mpv

Related articles
MPlayer
yt-dlp
mpv
is a media player based on
MPlayer
and the now unmaintained
mplayer2
. It supports a wide variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. A detailed (although admittedly incomplete) list of differences between
mpv
and the aforementioned players can be found in
[1]
.
Installation
Install
the
mpv
package.
Front ends
See
List of applications/Multimedia#mpv-based
.
Configuration
mpv
comes with good all-around defaults that should work well on computers with weaker/older video cards. However, if you have a computer with a more modern video card,
mpv
allows you to do a great deal of configuration to achieve better video quality (limited only by the power of your video card). To do this, one only needs to create a few configuration files (as they do not exist by default).
Note
Configuration files are read system-wide from
/etc/mpv/
and per-user from
~/.config/mpv/
(unless the
environment variable
XDG_CONFIG_HOME
is set), where per-user settings override system-wide settings, all of which are overridden by the command line. User-specific configuration is suggested since it may require some trial and error.
To help you get started,
mpv
provides sample configuration files with default settings. Copy them to use as a starting point:
$ cp -r /usr/share/doc/mpv/ ~/.config/
mpv.conf
contains the majority of
mpv'
s settings,
input.conf
contains key bindings. Read through both of them to get an idea of how they work and what options are available.
General settings
Add the following settings to
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
.
Subtitle configurations
Enable fuzzy searching:
sub-auto=fuzzy
Change font:
sub-font="fontName"
Bold the subtitles to increase readability:
sub-bold=yes
High quality configurations
By default, mpv utilizes settings that balance quality and performance. Additionally, two predefined profiles are available:
fast
for maximum performance and
high-quality
for superior rendering quality. You can apply a specific profile using the
--profile=
name
option and inspect its contents using
--show-profile=
name
.
profile=high-quality
Live statistics showing how well
mpv
is performing can be brought up with the
i
key. It is very useful for making sure that your hardware can keep up with your configuration and for comparing different configurations.
These last two options are a little more complicated.
video-sync=display-resample
makes it so that if audio and video go out of sync, then instead of dropping video frames, it will resample the audio (a slight change in audio pitch is often less noticeable than dropped frames). The mpv wiki has an in depth article on it titled
Display Synchronization
.
interpolation
makes motion appear smoother on your display by changing the way that frames are shown so that the source framerate jives better with your display's refresh rate (not to be confused with SVP's technique which actually converts video to 60fps). The mpv wiki has an in depth article on it titled
Interpolation
though it is also commonly known as
smoothmotion
.
profile=high-quality
video-sync=display-resample
interpolation
Note
If
NVIDIA Optimus
is being used, the line
video-sync=display-resample
may cause video to be sped up. It also completely messes up frame pacing on some systems, seemingly preventing interpolation from working at all.
Beyond this, there is still a lot you can do, but things become more complicated, require more powerful video cards, and are in constant development. As a brief overview, it is possible to load special shaders that perform exotic scaling and sharpening techniques including some that actually use deep neural networks trained on images (for both real world and animated content). To learn more about this, take a look around the
mpv wiki
, particularly the
user shader's section
.
There are also plenty of other options you may find desirable as well. It is worthwhile taking a look at
mpv(1)
. It is also helpful to run
mpv
from the command line to check for error messages about the config.
Custom profiles
In
mpv.conf
it is possible to create
profiles
which are essentially just "groups of options" with which you can:
Quickly switch between different configurations without having to rewrite the file.
Create special profiles for special content.
nest
profiles so that you can make more complicated
profiles
out of simpler ones.
Creating a profile is easy. The area at the top of
mpv.conf
is called the top level, any options you write there will kick into effect once
mpv
is started. However, once you define a profile by writing its name in brackets, every option you write below it (until you define a new profile) is considered part of that profile. Here is an example
mpv.conf
:
profile=myprofile2        #Top level area, load myprofile2
ontop=yes                 #Always on top

[myprofile1]              #A simple profile, top level area ends here
profile-desc="a profile"  #Optional description for profile
fs=yes                    #Start in full screen

[myprofile2]              #Another simple profile
profile=high-quality      #A built in profile that comes with mpv
log-file=~~/log           #Sets a location for writing a log file, ~~/ translates to ~/.config/mpv
There are only two lines within the top level area and there are two separate profiles defined below it. When
mpv
starts, it sees the first line, loads the options in
myprofile2
(which means it loads the options in
high-quality
and
log-file=~~/log
) finally it loads
ontop=yes
and finishes starting up. Note,
myprofile1
is never loaded because it is never called in the top level area.
Alternatively, one could call
mpv
from the command line with:
$ mpv --profile=myprofile1 video.mkv
and it would ignore all options except the ones for
myprofile1
.
Automatic profiles
Certain types of profiles will be loaded automatically based on either the file extension or the protocol used.
These profiles will be loaded for all files with a matching file extension (for all
.mkv
and
.gif
files respectively):
[extension.mkv]
keep-open
volume-max=150

[extension.gif]
osc=no
loop-file
This profile will be loaded automatically whenever any http or https streams are played
(e.g.
mpv https://example.com/video.mp4
):
[protocol.https]
speed=2
keep-open

[protocol.http]
profile=protocol.https
Run
mpv --list-protocols
to see the different protocols supported by mpv.
Key bindings
Key bindings are fairly straightforward given the examples in
/usr/share/doc/mpv/input.conf
and
mpv(1) § COMMAND INTERFACE
.
Add the following examples to
~/.config/mpv/input.conf
:
shift+s         screenshot each-frame
Shift+UP        seek  600
Shift+DOWN      seek -600
=               cycle video-unscaled
-               cycle-values window-scale 2 3 1 .5
WHEEL_UP        add volume 5
WHEEL_DOWN      add volume -5
WHEEL_LEFT      ignore
WHEEL_RIGHT     ignore
Alt+RIGHT       add video-rotate 90
Alt+LEFT        add video-rotate -90
Alt+-           add video-zoom -0.25
Alt+=           add video-zoom 0.25
Alt+j           add video-pan-x -0.05
Alt+l           add video-pan-x 0.05
Alt+i           add video-pan-y 0.05
Alt+k           add video-pan-y -0.05
Alt+BS          set video-zoom 0; set video-pan-x 0; set video-pan-y 0
For an attempt to reproduce MPC-HC key bindings in mpv, see
[2]
.
Additional configuration files
In addition there are a few more configuration files and directories that can be created, among which:
~/.config/mpv/script-opts/osc.conf
manages the on Screen Controller. See
mpv(1) § ON SCREEN CONTROLLER
for more information.
~/.config/mpv/scripts/
script-name
.lua
for Lua scripts. See
[3]
for an example.
See
mpv(1) § FILES
for information on other files and directories.
Scripts
mpv
has a
large variety of scripts
that extend the functionality of the player. To this end, it has internal bindings for both Lua and JavaScript.
Scripts are typically installed by putting them in the
~/.config/mpv/scripts/
directory (you may have to create it first). After that they will be automatically loaded when mpv starts (this behavior can be altered with other
mpv
options). Some scripts come with their own installation and configuration instructions, so make sure to have a look. In addition some scripts are old, broken, and unmaintained.
JavaScript
JavaScript (ES5 via
MuJS
) has been supported as an mpv scripting language since 2014. Currently only
a few scripts
are available, but documentation exists at
mpv(1) § JAVASCRIPT
for anyone interested in making their own.
To get started, drop a script with a
.js
extension in the mpv
scripts
directory, e.g.:
~/.config/mpv/scripts/fullscreen-off-on-pause.js
function onPauseChange (prop, enabled) {
    if (enabled) {
        mp.set_property('fullscreen', 'no')
    }
}

mp.observe_property('pause', 'bool', onPauseChange)
For more details, e.g. on using
require
to load CommonJS modules, see
mpv(1) § CommonJS modules and require(id)
.
Lua
The development of
mpv'
s Lua scripts is documented in
mpv(1) § LUA SCRIPTING
with examples in
TOOLS/lua
, which are installed to
/usr/share/mpv/scripts
.
For example, you can enable the builtin script to automatically crop videos with black bars:
$ ln -s /usr/share/mpv/scripts/autocrop.lua ~/.config/mpv/scripts
mpv-ytdlAutoFormat
mpv-ytdlautoformat
is a Lua script to auto change ytdl-format for Youtube and Twitch or the domains you desire, to 480p or the quality you desire.
mpv-webm
mpv-webm
(or simply
webm
) is a very easy to use Lua script that allows one to create WebM files while watching videos. It includes several features and does not have any extra dependencies (relies entirely on mpv).
ytdl-preload
ytdl-preload
is a Lua script to preload the next ytdl-link in your playlist.
Note
The script is still in active developing process.
C
mpv-mpris
The C plugin
mpv-mpris
allows other applications to integrate with
mpv
via the
MPRIS
protocol. For example, with
mpv-mpris
installed,
kdeconnect
can automatically pause video playback in
mpv
when a phone call arrives. Another example is buttons (play\pause etc) on bluetooth audio-devices.
To use the plugin, install
mpv-mpris
.
Vapoursynth
Vapoursynth is an alternative to AviSynth that can be used on Linux and allows for Video manipulation via python scripts. Vapoursynths python scripts can be used as video filters for
mpv
.
The
mpv
package now enables Vapoursynth support by default.
SVP 4 Linux (SmoothVideoProject)
This article or section is out of date.
Reason:
SVP now requires a
paid license
after a 30 days trial period. (Discuss in
Talk:Mpv
)
SmoothVideoProject SVP
is a program that is primarily known for converting video to 60fps. It is free [as in beer] and full featured for 64bit Linux (costs money for Windows and OS X and is incompatible with 32bit Linux).
It has three main features and each one can be disabled/enabled as one chooses (you are not forced to use motion interpolation).
Motion interpolation
(
youtube video
) - An algorithm that converts video to 60fps. This creates the somewhat controversial "soap opera effect" that some people love and others hate. Unfortunately, the algorithm is not perfect and it also introduces more than its share of weird artifacts. The algorithm can be tuned (via a slider) for either performance or quality. It also has some artifact reduction settings that interpolate actual frames with the generated frames reducing the noticeability of the artifacts. The framerate detection can be set to automatic or manual (manual seems to resolve performance issues for some users).
Black bar lighting
(
youtube video
) - If the image has an aspect ratio that produces black bars on your display, SVP will illuminate the black bars with "lights" generated by the content on the screen. It has some amount of customization, but the defaults are pretty close to optimal.
LED ambient lighting control
(
youtube video
) - Has the ability to control LED ambient lighting attached to your television.
Once you have
mpv
compiled with Vapoursynth support, it is fairly easy to get SVP working with
mpv
. Simply install
svp-bin
AUR
, open the SVP program to let it assess your system performance (you may want to close other programs first so that it gets an accurate reading), and finally add the following
mpv
profile to your mpv.conf
[4]
:
mpv.conf
[svp]
input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket     # Receives input from SVP
hr-seek-framedrop=no                # Fixes audio desync
watch-later-options-remove=vf       # Do not remember SVP's video filters

# Can fix stuttering in some cases, in other cases probably causes it. Try it if you experience stuttering.
#opengl-early-flush=yes
Then, in order to use SVP, you must have the SVP program running in the background before opening the file using
mpv
with that profile. Either do:
$ mpv --profile=svp video.mkv
or set
profile=svp
in the top-level portion of the
mpv
configuration
.
If you want to use hardware decoding, you must use a copy-back decoder since normal decoders are not compatible with Vapoursynth (choose a
hwdec
option that ends in
-copy
). For instance:
hwdec=auto-copy
hwdec-codecs=all
Either way, hardware decoding is discouraged by
mpv
developers and is not likely to make a significant difference in performance.
Tips and tricks
Picture
Hardware video acceleration
See
Hardware video acceleration
.
Hardware accelerated video decoding is available via the
--hwdec=
API
option. For a list of all supported APIs and other required options, see
mpv(1) § hwdec
.
To make it permanent (for example when playing videos from a desktop environment), add it to the configuration file:
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
hwdec=auto
To allow CPU processing with video filters, choose a
*-copy
API.
Use the keyboard shortcut
Ctrl+h
while a video is running to toggle hardware decoding.
To troubleshoot hardware acceleration, adjusting the logging levels (see
mpv(1) § msg-level
) may be necessary. For instance,
--msg-level=vd=v,vo=v,vo/gpu/vaapi-egl=trace
enables the following:
Verbose
messages from the video decoder (
vd
) and video output (
vo
) modules.
Even more detailed
trace
messages for the module responsible for video decoding. Here, after running mpv once without any log levels adjusted, the module of interest was empirically determined to be
vo/gpu/vaapi-egl
.
Quickly cycle between aspect ratios
You can cycle between aspect ratios using
Shift+a
.
Ignoring aspect ratio
You can ignore the aspect ratio using
--keepaspect=
no
. To make the option permanent, add the line
keepaspect=
no
to the configuration file.
Draw to the root window
Run
mpv
with
--wid=0
.
mpv
will draw to the window with a window ID of 0.
Always show the application window
To show the application window even for audio files when launching mpv from the command line, use the
--force-window
option. To make the option permanent, add the line
force-window=yes
to the configuration file.
Disable video output
To disable video output when launching from command line, use the
--vid=no
option, or its alias,
--no-video
.
Terminal video
--vo=tct
"Color Unicode art video output driver that works on a text console."
--vo=caca
"Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console."
libcaca
support has been disabled on Arch due to vulnerabilities (see
FS#70962
) and has not been added back in as its upstream is inactive: install
mpv-full
AUR
.
--vo=kitty
"Using Kitty protocol for video output that works on all terminals that support this protocol"
Audio
Volume is too low
Set
volume-max=
value
in your configuration file to a reasonable amount, such as
volume-max=150
, which then allows you to increase your volume up to 150%, which is more than twice as loud. Increasing your volume too high will result in clipping artefacts. Additionally (or alternatively), you can utilize
dynamic range compression
with
af=acompressor
.
Specify an audio output
Run the following command to get a list of available audio output devices
$ mpv --audio-device=help
Then add one to
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
. For example:
audio-device=alsa/hdmi:CARD=NVidia,DEV=1
HD Audio passthrough
To enable HD audio codecs like TrueHD and DTS-MA to passthrough to an AV receiver, add the following to
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
audio-spdif=ac3,eac3,dts-hd,truehd
Volume normalization
This article or section needs expansion.
Reason:
Add little more details about the available filters, see
[5]
for a comparison of
loudnorm
and
dynaudnorm
. (Discuss in
Talk:Mpv
)
Different sources may have different or inconsistent loudness, so
mpv
users may need to configure automatic volume normalization. For example:
~/.config/mpv/input.conf
n cycle_values af loudnorm=I=-30 loudnorm=I=-15 anull
This binds the key
n
to cycle the audio filter settings (
af
) through the specified values:
loudnorm=I=-30
: loudnorm setting with
I=-30
, soft volume, might be suitable for background music
loudnorm=I=-15
: louder volume, might be good for the video currently in view
anull
: reset audio filter to null, i.e., disable the audio filter
Note
Binding a key does not change the default audio filter. To change the default, add e.g.
af=loudnorm=I=-30
to the main configuration file.
Audio filtering in
mpv
is provided by the
FFmpeg
backend. See
Wikipedia:EBU R 128
and
ffmpeg loudnorm filter
for details.
See also upstream issues
[6]
and
[7]
which mention different options.
Improving mpv as a music player with Lua scripts
This blog post
introduces the
music.lua
script, which shows how Lua scripts can be used to improve
mpv
as a music player.
Save position on quit
By default, you can save the position and quit by pressing
Shift+q
. The shortcut can be changed by setting
quit_watch_later
in the key bindings configuration file.
To automatically save the current playback position on quit, start
mpv
with
--save-position-on-quit
, or add
save-position-on-quit
to the configuration file.
Save position of a playlist and pause on next file
A playlist could simply be a list of files, see
mpv(1) § playlist
. To play a playlist and remember its position:
$ mpv --save-position-on-quit --pause --reset-on-next-file=pause --playlist=
/path/to/playlist
With the option
--pause
mpv
will start in paused state and
--reset-on-next-file=pause
will reset the pause mode when switching to the next file.
Play a DVD
mpv does not support DVD menus. To start the main stream with the longest title of a video DVD, use the command:
$ mpv dvd://
An optional title specifier is a number (starting at 0) which selects between separate video streams on the DVD:
$ mpv dvd://[title]
DVDs which have been copied on to a local file system (by e.g. the
dvdbackup
tool) are accommodated by specifying the path to the local copy:
--dvd-device=
PATH
.
See the following
desktop file
example for playing DVDs from a local file system:
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=mpv Media Player DVD 
GenericName=Multimedia player
Comment=Play movies and songs
Icon=mpv
Exec=mpv dvd:// --player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui --force-window --idle --dvd-device=%f
Terminal=false
Categories=AudioVideo;Audio;Video;Player;TV;
# (MimeType and X-KDE-Protocols omitted, see original mpv.desktop file)
By replacing the Exec line with
Exec=mpv dvd://0 dvd://1 dvd://2 dvd://3 dvd://4 dvd://5 dvd://6 dvd://7 dvd://8 dvd://9  --player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui --force-window --idle --dvd-device=%f
the mpv player will queue DVD title 0 to 9 in the playlist, which allows the user to play the titles consecutively or jump forward and backward in the DVD titles with the mpv GUI.
Install
libdvdcss
, to fix the error:
[dvdnav] Error getting next block from DVD 1 (Error reading from DVD.)
Restoring old OSC
Since version 0.21.0,
mpv
has replaced the on-screen controls by a bottombar. In case you want on-screen controls back, you can edit the
mpv
configuration
as described here
.
Reproducible screenshots
The screenshot template option can include the precise timecode (HH:MM:SS.mmm) of the screenshoted frame. The meaningful filename makes it easy to know the origin of the screenshot. It can be set like this:
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
screenshot-template="%F - [%P] (%#01n)"
This expands to
filename
- [HH:MM:SS.mmm] (
number
).jpg
. Example result:
Gunsmith Cats/
├── Gunsmith Cats Ep. 01 - [00:00:50.217] (1).jpg
├── Gunsmith Cats Ep. 01 - [00:22:55.874] (1).jpg
├── Gunsmith Cats Ep. 01 - [00:22:55.874] (2).jpg
└── Gunsmith Cats Ep. 02 - [00:15:05.778] (1).jpg
A bonus is it sorts nicely because alphabetically, the timecode is sorted within the episode number.
See
mpv(1) § screenshot-template
for more information.
Creating a single screenshot
An example of creating a single screenshot, by using a start time (
HH:MM:SS
):
$ mpv --no-audio --start=00:01:30 --frames=1 /path/to/video/file --o=/path/to/screenshot.png
Screenshots will be saved in /path/to/screenshot.png.
Streaming
Twitch.tv streaming over mpv
If
yt-dlp
or
youtube-dl
AUR
is installed,
mpv
can directly open a Twitch livestream.
Alternatively, see
Streamlink#Twitch
.
Another alternative based on Livestreamer is this Lua script:
https://gist.github.com/ChrisK2/8701184fe3ea7701c9cc
youtube-dl and choosing formats
The default
--ytdl-format
is
bestvideo+bestaudio/best
. For youtube videos that have 4K resolutions available, this may mean that your device will struggle to decode 4K VP9 encoded video in software even if the attached monitor is much lower resolution.
Setting the right youtube-dl format selectors can fix this easily though. In the following configuration example, only videos with a vertical resolution of 1080 pixels or less will be considered.
ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?1080]+bestaudio/best"
If you wish to avoid a certain codec altogether because you cannot hardware-decode it, you can add this to the format selector. For example, we can additionally choose to ignore VP9 as follows:
ytdl-format="bestvideo[height<=?1080][vcodec!~='vp0?9']+bestaudio/best"
If you prefer best quality open codecs (VP9 and Opus), use:
ytdl-format="((bestvideo[vcodec^=vp9]/bestvideo)+(bestaudio[acodec=opus]/bestaudio[acodec=vorbis]/bestaudio[acodec=aac]/bestaudio))/best"
youtube-dl audio with search
To find and stream audio from your terminal emulator with
yta
search terms
, put the following function in your
shell startup file
:
function yta() {
    mpv --ytdl-format=bestaudio ytdl://ytsearch:"$*"
}
V4L2 AV capture device
For example, live streaming from an USB webcam or from an USB HDMI capture device.
Find the V4L2 device's video device node:
$ v4l2-ctl --list-devices
HDMI Capture: HDMI Capture (usb-0000:07:00.1-2):
	/dev/video2
	/dev/video3
	/dev/media1
Usually this ist the first listed
/dev/video*
node, here
/dev/video2
.
Then, find the name of the capture device's PulseAudio source:
$ pactl list short sources | grep --invert-match --regexp=.monitor
(...some devices omitted...)
8750	alsa_input.usb-XF_HDMI_Capture_20000130041415-02.iec958-stereo	PipeWire	s16le 2ch 48000Hz	SUSPENDED
That name would here be
alsa_input.usb-XF_HDMI_Capture_20000130041415-02.iec958-stereo
.
Now you can launch MPV with this command:
$ mpv --audio-file=av://pulse:alsa_input.usb-XF_HDMI_Capture_20000130041415-02.iec958-stereo -- av://v4l2:/dev/video2
System integration
Opening video links from the KDE clipboard
If
youtube-dl
AUR
or
yt-dlp
is installed and
KDE Plasma
is being used, it is possible to create a custom action in the KDE clipboard to conveniently play links from video sharing sites.
Open the clipboard configuration menu (typically by right-clicking its icon in the system tray) and go to the
Actions
tab.
Click
Add Action
then enter a regular expression to detect the sites you would like to play video from (e.g.
^http.+(youtu|twitch)
to detect YouTube and Twitch URLs).
Click
Add Command
, under
Command
enter
mpv %s
and under
Description
enter
mpv
.
Now, you can play video links from your clipboard in
mpv
by pressing
Ctrl+Alt+r
and selecting
mpv
from the context menu. You may need to go to
Advanced Settings
and remove Firefox from the section
Disable Actions for Windows of Type WM_CLASS
.
Troubleshooting
General debugging
If you are having trouble with
mpv'
s playback (or if it is flat out failing to run) then the first three things you should do are:
Run
mpv
from the command line (the -v flag increases verbosity). If you are lucky there will be an error message there telling you what is wrong.
$ mpv -v video.mkv
Have
mpv
output a log file. The log file might be difficult to sift through but if something is broken you might see it there.
$ mpv -v --log-file=./log video.mkv
Run
mpv
without a configuration. If this runs well then the problem is somewhere in your configuration (perhaps your hardware cannot keep up with your settings).
$ mpv --no-config video.mkv
If
mpv
runs but it just does not run well then a fourth thing that might be worth taking a look at is the live statistics (with
i
) to see exactly how it is performing.
Fix jerky playback and tearing
mpv
defaults to using the OpenGL video output device setting on hardware that supports it. In cases such as trying to play video back on a 4K display using an Intel HD4XXX series card or similar, you will find video playback unreliable, jerky to the point of stopping entirely at times and with major tearing when using any OpenGL output setting. If you experience any of these issues, using the XV (
Xorg
only) video output device may help:
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
vo=xv
Note
This is the most compatible VO on X, but may be low-quality, and has issues with OSD and subtitle display.
It is possible to increase playback performance even more (especially on lower hardware), but this decreases the video quality dramatically in most cases.
The following
options
may be considered to increase the video playback performance:
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
vd-lavc-fast
vd-lavc-skiploopfilter=
skipvalue
vd-lavc-skipframe=
skipvalue
vd-lavc-framedrop=
skipvalue
vd-lavc-threads=
threads
Problems with window compositors
As described in
mpv(1) § Window
, mpv by default disables any active window
compositor
while in fullscreen mode. This is done to prevent potential performance issues during playback.
For window compositors such as KWin or Mutter, it can be advantageous to disable window compositing even while in windowed mode. This can be achieved by using setting the
x11-bypass-compositor=yes
option.
There are two disadvantages to disabling compositing:
Re-enabling compositing may introduce stutter for a period of time, particularly if using KWin compositing.
Any effects provided by compositing will be temporarily unavailable (until mpv re-enables it), which in
Plasma
prevents the default app switcher from working.
To sidestep these issues, you can try keeping your compositor enabled with
x11-bypass-compositor=no
No volume bar, cannot change volume
Spin the mouse wheel over the volume icon.
GNOME Blank screen (Wayland)
mpv
may not suspend GNOME's Power Saving Settings if using Wayland resulting in screen saver turning off the monitor during video playback. A workaround is to add
gnome-session-inhibit
to the beginning of the
Exec=
line in
mpv.desktop
.
In order to inhibit the screensaver only during playback, use
mpv_inhibit_gnome
AUR
. Alternatively, a
mpv lua script
based on
gnome-session-inhibit
may be used.
Tip
The
io.mpv.Mpv
flatpak app already includes the
mpv_inhibit_gnome
plugin.
Cursor theme not respected under GNOME Wayland
See
GNOME/Troubleshooting#Cursor size or theme issues on Wayland
.
Error message about missing CUDA libraries on AMD GPUs
While using VAAPI hardware acceleration on AMD GPUs on versions
v0.34.1
and older, you may see a persistent error message saying
Cannot load libcuda.so.1
. This can be suppressed by setting
gpu-hwdec-interop=vaapi
.
Related bug reports:
Github issue #9691
,
Github issue #8765
This issue has been fixed upstream in
pull request #9842
.
Unable to play audio if PipeWire is masked
If
mpv
crashes or fails to play audio on systems where
PipeWire
is
masked
, reporting no outputs or broken pipe, set the
--ao
option to match your environment. Set it in
mpv.conf
for persistent configuration.
mpv will not start playing a DVD from file
If
mpv
will not play a DVD from file in plain VIDEO_TS/VOB structure, there could be a problem with the restore playback position function. Try either cleaning
.config/mpv/watch_later
folder, or start
mpv
with the
no-resume-playback
option and/or set the
save-position-on-quit=no
option.
Fix stuttering after resuming playback from pause
If video is stuttering with
PulseAudio
, try the
pulse-latency-hacks
option discussed at
mpv(1) § --pulse-latency-hacks
:
~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf
pulse-latency-hacks=yes
Screen sharing cannot capture audio from mpv
For example, when you share
mpv
into Discord with Discord's "Share a window" functionality and specify that audio should be shared as well, yet Discord fails to capture
mpv'
s audio.
This has been observed when the system uses
PipeWire
. Then, by default,
mpv
uses its
pipewire
audio output driver, which may cause this issue.
The solution is to switch
mpv
to its
pulse
audio output driver. This should be uncritical as PipeWire also implements
PulseAudio
's audio API.
When running
mpv
from the command line this can be done by supplying the
--ao=pulse
option.
To permanently make
mpv
use its PulseAudio audio output driver you can put an
ao=pulse
text line into an
mpv
configuration file.