3) or floating point number (1.33). Alternatively, you may specify the exact display width and height desired. Note that this filter does not do any scaling itself; it just affects what later scalers (software or hardware) will do when auto-scaling to correct aspect.
<w>,<h>
New display width and height.
Can also be these special values:
0
original display width and height
-1
original video width and height (default)
-2
Calculate w/h using the other dimension and the original display aspect ratio.
-3
Calculate w/h using the other dimension and the original video aspect ratio.
dsize=800:-2
Specifies a display resolution of 800x600 for a 4/3 aspect video, or 800x450 for a 16/9 aspect video.
<aspect-method>
Modifies width and height according to original aspect ratios.
-1
Ignore original aspect ratio (default).
0
Keep display aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> as maximum resolution.
1
Keep display aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> as minimum resolution.
2
Keep video aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> as maximum resolution.
3
Keep video aspect ratio by using <w> and <h> as minimum resolution.
dsize=800:600:0
Specifies a display resolution of at most 800x600, or smaller, in order to keep aspect.
<r>
Rounds up to make both width and height divisible by <r> (default: 1).
<aspect>
Force an aspect ratio.
format[=fmt[:outfmt]]
Restricts the color space for the next filter without doing any conversion. Use together with the scale filter for a real conversion.
NOTE: For a list of available formats, see format=fmt=help.
<fmt>
Format name, e.g. rgb15, bgr24, 420p, etc. (default: yuyv).
<outfmt>
Format name that should be substituted for the output. If this is not 100% compatible with the <fmt> value, it will crash.
| Valid |
|---|
| Invalid (will crash) |
| format=rgb24:bgr24 |
| format=rgb24:420p |
| format=yuyv:uyvy |
noformat[=fmt]
Restricts the color space for the next filter without doing any conversion. Unlike the format filter, this will allow any color space except the one you specify.
NOTE: For a list of available formats, see noformat=fmt=help.
<fmt>
Format name, e.g. rgb15, bgr24, 420p, etc. (default: 420p).
pp=[filter string]
Enables the specified chain of post-processing subfilters. Subfilters must be separated by '/' and can be disabled by prepending a '-'. Each subfilter and some options have a short and a long name that can be used interchangeably, i.e. dr/dering are the same.
NOTE: Unlike in MPlayer or in earlier versions, you must quote the pp string if it contains : characters, e.g. '--vf=pp=[...]'.
This filter is most likely useless on modern HD video. It might be helpful with old low-resolution files.
All subfilters share common options to determine their scope:
a/autoq
Automatically switch the subfilter off if the CPU is too slow.
c/chrom
Do chrominance filtering, too (default).
y/nochrom
Do luminance filtering only (no chrominance).
n/noluma
Do chrominance filtering only (no luminance).
NOTE: --vf=pp:help shows a list of available subfilters.
Available subfilters are:
hb/hdeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>
Difference factor where higher values mean more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>
Flatness threshold where lower values mean more deblocking (default: 39).
vb/vdeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
vertical deblocking filter
<difference>
Difference factor where higher values mean more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>
Flatness threshold where lower values mean more deblocking (default: 39).
ha/hadeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
accurate horizontal deblocking filter
<difference>
Difference factor where higher values mean more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>
Flatness threshold where lower values mean more deblocking (default: 39).
va/vadeblock[:difference[:flatness]]
accurate vertical deblocking filter
<difference>
Difference factor where higher values mean more deblocking (default: 32).
<flatness>
Flatness threshold where lower values mean more deblocking (default: 39).
The horizontal and vertical deblocking filters share the difference and flatness values so you cannot set different horizontal and vertical thresholds.
h1/x1hdeblock
experimental horizontal deblocking filter
v1/x1vdeblock
experimental vertical deblocking filter
dr/dering
deringing filter
tn/tmpnoise[:threshold1[:threshold2[:threshold3]]]
temporal noise reducer
<threshold1>
larger -> stronger filtering
<threshold2>
larger -> stronger filtering
<threshold3>
larger -> stronger filtering
al/autolevels[:f/fullyrange]
automatic brightness / contrast correction
f/fullyrange
Stretch luminance to (0-255).
lb/linblenddeint
Linear blend deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering all lines with a (1 2 1) filter.
li/linipoldeint
Linear interpolating deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by linearly interpolating every second line.
ci/cubicipoldeint
Cubic interpolating deinterlacing filter deinterlaces the given block by cubically interpolating every second line.
md/mediandeint
Median deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by applying a median filter to every second line.
fd/ffmpegdeint
FFmpeg deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering every second line with a (-1 4 2 4 -1) filter.
l5/lowpass5
Vertically applied FIR low-pass deinterlacing filter that deinterlaces the given block by filtering all lines with a (-1 2 6 2 -1) filter.
fq/forceQuant[:quantizer]
Overrides the quantizer table from the input with the constant quantizer you specify.
<quantizer>
quantizer to use
de/default
default pp filter combination (hb:a,vb:a,dr:a)
fa/fast
fast pp filter combination (h1:a,v1:a,dr:a)
ac
high quality pp filter combination (ha:a:128:7,va:a,dr:a)
NOTE: This filter is only available if FFmpeg/Libav has been compiled with libpostproc enabled.
--vf=pp=hb/vb/dr/al
horizontal and vertical deblocking, deringing and automatic brightness/contrast
--vf=pp=de/-al
default filters without brightness/contrast correction
--vf=pp=[default/tmpnoise:1:2:3]
Enable default filters & temporal denoiser.
--vf=pp=[hb:y/vb:a]
Horizontal deblocking on luminance only, and switch vertical deblocking on or off automatically depending on available CPU time.
lavfi=graph[:sws-flags[:o=opts]]
Filter video using FFmpeg's libavfilter.
<graph>
The libavfilter graph string. The filter must have a single 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 option, you have to quote the filter graph in order to prevent mpv's syntax and the filter graph syntax from clashing.
-vf lavfi=[gradfun=20:30,vflip]
gradfun filter with nonsense parameters, followed 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=radius=30:strength=20,vflip"'
Same as before, but uses named parameters for everything.
<sws-flags>
If libavfilter inserts filters for pixel format conversion, 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 http://git.videolan.org/?p=ffmpeg.git;a=blob;f=libswscale/swscale.h.
<o>
Set AVFilterGraph options. These should be documented by FFmpeg.
'--vf=lavfi=yadif:o="threads=2,thread_type=slice"'
forces a specific threading configuration.
noise[=<strength>[:averaged][:pattern][:temporal][:uniform][:hq]
Adds noise.
strength
Set the noise for all components. If you want different strength values for luma and chroma, use libavfilter's noise filter directly (using --vf=lavfi=[noise=...]), or tell the libavfilter developers to stop being stupid.
averaged
averaged temporal noise (smoother, but a lot slower)
pattern
mix random noise with a (semi)regular pattern
temporal
temporal noise (noise pattern changes between frames)
uniform
uniform noise (Gaussian otherwise)
hq
high quality (slightly better looking, slightly slower) - not available when using libavfilter
hqdn3d[=luma_spatial:chroma_spatial:luma_tmp:chroma_tmp]
This filter aims to reduce image noise producing smooth images and making still images really still (This should enhance compressibility.).
<luma_spatial>
spatial luma strength (default: 4)
<chroma_spatial>
spatial chroma strength (default: 3)
<luma_tmp>
luma temporal strength (default: 6)
<chroma_tmp>
chroma temporal strength (default: luma_tmp*chroma_spatial/luma_spatial)
eq[=gamma:contrast:brightness:saturation:rg:gg:bg:weight]
Software equalizer that uses lookup tables (slow), allowing gamma correction in addition to simple brightness and contrast adjustment. The parameters are given as floating point values.
<0.1-10>
initial gamma value (default: 1.0)
<-2-2>
initial contrast, where negative values result in a negative image (default: 1.0)
<-1-1>
initial brightness (default: 0.0)
<0-3>
initial saturation (default: 1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the red component (default: 1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the green component (default: 1.0)
<0.1-10>
gamma value for the blue component (default: 1.0)
<0-1>
The weight parameter can be used to reduce the effect of a high gamma value on bright image areas, e.g. keep them from getting overamplified and just plain white. A value of 0.0 turns the gamma correction all the way down while 1.0 leaves it at its full strength (default: 1.0).
ilpack[=mode]
When interlaced video is stored in YUV 4:2:0 formats, chroma interlacing does not line up properly due to vertical downsampling of the chroma channels. This filter packs the planar 4:2:0 data into YUY2 (4:2:2) format with the chroma lines in their proper locations, so that in any given scanline, the luma and chroma data both come from the same field.
<mode>
Select the sampling mode.
0
nearest-neighbor sampling, fast but incorrect
1
linear interpolation (default)
unsharp[=lx:ly:la:cx:cy:ca]
unsharp mask / Gaussian blur
l is for the luma component, c for the chroma component. x/y is the filter size. a is the amount.
lx, ly, cx, cy
width and height of the matrix, odd sized in both directions (min = 3:3, max = 13:11 or 11:13, usually something between 3:3 and 7:7)
la, ca
Relative amount of sharpness/blur to add to the image (a sane range should be -1.5-1.5).
<0
blur
>0
sharpen
swapuv
Swap U & V plane.
pullup[=jl:jr:jt:jb:sb:mp]
Pulldown reversal (inverse telecine) filter, capable of handling mixed hard-telecine, 24000/1001 fps progressive, and 30000/1001 fps progressive content. The pullup filter makes use of future context in making its decisions. It is stateless in the sense that it does not lock onto a pattern to follow, but it instead looks forward to the following fields in order to identify matches and rebuild progressive frames.
jl, jr, jt, and jb
These options set the amount of "junk" to ignore at the left, right, top, and bottom of the image, respectively. Left/right are in units of 8 pixels, while top/bottom are in units of 2 lines. The default is 8 pixels on each side.
sb (strict breaks)
Setting this option to 1 will reduce the chances of pullup generating an occasional mismatched frame, but it may also cause an excessive number of frames to be dropped during high motion sequences. Conversely, setting it to -1 will make pullup match fields more easily. This may help processing of video where there is slight blurring between the fields, but may also cause there to be interlaced frames in the output.
mp (metric plane)
This option may be set to u or v to use a chroma plane instead of the luma plane for doing pullup's computations. This may improve accuracy on very clean source material, but more likely will decrease accuracy, especially if there is chroma noise (rainbow effect) or any grayscale video. The main purpose of setting mp to a chroma plane is to reduce CPU load and make pullup usable in realtime on slow machines.
divtc[=options]
Inverse telecine for deinterlaced video. If 3:2-pulldown telecined video has lost one of the fields or is deinterlaced using a method that keeps one field and interpolates the other, the result is a juddering video that has every fourth frame duplicated. This filter is intended to find and drop those duplicates and restore the original film framerate. Two different modes are available: One-pass mode is the default and is straightforward to use, but has the disadvantage that any changes in the telecine phase (lost frames or bad edits) cause momentary judder until the filter can resync again. Two-pass mode avoids this by analyzing the entire video beforehand so it will have forward knowledge about the phase changes and can resync at the exact spot. These passes do not correspond to pass one and two of the encoding process. You must run an extra pass using divtc pass one before the actual encoding throwing the resulting video away. Then use divtc pass two for the actual encoding. If you use multiple encoder passes, use divtc pass two for all of them.
The options are:
pass=1|2
Use two pass mode.
file=<filename>
Set the two pass log filename (default: framediff.log).
threshold=<value>
Set the minimum strength the telecine pattern must have for the filter to believe in it (default: 0.5). This is used to avoid recognizing false pattern from the parts of the video that are very dark or very still.
window=<numframes>
Set the number of past frames to look at when searching for pattern (default: 30). Longer window improves the reliability of the pattern search, but shorter window improves the reaction time to the changes in the telecine phase. This only affects the one-pass mode. The two-pass mode currently uses fixed window that extends to both future and past.
phase=0|1|2|3|4
Sets the initial telecine phase for one pass mode (default: 0). The two-pass mode can see the future, so it is able to use the correct phase from the beginning, but one-pass mode can only guess. It catches the correct phase when it finds it, but this option can be used to fix the possible juddering at the beginning. The first pass of the two pass mode also uses this, so if you save the output from the first pass, you get constant phase result.
deghost=<value>
Set the deghosting threshold (0-255 for one-pass mode, -255-255 for two-pass mode, default 0). If nonzero, deghosting mode is used. This is for video that has been deinterlaced by blending the fields together instead of dropping one of the fields. Deghosting amplifies any compression artifacts in the blended frames, so the parameter value is used as a threshold to exclude those pixels from deghosting that differ from the previous frame less than specified value. If two pass mode is used, then negative value can be used to make the filter analyze the whole video in the beginning of pass-2 to determine whether it needs deghosting or not and then select either zero or the absolute value of the parameter. Specify this option for pass 2, it makes no difference on pass 1.
phase[=t|b|p|a|u|T|B|A|U][:v]
Delay interlaced video by one field time so that the field order changes. The intended use is to fix PAL videos that have been captured with the opposite field order to the film-to-video transfer. The options are:
t
Capture field order top-first, transfer bottom-first. Filter will delay the bottom field.
b
Capture bottom-first, transfer top-first. Filter will delay the top field.
p
Capture and transfer with the same field order. This mode only exists for the documentation of the other options to refer to, but if you actually select it, the filter will faithfully do nothing ;-)
a
Capture field order determined automatically by field flags, transfer opposite. Filter selects among t and b modes on a frame by frame basis using field flags. If no field information is available, then this works just like u.
u
Capture unknown or varying, transfer opposite. Filter selects among t and b on a frame by frame basis by analyzing the images and selecting the alternative that produces best match between the fields.
T
Capture top-first, transfer unknown or varying. Filter selects among t and p using image analysis.
B
Capture bottom-first, transfer unknown or varying. Filter selects among b and p using image analysis.
A
Capture determined by field flags, transfer unknown or varying. Filter selects among t, b and p using field flags and image analysis. If no field information is available, then this works just like U. This is the default mode.
U
Both capture and transfer unknown or varying. Filter selects among t, b and p using image analysis only.
v
Verbose operation. Prints the selected mode for each frame and the average squared difference between fields for t, b, and p alternatives. (Ignored when libavfilter is used.)
yadif=[mode[:enabled=yes|no]]
Yet another deinterlacing filter
<mode>
frame
Output 1 frame for each frame.
field
Output 1 frame for each field.
frame-nospatial
Like frame but skips spatial interlacing check.
field-nospatial
Like field but skips spatial interlacing check.
<enabled>
yes
Filter is active (default).
no
Filter is not active, but can be activated with the D key (or any other key that toggles the deinterlace property).
This filter, is automatically inserted when using the D key (or any other key that toggles the deinterlace property or when using the --deinterlace switch), assuming the video output does not have native deinterlacing support.
If you just want to set the default mode, put this filter and its options into --vf-defaults instead, and enable deinterlacing with D or --deinterlace.
Also note that the D key is stupid enough to insert an interlacer twice when inserting yadif with --vf, so using the above methods is recommended.
delogo[=x:y:w:h:t:show]
Suppresses a TV station logo by a simple interpolation of the surrounding pixels. Just set a rectangle covering the logo and watch it disappear (and sometimes something even uglier appear - your mileage may vary).
<x>,<y>
top left corner of the logo
<w>,<h>
width and height of the cleared rectangle
<t>
Thickness of the fuzzy edge of the rectangle (added to w and h). When set to -1, a green rectangle is drawn on the screen to simplify finding the right x,\(ga\(gay\(ga\(ga,\(ga\(gaw\(ga\(ga,\(ga\(gah\(ga\(ga parameters.
show
Draw a rectangle showing the area defined by x/y/w/h.
screenshot
Optional filter for screenshot support. This is only needed if the video output does not provide working direct screenshot support. Note that it is not always safe to insert this filter by default. See TAKING SCREENSHOTS for details.
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 --ass-use-margins).
<top-margin>
Black band on the top for toptitles (with --ass-use-margins).
--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.
stereo3d[=in:out]
Stereo3d converts between different stereoscopic image formats.
<in>
Stereoscopic image format of input. Possible values:
sbsl or side_by_side_left_first
side by side parallel (left eye left, right eye right)
sbsr or side_by_side_right_first
side by side crosseye (right eye left, left eye right)
abl or above_below_left_first
above-below (left eye above, right eye below)
abr or above_below_right_first
above-below (right eye above, left eye below)
ab2l or above_below_half_height_left_first
above-below with half height resolution (left eye above, right eye below)
ab2r or above_below_half_height_right_first
above-below with half height resolution (right eye above, left eye below)
<out>
Stereoscopic image format of output. Possible values are all the input formats as well as:
arcg or anaglyph_red_cyan_gray
anaglyph red/cyan gray (red filter on left eye, cyan filter on right eye)
arch or anaglyph_red_cyan_half_color
anaglyph red/cyan half colored (red filter on left eye, cyan filter on right eye)
arcc or anaglyph_red_cyan_color
anaglyph red/cyan color (red filter on left eye, cyan filter on right eye)
arcd or anaglyph_red_cyan_dubois
anaglyph red/cyan color optimized with the least-squares projection of Dubois (red filter on left eye, cyan filter on right eye)
agmg or anaglyph_green_magenta_gray
anaglyph green/magenta gray (green filter on left eye, magenta filter on right eye)
agmh or anaglyph_green_magenta_half_color
anaglyph green/magenta half colored (green filter on left eye, magenta filter on right eye)
agmc or anaglyph_green_magenta_color
anaglyph green/magenta colored (green filter on left eye, magenta filter on right eye)
aybg or anaglyph_yellow_blue_gray
anaglyph yellow/blue gray (yellow filter on left eye, blue filter on right eye)
aybh or anaglyph_yellow_blue_half_color
anaglyph yellow/blue half colored (yellow filter on left eye, blue filter on right eye)
aybc or anaglyph_yellow_blue_color
anaglyph yellow/blue colored (yellow filter on left eye, blue filter on right eye)
irl or interleave_rows_left_first
Interleaved rows (left eye has top row, right eye starts on next row)
irr or interleave_rows_right_first
Interleaved rows (right eye has top row, left eye starts on next row)
ml or mono_left
mono output (left eye only)
mr or mono_right
mono output (right eye only)
gradfun[=strength[:radius|:size=<size>]]
Fix the banding artifacts that are sometimes introduced into nearly flat regions by truncation to 8-bit color depth. Interpolates the gradients that should go where the bands are, and dithers them.
<strength>
Maximum amount by which the filter will change any one pixel. Also the threshold for detecting nearly flat regions (default: 1.5).
<radius>
Neighborhood to fit the gradient to. Larger radius makes for smoother gradients, but also prevents the filter from modifying pixels near detailed regions (default: disabled).
<size>
size of the filter in percent of the image diagonal size. This is used to calculate the final radius size (default: 1).
dlopen=dll[:a0[:a1[:a2[:a3]]]]
Loads an external library to filter the image. The library interface is the vf_dlopen interface specified using libmpcodecs/vf_dlopen.h.
dll=<library>
Specify the library to load. This may require a full file system path in some cases. This argument is required.
a0=<string>
Specify the first parameter to pass to the library.
a1=<string>
Specify the second parameter to pass to the library.
a2=<string>
Specify the third parameter to pass to the library.
a3=<string>
Specify the fourth parameter to pass to the library.
vapoursynth=file:buffered-frames:concurrent-frames
Loads a VapourSynth filter script. This is intended for streamed processing: mpv actually provides a source filter, instead of using 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.
If you just want to play video generated by a VapourSynth (i.e. using a native VapourSynth video source), it's better to use vspipe and a FIFO to feed the video to mpv. The same applies if the filter script requires random frame access (see buffered-frames parameter).
This filter is experimental. If it turns out that it works well and is used, it will be ported to libavfilter. Otherwise, it will be just removed.
file
Filename of the script source. Currently, this is always a python script. The variable video_in is set to the mpv video source, and it is expected that the script reads video from it. (Otherwise, mpv will decode no video, and the video packet queue will overflow, eventually leading to audio being stopped.) The script is also expected to pass through timestamps using the _DurationNum and _DurationDen frame properties.
import vapoursynth as vs core = vs.get_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 requests backwards. 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 actual number of buffered frames also depends on the value of the concurrent-frames option. Currently, both option values are multiplied to get the final buffer size.
(Normally, VapourSynth source filters must provide random access, but mpv was made for playback, and does not provide frame-exact random access. The way this video filter works is a compromise to make simple filters work anyway.)
concurrent-frames
Number of frames that should be requested in parallel (default: 2). 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.
vavpp
VA-AP-API video post processing. Works with --vo=vaapi and --vo=opengl only. Currently deinterlaces. This filter is automatically inserted if deinterlacing is requested (either using the D key, by default mapped to the command cycle deinterlace, or the --deinterlace option).
deint=<method>
Select the deinterlacing algorithm.
no
Don't perform deinterlacing.
first-field
Show only first field (going by --field-dominance).
bob
bob deinterlacing (default).
vdpaupp
VDPAU video post processing. Works with --vo=vdpau and --vo=opengl only. This filter is automatically inserted if deinterlacing is requested (either using the D key, by default mapped to the command cycle deinterlace, or the --deinterlace option). When enabling deinterlacing, it is always preferred over software deinterlacer filters if the vdpau VO is used, and also if opengl 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 enabled, it will use the mode selected with deint-mode.
deint-mode=<first-field|bob|temporal|temporal-spatial>
Select deinterlacing mode (default: temporal). All modes respect --field-dominance.
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 temporal deinterlacing.
hqscaling=<0-9>
0
Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9
Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable hardware).
buffer=<num>
Buffer <num> frames in the filter chain. This filter is probably pretty useless, except for debugging. (Note that this won't help smoothing out latencies with decoding, because the filter will never output a frame if the buffer isn't full, except on EOF.)
You can encode files from one format/codec to another using this facility.
--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). This can be a comma separated list of possible formats to try. 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.
Options are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the options list.
--ofopts-add=<options1[,options2,...]>
Appends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--ofopts-pre=<options1[,options2,...]>
Prepends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--ofopts-del=<index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the options at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).
--ofopts-clr
Completely empties the options list.
--ofps=<float value>
Specifies the output format time base (default: 24000). Low values like 25 limit video fps by dropping frames.
--oautofps
Sets the output format time base to the guessed frame rate of the input video (simulates MEncoder behavior, useful for AVI; may cause frame drops). Note that not all codecs and not all formats support VFR encoding, and some which do have bugs when a target bitrate is specified - use --ofps or --oautofps to force CFR encoding in these cases.
--omaxfps=<float value>
Specifies the minimum distance of adjacent frames (default: 0, which means unset). Content of lower frame rate is not readjusted to this frame rate; content of higher frame rate is decimated to this frame rate.
--oharddup
If set, the frame rate given by --ofps is attained not by skipping time codes, but by duplicating frames (constant frame rate mode).
--oneverdrop
If set, frames are never dropped. Instead, time codes of video are readjusted to always increase. This may cause AV desync, though; to work around this, use a high-fps time base using --ofps and absolutely avoid --oautofps.
--oac=<codec>
Specifies the output audio codec. This can be a comma separated list of possible codecs to try. See --oac=help for a full list of supported codecs.
--oaoffset=<value>
Shifts audio data by the given time (in seconds) by adding/removing samples at the start.
--oacopts=<options>
Specifies the output audio codec options for libavcodec. See --oacopts=help for a full list of supported options.
--oac=libmp3lame --oacopts=b=128000
selects 128 kbps MP3 encoding.
Options are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the options list.
--oacopts-add=<options1[,options2,...]>
Appends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--oacopts-pre=<options1[,options2,...]>
Prepends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--oacopts-del=<index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the options at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).
--oacopts-clr
Completely empties the options list.
--oafirst
Force the audio stream to become the first stream in the output. By default the order is unspecified.
--ovc=<codec>
Specifies the output video codec. This can be a comma separated list of possible codecs to try. See --ovc=help for a full list of supported codecs.
--ovoffset=<value>
Shifts video data by the given time (in seconds) by shifting the pts values.
--ovcopts <options>
Specifies the output video codec options for libavcodec. See --ovcopts=help for a full list of supported options.
"--ovc=mpeg4 --oacopts=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.
Options are managed in lists. There are a few commands to manage the options list.
--ovcopts-add=<options1[,options2,...]>
Appends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--ovcopts-pre=<options1[,options2,...]>
Prepends the options given as arguments to the options list.
--ovcopts-del=<index1[,index2,...]>
Deletes the options at the given indexes. Index numbers start at 0, negative numbers address the end of the list (-1 is the last).
--ovcopts-clr
Completely empties the options list.
--ovfirst
Force the video stream to become the first stream in the output. By default the order is unspecified.
--ocopyts
Copies input pts to the output video (not supported by some output container formats, e.g. AVI). Discontinuities are still fixed. By default, audio pts are set to playback time and video pts are synchronized to match audio pts, as some output formats do not support anything else.
--orawts
Copies input pts to the output video (not supported by some output 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!
--no-ometadata
Turns off copying of metadata from input files to output files when encoding (which is enabled by default).
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 commands:
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.)
[Shift+][Ctrl+][Alt+][Meta+]<key> [{<section>}] [<prefixes>] <command> (<argument>)* [; <command>]
Note that by default, the right Alt key can be used to create special characters, and thus does not register as a modifier. The option --no-input-right-alt-gr changes this behavior.
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.
Arguments are separated by whitespace. This applies even to string arguments. For this reason, string arguments should be quoted with ". Inside quotes, C-style escaping can be used.
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.
ignore
Use this to "block" keys that should be unbound, and do nothing. Useful for disabling default bindings, without disabling all bindings with --no-input-default-bindings.
seek <seconds> [relative|absolute|absolute-percent|- [default-precise|exact|keyframes]]
Change the playback position. By default, seeks by a relative amount of seconds.
The second argument sets the seek mode:
relative (default)
Seek relative to current position (a negative value seeks backwards).
absolute
Seek to a given time.
absolute-percent
Seek to a given percent position.
The third argument defines how exact the seek is:
default-precise (default)
Follow the default behavior as set by --hr-seek, which by default does imprecise seeks (like keyframes).
exact
Always do exact/hr/precise seeks (slow).
keyframes
Always restart playback at keyframe boundaries (fast).
revert_seek
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.
frame_step
Play one frame, then pause. Does nothing with audio-only playback.
frame_back_step
Go back by one frame, then pause. Note that this can 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 correctly (e.g. see the --hr-seek-demuxer-offset option). Video filters or other video post-processing that modifies timing of frames (e.g. deinterlacing) should usually work, but might make backstepping silently behave incorrectly in corner cases. Using --hr-seek-framedrop=no should help, although it might make precise seeking slower.
This does not work with audio-only playback.
set <property> <value>
Set the given property to the given value.
add <property> [<value>]
Add the given value to the property. On overflow or underflow, clamp the property to the maximum. If <value> is omitted, assume 1.
cycle <property> [up|down]
Cycle the given property. up and down 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.
multiply <property> <factor>
Multiplies the value of a property with the numeric factor.
screenshot [subtitles|video|window|- [single|each-frame]]
Take a screenshot.
First argument:
<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, and if no support is available, this will act like video.
Second argument:
<single> (default)
Take a single screenshot.
<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.
screenshot_to_file <filename> [subtitles|video|window]
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.
This command tries to never overwrite files. If the file already exists, it fails.
Like all input command parameters, the filename is subject to property expansion as described in Property Expansion.
playlist_next [weak|force]
Go to the next entry on the playlist.
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 [weak|force]
Go to the previous entry on the playlist.
weak (default)
If the first file on the playlist is currently played, do nothing.
force
Terminate playback if the first file is being played.
loadfile <file> [replace|append [options]]
Load the given file and play it.
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.
The third 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,... Not all options can be changed this way. Some options require a restart of the player.
loadlist <playlist> [replace|append]
Load the given playlist file (like --playlist).
playlist_clear
Clear the playlist, except the currently played file.
playlist_remove current|<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.)
run command arg1 arg2 ...
(Unix only) 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. Note that there is a static limit of (as of this writing) 9 arguments (this limit could be raised on demand).
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 arguments.
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 commands. It is recommended to write a small shell script, and call that with run.
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 (optional) argument is exactly as in the quit command.
sub_add <file>
Load the given subtitle file. It is selected as current subtitle after loading.
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>
Change subtitle timing such, that the subtitle event after the next <skip> subtitle events is displayed. <skip> can be negative to step backwards.
sub_seek <skip>
Seek to the next (skip set to 1) or the previous (skip set to -1) subtitle. This is similar to sub_step, except that it seeks video and audio instead of adjusting the subtitle delay.
Like with sub_step, this works with external text subtitles only. For embedded text subtitles (like with Matroska), this works only with subtitle events that have already been displayed.
osd [<level>]
Toggle OSD level. If <level> is specified, set the OSD mode (see --osd-level for valid values).
print_text <string>
Print text to stdout. The string can contain properties (see Property Expansion).
show_text <string> [<duration>|- [<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.
<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.
discnav <command>
Send a menu control command to the DVD/BD menu implementation. The following commands are defined: up, down, left, right, menu (request to enter menu), prev (previous screen), select (activate current button), mouse (the mouse was clicked), mouse_move (the mouse cursor changed position).
mouse_move will use the current mouse position.
Note that while the menu is active, the input section discnav-menu will be enabled, so different key bindings can be mapped for menu mode.
write_watch_later_config
Write the resume config file that the quit_watch_later command writes, but continue playback normally.
stop
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.
af set|add|toggle|del|clr filter1=params,filter2,...
Change audio filter chain. See vf command.
vf set|add|toggle|del|clr filter1=params,filter2,...
Change video filter chain.
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 yes, remove the filter. If no, add the filter. (If several filters are passed to the command, this is done for each filter.)
del
Remove the given filters from the video chain. Unlike in the other cases, the second parameter is a comma separated list of filter names or integer indexes. 0 would denote the first filter. Negative indexes start from the last filter, and -1 denotes the last filter.
clr
Remove all filters. Note that like the other sub-commands, this does not control automatically inserted filters.
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 modification commands. For add, using an already used label will replace the existing filter.
The vf command shows the list of requested filters on the OSD after changing the filter chain. This is roughly equivalent to show_text ${vf}. Note that auto-inserted filters for format conversion 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.
a vf set flip turn video upside-down on the a key
b vf set "" remove all video filters on b
c vf toggle lavfi=gradfun toggle debanding on c
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 maintains an internal counter which value to pick next, and which is initially 0. It is reset to 0 once the last value is reached.
The internal counter is associated using the property name and the value list. If multiple commands (bound to different keys) use the same name and value list, they will share the internal counter.
The special argument !reverse can be used to cycle the value list in reverse. Compared with a command that just lists the value in reverse, this command will actually share the internal counter with the forward-cycling key binding.
Note that there is a static limit of (as of this writing) 10 arguments (this limit could be raised on demand).
enable_section <section> [default|exclusive]
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 command puts the section on top of the stack. If the section was already on the stack, it is implicitly removed beforehand. (A section cannot be on the stack more than once.)
If exclusive is specified as second argument, all sections below the newly enabled section are disabled. They will be re-enabled as soon as all exclusive sections above them are removed.
disable_section <section>
Disable the named input section. Undoes enable_section.
overlay_add <id> <x> <y> <file> <offset> <fmt> <w> <h> <stride>
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. (Future directions: maybe mpv should take care of some of these things automatically, but it's hard to tell where to draw the line.)
id is an integer between 0 and 63 identifying the overlay element. The ID can be used to add multiple overlay parts, update a part by using this command with an already existing ID, or to remove a part with overlay_remove. Using a previously unused ID will add a new overlay, while reusing an ID will update it. (Future directions: there should be something to ensure different programs wanting to create overlays don't conflict with each others, should that ever be needed.)
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(). Some VOs will pass the mapped pointer directly to display APIs (e.g. opengl or vdpau), so no actual copying is involved. Truncating the source file while the overlay is active will crash the player. You shouldn't change the data while the overlay is active, because the data is essentially accessed at random points. Instead, call overlay_add again (preferably with a different memory region to prevent tearing).
offset is the offset of the first pixel in the source file. It is passed directly to mmap and is subject to certain restrictions (see man mmap for details). In particular, this value has to be a multiple of the system's page size.
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 components 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 considered something that shouldn't happen, and consequently implementations don't ensure that you get predictable behavior in this case.)
w, h, and stride specify the size of the overlay. w is the visible 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.)
When updating the overlay, you should prepare a second shared memory region (e.g. make use of the offset parameter) and add this as overlay, instead of reusing the same memory every time. Otherwise, you might get the equivalent of tearing, when your application and mpv write/read the buffer at the same time. Also, keep in mind that mpv might access an overlay's memory at random times whenever it feels the need to do so, for example when redrawing the screen.
overlay_remove <id>
Remove an overlay added with overlay_add and the same ID. Does nothing if no overlay with this ID exists.
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).
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 example, Lua scripts can get their name via mp.get_script_name().
(Scripts use this internally to dispatch key bindings, and this can also be used in input.conf to reassign such bindings.)
Undocumented commands: tv_last_channel (TV/DVB only), get_property (?), vo_cmdline (experimental).
These prefixes are placed between key name and the actual command. Multiple prefixes can be specified. They are separated by whitespace.
osd-auto (default)
Use the default behavior for this command.
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 "${property-name}".)
expand-properties (default)
All string arguments are expanded as described in Property Expansion.
All of the osd prefixes are still overridden by the global --osd-level settings.
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.
Also see 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 exclusively, so that bindings in the default sections are ignored.
Properties are used to set mpv options during runtime, or to query arbitrary information. They can be manipulated with the set/add/cycle commands, and retrieved with show_text, or anything else that uses property expansion. (See Property Expansion.)
The property name is annotated with RW to indicate whether the property is generally writable.
If an option is referenced, the property will normally take/return exactly the same values as the option. In these cases, properties are merely a way to change an option at runtime.
osd-level (RW)
See --osd-level.
osd-scale (RW)
OSD font size multiplier, see --osd-scale.
loop (RW)
See --loop.
loop-file (RW)
See --loop-file (uses yes/no).
speed (RW)
See --speed.
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.)
file-size
Length in bytes of the source file/stream. (This is the same as ${stream-end}. For ordered chapters and such, the size of the currently played segment is returned.)
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.)
path
Full path of the currently played file.
media-title
If libquvi is used and libquvi returns a page title for the currently played URL, return the page title.
Otherwise, if the currently played file has a title tag, use that.
Otherwise, if the media type is DVD, return the volume ID of DVD.
Otherwise, return the filename property.
demuxer
Name of the current demuxer. (This is useless.)
stream-path
Filename (full path) of the stream layer filename. (This is probably useless. It looks like this can be different from path only when using e.g. ordered chapters.)
stream-pos (RW)
Raw byte position in source stream.
stream-end
Raw end position in bytes in source stream.
length
Length of the current file in seconds. If the length is unknown, the property is unavailable. Note that the file duration is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.
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.
drop-frame-count
Frames dropped because they arrived too late. Doesn't necessarily indicate actual frame-drops, just the number of times the decoder was asked to drop. Unavailable if video is disabled
vo-drop-frame-count
Frames dropped by VO (when using --framedrop=vo).
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.
time-start
Return the start time of the file. (Usually 0, but some kind of files, especially transport streams, can have a different start time.)
time-remaining
Remaining length of the file in seconds. Note that the file duration is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.
playtime-remaining
time-remaining scaled by the the current speed.
playback-time
Return the playback time, which is the time difference between start PTS and current PTS.
chapter (RW)
Current chapter number. The number of the first chapter is 0.
edition (RW)
Current MKV edition number. Setting this property to a different value will restart playback. The number of the first edition is 0.
disc-titles
Number of BD/DVD titles.
disc-title (RW)
Current BD/DVD title number. Writing works only for dvdnav:// and bd:// (and aliases for these).
disc-menu-active
Return yes if the BD/DVD menu is active, or no on normal video playback. The property is unavailable when playing something that is not a BD or DVD. Use the discnav menu command to actually enter or leave menu mode.
chapters
Number of chapters.
editions
Number of MKV editions.
edition-list
List of editions, current entry marked. Currently, the raw property value is useless.
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. Use this to set the edition property. Currently, this is the same as the edition index.
edition-list/N/default
yes if this is the default edition, no otherwise.
edition-list/N/title
Edition title as stored in the file. Not always available.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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
angle (RW)
Current DVD angle.
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 values. 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. Suggestions are welcome how exactly this property should work.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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)
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: syntax, will be <filter-name>NN.
Works similar to metadata property. It allows the same access methods (using sub-properties).
An example of these kind of metadata are the cropping parameters added by --vf=lavfi=cropdetect.
pause (RW)
Pause status. This is usually yes or no. See --pause.
core-idle
Return yes if the playback core is paused, otherwise no. This can be different pause in special situations, such as when the player pauses itself due to low network cache.
cache
Network cache fill state (0-100.0).
cache-size (RW)
Total network cache size in KB. This is similar to --cache. This allows to set the cache size at runtime. Currently, it's not possible to enable or disable the cache at runtime using this property, just to resize an existing cache.
Note that this tries to keep the cache contents as far as possible. To make this easier, the cache resizing code will allocate the new cache while the old cache is still allocated.
Don't use this when playing DVD or Blu-ray.
cache-free (R)
Total free cache size in KB.
cache-used (R)
Total used cache size in KB.
cache-idle (R)
Returns yes if the cache is idle, which means the cache is filled as much as possible, and is currently not reading more data.
demuxer-cache-duration
Approximate duration of video buffered in the demuxer, in seconds. The guess is very unreliable, and often the property will not be available at all, even if data is buffered.
demuxer-cache-idle
Returns yes if the demuxer is idle, which means the demuxer cache is filled to the requested amount, and is currently not reading more data.
paused-for-cache
Returns yes when playback is paused because of waiting for the cache.
eof-reached
Returns yes if end of playback was reached, no otherwise. Note that this is usually 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 logically be cleared immediately after it's set.
seeking
Returns yes if the player is currently seeking, or otherwise trying to restart playback. (It's possible that it returns yes while a file is loaded, or when switching ordered chapter segments. This is because the same underlying code is used for seeking and resyncing.)
pts-association-mode (RW)
See --pts-association-mode.
hr-seek (RW)
See --hr-seek.
volume (RW)
Current volume (0-100).
mute (RW)
Current mute status (yes/no).
audio-delay (RW)
See --audio-delay.
audio-format
Audio format as string.
audio-codec
Audio codec selected for decoding.
audio-bitrate
Audio bitrate. This is probably a very bad guess in most cases.
audio-samplerate
Audio samplerate.
audio-channels
Number of audio channels. The OSD value of this property is actually the channel layout, while the raw value returns the number of channels only.
aid (RW)
Current audio track (similar to --aid).
audio (RW)
Alias for aid.
balance (RW)
Audio channel balance. (The implementation of this feature is rather odd. It doesn't change the volumes of each channel, but instead sets up a pan matrix to mix the the left and right channels.)
fullscreen (RW)
See --fullscreen.
deinterlace (RW)
See --deinterlace.
colormatrix (RW)
See --colormatrix.
colormatrix-input-range (RW)
See --colormatrix-input-range.
colormatrix-output-range (RW)
See --colormatrix-output-range.
colormatrix-primaries (RW)
See --colormatrix-primaries.
ontop (RW)
See --ontop.
border (RW)
See --border.
framedrop (RW)
See --framedrop.
gamma (RW)
See --gamma.
brightness (RW)
See --brightness.
contrast (RW)
See --contrast.
saturation (RW)
See --saturation.
hue (RW)
See --hue.
hwdec (RW)
Return the current hardware decoder that is used. This uses the same values as the --hwdec option. If software decoding is active, this returns no. You can write this property. Then the --hwdec option is set to the new value, and video decoding will be reinitialized (internally, the player will perform a seek to refresh the video properly).
Note that you don't know the success of the operation immediately after writing this property. It happens with a delay as video is reinitialized.
panscan (RW)
See --panscan.
video-format
Video format as string.
video-codec
Video codec selected for decoding.
video-bitrate
Video bitrate (a bad guess).
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) container 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/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/aspect
Display aspect ratio as float.
video-params/par
Pixel aspect ratio.
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/chroma-location
Chroma location as string. (Exact values subject to change.)
video-params/rotate
Intended display rotation in degrees (clockwise).
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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)
"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
"chroma-location" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"rotate" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
dwidth, dheight
Video display size. This is the video size after filters and aspect 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-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.
fps
Container FPS. This can easily contain bogus values. For videos that use modern container formats or video codecs, this will often be incorrect.
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 unstable results.
window-scale (RW)
Window size multiplier. Setting this will resize the video window to the values contained in dwidth and dheight multiplied with the value set with this property. Setting 1 will resize to original video size (or to be exact, the size the video filters output). 2 will set the double size, 0.5 halves the size.
video-aspect (RW)
Video aspect, see --video-aspect.
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 size, which can be different from the window size in some cases.
osd-par
Last known OSD display pixel aspect (can be 0).
vid (RW)
Current video track (similar to --vid).
video (RW)
Alias for vid.
video-align-x, video-align-y (RW)
See --video-align-x and --video-align-y.
video-pan-x, video-pan-y (RW)
See --video-pan-x and --video-pan-y.
video-zoom (RW)
See --video-zoom.
video-unscaled (W)
See --video-unscaled.
program (W)
Switch TS program (write-only).
sid (RW)
Current subtitle track (similar to --sid).
secondary-sid (RW)
Secondary subtitle track (see --secondary-sid).
sub (RW)
Alias for sid.
sub-delay (RW)
See --sub-delay.
sub-pos (RW)
See --sub-pos.
sub-visibility (RW)
See --sub-visibility.
sub-forced-only (RW)
See --sub-forced-only.
sub-scale (RW)
Subtitle font size multiplier.
ass-use-margins (RW)
See --ass-use-margins.
ass-vsfilter-aspect-compat (RW)
See --ass-vsfilter-aspect-compat.
ass-style-override (RW)
See --ass-style-override.
stream-capture (RW)
A filename, see --stream-capture. Setting this will start capture using the given filename. Setting it to an empty string will stop it.
tv-brightness, tv-contrast, tv-saturation, tv-hue (RW)
TV stuff.
playlist-pos (RW)
Current position on playlist. The first entry is on position 0. Writing to the property will restart playback at the written entry.
playlist-count
Number of total playlist entries.
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.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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
track-list
List of audio/video/sub tracks, current entry marked. Currently, the raw property value is useless.
This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based track index.
track-list/count
Total number of tracks.
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 otherwise 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.
track-list/N/title
Track title as it is stored in the file. Not always available.
track-list/N/lang
Track language as identified by the file. Not always available.
track-list/N/albumart
yes if this is a video track that consists of a single picture, no or unavailable otherwise. This is used for video tracks that are really attached pictures in audio files.
track-list/N/default
yes if the track has the default flag set in the file, no otherwise.
track-list/N/codec
The codec name used by this track, for example h264. Unavailable in some rare cases.
track-list/N/external
yes if the track is an external file, no otherwise. This is set for separate subtitle files.
track-list/N/external-filename
The filename if the track is from an external file, unavailable otherwise.
track-list/N/selected
yes if the track is currently decoded, no otherwise.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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
"albumart" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"default" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"external" MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
"external-filename" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
"codec" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
chapter-list
List of chapters, current entry marked. Currently, the raw property value is useless.
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_FORMAT_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 (RW)
See --af and the af command.
vf (RW)
See --vf and the vf command.
When querying the property with the client API using MPV_FORMAT_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]
"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
Return whether it's generally possible to seek in the current file.
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 command or options which set OSD messages.
--osd-status-msg='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.
options/<name> (RW)
Read-only access to value of option --<name>. Most options can be changed at runtime 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.
property-list
Return the list of top-level properties.
All string arguments to input commands as well as certain options (like --term-playing-msg) are subject to property expansion.
i show_text Filename: ${filename}
shows the filename of the current file when pressing the i key
Within input.conf, property expansion can be inhibited by putting the raw prefix in front of commands.
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 retrieved.
${?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 expansion.)
$>
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 \
Normally, properties are formatted as human-readable text, meant to be displayed on OSD or on the terminal. It is possible to retrieve an unformatted (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.
${time-pos} expands to 00:14:23 (if playback position is at 14 minutes 23 seconds)
${=time-pos} expands to 863.4 (same time, plus 400 milliseconds - milliseconds are normally not shown in the formatted case)
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.
The On Screen Controller (short: OSC) is a minimal GUI integrated with mpv to offer basic mouse-controllability. It is intended to make interaction 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.
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.
+------------------+-----------+--------------------+ | playlist prev | title | playlist next | +-------+------+---+--+------+-+----+------+--------+ | audio | skip | seek | | seek | skip | full | +-------+ back | back | play | frwd | frwd | screen | | sub | | | | | | | +-------+------+------+------+------+------+--------+ | seekbar | +----------------+--------------+-------------------+ | time passed | cache status | time remaining | +----------------+--------------+-------------------+
playlist prev
| left-click |
|---|
| play previous file in playlist |
| shift+L-click |
| show playlist |
title
Displays current media-title or filename
| left-click |
|---|
| show playlist position and length and full title |
| right-click |
| show filename |
playlist next
| left-click |
|---|
| play next file in playlist |
| shift+L-click |
| show playlist |
audio and sub
Displays selected track and amount of available tracks
| left-click |
|---|
| cycle audio/sub tracks forward |
| right-click |
| cycle audio/sub tracks backwards |
| shift+L-click |
| show available audio/sub tracks |
skip back
| left-click |
|---|
| go to beginning of chapter / previous chapter |
| shift+L-click |
| show chapters |
seek back
| left-click |
|---|
| skip back 5 seconds |
| right-click |
| skip back 30 seconds |
| shift-L-click |
| skip back 1 frame |
play
| left-click |
|---|
| toggle play/pause |
seek frwd
| left-click |
|---|
| skip forward 10 seconds |
| right-click |
| skip forward 60 seconds |
| shift-L-click |
| skip forward 1 frame |
skip frwd
| left-click |
|---|
| go to next chapter |
| shift+L-click |
| show chapters |
fullscreen
| left-click |
|---|
| toggle fullscreen |
seekbar
Indicates current playback position and position of chapters
| left-click |
|---|
| seek to position |
time passed
Shows current playback position timestamp
| left-click |
|---|
| toggle displaying timecodes with milliseconds |
cache status
Shows current cache fill status (only visible when below 45%)
time remaining
Shows remaining playback time timestamp
| left-click |
|---|
| toggle between total and remaining time |
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 Script Commands section.
| del |
|---|
| Hide the OSC permanently until mpv is restarted. |
The OSC offers limited configuration through a config file lua-settings/osc.conf placed in mpv's user dir and through the --lua-opts command-line option. Options provided through the command-line will override those from the config file.
The config file must exactly follow the following syntax:
# this is a comment optionA=value1 optionB=value2
# can only be used at the beginning of a line and there may be no spaces around the = or anywhere else.
To avoid collisions with other scripts, all options need to be prefixed with osc-.
Example:
--lua-opts=osc-optionA=value1,osc-optionB=value2
showwindowed
Default: yes Show OSC when windowed?
showfullscreen
Default: yes Show OSC when fullscreen?
scalewindowed
Default: 1 Scaling of the controller when windowed
scalefullscreen
Default: 1 Scaling of the controller when fullscreen
scaleforcedwindow
Default: 2 Scaling of the controller when rendered on a forced (dummy) window
vidscale
Default: yes Scale the controller with the video?
valign
Default: 0.8 Vertical alignment, -1 (top) to 1 (bottom)
halign
Default: 0 Horizontal alignment, -1 (left) to 1 (right)
boxalpha
Default: 80 Alpha of the background box, 0 (opaque) to 255 (fully transparent)
hidetimeout
Default: 500 Duration in ms until the OSC hides if no mouse movement, negative value disables auto-hide
fadeduration
Default: 200 Duration of fade out in ms, 0 = no fade
deadzonesize
Default: 0 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 between 0 and 1.
minmousemove
Default: 3 Minimum amount of pixels the mouse has to move between ticks to make the OSC show up
seektooltip
Default: yes Display a tooltip over the seekbar indicating time at mouse position.
The OSC script listens to certain script commands. These commands can bound in input.conf, or sent by other scripts.
enable-osc
Undoes disable-osc or the effect of the del key.
disable-osc
Hide the OSC permanently. This is also what the del key does.
Example
You could put this into input.conf to hide the OSC with the a key and to unhide it with b:
a script_message disable-osc b script_message enable-osc
mpv can load Lua scripts. Scripts passed to the --lua option, or found in the lua subdirectory of the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv/lua/) will be loaded on program start. mpv also appends the lua subdirectory to the end of Lua's path so you can import scripts from there too. Since it's added to the end, don't name scripts you want to import the same as Lua libraries because they will be overshadowed by them.
mpv provides the built-in module mp, which provides 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.
A script which leaves fullscreen mode when the player is paused:
function on_pause()
mp.set_property("fullscreen", "no")
end
mp.register_event("pause", on_pause)
This script provides a pretty weird feature, but Lua scripting was made to allow users implement features which are not going to be added to the mpv core.
Your script will be loaded by the player at program start from the lua configuration subdirectory, from a path specified with the --lua option, or in some cases, 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 dispatch 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.
When the player quits, all scripts will be asked to terminate. This happens via a shutdown event, which by default will make the event loop return. If your script got into an endless loop, mpv will probably behave fine during playback (unless the player is suspended, see mp.suspend), 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. before playback actually starts. In older mpv versions, this happened asynchronously.
The mp module is preloaded, although it can be loaded manually with require '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.
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 characters.
Note that properties are not expanded. You can use either mp.command, the expand-properties prefix, or the mp.get_property family of functions.
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 formatted 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 number.
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 chapter-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 properties.
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 can not represented natively in Lua, this might not always work as expected. For example, 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_property_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])
Register callback to be run on a key binding. The binding will be mapped to the given key, which is a string describing the physical key. This uses the same key names as in input.conf, and also allows combinations (e.g. ctrl+a).
After calling this function, key presses will cause the function fn to be called (unless the user remapped the key with another binding).
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 below for an example). The name should be unique across other bindings 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.
Internally, key bindings are dispatched via the script_message_to input command 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 his input.conf to remap the command to the y key:
y script_message 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_message_to 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 his input.conf. (mp.add_key_binding overwrites default 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 == comparison, 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_property_<type> to retrieve it. This means if type is for example string, fn is roughly called as in fn(name, mp.get_property_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.)
In some cases the function is not called even if the property changes. Whether this can happen depends on the property.
If the type is none or nil, sporadic property change events are possible. This means the change function fn can be called even if the property doesn't actually change.
mp.unobserve_property(fn)
Undo mp.observe_property(..., fn). This removes all property handlers that are equal to the fn parameter. This uses normal Lua == comparison, so be careful when dealing with closures.
mp.add_timeout(seconds, fn)
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.
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)
Call the given function periodically. This is like mp.add_timeout, 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 already disabled. This will remember the current elapsed time when stopping, so that resume() essentially unpauses the timer.
kill()
Disable the timer. Resets the elapsed time. resume() 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.
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:resume() 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 expires (but before the timer callback function fn is run).
mp.get_opt(key)
Return a setting from the --lua-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 script which would have the same name, it's made unique by appending a number.
The script /path/to/fooscript.lua becomes fooscript.
mp.osd_message(text [,duration])
Show an OSD message on the screen. duration is in seconds, and is optional (uses --osd-duration by default).
These also live in the mp module, but are documented separately as they are useful only in special situations.
mp.suspend()
Suspend the mpv main loop. There is a long-winded explanation of this in the C API function mpv_suspend(). In short, this prevents the player from displaying the next video frame, so that you don't get blocked when trying to access the player.
This is automatically called by the event handler.
mp.resume()
Undo one mp.suspend() call. mp.suspend() increments an internal counter, and mp.resume() decrements it. When 0 is reached, the player is actually resumed.
mp.resume_all()
This resets the internal suspend counter and resumes the player. (It's like calling mp.resume() until the player is actually resumed.)
You might want to call this if you're about to do something that takes a long time, but doesn't really need access to the player (like a network operation). Note that you still can access the player at any time.
mp.get_wakeup_pipe()
Calls mpv_get_wakeup_pipe() and returns the read end of the wakeup pipe. (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, return 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 interested in properly working notification of new events and working timers.
This function calls mp.suspend() and mp.resume_all() on its own.
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 description 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.
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. The user's settings will determine which of these messages will be visible. Normally, all messages are visible, except v and debug.
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.verbose(...), msg.debug(...)
All of these are shortcuts and equivalent to the corresponding msg.log(level, ...) call.
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])
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 command-line options. These needs to unique to avoid collisions with other scripts. Defaults to mp.get_script_name().
Example implementation:
require 'mp.options'
local options = {
optionA = "defaultvalueA",
optionB = -0.5,
optionC = true,
}
options.read_options(options, "myscript")
print(option.optionA)
The config file will be stored in lua-settings/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 --lua-opts parameter. To avoid collisions, all keys have to be prefixed with identifier-.
Example command-line:
--lua-opts=myscript-optionA=TEST:myscript-optionB=0:myscript-optionC=yes
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.
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, FIFOs, and the . and .. entries.
On error, 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 directory entry.
utils.join_path(p1, p2)
Return the concatenation of the 2 paths. Tries to be clever. For example, if \(gap2 is an absolute path, p2 is returned without change.
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 receiving events.
Example:
function my_fn(event)
print("start of playback!")
end
mp.register_event("playback-start", my_fn)
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).
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.
file-loaded
Happens after a file was loaded and begins playback.
seek
Happens on seeking (including ordered chapter segment changes).
playback-restart
Start of playback after seek or after file was loaded.
tracks-changed
The list of video/audio/sub tracks was updated. (This happens on playback start, and very rarely during playback.)
track-switched
A video/audio/subtitle track was switched on or off. This usually happens when the user (or a script) changes the subtitle track and so on.
idle
Idle mode is entered. This happens when playback ended, and the player was started with --idle or --force-window. This mode is implicitly ended when the start-file or shutdown events happen.
pause
Playback was paused. This also happens when for example the player is paused on low network cache. Then the event type indicates the pause state (like the property "pause" as opposed to the "core-idle" property), and you might receive multiple pause events in a row.
unpause
Playback was unpaused. See above for details.
tick
Called after a video frame was displayed. This is a hack, and you should avoid using it. Use timers instead and maybe watch pausing/unpausing events to avoid wasting CPU when the player is paused.
shutdown
Sent when the player quits, and the script should terminate. Normally handled automatically. See Mode of operation.
log-message
Receives messages enabled with mp.enable_messages. The message data is contained in the table passed as first parameter to the event handler. The table contains, in addition to the default event fields, the following fields:
prefix
The module prefix, identifies the sender of the message. This is what the terminal player puts in front of the message 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. Note that this is the direct output of a printf() style output API. The text will contain embedded newlines, and it's possible that a single message contains multiple lines, or that a message contains a partial line.
It's safe to display messages only if they end with a newline character, and to buffer them otherwise.
Keep in mind that these messages are meant to be hints for humans. You should not parse them, and prefix/level/text of messages might change any time.
get-property-reply
Undocumented (not useful for Lua scripts).
set-property-reply
Undocumented (not useful for Lua scripts).
command-reply
Undocumented (not useful for Lua scripts).
script-input-dispatch
Undocumented (used internally).
client-message
Undocumented (used internally).
video-reconfig
Happens on video output or filter reconfig.
audio-reconfig
Happens on audio output or filter reconfig.
metadata-update
Metadata (like file tags) was updated.
chapter-change
The current chapter possibly changed.
mpv is based on mplayer2, which in turn is based on the original MPlayer (also called mplayer, mplayer-svn, mplayer1). Many changes have been made, a large part of which is incompatible or completely changes how the player behaves. Although there are still many similarities to its ancestors, mpv should generally be treated as a completely different program.
NOTE: These lists are incomplete.
Switch to GPLv2+. (Technically speaking, MPlayer as a whole seems to be GPLv2-only, while mplayer2 is GPLv3+ - see Copyright file for details.)
Removal of the internal GUI, MEncoder, OSD menu, video kernel drivers for Linux 2.4 (including VIDIX)
Large internal cleanups
Removal of support for dead platforms
New build system
No embedded copy of FFmpeg and other libraries
Better pause handling (do not unpause on a command)
Better MKV support (such as ordered chapters)
vo_vdpau improvements
Precise seeking support
Native OpenGL backend for OS X
General OS X improvements
Improvements in audio/video sync handling
Cleaned up terminal output
Gapless audio support (--gapless-audio)
Improved responsiveness on user input
Support for modifier keys (alt, shift, ctrl) in input.conf
OSS4 volume control
More correct color reproduction (color matrix generation)
Use libass for subtitle rendering by default (better quality)
Generally preferring FFmpeg/Libav over internal demuxers and decoders
Improvements when playing multiple files (--fixed-vo)
Screenshot improvements (instant screenshots without 1-frame delay, allow taking screenshots even with hardware decoding)
Improved support for PulseAudio
Generally improved MS Windows support (dealing with Unicode file names, improved --vo=direct3d, improved window handling)
Better OSD rendering (using libass). This has full Unicode support, and languages like Arabic should be better supported.
Cleaned up terminal output (nicer status line, less useless noise)
Support for playing URLs of popular streaming sites directly (e.g. mpv https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=...)
Improved OpenGL output (--vo=opengl-hq)
Make --softvol default (mpv is not a mixer control panel)
Improved support for .cue files
Screenshot improvements (can save screenshots as JPEG or PNG, configurable file names, support for taking screenshots with or without subtitles - the screenshot video filter is not needed anymore, and should not be put into the mpv config file)
Removal of teletext support
Removal of most built-in demuxers, using libavformat instead
Removal of built-in network support, using libavformat instead (also, support https via libavformat)
Replace image VOs (--vo=jpeg etc.) with --vo=image
Do not lose settings when playing a new file in the same player instance
New location for config files, new name for the binary.
Slave mode compatibility broken (see below)
Encoding functionality (replacement for MEncoder, see DOCS/encoding.rst)
Remove --vo=gif89a, --vo=md5sum, --vo=yuv4mpeg, as encoding can handle these use cases. For yuv4mpeg, for example, use: mpv input.mkv -o output.y4m --no-audio --oautofps --oneverdrop.
Image subtitles (DVDs etc.) are rendered in color and use more correct positioning (color can be disabled with --sub-gray)
Wayland support
Support for precise scrolling which scales the parameter of commands. If the input doesn't support precise scrolling the scale factor stays 1.
OS X: Cocoa event loop is independent from MPlayer's event loop, so user actions like accessing menus and live resizing do not block the playback.
OS X: Apple Remote support.
OS X: Media Keys support.
Windows: Added WASAPI audio output.
New OSD bar with chapter marks and not positioned in the middle of the video (though this can be customized with the --osd-bar-align-y option).
Allow customizing whether a key binding for seeking shows the video time, the OSD bar, or nothing (see section Input Command Prefixes).
Display list of chapters and audio/subtitle tracks on OSD (see section Properties).
--keep-open option to stop the player from closing the window and exiting after playback ends.
Re-enable screensaver while the player is paused.
Matroska edition switching at runtime.
Support for libavfilter (for video->video and audio->audio). This allows using most of FFmpeg's filters, which improve greatly on the old MPlayer filters in features, performance, and correctness.
Improved downmixing and output of surround audio. Instead of using hardcoded pan filters to do remixing, use libavresample. Channel maps are used to identify the channel layout, so e.g. 3.0 and 2.1 audio can be distinguished.
Allow resuming playback at a later point with Shift+q, also see quit_watch_later input command.
Support mapping multiple commands to one key.
Allow changing/adjusting video filters at runtime. (This is also used to make the D key insert vf_yadif if deinterlacing is not supported otherwise.)
Native VAAPI support
OS X: VDA support using libavcodec hwaccel API instead of FFmpeg's decoder. Up to 2-2.5x reduction in CPU usage.
Make hardware decoding in general work with the opengl video output.
Lua scripting (see LUA SCRIPTING)
A client API, that allows embedding mpv into applications (see libmpv/client.h in the sources)
General bug fixes and removal of long-standing issues
General code cleanups (including refactoring or rewrites of many parts)
Many more changes
This listing is about changed command line switches, slave commands, and similar things. Completely removed features are not listed.
There is a new command line syntax, which is generally preferred over the old syntax. -optname optvalue becomes --optname=optvalue.
The old syntax will not be removed. However, the new syntax is mentioned in all documentation and so on, and unlike the old syntax is not ambiguous, so it is a good thing to know about this change.
In general, negating switches like -noopt now have to be written as -no-opt or --no-opt.
Per-file options are not the default anymore. You can explicitly specify file-local options. See Usage section.
Many options have been renamed, removed or changed semantics. Some options that are required for a good playback experience with MPlayer are now superfluous or even worse than the defaults, so make sure to read the manual before trying to use your existing configuration with mpv.
Table of renamed/replaced switches:
| Old |
|---|
| New |
| -no<opt> |
| --no-<opt> (add a dash) |
| -a52drc level |
| --ad-lavc-ac3drc=level |
| -ac spdifac3 |
| --ad=spdif:ac3 (see --ad=help) |
| -af volnorm |
| --af=drc (renamed) |
| -afm hwac3 |
| --ad=spdif:ac3,spdif:dts |
| -ao alsa:device=hw=0.3 |
| --ao=alsa:device=[hw:0,3] |
| -aspect |
| --video-aspect |
| -ass-bottom-margin |
| --vf=sub=bottom:top |
| -ass |
| --sub-ass |
| -audiofile-cache |
| (removed; the main cache settings are used) |
| -audiofile |
| --audio-file |
| -benchmark |
| --untimed (no stats) |
| -capture |
| --stream-capture=<filename> |
| -channels |
| --audio-channels (changed semantics) |
| -cursor-autohide-delay |
| --cursor-autohide |
| -delay |
| --audio-delay |
| -dumpstream |
| --stream-dump=<filename> |
| -dvdangle |
| --dvd-angle |
| -endpos |
| --length |
| -font |
| --osd-font |
| -forcedsubsonly |
| --sub-forced-only |
| -forceidx |
| --index |
| -format |
| --audio-format |
| -fsmode-dontuse |
| (removed) |
| -fstype |
| --x11-netwm (changed semantics) |
| -hardframedrop |
| --framedrop=hard |
| -identify |
| (removed; use TOOLS/mpv_identify.sh) |
| -idx |
| --index |
| -lavdopts ... |
| --vd-lavc-... |
| -lavfdopts |
| --demuxer-lavf-... |
| -lircconf |
| --input-lirc-conf |
| -loop 0 |
| --loop=inf |
| -mixer-channel |
| AO suboptions (alsa, oss) |
| -mixer |
| AO suboptions (alsa, oss) |
| -mouse-movements |
| --input-cursor |
| -msgcolor |
| --msg-color |
| -msglevel |
| --msg-level (changed semantics) |
| -msgmodule |
| --msg-module |
| -name |
| --x11-name |
| -noar |
| --no-input-appleremote |
| -noautosub |
| --no-sub-auto |
| -noconsolecontrols |
| --no-input-terminal |
| -nojoystick |
| --no-input-joystick |
| -nosound |
| --no-audio |
| -osdlevel |
| --osd-level |
| -panscanrange |
| --video-zoom, --video-pan-x/y |
| -playing-msg |
| --term-playing-msg |
| -pp ... |
| '--vf=pp=[...]' |
| -pphelp |
| --vf=pp:help |
| -rawaudio ... |
| --demuxer-rawaudio-... |
| -rawvideo ... |
| --demuxer-rawvideo-... |
| -spugauss |
| --sub-gauss |
| -srate |
| --audio-samplerate |
| -ss |
| --start |
| -ssf <sub> |
| --sws-... |
| -stop-xscreensaver |
| --stop-screensaver |
| -sub-fuzziness |
| --sub-auto |
| -sub |
| --sub-file |
| -subcp |
| --sub-codepage |
| -subdelay |
| --sub-delay |
| -subfile |
| --sub-file |
| -subfont-* |
| --sub-text-*, --osd-* |
| -subfont-text-scale |
| --sub-scale |
| -subfont |
| --sub-text-font |
| -subfps |
| --sub-fps |
| -subpos |
| --sub-pos |
| -sws |
| --sws-scaler |
| -tvscan |
| --tv-scan |
| -use-filename-title |
| --title='${filename}' |
| -vc ffh264vdpau (etc.) |
| --hwdec=vdpau |
| -vobsub |
| --sub-file (pass the .idx file) |
| -x W, -y H |
| --geometry=WxH + --no-keepaspect |
| -xineramascreen |
| --screen (different values) |
| -xy W |
| --autofit=W |
| -zoom |
| Inverse available as --video-unscaled |
| dvdnav:// |
| dvdnav://menu |
| dvd://1 |
| dvd://0 (0-based offset) |
NOTE: -opt val becomes --opt=val.
NOTE: Quite some video filters, video outputs, audio filters, audio outputs, had changes in their option parsing. These aren't mentioned in the table above.
Also, some video and audio filters have been removed, and you have to use libavfilter (using --vf=lavfi=[...] or --af=lavfi=[...]) to get them back.
Table of renamed input commands: This lists only commands that are not always gracefully handled by the internal legacy translation layer. If an input.conf contains any legacy commands, a warning will be printed when starting the player. The warnings also show the replacement commands.
Properties containing _ to separate words use - instead.
| Old |
|---|
| New |
| pt_step 1 [0|1] |
| playlist_next [weak|force] (translation layer cannot deal with whitespace) |
| pt_step -1 [0|1] |
| playlist_prev [weak|force] (same) |
| switch_ratio [<ratio>] |
| set video-aspect <ratio> set video-aspect 0 (reset aspect) |
| step_property_osd <prop> <step> <dir> |
| cycle <prop> <step> (wraps), add <prop> <step> (clamps). <dir> parameter unsupported. Use a negative <step> instead. |
| step_property <prop> <step> <dir> |
| Prefix cycle or add with no-osd: no-osd cycle <prop> <step> |
| osd_show_property_text <text> |
| show_text <text> The property expansion format string syntax slightly changed. |
| osd_show_text |
| Now does the same as osd_show_property_text. Use the raw prefix to disable property expansion. |
| show_tracks |
| show_text ${track-list} |
| show_chapters |
| show_text ${chapter-list} |
| af_switch, af_add, ... |
| af set|add|... |
| tv_start_scan |
| set tv-scan yes |
| tv_set_channel <val> |
| set tv-channel <val> |
| tv_step_channel |
| cycle tv-channel |
| dvb_set_channel <v1> <v2> |
| set dvb-channel <v1>-<v2> |
| dvb_step_channel |
| cycle dvb-channel |
| tv_set_freq <val> |
| set tv-freq <val> |
| tv_step_freq |
| cycle tv-freq |
| tv_set_norm <norm> |
| set tv-norm <norm> |
| tv_step_norm |
| cycle tv-norm |
NOTE: Due to lack of hardware and users using the TV/DVB/PVR features, and due to the need to cleanup the related command code, it's possible that the new commands are buggy or behave worse. This can be improved if testers are available. Otherwise, some of the TV code will be removed at some point.
Slave mode was removed. A proper slave mode application needed tons of code and hacks to get it right. The main problem is that slave mode is a bad and incomplete interface, and to get around that, applications parsed output messages intended for users. It is hard to know which messages exactly are parsed by slave mode applications. This makes it virtually impossible to improve terminal output intended for users without possibly breaking something.
This is absolutely insane, and since initial improvements to mpv quickly made slave mode incompatible to most applications, it was removed as useless cruft. The client API (see below) is provided instead.
--identify was replaced by the TOOLS/mpv_identify.sh wrapper script.
For some time (until including release 0.4.x), mpv supported a --slave-broken option. The following options are equivalent:
--input-file=/dev/stdin --input-terminal=no
Assuming the system supports /dev/stdin.
(The option was readded in 0.5.1 and sets exactly these options.)
A JSON RPC protocol giving access to the client API is planned, but nothing has emerged yet.
mpv also provides a client API, which can be used to embed the player by loading it as shared library. (See libmpv/client.h in the sources.) It might also be possible to implement a custom slave mode-like protocol using Lua scripting.
mpv is in active development. If something is in the way of more important development (such as fixing bugs or implementing new features), we sometimes remove features. Usually this happens only with old features that either seem to be useless, or are not used by anyone. Often these are obscure, or "inherited", or were marked experimental, but never received any particular praise by any users.
Sometimes, features are replaced by something new. The new code will be either simpler or more powerful, but doesn't necessarily provide everything the old feature did.
We can not exclude that we accidentally remove features that are actually popular. Generally, we do not know how much a specific functionality is used. If you miss a feature and think it should be re-added, please open an issue on the mpv bug tracker. Hopefully, a solution can be found. Often, it turns out that re-adding something is not much of a problem, or that there are better alternatives.
mplayer2 is practically dead, and mpv started out as a branch containing new/experimental development. (Some of it was merged right after the fork was made public, seemingly as an acknowledgment that development, or at least merging, should have been more active.)
MPlayer is focused on not breaking anything, but is stuck with a horrible codebase resistant to cleanup. (Unless you do what mpv did - merciless and consequent pruning of bad, old code.) Cleanup and keeping broken things conflict, so the kind of development mpv strives for can't be done within MPlayer due to clashing development policies.
Additionally, mplayer2 already had lots of changes over MPlayer, which would have needed to be backported to the MPlayer codebase. This would not only have been hard (several years of diverging development), but also would have been impossible due to the aforementioned MPlayer development policy.
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.
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS
If set, XDG-style system configuration directories are used. Otherwise, the UNIX convention (PREFIX/etc/mpv/) is used.
TERM
Used to determine terminal type.
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 (default: 0). This is an integer, and the resulting verbosity corresponds to the number of --v options passed to the command line.
MPV_LEAK_REPORT
If set to 1, enable internal talloc leak reporting. Note that this can cause trouble with multithreading, so only developers should use this.
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/Libav:
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 application data directory (%APPDATA%) under Windows. The special value "off" disables caching.
DVDCSS_METHOD
Sets the authentication and decryption method that libdvdcss 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 and 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 devices is raw(8) for instance. Please note that on most operating 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.
Normally mpv returns 0 as exit code after finishing playback successfully. If errors happen, the following exit codes can be returned:
1
Error initializing mpv. This is also returned if unknown options 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 successful if initialization was mostly successful, even if playback 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).
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 returned.
/etc/mpv/mpv.conf
mpv system-wide settings (depends on --prefix passed to configure)
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
mpv user settings
~/.config/mpv/input.conf
key bindings (see INPUT.CONF section)
~/.config/mpv/lua/
All files in this directly are loaded as if they were passed to the --lua option. They are loaded in alphabetical order, and sub-directories and files with no .lua extension are ignored. The --load-scripts=no option disables loading these files.
Note that the environment variables $XDG_CONFIG_HOME and $MPV_HOME can override the standard directory ~/.config/mpv/.
Also, the old config location at ~/.mpv/ is still read, and if the XDG variant does not exist, will still be preferred.
Blu-ray playback:
mpv bd:////path/to/disc
mpv bd:// --bluray-device=/path/to/disc
Play in Japanese with English subtitles:
mpv dvd://1 --alang=ja --slang=en
Play only chapters 5, 6, 7:
mpv dvd://1 --chapter=5-7
Play only titles 5, 6, 7:
mpv dvd://5-7
Play a multi-angle DVD:
mpv dvd://1 --dvd-angle=2
Play from a different DVD device:
mpv dvd://1 --dvd-device=/dev/dvd2
Play DVD video from a directory with VOB files:
mpv dvd://1 --dvd-device=/path/to/directory/
Stream from HTTP:
mpv http://example.com/example.avi
Stream using RTSP:
mpv rtsp://server.example.com/streamName
Play a libavfilter graph:
mpv avdevice://lavfi:mandelbrot
mpv is a MPlayer fork based on mplayer2, which in turn is a fork of MPlayer.
MPlayer was initially written by Arpad Gereoffy. See the AUTHORS file for a list of some of the many other contributors.
MPlayer is (C) 2000-2013 The MPlayer Team
This man page was written mainly by Gabucino, Jonas Jermann and Diego Biurrun.
GPLv2+