mpv

a media player

Copyright:	GPLv2+
Manual section:	1
Manual group:	multimedia

SYNOPSIS

mpv [options] [file|URL|PLAYLIST|-]

mpv [options] files

DESCRIPTION

mpv is a media player based on MPlayer and mplayer2. It supports a wide variety of video file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. Special input URL types are available to read input from a 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.

INTERACTIVE CONTROL

mpv has a fully configurable, command-driven control layer which allows you to control mpv using keyboard, mouse, or remote control (there is no LIRC support - configure remotes as input devices instead).

See the --input- options for ways to customize it.

The following listings are not necessarily complete. See etc/input.conf for a list of default bindings. User input.conf files and Lua scripts can define additional key bindings.

Keyboard Control

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).
Ctrl+LEFT and Ctrl+RIGHT: Seek to the previous/next subtitle. Subject to some restrictions and might not always work; see sub-seek command.
[ 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.
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 between normal and playback time/duration.
v: Toggle subtitle visibility.
j and J: Cycle through the available subtitles.
x and z: Adjust subtitle delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
l: Set/clear A-B loop points. See ab-loop command for details.
L: Toggle infinite looping.
Ctrl + and Ctrl -: Adjust audio delay by +/- 0.1 seconds.
u: Switch between applying no style overrides to SSA/ASS subtitles, and overriding them almost completely with the normal subtitle style. See --sub-ass-style-override for more info.
V: Toggle subtitle VSFilter aspect compatibility mode. See --sub-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.)
Ctrl s: Take a screenshot, as the window shows it (with subtitles, OSD, and scaled video).
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.
A: Cycle aspect ratio override.

(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.
Alt+0 (and command+0 on OSX): Resize video window to half its original size.
Alt+1 (and command+1 on OSX): Resize video window to its original size.
Alt+2 (and command+2 on OSX): Resize video window to double its original size.
command + f (OSX only): Toggle fullscreen (see also --fs).
command + [ and command + ] (OSX only): 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 tv-channel.
H and K: Select previous/next dvb-channel.

Mouse Control

button 3 and button 4: Seek backward/forward 1 minute.
button 5 and button 6: Decrease/increase volume.

USAGE

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.

Escaping spaces and other special characters

Keep in mind that the shell will partially parse and mangle the arguments you pass to mpv. For example, you might need to quote or escape options and filenames:

mpv "filename with spaces.mkv" --title="window title"

It gets more complicated if the suboption parser is involved. The suboption parser puts several options into a single string, and passes them to a component at once, instead of using multiple options on the level of the command line.

The suboption parser can quote strings with " and [...]. Additionally, there is a special form of quoting with %n% described below.

For example, assume the hypothetical foo filter can take multiple options:

mpv test.mkv --vf=foo:option1=value1:option2:option3=value3,bar

This passes option1 and option3 to the foo filter, with option2 as flag (implicitly option2=yes), and adds a bar filter after that. If an option contains spaces or characters like , or :, you need to quote them:

mpv '--vf=foo:option1="option value with spaces",bar'

Shells may actually strip some quotes from the string passed to the commandline, so the example quotes the string twice, ensuring that mpv receives the " quotes.

The [...] form of quotes wraps everything between [ and ]. It's useful with shells that don't interpret these characters in the middle of an argument (like bash). These quotes are balanced (since mpv 0.9.0): the [ and ] nest, and the quote terminates on the last ] that has no matching [ within the string. (For example, [a[b]c] results in a[b]c.)

The fixed-length quoting syntax is intended for use with external scripts and programs.

It is started with % and has the following format:

%n%string_of_length_n

Examples

mpv '--vf=foo:option1=%11%quoted text' test.avi

Or in a script:

mpv --vf=foo:option1=%`expr length "$NAME"`%"$NAME" test.avi

Suboptions passed to the client API are also subject to escaping. Using mpv_set_option_string() is exactly like passing --name=data to the command line (but without shell processing of the string). Some options support passing values in a more structured way instead of flat strings, and can avoid the suboption parsing mess. For example, --vf supports MPV_FORMAT_NODE, which lets you pass suboptions as a nested data structure of maps and arrays.

Paths

Some care must be taken when passing arbitrary paths and filenames to mpv. For example, paths starting with - will be interpreted as options. Likewise, if a path contains the sequence ://, the string before that might be interpreted as protocol prefix, even though :// can be part of a legal UNIX path. To avoid problems with arbitrary paths, you should be sure that absolute paths passed to mpv start with /, and prefix relative paths with ./.

Using the file:// pseudo-protocol is discouraged, because it involves strange URL unescaping rules.

The name - itself is interpreted as stdin, and will cause mpv to disable console controls. (Which makes it suitable for playing data piped to stdin.)

The special argument -- can be used to stop mpv from interpreting the following arguments as options.

When using the client API, you should strictly avoid using mpv_command_string for invoking the loadfile command, and instead prefer e.g. mpv_command to avoid the need for filename escaping.

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 fixed-length syntax, e.g. %n%string_of_length_n (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.) There are the following paths as well:

Name	Meaning
`~~home/`	same as `~~/`
`~~global/`	the global config path, if available (not on win32)
`~~osxbundle/`	the OSX bundle resource path (OSX only)
`~~desktop/`	the path to the desktop (win32, OSX)

Per-File Options

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.

Playing DVDs

DVDs can be played with the dvd://[title] syntax. The optional title specifier is a number which selects between separate video streams on the DVD. If no title is given (dvd://) then the longest title is selected automatically by the library. This is usually what you want. mpv does not support DVD menus.

DVDs which have been copied on to a hard drive or other mounted filesystem (by e.g. the dvdbackup tool) are accommodated by specifying the path to the local copy: --dvd-device=PATH. Alternatively, running mpv PATH should auto-detect a DVD directory tree and play the longest title.

Note

mpv uses a different default DVD library than MPlayer. MPlayer uses libdvdread by default, and mpv uses libdvdnav by default. Both libraries are developed in parallel, but libdvdnav is intended to support more sophisticated DVD features such as menus and multi-angle playback. mpv uses libdvdnav for files specified as either dvd://... or dvdnav://.... To use libdvdread, which will produce behavior more like MPlayer, specify dvdread://... instead. Some users have experienced problems when using libdvdnav, in which playback gets stuck in a DVD menu stream. These problems are reported to go away when auto-selecting the title (dvd:// rather than dvd://1) or when using libdvdread (e.g. dvdread://0).

DVDs use image-based subtitles. Image subtitles are implemented as a bitmap video stream which can be superimposed over the main movie. mpv's subtitle styling and positioning options and keyboard shortcuts generally do not work with image-based subtitles. Exceptions include options like --stretch-dvd-subs and --stretch-image-subs-to-screen.

CONFIGURATION FILES

Location and Syntax

You can put all of the options in configuration files which will be read every time mpv is run. The system-wide configuration file 'mpv.conf' is in your configuration directory (e.g. /etc/mpv or /usr/local/etc/mpv), the user-specific one is ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf. For details and platform specifics (in particular Windows paths) see the FILES section.

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.

Example configuration file

# Use opengl video output by default.
vo=opengl
# Use quotes for text that can contain spaces:
status-msg="Time: ${time-pos}"

Escaping spaces and special characters

This is done like with command line options. The shell is not involved here, but option values still need to be quoted as a whole if it contains certain characters like spaces. A config entry can be quoted with ", as well as with the fixed-length syntax (%n%) mentioned before. This is like passing the exact contents of the quoted string as command line option. C-style escapes are currently _not_ interpreted on this level, although some options do this manually. (This is a mess and should probably be changed at some point.)

Putting Command Line Options into the Configuration File

Almost all command line options can be put into the configuration file. Here is a small guide:

Option	Configuration file entry
`--flag`	`flag`
`-opt val`	`opt=val`
`--opt=val`	`opt=val`
`-opt "has spaces"`	`opt="has spaces"`

File-specific Configuration Files

You can also write file-specific configuration files. If you wish to have a configuration file for a file called 'video.avi', create a file named 'video.avi.conf' with the file-specific options in it and put it in ~/.config/mpv/. You can also put the configuration file in the same directory as the file to be played. Both require you to set the --use-filedir-conf option (either on the command line or in your global config file). If a file-specific configuration file is found in the same directory, no file-specific configuration is loaded from ~/.config/mpv. In addition, the --use-filedir-conf option enables directory-specific configuration files. For this, mpv first tries to load a mpv.conf from the same directory as the file played and then tries to load any file-specific configuration.

Profiles

To ease working with different configurations, profiles can be defined in the configuration files. A profile starts with its name in square brackets, e.g. [my-profile]. All following options will be part of the profile. A description (shown by --profile=help) can be defined with the profile-desc option. To end the profile, start another one or use the profile name default to continue with normal options.

Example mpv config file with profiles

# normal top-level option
fullscreen=yes

# a profile that can be enabled with --profile=big-cache
[big-cache]
cache=123400
demuxer-readahead-secs=20

[slow]
profile-desc="some profile name"
# reference a builtin profile
profile=opengl-hq

[fast]
vo=vdpau

# using a profile again extends it
[slow]
framedrop=no
# you can also include other profiles
profile=big-cache

Auto profiles

Some profiles are loaded automatically. The following example demonstrates this:

Auto profile loading

[protocol.dvd]
profile-desc="profile for dvd:// streams"
alang=en

[extension.flv]
profile-desc="profile for .flv files"
vf=flip

The profile name follows the schema type.name, where type can be protocol for the input/output protocol in use (see --list-protocols), and extension for the extension of the path of the currently played file (not the file format).

This feature is very limited, and there are no other auto profiles.

TAKING SCREENSHOTS

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 mpv-shotNNNN.jpg will be saved in the working directory, using the first available number - no files will be overwritten. In pseudo-GUI mode, the screenshot will be saved somewhere else. See PSEUDO GUI MODE.

A screenshot will usually contain the unscaled video contents at the end of the video filter chain and subtitles. By default, S takes screenshots without subtitles, while s includes subtitles.

Unlike with MPlayer, the screenshot video filter is not required. This filter was never required in mpv, and has been removed.

TERMINAL STATUS LINE

During playback, mpv shows the playback status on the terminal. It looks like something like this:

AV: 00:03:12 / 00:24:25 (13%) A-V: -0.000

The status line can be overridden with the --term-status-msg option.

The following is a list of things that can show up in the status line. Input properties, that can be used to get the same information manually, are also listed.

AV: or V: (video only) or A: (audio only)
The current time position in HH:MM:SS format (playback-time property)
The total file duration (absent if unknown) (length property)
Playback speed, e.g. `` x2.0``. Only visible if the speed is not normal. This is the user-requested speed, and not the actual speed (usually they should be the same, unless playback is too slow). (speed 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.
Display sync state. If display sync is active (display-sync-active property), this shows DS: 2.500/13, where the first number is average number of vsyncs per video frame (e.g. 2.5 when playing 24Hz videos on 60Hz screens), which might jitter if the ratio doesn't round off, or there are mistimed frames (vsync-ratio), and the second number of estimated number of vsyncs which took too long (vo-delayed-frame-count property). The latter is a heuristic, as it's generally not possible to determine this with certainty.
Dropped frames, e.g. Dropped: 4. Shows up only if the count is not 0. Can grow if the video framerate is higher than that of the display, or if video rendering is too slow. May also be incremented on "hiccups" and when the video frame couldn't be displayed on time. (vo-drop-frame-count property.) If the decoder drops frames, the number of decoder-dropped frames is appended to the display as well, e.g.: Dropped: 4/34. This happens only if decoder frame dropping is enabled with the --framedrop options. (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 cache-used properties.)

PROTOCOLS

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.

Note that not all prefixes are documented here. Undocumented prefixes are either aliases to documented protocols, or are just redirections to protocols implemented and documented in FFmpeg.

ytdl://...

By default, the youtube-dl hook script (enabled by default for mpv CLI) only looks at http URLs. Prefixing an URL with ytdl:// forces it to be always processed by the script. This can also be used to invoke special youtube-dl functionality like playing a video by ID or invoking search.

Keep in mind that you can't pass youtube-dl command line options by this, and you have to use --ytdl-raw-options instead.

-

Play data from stdin.

smb://PATH

Play a path from Samba share.

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 directory directly.

dvd://[title|[starttitle]-endtitle][/device] --dvd-device=PATH

Play a DVD. DVD menus are not supported. 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://[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.

fd://123

Read data from the given file descriptor (for example 123). This is similar to piping data to stdin via -, but can use an arbitrary file descriptor.

edl://[edl specification as in edl-mpv.rst]

Stitch together parts of multiple files and play them.

null://

Simulate an empty file. If opened for writing, it will discard all data. The null demuxer will specifically pass autoprobing if this protocol is used (while it's not automatically invoked for empty files).

memory://data

Use the data part as source data.

hex://data

Like memory://, but the string is interpreted as hexdump.

PSEUDO GUI MODE

mpv has no official GUI, other than the OSC (ON SCREEN CONTROLLER), which is not a full GUI and is not meant to be. However, to compensate for the lack of expected GUI behavior, mpv will in some cases start with some settings changed to behave slightly more like a GUI mode.

Currently this happens only in the following cases:

if started using the mpv.desktop file on Linux (e.g. started from menus or file associations provided by desktop environments)
if started from explorer.exe on Windows (technically, if it was started on Windows, and all of the stdout/stderr/stdin handles are unset)
started out of the bundle on OSX
if you manually use --player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui on the command line

This mode applies options from the builtin profile builtin-pseudo-gui, but only if these haven't been set in the user's config file or on the command line. Also, for compatibility with the old pseudo-gui behavior, the options in the pseudo-gui profile are applied unconditionally. In addition, the profile makes sure to enable the pseudo-GUI mode, so that --profile=pseudo-gui works like in older mpv releases. The profiles are currently defined as follows:

[builtin-pseudo-gui]
terminal=no
force-window=yes
idle=once
screenshot-directory=~~desktop/
[pseudo-gui]
player-operation-mode=pseudo-gui

Warning

Currently, you can extend the pseudo-gui profile in the config file the normal way. This is deprecated. In future mpv releases, the behavior might change, and not apply your additional settings, and/or use a different profile name.

OPTIONS

Track Selection

--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.

Examples

mpv dvd://1 --alang=hu,en: Chooses the Hungarian language track on a DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian is not available.
mpv --alang=jpn example.mkv: Plays a Matroska file 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.

Examples

mpv dvd://1 --slang=hu,en chooses the Hungarian subtitle track on a DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian is not available.
mpv --slang=jpn example.mkv plays a Matroska file with Japanese subtitles.

--aid=<ID|auto|no>

Select audio track. auto selects the default, no disables audio. See also --alang. mpv normally prints available audio tracks on the terminal when starting playback of a file.

--audio is an alias for --aid.

--aid=no or --audio=no or --no-audio disables audio playback. (The latter variant does not work with the client API.)

--sid=<ID|auto|no>

Display the subtitle stream specified by <ID>. auto selects the default, no disables subtitles.

--sub is an alias for --sid.

--sid=no or --sub=no or --no-sub disables subtitle decoding. (The latter variant does not work with the client API.)

--vid=<ID|auto|no>

Select video channel. auto selects the default, no disables video.

--video is an alias for --vid.

--vid=no or --video=no or --no-video disables video playback. (The latter variant does not work with the client API.)

If video is disabled, mpv will try to download the audio only if media is streamed with youtube-dl, because it saves bandwidth. This is done by setting the ytdl_format to "bestaudio/best" in the ytdl_hook.lua script.

Select audio/subtitle/video streams by the FFmpeg stream index. The FFmpeg stream index is relatively arbitrary, but useful when interacting with other software using FFmpeg (consider ffprobe).

Note that with external tracks (added with --sub-file and similar options), there will be streams with duplicate IDs. In this case, the first stream in order is selected.

--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.

Playback Control

--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. (Since mpv 0.14, the start of the file is always considered 0.)

pp% seeks to percent position pp (0-100).

#c seeks to chapter number c. (Chapters start from 1.)

Examples

--start=+56, --start=+00:56: Seeks to the start time + 56 seconds.
--start=-56, --start=-00:56: Seeks to the end time - 56 seconds.
--start=01:10:00: Seeks to 1 hour 10 min.
--start=50%: Seeks to the middle of the file.
--start=30 --end=40: Seeks to 30 seconds, plays 10 seconds, and exits.
--start=-3:20 --length=10: Seeks to 3 minutes and 20 seconds before the end of the file, plays 10 seconds, and exits.
--start='#2' --end='#4': Plays chapters 2 and 3, and exits.

--end=<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.

--rebase-start-time=<yes|no>

Whether to move the file start time to 00:00:00 (default: yes). This is less awkward for files which start at a random timestamp, such as transport streams. On the other hand, if there are timestamp resets, the resulting behavior can be rather weird. For this reason, and in case you are actually interested in the real timestamps, this behavior can be disabled with no.

--speed=<0.01-100>

Slow down or speed up playback by the factor given as parameter.

If --audio-pitch-correction (on by default) is used, playing with a speed higher than normal automatically inserts the scaletempo audio filter.

--loop=<N|inf|force|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.

The force mode is like inf, but does not skip playlist entries which have been marked as failing. This means the player might waste CPU time trying to loop a file that doesn't exist. But it might be useful for playing webradios under very bad network conditions.

--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.

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.
always:	Same as `yes` (for compatibility).

default:	use an index if the file has one, or build it if missing
recreate:	don't read or use the file's index

Program Behavior

--help, --h

Show short summary of options.

You can also pass a shell pattern to this option, which will list all matching top-level options, e.g. --h=*scale* for all options that contain the word "scale".

-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.

Video

--vo=<driver>

Specify the video output backend to be used. 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.

--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 Dropped: 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 unwatchable choppy output, or even freeze the display completely. 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 display FPS used with the --video-sync=display-* modes. By default, a detected value is used. Keep in mind that setting an incorrect value (even if slightly incorrect) can ruin video playback. On multi-monitor systems, there is a chance that the detected value is from the wrong monitor.

Set this option only if you have reason to believe the automatically determined value is wrong.

--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:

videotoolbox-copy:
no:	always use software decoding (default)
auto:	enable best hw decoder (see below)
yes:	exactly the same as `auto`
auto-copy:	enable best hw decoder with copy-back (see below)
vdpau:	requires `--vo=vdpau` or `--vo=opengl` (Linux only)
vdpau-copy:	copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs only)
vaapi:	requires `--vo=opengl` or `--vo=vaapi` (Linux only)
vaapi-copy:	copies video back into system RAM (Linux with Intel GPUs only)
videotoolbox:	requires `--vo=opengl` (OS X 10.8 and up only)
	copies video back into system RAM (OS X 10.8 and up only)
dxva2:	requires `--vo=opengl` with `--opengl-backend=angle` or `--opengl-backend=dxinterop` (Windows only)
dxva2-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Windows only)
d3d11va:	requires `--vo=opengl` with `--opengl-backend=angle` (Windows only)
d3d11va-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Windows only)
mediacodec:	copies video back to system RAM (Android only)
rpi:	requires `--vo=opengl` (Raspberry Pi only - default if available)
rpi-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Raspberry Pi only)
cuda:	requires `--vo=opengl` (Any platform CUDA is available)
cuda-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is available)
crystalhd:	copies video back to system RAM (Any platform supported by hardware)

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 or --vo=opengl, 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 (might matter on some Linux systems).

auto-copy selects only modes that copy the video data back to system memory after decoding. Currently, this selects only one of the following modes: vaapi-copy, dxva2-copy, d3d11va-copy, mediacodec. If none of these work, hardware decoding is disabled. This mode is always guaranteed to incur no additional loss compared to software decoding, and will allow CPU processing with video filters.

The vaapi mode, if used with --vo=opengl, requires Mesa 11 and most likely works with Intel GPUs only. It also requires the opengl EGL backend (automatically used if available). You can also try the old GLX backend by forcing it with --opengl-backend=x11, but the vaapi/GLX interop is said to be slower than vaapi-copy.

Most video filters will not work with hardware decoding as they are primarily implemented on the CPU. Some exceptions are vdpaupp, vdpaurb and vavpp. See VIDEO FILTERS for more details.

The ...-copy modes (e.g. dxva2-copy) allow you to use hardware decoding with any VO, backend or filter. Because these copy the decoded video back to system RAM, they're likely less efficient than the direct modes (like e.g. dxva2).

Note

When using this switch, hardware decoding is still only done for some codecs. See --hwdec-codecs to enable hardware decoding for more codecs.

Quality reduction with hardware decoding

Normally, hardware decoding does not reduce video quality (at least for the codecs h264 and HEVC). However, due to restrictions in video output APIs, there can be some loss, or blatantly incorrect results.

In some cases, RGB conversion is forced, which means the RGB conversion is performed by the hardware decoding API, instead of the OpenGL code used by --vo=opengl. This means certain obscure colorspaces may not display correctly, not certain filtering (such as debanding) cannot be applied in an ideal way.

vdpau is usually safe. If deinterlacing enabled (or the vdpaupp video filter is active in general), it forces RGB conversion. The latter currently does not treat certain colorspaces like BT.2020 correctly (which is mostly a mpv-specific restriction). The vdpauprb video filter retrieves image data without RGB conversion and is safe (but precludes use of vdpau postprocessing).

vaapi is safe if the vaapi-egl backend is indicated in the logs. If vaapi-glx is indicated, and the video colorspace is either BT.601 or BT.709, a forced but correct RGB conversion is performed. Otherwise, the result will be incorrect.

d3d11va is usually safe (if used with ANGLE builds that support EGL_KHR_stream path - otherwise, it converts to RGB), except that 10 bit input (HEVC main 10 profiles) will be rounded down to 8 bits.

dxva2 is not safe. It appears to always use BT.601 for forced RGB conversion, but actual behavior depends on the GPU drivers. Some drivers appear to convert to limited range RGB, which gives a faded appearance. In addition to driver-specific behavior, global system settings might affect this additionally. This can give incorrect results even with completely ordinary video sources.

cuda is usually safe. Interlaced content can be deinterlaced by the decoder, which is useful as there is no other deinterlacing mechanism in the opengl output path. To use this deinterlacing you must pass the option: vd-lavc-o=deint=[weave|bob|adaptive]. Pass weave to not attempt any deinterlacing. 10bit HEVC is available if the hardware supports it but it will be rounded down to 8 bits.

cuda-copy has the same behaviour as cuda - including the ability to deinterlace inside the decoder. However, traditional deinterlacing filters can be used in this case.

rpi always uses the hardware overlay renderer, even with --vo=opengl.

crystalhd is not safe. It always converts to 4:2:2 YUV, which may be lossy, depending on how chroma sub-sampling is done during conversion. It also discards the top left pixel of each frame for some reason.

All other methods, in particular the copy-back methods (like dxva2-copy etc.) are either fully safe, or not worse than software decoding.

In particular, auto-copy will only select safe modes (although potentially slower than other methods).

--hwdec-preload=<api>

This is useful for the opengl and opengl-cb VOs for creating the hardware decoding OpenGL interop context, but without actually enabling hardware decoding itself (like --hwdec does).

If set to no (default), the --hwdec option is used.

For opengl, if set, do not create the interop context on demand, but when the VO is created.

For opengl-cb, if set, load the interop context as soon as the OpenGL context is created. Since opengl-cb has no on-demand loading, this allows enabling hardware decoding at runtime at all, without having to temporarily set the hwdec option just during OpenGL context initialization with mpv_opengl_cb_init_gl().

--videotoolbox-format=<name>

Set the internal pixel format used by --hwdec=videotoolbox on OSX. The choice of the format can influence performance considerably. On the other hand, there doesn't appear to be a good way to detect the best format for the given hardware. nv12, the default, works better on modern hardware, while uyvy422 appears to be better for old hardware. rgb0 and yuv420p also work.

--panscan=<0.0-1.0>

Enables pan-and-scan functionality (cropping the sides of e.g. a 16:9 video to make it fit a 4:3 display without black bands). The range controls how much of the image is cropped. May not work with all video output drivers.

This option has no effect if --video-unscaled option is used.

--video-aspect=<ratio|no>

Override video aspect ratio, in case aspect information is incorrect or missing in the file being played. See also --no-video-aspect.

These values have special meaning:

0:	disable aspect ratio handling, pretend the video has square pixels
no:	same as `0`
-1:	use the video stream or container aspect (default)

But note that handling of these special values might change in the future.

Examples

--video-aspect=4:3 or --video-aspect=1.3333
--video-aspect=16:9 or --video-aspect=1.7777
--no-video-aspect or --video-aspect=no

--video-aspect-method=<hybrid|bitstream|container>

This sets the default video aspect determination method (if the aspect is _not_ overridden by the user with --video-aspect or others).

hybrid:	Prefer the container aspect ratio. If the bitstream aspect switches mid-stream, switch to preferring the bitstream aspect. This is the default behavior in mpv and mplayer2.
container:	Strictly prefer the container aspect ratio. This is apparently the default behavior with VLC, at least with Matroska.
bitstream:	Strictly prefer the bitstream aspect ratio, unless the bitstream aspect ratio is not set. This is apparently the default behavior with XBMC/kodi, at least with Matroska.

Normally you should not set this. Try the container and bitstream choices if you encounter video that has the wrong aspect ratio in mpv, but seems to be correct in other players.

--video-unscaled=<no|yes|downscale-big>

Disable scaling of the video. If the window is larger than the video, black bars are added. Otherwise, the video is cropped, unless the option is set to downscale-big, in which case the video is fit to window. The video still can be influenced by the other --video-... options. This option disables the effect of --panscan.

Note that the scaler algorithm may still be used, even if the video isn't scaled. For example, this can influence chroma conversion. The video will also still be scaled in one dimension if the source uses non-square pixels (e.g. anamorphic widescreen DVDs).

This option is disabled if 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=<no|mode>

Set the stereo 3D output mode (default: mono). This is done by inserting the stereo3d conversion filter.

The pseudo-mode no disables automatic conversion completely.

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.).

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 parameter is given log 2. For example, --video-zoom=0 is unscaled, --video-zoom=1 is twice the size, --video-zoom=-2 is one fourth of the size, and so on.

This option is disabled if 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 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.

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

Note

Setting either top or bottom will flag all frames as interlaced.

--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.

--video-output-levels=<outputlevels>

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.

Not all VOs support this option. Some will silently ignore it.

Available color ranges are:

auto:	automatic selection (equals to full range) (default)
limited:	limited range (16-235 per component), studio levels
full:	full range (0-255 per component), PC levels

Note

It is advisable to use your graphics driver's color range option instead, if available.

--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,hevc,mpeg2video,vp9. 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.

Example

mpv --hwdec=vdpau --vo=vdpau --hwdec-codecs=h264,mpeg2video: Enable vdpau decoding for h264 and mpeg2 only.

--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-software-fallback=<yes|no|N>

Fallback to software decoding if the hardware-accelerated decoder fails (default: 3). If this is a number, then fallback will be triggered if N frames fail to decode in a row. 1 is equivalent to yes.

--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.

Example

--vd-lavc-o=debug=pict

--vd-lavc-show-all=<yes|no>

Show even broken/corrupt frames (default: no). If this option is set to no, libavcodec won't output frames that were either 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=<N>

Number of threads to use for decoding. Whether threading is actually supported depends on codec (default: 0). 0 means autodetect number of cores on the machine and use that, up to the maximum of 16. You can set more than 16 threads manually.

Audio

--audio-pitch-correction=<yes|no>

If this is enabled (default), playing with a speed different from normal automatically inserts the scaletempo audio filter. For details, see audio filter section.

--audio-device=<name>

Use the given audio device. This consists of the audio output name, e.g. alsa, followed by /, followed by the audio output specific device name. The default value for this option is auto, which tries every audio output in preference order with the default device.

You can list audio devices with --audio-device=help. This outputs the device name in quotes, followed by a description. The device name is what you have to pass to the --audio-device option. The list of audio devices can be retrieved by API by using the audio-device-list property.

While the option normally takes one of the strings as indicated by the methods above, you can also force the device for most AOs by building it manually. For example name/foobar forces the AO name to use the device foobar.

Example for ALSA

MPlayer and mplayer2 required you to replace any ',' with '.' and any ':' with '=' in the ALSA device name. For example, to use the device named dmix:default, you had to do:

-ao alsa:device=dmix=default

In mpv you could instead use:

--audio-device=alsa/dmix:default

--audio-exclusive=<yes|no>

Enable exclusive output mode. In this mode, the system is usually locked out, and only mpv will be able to output audio.

This only works for some audio outputs, such as wasapi and coreaudio. Other audio outputs silently ignore this options. They either have no concept of exclusive mode, or the mpv side of the implementation is missing.

--audio-fallback-to-null=<yes|no>

If no audio device can be opened, behave as if --ao=null was given. This is useful in combination with --audio-device: instead of causing an error if the selected device does not exist, the client API user (or a Lua script) could let playback continue normally, and check the current-ao and audio-device-list properties to make high-level decisions about how to continue.

--ao=<driver>

Specify the audio output drivers to be used. See AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS for details and descriptions of available drivers.

--af=<filter1[=parameter1:parameter2:...],filter2,...>

Specify a list of audio filters to apply to the audio stream. See AUDIO FILTERS for details and descriptions of the available 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.

--audio-spdif=<codecs>

List of codecs for which compressed audio passthrough should be used. This works for both classic S/PDIF and HDMI.

Possible codecs are ac3, dts, dts-hd. Multiple codecs can be specified by separating them with ,. dts refers to low bitrate DTS core, while dts-hd refers to DTS MA (receiver and OS support varies). You should only use either dts or dts-hd (if both are specified, and dts comes first, only dts will be used).

In general, all codecs in the spdif family listed with --ad=help are supported in theory.

Warning

There is not much reason to use this. HDMI supports uncompressed multichannel PCM, and mpv supports lossless DTS-HD decoding via FFmpeg's new DCA decoder (based on libdcadec).

--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.

Examples

--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.

Warning

Enabling compressed audio passthrough (AC3 and DTS via SPDIF/HDMI) with this option is deprecated. Use --audio-spdif instead.

--volume=<value>

Set the startup volume. 0 means silence, 100 means no volume reduction or amplification. Negative values can be passed for compatibility, but are treated as 0.

Since mpv 0.18.1, this always controls the internal mixer (aka "softvol").

--balance=<value>

How much left/right channels contribute to the audio. (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 left and right channels.)

Deprecated.

--audio-delay=<sec>

Audio delay in seconds (positive or negative float value). Positive values delay the audio, and negative values delay the video.

--mute=<yes|no|auto>

Set startup audio mute status (default: no).

auto is a deprecated possible value that is equivalent to no.

no:	Disable gapless audio.
yes:	The audio device is opened using parameters chosen for the first file played and is then kept open for gapless 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.)

no:	Don't automatically load external audio files.
exact:	Load the media filename with audio file extension (default).
fuzzy:	Load all audio files containing media filename.
all:	Load all audio files in the current and `--audio-file-paths` directories.

Subtitles

Note

Changing styling and position does not work with all subtitles. Image-based subtitles (DVD, Bluray/PGS, DVB) cannot changed for fundamental reasons. Subtitles in ASS format are normally not changed intentionally, but overriding them can be controlled with --sub-ass-style-override.

Previously some options working on text subtitles were called --sub-text-*, they are now named --sub-*, and those specifically for ASS have been renamed from --ass-* to --sub-ass-*. They are now all in this section.

--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-font-size instead.

--sub-scale-by-window=<yes|no>

Whether to scale subtitles with the window size (default: yes). If this is disabled, changing the window size won't change the subtitle font size.

Like --sub-scale, this can break ASS subtitles.

--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 cover the window fully, e.g. because screen aspect and window aspect mismatch (and the player adds black bars).

Default: yes.

This option is misnamed. The difference to the confusingly similar sounding option --sub-scale-by-window is that --sub-scale-with-window still scales with the approximate window size, while the other option disables this scaling.

Affects plain text subtitles only (or ASS if --sub-ass-style-override is set high enough).

--sub-ass-scale-with-window=<yes|no>

Like --sub-scale-with-window, but affects subtitles in ASS format only. Like --sub-scale, this can break ASS subtitles.

Default: no.

--embeddedfonts, --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-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. Affects text subtitles only.

Example

--sub-speed=25/23.976` plays frame based subtitles which have been loaded assuming a framerate of 23.976 at 25 FPS.

--sub-ass-force-style=<[Style.]Param=Value[,...]>

Override some style or script info parameters.

Examples

--sub-ass-force-style=FontName=Arial,Default.Bold=1
--sub-ass-force-style=PlayResY=768

Note

Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.

--sub-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

Warning

Enabling hinting can lead to mispositioned text (in situations it's supposed to match up video background), or reduce the smoothness of animations with some badly authored ASS scripts. It is recommended to not use this option, unless really needed.

--sub-ass-line-spacing=<value>

Set line spacing value for SSA/ASS renderer.

--sub-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.

--sub-ass-styles=<filename>

Load all SSA/ASS styles found in the specified file and use them for rendering text subtitles. The syntax of the file is exactly like the [V4 Styles] / [V4+ Styles] section of SSA/ASS.

Note

Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.

--sub-ass-style-override=<yes|no|force|signfs|strip>

Control whether user style overrides should be applied.

yes:	Apply all the `--sub-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-*` options. Can break rendering easily.
strip:	Radically strip all ASS tags and styles from the subtitle. This is equivalent to the old `--no-ass` / `--no-sub-ass` options.

--sub-ass-force-margins

Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are available, if the subtitles are in the ASS format.

Default: no.

--sub-use-margins

Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are available, if the subtitles are in a plain text format (or ASS if --sub-ass-style-override is set high enough).

Default: yes.

Renamed from --sub-ass-use-margins. To place ASS subtitles in the borders too (like the old option did), also add --sub-ass-force-margins.

--sub-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.

--sub-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.

--sub-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 --sub-ass-style-override option doesn't affect how this option is interpreted.

--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.

--stretch-image-subs-to-screen=<yes|no>

Stretch DVD and other image subtitles to the screen, ignoring the video margins. This has a similar effect as --sub-use-margins for text subtitles, except that the text itself will be stretched, not only just repositioned. (At least in general it is unavoidable, as an image bitmap can in theory consist of a single bitmap covering the whole screen, and the player won't know where exactly the text parts are located.)

This option does not display subtitles correctly. Use with care.

Disabled by default.

--sub-ass, --no-sub-ass

Render ASS subtitles natively (enabled by default).

Note

This has been deprecated by --sub-ass-style-override=strip. You also may need --embeddedfonts=no to get the same behavior. Also, using --sub-ass-style-override=force should give better results without breaking subtitles too much.

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- 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.

--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, uchardet will be used to guess the charset. If mpv is not compiled with uchardet, enca will be used. If mpv is compiled with neither uchardet nor 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.

Warning

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.

Examples

--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.

Examples

--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.

If the player was compiled with uchardet support you can use it with:

--sub-codepage=uchardet

This mode doesn't take language or fallback codepage.

--sub-fix-timing, --no-sub-fix-timing

By default, subtitle timing is adjusted to remove minor gaps or overlaps between subtitles (if the difference is smaller than 210 ms, the gap or overlap is removed).

--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). Affects text subtitles only.

Note

<rate> > video fps speeds the subtitles up for frame-based subtitle files and slows them down for time-based ones.

Window

--title=<string>

Set the window title. This is used for the video window, and if possible, also sets the audio stream title.

Properties are expanded. (See Property Expansion.)

Warning

There is a danger of this causing significant CPU usage, depending on the properties used. Changing the window title is often a slow operation, and if the title changes every frame, playback can be ruined.

--screen=<default|0-32>

In multi-monitor configurations (i.e. a single desktop that spans across multiple displays), this option tells mpv which screen to display the video on.

Note (X11)

This option does not work properly with all window 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.

no:	If the current file ends, go to the next file or terminate. (Default.)
yes:	Don't terminate if the current file is the last playlist entry. Equivalent to `--keep-open` without arguments.
always:	Like `yes`, but also applies to files before the last playlist entry. This means playback will never automatically advance to the next file.

Disc Devices

--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).

Example

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.

Example

mpv bd:// --bluray-device=/path/to/bd/

--cdda-...

These options can be used to tune the CD Audio reading feature of mpv.

--cdda-speed=<value>

Set CD spin speed.

--cdda-paranoia=<0-2>

Set paranoia level. Values other than 0 seem to break playback of anything but the first track.

0:	disable checking (default)
1:	overlap checking only
2:	full data correction and verification

--cdda-sector-size=<value>

Set atomic read size.

--cdda-overlap=<value>

Force minimum overlap search during verification to <value> 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=<yes|no>

(Never) accept imperfect data reconstruction.

--cdda-cdtext=<yes|no>

Print CD text. This is disabled by default, because it ruins performance with CD-ROM drives for unknown reasons.

--dvd-speed=<speed>

Try to limit DVD speed (default: 0, no change). DVD base speed is 1385 kB/s, so an 8x drive can read at speeds up to 11080 kB/s. Slower speeds make the drive more quiet. For watching DVDs, 2700 kB/s should be quiet and fast enough. mpv resets the speed to the drive default value on close. Values of at least 100 mean speed in kB/s. Values less than 100 mean multiples of 1385 kB/s, i.e. --dvd-speed=8 selects 11080 kB/s.

Note

You need write access to the DVD device to change the speed.

--dvd-angle=<ID>

Some DVDs contain scenes that can be viewed from multiple angles. This option tells mpv which angle to use (default: 1).

Equalizer

--brightness=<-100-100>: Adjust the brightness of the video signal (default: 0). Not 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.

Demuxer

--demuxer=<[+]name>

Force demuxer type. Use a '+' before the name to force it; this will skip some checks. Give the demuxer name as printed by --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-hacks=<yes|no>

By default, some formats will be handled differently from other formats by explicitly checking for them. Most of these compensate for weird or imperfect behavior from libavformat demuxers. Passing no disables these. For debugging and testing only.

--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.

Example

--demuxer-lavf-o=fflags=+ignidx

--demuxer-lavf-probesize=<value>

Maximum amount of data to probe during the detection phase. In the case of MPEG-TS this value identifies the maximum number of TS packets to scan.

--demuxer-lavf-buffersize=<value>

Size of the stream read buffer allocated for libavformat in bytes (default: 32768). Lowering the size could lower latency. Note that libavformat might reallocate the buffer internally, or not fully use all of it.

--demuxer-lavf-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=<yes|index|no>, --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.

You can use the --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs option to specify how much data the demuxer should pre-read at most in order to find subtitle packets that may overlap. Setting this to 0 will effectively disable this preroll mechanism. Setting a very large value can make seeking very slow, and an extremely large value would completely reread the entire file from start to seek target on every seek - seeking can become slower towards the end of the file. The details are messy, and the value is actually rounded down to the cluster with the previous video keyframe.

Some files, especially files muxed with newer mkvmerge versions, have information embedded that can be used to determine what subtitle packets overlap with a seek target. In these cases, mpv will reduce the amount of data read to a minimum. (Although it will still read all data between the cluster that contains the first wanted subtitle packet, and the seek target.) If the index choice (which is the default) is specified, then prerolling will be done only if this information is actually available. If this method is used, the maximum amount of data to skip can be additionally controlled by --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs-index (it still uses the value of the option without -index if that is higher).

See also --hr-seek-demuxer-offset option. This option can achieve a similar effect, but only if hr-seek is active. It works with any demuxer, but makes seeking much slower, as it has to decode audio and video data instead of just skipping over it.

--mkv-subtitle-preroll is a deprecated alias.

--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs=<value>

See --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll.

--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll-secs-index=<value>

See --demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll.

--demuxer-mkv-probe-video-duration=<yes|no|full>

When opening the file, seek to the end of it, and check what timestamp the last video packet has, and report that as file duration. This is strictly for compatibility with Haali only. In this mode, it's possible that opening will be slower (especially when playing over http), or that behavior with broken files is much worse. So don't use this option.

The yes mode merely uses the index and reads a small number of blocks from the end of the file. The full mode actually traverses the entire file and can make a reliable estimate even without an index present (such as partial files).

--demuxer-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.

Example

Play a raw YUV sample:

mpv sample-720x576.yuv --demuxer=rawvideo \
--demuxer-rawvideo-w=720 --demuxer-rawvideo-h=576

--demuxer-rawvideo-format=<value>

Color space (fourcc) in hex or string for --demuxer=rawvideo (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-max-packets=<packets>, --demuxer-max-bytes=<bytes>

This controls how much the demuxer is allowed to buffer ahead. The demuxer will normally try to read ahead as much as necessary, or as much is requested with --demuxer-readahead-secs. The --demuxer-max-... options can be used to restrict the maximum readahead. This limits excessive readahead in case of broken files or desynced playback. The demuxer will stop reading additional packets as soon as one of the limits is reached. (The limits still can be slightly overstepped due to technical reasons.)

Set these limits higher if you get a packet queue overflow warning, and you think normal playback would be possible with a larger packet queue.

See --list-options for defaults and value range.

--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=<seconds>

If --demuxer-thread is enabled, this controls how much the demuxer should buffer ahead in seconds (default: 1). As long as no packet has a timestamp difference higher than the readahead amount relative to the last packet returned to the decoder, the demuxer keeps reading.

Note that the --cache-secs option will override this value if a cache is enabled, and the value is larger.

(This value tends to be fuzzy, because many file formats don't store linear timestamps.)

--force-seekable=<yes|no>

If the player thinks that the media is not seekable (e.g. playing from a pipe, or it's an http stream with a server that doesn't support range requests), seeking will be disabled. This option can forcibly enable it. For seeks within the cache, there's a good chance of success.

Input

--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. Since mpv 0.7.0 also understands JSON commands (see JSON IPC), but you can't get replies or events. Use --input-ipc-server for something bi-directional. On MS Windows, JSON commands are not available.

This can also specify a direct file descriptor with fd://N (UNIX only). In this case, JSON replies will be written if the FD is writable.

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 input commands.

--input-ipc-server=<filename>

Enable the IPC support and create the listening socket at the given path.

On Linux and Unix, the given path is a regular filesystem path. On Windows, named pipes are used, so the path refers to the pipe namespace (\\.\pipe\<name>). If the \\.\pipe\ prefix is missing, mpv will add it automatically before creating the pipe, so --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpv-socket and --input-ipc-server=\\.\pipe\tmp\mpv-socket are equivalent for IPC on Windows.

See JSON IPC for details.

--input-appleremote=<yes|no>

(OS X only) Enable/disable Apple Remote support. Enabled by default (except for libmpv).

--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-media-keys=<yes|no>

(OS X only) Enable/disable media keys support. Enabled by default (except for libmpv).

--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-vo-keyboard=<yes|no>

Disable all keyboard input on for VOs which can't participate in proper keyboard input dispatching. May not affect all VOs. 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. It can steal away all keyboard input from the application embedding the mpv window, and on the other hand, the mpv window will receive no input if the mouse is 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. GTK provides GtkSocket, which supports XEmbed. Qt doesn't seem to provide anything working in newer versions.

If the embedder supports XEmbed, input should work with default settings and with this option disabled. Note that input-default-bindings is disabled by default in libmpv as well - it should be enabled if you want the mpv default key bindings.

(This option was renamed from --input-x11-keyboard.)

--input-app-events=<yes|no>

(OS X only) Enable/disable application wide keyboard events so that keyboard shortcuts can be processed without a window. Enabled by default (except for libmpv).

OSD

--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=<name>

Specify font to use for OSD. The default is sans-serif.

Examples

--osd-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'
--osd-font='MS Comic Sans'

--osd-font-size=<size>

Specify the OSD font size. See --sub-font-size for details.

Default: 55.

--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>

See --osd-color. Color used for OSD text background.

--osd-blur=<0..20.0>

Gaussian blur factor. 0 means no blur applied (default).

--osd-bold=<yes|no>

Format text on bold.

--osd-italic=<yes|no>

Format text on italic.

--osd-border-color=<color>

See --osd-color. Color used for the OSD font border.

Note

ignored when --osd-back-color is specified (or more exactly: when that option is not set to completely transparent).

--osd-border-size=<size>

Size of the OSD font border in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables borders.

Default: 3.

--osd-color=<color>

Specify the color used for OSD. See --sub-color for details.

--osd-fractions

Show OSD times with fractions of seconds (in millisecond precision). Useful to see the exact timestamp of a video frame.

--osd-level=<0-3>

Specifies which mode the OSD should start in.

0:	OSD completely disabled (subtitles only)
1:	enabled (shows up only on user interaction)
2:	enabled + current time visible by default
3:	enabled + `--osd-status-msg` (current time and status by default)

--osd-margin-x=<size>

Left and right screen margin for the OSD in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details).

This option specifies the distance of the OSD to the left, as well as at which distance from the right border long OSD text will be broken.

Default: 25.

--osd-margin-y=<size>

Top and bottom screen margin for the OSD in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details).

This option specifies the vertical margins of the OSD.

Default: 22.

--osd-align-x=<left|center|right>

Control to which corner of the screen OSD should be aligned to (default: left).

--osd-align-y=<top|center|bottom>

Vertical position (default: top). Details see --osd-align-x.

--osd-scale=<factor>

OSD font size multiplier, multiplied with --osd-font-size value.

--osd-scale-by-window=<yes|no>

Whether to scale the OSD with the window size (default: yes). If this is disabled, --osd-font-size and other OSD options that use scaled pixels are always in actual pixels. The effect is that changing the window size won't change the OSD font size.

--osd-shadow-color=<color>

See --sub-color. Color used for OSD shadow.

--osd-shadow-offset=<size>

Displacement of the OSD shadow in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details). A value of 0 disables shadows.

Default: 0.

--osd-spacing=<size>

Horizontal OSD/sub font spacing in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details). This value is added to the normal letter spacing. Negative values are allowed.

Default: 0.

--video-osd=<yes|no>

Enabled OSD rendering on the video window (default: yes). This can be used in situations where terminal OSD is preferred. If you just want to disable all OSD rendering, use --osd-level=0.

It does not affect subtitles or overlays created by scripts (in particular, the OSC needs to be disabled with --no-osc).

This option is somewhat experimental and could be replaced by another mechanism in the future.

Screenshot

--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-tag-colorspace=<yes|no>

Tag screenshots with the appropriate colorspace.

Note that not all formats are supported.

Default: no.

--screenshot-high-bit-depth=<yes|no>

If possible, write screenshots with a bit depth similar to the source video (default: yes). This is interesting in particular for PNG, as this sometimes triggers writing 16 bit PNGs with huge file sizes.

--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 mpv-shot%n, which results in filenames like mpv-shot0012.png for example.

The template can start with a relative or absolute path, in order to specify a directory location where screenshots should be saved.

If the final screenshot filename points to an already existing file, the file will not be overwritten. The screenshot will 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 input property 'prop'. E.g. %{filename} is the same as %f. If the property does not exist or is not available, an error text is inserted, unless a fallback is specified.

%%

Replaced with the % character itself.

--screenshot-directory=<path>

Store screenshots in this directory. This path is joined with the filename generated by --screenshot-template. If the template filename is already absolute, the directory is ignored.

If the directory does not exist, it is created on the first screenshot. If it is not a directory, an error is generated when trying to write a screenshot.

This option is not set by default, and thus will write screenshots to the directory from which mpv was started. In pseudo-gui mode (see PSEUDO GUI MODE), this is set to the desktop.

--screenshot-jpeg-quality=<0-100>

Set the JPEG quality level. Higher means better quality. The default is 90.

--screenshot-jpeg-source-chroma=<yes|no>

Write JPEG files with the same chroma subsampling as the video (default: yes). If disabled, the libjpeg default is used.

--screenshot-png-compression=<0-9>

Set the PNG compression level. Higher means better compression. This will affect the file size of the written screenshot file and the time it takes to write a screenshot. Too high compression might occupy enough CPU time to interrupt playback. The default is 7.

--screenshot-png-filter=<0-5>

Set the filter applied prior to PNG compression. 0 is none, 1 is "sub", 2 is "up", 3 is "average", 4 is "Paeth", and 5 is "mixed". This affects the level of compression that can be achieved. For most images, "mixed" achieves the best compression ratio, hence it is the default.

Software Scaler

--sws-scaler=<name>

Specify the software scaler algorithm to be used with --vf=scale. This also affects video output drivers which lack hardware 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.

Terminal

--quiet

Make console output less verbose; in particular, prevents the status line (i.e. AV: 3.4 (00:00:03.37) / 5320.6 ...) from being displayed. Particularly useful on slow terminals or broken ones which do not properly handle carriage return (i.e. \r).

See also: --really-quiet and --msg-level.

--really-quiet

Display even less output and status messages than with --quiet.

--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

no:	complete silence
fatal:	fatal messages only
error:	error messages
warn:	warning messages
info:	informational messages
status:	status messages (default)
v:	verbose messages
debug:	debug messages
trace:	very noisy debug messages

Example

mpv --msg-level=ao/sndio=no

Completely silences the output of ao_sndio, which uses the log prefix [ao/sndio].

mpv --msg-level=all=warn,ao/alsa=error

Only show warnings or worse, and let the ao_alsa output show errors only.

--term-osd=<auto|no|force>

Control whether OSD messages are shown on the console when no video output is available (default: auto).

auto:	use terminal OSD if no video output active
no:	disable terminal OSD
force:	use terminal OSD even if video output active

The auto mode also enables terminal OSD if --video-osd=no was set.

--term-osd-bar, --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

--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.

0:	mono
1:	stereo
2:	language 1
3:	language 2

1:	full size 704x576 PAL 704x480 NTSC
2:	medium size 352x288 PAL 352x240 NTSC
4:	small size 176x144 PAL 176x120 NTSC

Cache

--cache=<kBytes|yes|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. With yes, the cache will always be enabled with the size set by --cache-default (unless the stream cannot be cached, or --cache-default disables caching).

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 not reported as 100% full. The cache fill display does not include the part of the cache reserved for seeking back. The actual maximum percentage will usually be the ratio between readahead and backbuffer sizes.

--cache-default=<kBytes|no>

Set the size of the cache in kilobytes (default: 75000 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-backbuffer=<kBytes>

Size of the cache back buffer (default: 75000 KB). This will add to the total cache size, and reserved the amount for seeking back. The reserved amount will not be used for readahead, and instead preserves already read data to enable fast seeking back.

--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.

Network

--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.

Example

mpv --http-header-fields='Field1: value1','Field2: value2' \
http://localhost:1234

Will generate HTTP request:

GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: localhost:1234
User-Agent: MPlayer
Icy-MetaData: 1
Field1: value1
Field2: value2
Connection: close

--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.)

--tls-cert-file

A file containing a certificate to use in the handshake with the peer.

--tls-key-file

A file containing the private key for the certificate.

--referrer=<string>

Specify a referrer path or URL for HTTP requests.

--network-timeout=<seconds>

Specify the network timeout in seconds. This affects at least HTTP. The special value 0 (default) uses the FFmpeg/Libav defaults. If a protocol is used which does not support timeouts, this option is silently ignored.

--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|<rate>>

If HLS streams are played, this option controls what streams are selected by default. The option allows the following parameters:

no:	Don't do anything special. Typically, this will simply pick the first audio/video streams it can find.
min:	Pick the streams with the lowest bitrate.
max:	Same, but highest bitrate. (Default.)

Additionally, if the option is a number, the stream with the highest rate equal or below the option value is selected.

The bitrate as used is sent by the server, and there's no guarantee it's actually meaningful.

DVB

--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. For DVB-S/2 cards, a VDR 1.7.x format channel list is recommended as it allows tuning to DVB-S2 channels, enabling subtitles and decoding the PMT (which largely improves the demuxing). Classic mplayer format channel lists are still supported (without these improvements), and for other card types, only limited VDR format channel list support is implemented (patches welcome). For channels with dynamic PID switching or incomplete channels.conf, --dvbin-full-transponder or the magic PID 8192 are recommended.

--dvbin-timeout=<1-30>

Maximum number of seconds to wait when trying to tune a frequency before giving up (default: 30).

--dvbin-full-transponder=<yes|no>

Apply no filters on program PIDs, only tune to frequency and pass full transponder to demuxer. The player frontend selects the streams from the full TS in this case, so the program which is shown initially may not match the chosen channel. Switching between the programs is possible by cycling the program property. This is useful to record multiple programs on a single transponder, or to work around issues in the channels.conf. It is also recommended to use this for channels which switch PIDs on-the-fly, e.g. for regional news.

Default: no

ALSA audio output options

--alsa-device=<device>: Deprecated, use --audio-device (requires alsa/ prefix).
--alsa-resample=yes: Enable ALSA resampling plugin. (This is disabled by default, because some drivers report incorrect audio delay in some cases.)
--alsa-mixer-device=<device>: Set the mixer device used with ao-volume (default: default).
--alsa-mixer-name=<name>: Set the name of the mixer element (default: Master). This is for example PCM or Master.
--alsa-mixer-index=<number>: Set the index of the mixer channel (default: 0). Consider the output of "amixer scontrols", then the index is the number that follows the name of the element.
--alsa-non-interleaved: Allow output of non-interleaved formats (if the audio decoder uses this format). Currently disabled by default, because some popular ALSA plugins are utterly broken with non-interleaved formats.
--alsa-ignore-chmap: Don't read or set the channel map of the ALSA device - only request the required number of channels, and then pass the audio as-is to it. This option most likely should not be used. It can be useful for debugging, or for static setups with a specially engineered ALSA configuration (in this case you should always force the same layout with --audio-channels, or it will work only for files which use the layout implicit to your ALSA device).

OpenGL renderer options

The following video options are currently all specific to --vo=opengl and -vo=opengl-cb only, which are the only VOs that implement them.

--opengl-dumb-mode=<yes|no>

This mode is extremely restricted, and will disable most extended OpenGL features. This includes high quality scalers and custom shaders!

It is intended for hardware that does not support FBOs (including GLES, which supports it insufficiently), or to get some more performance out of bad or old hardware.

This mode is forced automatically if needed, and this option is mostly useful for debugging. It's also enabled automatically if nothing uses features which require FBOs.

This option might be silently removed in the future.

--scale=<filter>

bilinear

Bilinear hardware texture filtering (fastest, very low quality). This is the default for compatibility reasons.

spline36

Mid quality and speed. This is the default when using opengl-hq.

lanczos

Lanczos scaling. Provides mid quality and speed. Generally worse than spline36, but it results in a slightly sharper image which is good for some content types. The number of taps can be controlled with scale-radius, but is best left unchanged.

(This filter is an alias for sinc-windowed sinc)

ewa_lanczos

Elliptic weighted average Lanczos scaling. Also known as Jinc. Relatively slow, but very good quality. The radius can be controlled with scale-radius. Increasing the radius makes the filter sharper but adds more ringing.

(This filter is an alias for jinc-windowed jinc)

ewa_lanczossharp

A slightly sharpened version of ewa_lanczos, preconfigured to use an ideal radius and parameter. If your hardware can run it, this is probably what you should use by default.

mitchell

Mitchell-Netravali. The B and C parameters can be set with --scale-param1 and --scale-param2. This filter is very good at downscaling (see --dscale).

oversample

A version of nearest neighbour that (naively) oversamples pixels, so that pixels overlapping edges get linearly interpolated instead of rounded. This essentially removes the small imperfections and judder artifacts caused by nearest-neighbour interpolation, in exchange for adding some blur. This filter is good at temporal interpolation, and also known as "smoothmotion" (see --tscale).

linear

A --tscale filter.

There are some more filters, but most are not as useful. For a complete list, pass help as value, e.g.:
mpv --scale=help

--cscale=<filter>

As --scale, but for interpolating chroma information. If the image is not subsampled, this option is ignored entirely.

--dscale=<filter>

Like --scale, but apply these filters on downscaling instead. If this option is unset, the filter implied by --scale will be applied.

--tscale=<filter>

The filter used for interpolating the temporal axis (frames). This is only used if --interpolation is enabled. The only valid choices for --tscale are separable convolution filters (use --tscale=help to get a list). The default is mitchell.

Note that the maximum supported filter radius is currently 3, due to limitations in the number of video textures that can be loaded simultaneously.

--scale-param1=<value>, --scale-param2=<value>, --cscale-param1=<value>, --cscale-param2=<value>, --dscale-param1=<value>, --dscale-param2=<value>, --tscale-param1=<value>, --tscale-param2=<value>

Set filter parameters. Ignored if the filter is not tunable. Currently, this affects the following filter parameters:

bcspline: Spline parameters (B and C). Defaults to 0.5 for both.
gaussian: Scale parameter (t). Increasing this makes the result blurrier. Defaults to 1.
oversample: Minimum distance to an edge before interpolation is used. Setting this to 0 will always interpolate edges, whereas setting it to 0.5 will never interpolate, thus behaving as if the regular nearest neighbour algorithm was used. Defaults to 0.0.

--scale-blur=<value>, --scale-wblur=<value>, --cscale-blur=<value>, --cscale-wblur=<value>, --dscale-blur=<value>, --dscale-wblur=<value>, --tscale-blur=<value>, --tscale-wblur=<value>

Kernel/window scaling factor (also known as a blur factor). Decreasing this makes the result sharper, increasing it makes it blurrier (default 0). If set to 0, the kernel's preferred blur factor is used. Note that setting this too low (eg. 0.5) leads to bad results. It's generally recommended to stick to values between 0.8 and 1.2.

--scale-clamp, --cscale-clamp, --dscale-clamp, --tscale-clamp

Clamp the filter kernel's value range to [0-1]. This is especially useful for --tscale, where it reduces excessive ringing artifacts in the temporal domain (which typically manifest themselves as short flashes or fringes of black, mostly around moving edges) in exchange for potentially adding more blur.

--scale-taper=<value>, --scale-wtaper=<value>, --dscale-taper=<value>, --dscale-wtaper=<value>, --cscale-taper=<value>, --cscale-wtaper=<value>, --tscale-taper=<value>, --tscale-wtaper=<value>

Kernel/window taper factor. Increasing this flattens the filter function. Value range is 0 to 1. A value of 0 (the default) means no flattening, a value of 1 makes the filter completely flat (equivalent to a box function). Values in between mean that some portion will be flat and the actual filter function will be squeezed into the space in between.

--scale-radius=<value>, --cscale-radius=<value>, --dscale-radius=<value>, --tscale-radius=<value>

Set radius for tunable filters, must be a float number between 0.5 and 16.0. Defaults to the filter's preferred radius if not specified. Doesn't work for every scaler and VO combination.

Note that depending on filter implementation details and video scaling ratio, the radius that actually being used might be different (most likely being increased a bit).

--scale-antiring=<value>, --cscale-antiring=<value>, --dscale-antiring=<value>, --tscale-antiring=<value>

Set the antiringing strength. This tries to eliminate ringing, but can introduce other artifacts in the process. Must be a float number between 0.0 and 1.0. The default value of 0.0 disables antiringing entirely.

Note that this doesn't affect the special filters bilinear and bicubic_fast.

--scale-window=<window>, --cscale-window=<window>, --dscale-window=<window>, --tscale-window=<window>

(Advanced users only) Choose a custom windowing function for the kernel. Defaults to the filter's preferred window if unset. Use --scale-window=help to get a list of supported windowing functions.

--scale-wparam=<window>, --cscale-wparam=<window>, --cscale-wparam=<window>, --tscale-wparam=<window>

(Advanced users only) Configure the parameter for the window function given by --scale-window etc. Ignored if the window is not tunable. Currently, this affects the following window parameters:

kaiser: Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 6.33.
blackman: Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 0.16.
gaussian: Scale parameter (t). Increasing this makes the window wider. Defaults to 1.

--scaler-lut-size=<4..10>

Set the size of the lookup texture for scaler kernels (default: 6). The actual size of the texture is 2^N for an option value of N. So the lookup texture with the default setting uses 64 samples.

All weights are linearly interpolated from those samples, so increasing the size of lookup table might improve the accuracy of scaler.

--scaler-resizes-only

Disable the scaler if the video image is not resized. In that case, bilinear is used instead of whatever is set with --scale. Bilinear will reproduce the source image perfectly if no scaling is performed. Enabled by default. Note that this option never affects --cscale.

--linear-scaling

Scale in linear light. It should only be used with a --opengl-fbo-format that has at least 16 bit precision.

--correct-downscaling

When using convolution based filters, extend the filter size when downscaling. Increases quality, but reduces performance while downscaling.

This will perform slightly sub-optimally for anamorphic video (but still better than without it) since it will extend the size to match only the milder of the scale factors between the axes.

--interpolation

Reduce stuttering caused by mismatches in the video fps and display refresh rate (also known as judder).

Warning

This requires setting the --video-sync option to one of the display- modes, or it will be silently disabled. This was not required before mpv 0.14.0.

This essentially attempts to interpolate the missing frames by convoluting the video along the temporal axis. The filter used can be controlled using the --tscale setting.

Note that this relies on vsync to work, see --opengl-swapinterval for more information.

--interpolation-threshold=<0..1,-1>

Threshold below which frame ratio interpolation gets disabled (default: 0.0001). This is calculated as abs(disphz/vfps - 1) < threshold, where vfps is the speed-adjusted video FPS, and disphz the display refresh rate. (The speed-adjusted video FPS is roughly equal to the normal video FPS, but with slowdown and speedup applied. This matters if you use --video-sync=display-resample to make video run synchronously to the display FPS, or if you change the speed property.)

The default is intended to almost always enable interpolation if the playback rate is even slightly different from the display refresh rate. But note that if you use e.g. --video-sync=display-vdrop, small deviations in the rate can disable interpolation and introduce a discontinuity every other minute.

Set this to -1 to disable this logic.

--opengl-pbo

Enable use of PBOs. On some drivers this can be faster, especially if the source video size is huge (e.g. so called "4K" video). On other drivers it might be slower or cause latency issues.

In theory, this can sometimes lead to sporadic and temporary image corruption (because reupload is not retried when it fails).

--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 cannot be detected. Often, LCD panels will do dithering on their own, which conflicts with this option 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). (Normally, the --dither-depth option controls whether dithering is enabled.)

--temporal-dither

Enable temporal dithering. (Only active if dithering is enabled in general.) This changes between 8 different dithering patterns on each frame by changing the orientation of the tiled dithering matrix. Unfortunately, this can lead to flicker on LCD displays, since these have a high reaction time.

--temporal-dither-period=<1-128>

Determines how often the dithering pattern is updated when --temporal-dither is in use. 1 (the default) will update on every video frame, 2 on every other frame, etc.

--opengl-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).

--opengl-swapinterval=<n>

Interval in displayed frames between two buffer swaps. 1 is equivalent to enable VSYNC, 0 to disable VSYNC. Defaults to 1 if not specified.

Note that this depends on proper OpenGL vsync support. On some platforms and drivers, this only works reliably when in fullscreen mode. It may also require driver-specific hacks if using multiple monitors, to ensure mpv syncs to the right one. Compositing window managers can also lead to bad results, as can missing or incorrect display FPS information (see --display-fps).

--opengl-shaders=<files>

Custom GLSL hooks. These are a flexible way to add custom fragment shaders, which can be injected at almost arbitrary points in the rendering pipeline, and access all previous intermediate textures.

Warning

The syntax is not stable yet and may change any time.

The general syntax of a user shader looks like this:

//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...

vec4 hook() {
   ...
   return something;
}

//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...

...

Each block of metadata, along with the non-metadata lines after it, defines a single pass. Each pass can set the following metadata:

HOOK <name> (required): The texture which to hook into. May occur multiple times within a metadata block, up to a predetermined limit. See below for a list of hookable textures.
BIND <name>: Loads a texture and makes it available to the pass, and sets up macros to enable accessing it. See below for a list of set macros. By default, no textures are bound. The special name HOOKED can be used to refer to the texture that triggered this pass.
SAVE <name>: Gives the name of the texture to save the result of this pass into. By default, this is set to the special name HOOKED which has the effect of overwriting the hooked texture.
WIDTH <szexpr>, HEIGHT <szexpr>: Specifies the size of the resulting texture for this pass. szexpr refers to an expression in RPN (reverse polish notation), using the operators + - * / > < !, floating point literals, and references to sizes of existing texture and OUTPUT (such as MAIN.width or CHROMA.height). By default, these are set to HOOKED.w and HOOKED.h, respectively.
WHEN <szexpr>: Specifies a condition that needs to be true (non-zero) for the shader stage to be evaluated. If it fails, it will silently be omitted. (Note that a shader stage like this which has a dependency on an optional hook point can still cause that hook point to be saved, which has some minor overhead)
OFFSET ox oy: Indicates a pixel shift (offset) introduced by this pass. These pixel offsets will be accumulated and corrected during the next scaling pass (cscale or scale). The default values are 0 0 which correspond to no shift. Note that offsets are ignored when not overwriting the hooked texture.
COMPONENTS n: Specifies how many components of this pass's output are relevant and should be stored in the texture, up to 4 (rgba). By default, this value is equal to the number of components in HOOKED.

Each bound texture (via BIND) will make available the following definitions to that shader pass, where NAME is the name of the bound texture:

vec4 NAME_tex(vec2 pos): The sampling function to use to access the texture at a certain spot (in texture coordinate space, range [0,1]). This takes care of any necessary normalization conversions.
vec4 NAME_texOff(vec2 offset): Sample the texture at a certain offset in pixels. This works like NAME_tex but additionally takes care of necessary rotations, so that sampling at e.g. vec2(-1,0) is always one pixel to the left.
vec2 NAME_pos: The local texture coordinate of that texture, range [0,1].
vec2 NAME_size: The (rotated) size in pixels of the texture.
mat2 NAME_rot: The rotation matrix associated with this texture. (Rotates pixel space to texture coordinates)
vec2 NAME_pt: The (unrotated) size of a single pixel, range [0,1].
sampler NAME_raw: The raw bound texture itself. The use of this should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

In addition to these parameters, the following uniforms are also globally available:

float random: A random number in the range [0-1], different per frame.
int frame: A simple count of frames rendered, increases by one per frame and never resets (regardless of seeks).
vec2 image_size: The size in pixels of the input image.
vec2 target_size: The size in pixels of the visible part of the scaled (and possibly cropped) image.

Internally, vo_opengl may generate any number of the following textures. Whenever a texture is rendered and saved by vo_opengl, all of the passes that have hooked into it will run, in the order they were added by the user. This is a list of the legal hook points:

RGB, LUMA, CHROMA, ALPHA, XYZ (resizable): Source planes (raw). Which of these fire depends on the image format of the source.
CHROMA_SCALED, ALPHA_SCALED (fixed): Source planes (upscaled). These only fire on subsampled content.
NATIVE (resizable): The combined image, in the source colorspace, before conversion to RGB.
MAINPRESUB (resizable): The image, after conversion to RGB, but before --blend-subtitles=video is applied.
MAIN (resizable): The main image, after conversion to RGB but before upscaling.
LINEAR (fixed): Linear light image, before scaling. This only fires when --linear-scaling is in effect.
SIGMOID (fixed): Sigmoidized light, before scaling. This only fires when --sigmoid-upscaling is in effect.
PREKERNEL (fixed): The image immediately before the scaler kernel runs.
POSTKERNEL (fixed): The image immediately after the scaler kernel runs.
SCALED (fixed): The final upscaled image, before color management.
OUTPUT (fixed): The final output image, after color management but before dithering and drawing to screen.

Only the textures labelled with resizable may be transformed by the pass. When overwriting a texture marked fixed, the WIDTH, HEIGHT and OFFSET must be left at their default values.

--deband

Enable the debanding algorithm. This greatly reduces the amount of visible banding, blocking and other quantization artifacts, at the expensive of very slightly blurring some of the finest details. In practice, it's virtually always an improvement - the only reason to disable it would be for performance.

--deband-iterations=<1..16>

The number of debanding steps to perform per sample. Each step reduces a bit more banding, but takes time to compute. Note that the strength of each step falls off very quickly, so high numbers (>4) are practically useless. (Default 1)

--deband-threshold=<0..4096>

The debanding filter's cut-off threshold. Higher numbers increase the debanding strength dramatically but progressively diminish image details. (Default 64)

--deband-range=<1..64>

The debanding filter's initial radius. The radius increases linearly for each iteration. A higher radius will find more gradients, but a lower radius will smooth more aggressively. (Default 16)

If you increase the --deband-iterations, you should probably decrease this to compensate.

--deband-grain=<0..4096>

Add some extra noise to the image. This significantly helps cover up remaining quantization artifacts. Higher numbers add more noise. (Default 48)

--sigmoid-upscaling

When upscaling, use a sigmoidal color transform to avoid emphasizing ringing artifacts. This also implies --linear-scaling.

--sigmoid-center

The center of the sigmoid curve used for --sigmoid-upscaling, must be a float between 0.0 and 1.0. Defaults to 0.75 if not specified.

--sigmoid-slope

The slope of the sigmoid curve used for --sigmoid-upscaling, must be a float between 1.0 and 20.0. Defaults to 6.5 if not specified.

--sharpen=<value>

If set to a value other than 0, enable an unsharp masking filter. Positive values will sharpen the image (but add more ringing and aliasing). Negative values will blur the image. If your GPU is powerful enough, consider alternatives like the ewa_lanczossharp scale filter, or the --scale-blur option.

--opengl-glfinish

Call glFinish() before and after swapping buffers (default: disabled). Slower, but might improve results when doing framedropping. Can completely ruin performance. The details depend entirely on the OpenGL driver.

--opengl-waitvsync

Call glXWaitVideoSyncSGI after each buffer swap (default: 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/GLX only.

--opengl-vsync-fences=<N>

Synchronize the CPU to the Nth past frame using the GL_ARB_sync extension. A value of 0 disables this behavior (default). A value of 1 means it will synchronize to the current frame after rendering it. Like --glfinish and --waitvsync, this can lower or ruin performance. Its advantage is that it can span multiple frames, and effectively limit the number of frames the GPU queues ahead (which also has an influence on vsync).

--opengl-dwmflush=<no|windowed|yes|auto>

Calls DwmFlush after swapping buffers on Windows (default: auto). It also sets SwapInterval(0) to ignore the OpenGL timing. Values are: no (disabled), windowed (only in windowed mode), yes (also in full screen).

The value auto will try to determine whether the compositor is active, and calls DwmFlush only if it seems to be.

This may help to get more consistent frame intervals, especially with high-fps clips - which might also reduce dropped frames. Typically, a value of windowed should be enough, since full screen may bypass the DWM.

Windows only.

--opengl-dcomposition=<yes|no>

Allows DirectComposition when using the ANGLE backend (default: yes). DirectComposition implies flip-model presentation, which can improve rendering efficiency on Windows 8+ by avoiding a copy of the video frame. mpv uses it by default where possible, but it can cause poor behaviour with some drivers, such as a black screen or graphical corruption when leaving full-screen mode. Use "no" to disable it.

Windows with ANGLE only.

--opengl-sw

Continue even if a software renderer is detected.

--opengl-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
angle: Direct3D11 through the OpenGL ES translation layer ANGLE. This supports almost everything the win backend does (if the ANGLE build is new enough).
dxinterop (experimental): Win32, using WGL for rendering and Direct3D 9Ex for presentation. Works on Nvidia and AMD. Newer Intel chips with the latest drivers may also work.
x11: X11/GLX
wayland: Wayland/EGL
drm: DRM/EGL (drm-egl is a deprecated alias)
x11egl: X11/EGL
mali-fbdev: Direct fbdev/EGL support on some ARM/MALI devices.

--opengl-es=<mode>

Select whether to use GLES:

yes: Try to prefer ES over Desktop GL
no: Try to prefer desktop GL over ES
auto: Use the default for each backend (default)

--opengl-fbo-format=<fmt>

Selects the internal format of textures used for FBOs. The format can influence performance and quality of the video output. fmt can be one of: rgb8, rgb10, rgb10_a2, rgb16, rgb16f, rgb32f, rgba12, rgba16, rgba16f, rgba32f. Default: auto, which maps to rgba16 on desktop GL, and rgba16f or rgb10_a2 on GLES (e.g. ANGLE), unless GL_EXT_texture_norm16 is available.

--opengl-gamma=<0.1..2.0>

Set a gamma value (default: 1.0). 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.

Recommended values based on the environmental brightness:

1.0: Brightly illuminated (default)
0.9: Slightly dim
0.8: Pitch black room

NOTE: Typical movie content (Blu-ray etc.) already contains a gamma drop of about 0.8, so specifying it here as well will result in even darker image than intended!

--gamma-auto

Automatically corrects the gamma value depending on ambient lighting conditions (adding a gamma boost for dark rooms).

With ambient illuminance of 64lux, mpv will pick the 1.0 gamma value (no boost), and slightly increase the boost up until 0.8 for 16lux.

NOTE: Only implemented on OS X.

--target-prim=<value>

Specifies the primaries of the display. Video colors will be adapted to this colorspace when ICC color management is not being used. Valid values are:

auto: Disable any adaptation (default)
bt.470m: ITU-R BT.470 M
bt.601-525: ITU-R BT.601 (525-line SD systems, eg. NTSC), SMPTE 170M/240M
bt.601-625: ITU-R BT.601 (625-line SD systems, eg. PAL/SECAM), ITU-R BT.470 B/G
bt.709: ITU-R BT.709 (HD), IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB), SMPTE RP177 Annex B
bt.2020: ITU-R BT.2020 (UHD)
apple: Apple RGB
adobe: Adobe RGB (1998)
prophoto: ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
cie1931: CIE 1931 RGB (not to be confused with CIE XYZ)
dci-p3: DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Colorspace), SMPTE RP431-2
v-gamut: Panasonic V-Gamut (VARICAM) primaries

--target-trc=<value>

Specifies the transfer characteristics (gamma) of the display. Video colors will be adjusted to this curve when ICC color management is not being used. Valid values are:

auto: Disable any adaptation (default)
bt.1886: ITU-R BT.1886 curve (assuming infinite contrast)
srgb: IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB)
linear: Linear light output
gamma1.8: Pure power curve (gamma 1.8), also used for Apple RGB
gamma2.2: Pure power curve (gamma 2.2)
gamma2.8: Pure power curve (gamma 2.8), also used for BT.470-BG
prophoto: ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
st2084: SMPTE ST2084 (HDR) curve, PQ OETF
std-b67: ARIB STD-B67 (Hybrid Log-gamma) curve, also known as BBC/NHK HDR
v-log: Panasonic V-Log (VARICAM) curve

Note

When using HDR output formats, mpv will encode to the specified curve but it will not set any HDMI flags or other signalling that might be required for the target device to correctly display the HDR signal. The user should independently guarantee this before using these signal formats for display.

--target-brightness=<1..100000>

Specifies the display's approximate brightness in cd/m^2. When playing HDR content on a SDR display (or SDR content on an HDR display), video colors will be tone mapped to this target brightness using the algorithm specified by --hdr-tone-mapping. The default of 250 cd/m^2 corresponds to a typical consumer display.

--hdr-tone-mapping=<value>

Specifies the algorithm used for tone-mapping HDR images onto the target display. Valid values are:

clip: Hard-clip any out-of-range values.
reinhard: Reinhard tone mapping algorithm. Very simple continuous curve. Preserves dynamic range and peak but uses nonlinear contrast.
hable: Similar to reinhard but preserves dark contrast better (slightly sigmoidal). Developed by John Hable for use in video games. (default)
gamma: Fits a logarithmic transfer between the tone curves.
linear: Linearly stretches the entire reference gamut to (a linear multiple of) the display.

--tone-mapping-param=<value>

Set tone mapping parameters. Ignored if the tone mapping algorithm is not tunable. This affects the following tone mapping algorithms:

reinhard: Specifies the local contrast coefficient at the display peak. Defaults to 0.5, which means that in-gamut values will be about half as bright as when clipping.
gamma: Specifies the exponent of the function. Defaults to 1.8.
linear: Specifies the scale factor to use while stretching. Defaults to 1.0.

--icc-profile=<file>

Load an ICC profile and use it to transform video RGB to screen output. Needs LittleCMS 2 support compiled in. This option overrides the --target-prim, --target-trc and --icc-profile-auto options.

--icc-profile-auto

Automatically select the ICC display profile currently specified by the display settings of the operating system.

NOTE: On Windows, the default profile must be an ICC profile. WCS profiles are not supported.

--icc-cache-dir=<dirname>

Store and load the 3D LUTs created from the ICC profile in this directory. This can be used to speed up loading, since LittleCMS 2 can take a while to create a 3D LUT. Note that these files contain uncompressed LUTs. Their size depends on the --icc-3dlut-size, and can be very big.

NOTE: This is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused cache files may stick around indefinitely.

--icc-intent=<value>

Specifies the ICC intent used for the color transformation (when using --icc-profile).

0: perceptual
1: relative colorimetric (default)
2: saturation
3: absolute colorimetric

--icc-3dlut-size=<r>x<g>x<b>

Size of the 3D LUT generated from the ICC profile in each dimension. Default is 64x64x64. Sizes may range from 2 to 512.

--icc-contrast=<0-100000>

Specifies an upper limit on the target device's contrast ratio. This is detected automatically from the profile if possible, but for some profiles it might be missing, causing the contrast to be assumed as infinite. As a result, video may appear darker than intended. This only affects BT.1886 content. The default of 0 means no limit.

--blend-subtitles=<yes|video|no>

Blend subtitles directly onto upscaled video frames, before interpolation and/or color management (default: no). Enabling this causes subtitles to be affected by --icc-profile, --target-prim, --target-trc, --interpolation, --opengl-gamma and --post-shader. It also increases subtitle performance when using --interpolation.

The downside of enabling this is that it restricts subtitles to the visible portion of the video, so you can't have subtitles exist in the black margins below a video (for example).

If video is selected, the behavior is similar to yes, but subs are drawn at the video's native resolution, and scaled along with the video.

Warning

This changes the way subtitle colors are handled. Normally, subtitle colors are assumed to be in sRGB and color managed as such. Enabling this makes them treated as being in the video's color space instead. This is good if you want things like softsubbed ASS signs to match the video colors, but may cause SRT subtitles or similar to look slightly off.

--alpha=<blend-tiles|blend|yes|no>

Decides what to do if the input has an alpha component.

blend-tiles: Blend the frame against a 16x16 gray/white tiles background (default).
blend: Blend the frame against the background color (--background, normally black).
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 if you set the --opengl-fbo-format option to a non-default value, a format with alpha must be specified, or this won't work.
no: Ignore alpha component.

--opengl-rectangle-textures

Force use of rectangle textures (default: no). Normally this shouldn't have any advantages over normal textures. Note that hardware decoding overrides this flag. Could be removed any time.

--background=<color>

Color used to draw parts of the mpv window not covered by video. See --osd-color option how colors are defined.

--opengl-tex-pad-x, --opengl-tex-pad-y

Enlarge the video source textures by this many pixels. For debugging only (normally textures are sized exactly, but due to hardware decoding interop we may have to deal with additional padding, which can be tested with these options). Could be removed any time.

--opengl-early-flush=<yes|no|auto>

Call glFlush() after rendering a frame and before attempting to display it (default: auto). Can fix stuttering in some cases, in other cases probably causes it. The auto mode will call glFlush() only if the renderer is going to wait for a while after rendering, instead of flipping GL front and backbuffers immediately (i.e. it doesn't call it in display-sync mode).

Miscellaneous

--display-tags=tag1,tags2,...

Set the list of tags that should be displayed on the terminal. Tags that are in the list, but are not present in the played file, will not be shown. If a value ends with *, all tags are matched by prefix (though there is no general globbing). Just passing * essentially filtering.

The default includes a common list of tags, call mpv with --list-options to see it.

--mc=<seconds/frame>

Maximum A-V sync correction per frame (in seconds)

--autosync=<factor>

Gradually adjusts the A/V sync based on audio delay measurements. Specifying --autosync=0, the default, will cause frame timing to be based entirely on audio delay measurements. Specifying --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.

--video-sync=<audio|...>

How the player synchronizes audio and video.

The modes starting with display- try to output video frames completely synchronously to the display, using the detected display vertical refresh rate as a hint how fast frames will be displayed on average. These modes change video speed slightly to match the display. See --video-sync-... options for fine tuning. The robustness of this mode is further reduced by making a some idealized assumptions, which may not always apply in reality. Behavior can depend on the VO and the system's video and audio drivers. Media files must use constant framerate. Section-wise VFR might work as well with some container formats (but not e.g. mkv). If the sync code detects severe A/V desync, or the framerate cannot be detected, the player automatically reverts to audio mode for some time or permanently.

The modes with desync in their names do not attempt to keep audio/video in sync. They will slowly (or quickly) desync, until e.g. the next seek happens. These modes are meant for testing, not serious use.

display-resample:
audio:	Time video frames to audio. This is the most robust mode, because the player doesn't have to assume anything about how the display behaves. The disadvantage is that it can lead to occasional frame drops or repeats. If audio is disabled, this uses the system clock. This is the default mode.
	Resample audio to match the video. This mode will also try to adjust audio speed to compensate for other drift. (This means it will play the audio at a different speed every once in a while to reduce the A/V difference.)
display-resample-vdrop:
	Resample audio to match the video. Drop video frames to compensate for drift.
display-resample-desync:
	Like the previous mode, but no A/V compensation.
display-vdrop:	Drop or repeat video frames to compensate desyncing video. (Although it should have the same effects as `audio`, the implementation is very different.)
display-adrop:	Drop or repeat audio data to compensate desyncing video. See `--video-sync-adrop-size`. This mode will cause severe audio artifacts if the real monitor refresh rate is too different from the reported or forced rate.
display-desync:	Sync video to display, and let audio play on its own.
desync:	Sync video according to system clock, and let audio play on its own.

--video-sync-max-video-change=<value>

Maximum speed difference in percent that is applied to video with --video-sync=display-... (default: 1). Display sync mode will be disabled if the monitor and video refresh way do not match within the given range. It tries multiples as well: playing 30 fps video on a 60 Hz screen will duplicate every second frame. Playing 24 fps video on a 60 Hz screen will play video in a 2-3-2-3-... pattern.

The default settings are not loose enough to speed up 23.976 fps video to 25 fps. We consider the pitch change too extreme to allow this behavior by default. Set this option to a value of 5 to enable it.

Note that in the --video-sync=display-resample mode, audio speed will additionally be changed by a small amount if necessary for A/V sync. See --video-sync-max-audio-change.

--video-sync-max-audio-change=<value>

Maximum additional speed difference in percent that is applied to audio with --video-sync=display-... (default: 0.125). Normally, the player plays the audio at the speed of the video. But if the difference between audio and video position is too high, e.g. due to drift or other timing errors, it will attempt to speed up or slow down audio by this additional factor. Too low values could lead to video frame dropping or repeating if the A/V desync cannot be compensated, too high values could lead to chaotic frame dropping due to the audio "overshooting" and skipping multiple video frames before the sync logic can react.

--video-sync-adrop-size=<value>

For the --video-sync=display-adrop mode. This mode duplicates/drops audio data to keep audio in sync with video. To avoid audio artifacts on jitter (which would add/remove samples all the time), this is done in relatively large, fixed units, controlled by this option. The unit is 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 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.

The destination file is always appended. (Before mpv 0.8.0, the file was overwritten.)

--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.)

--vo-mmcss-profile=<name>

(Windows only.) Set the MMCSS profile for the video renderer thread (default: Playback).

--priority=<prio>

(Windows only.) Set process priority for mpv according to the predefined priorities available under Windows.

Warning

Using realtime priority can cause system lockup.

--force-media-title=<string>

Force the contents of the media-title property to this value. Useful for scripts which want to set a title, without overriding the user's setting in --title.

--external-file=<filename>

Add all tracks from the given file. Unlike --sub-file and --audio-file, this includes all tracks, and does not cause default stream selection over the "proper" file.

--autoload-files=<yes|no>

Automatically load/select external files (default: yes).

If set to no, then do not automatically load external files as specified by --sub-auto and --audio-file-auto. If external files are forcibly added (like with --sub-file), they will not be auto-selected.

This does not affect playlist expansion, redirection, or other loading of referenced files like with ordered chapters.

--lavfi-complex=<string>

Set a "complex" libavfilter filter, which means a single filter graph can take input from multiple source audio and video tracks. The graph can result in a single audio or video output (or both).

Currently, the filter graph labels are used to select the participating input tracks and audio/video output. The following rules apply:

A label of the form aidN selects audio track N as input (e.g. aid1).
A label of the form vidN selects video track N as input.
A label named ao will be connected to the audio output.
A label named vo will be connected to the video output.

Each label can be used only once. If you want to use e.g. an audio stream for multiple filters, you need to use the asplit filter. Multiple video or audio outputs are not possible, but you can use filters to merge them into one.

The complex filter cannot be changed yet during playback. It's also not possible to change the tracks connected to the filter at runtime. Other tracks, as long as they're not connected to the filter, and the corresponding output is not connected to the filter, can still be freely changed.

Note that the normal filter chains (--af, --vf) are applied between the complex graphs (e.g. ao label) and the actual output.

Examples

--lavfi-complex='[aid1] asplit [ao] [t] ; [t] aphasemeter [vo]' Play audio track 1, and visualize it as video using the aphasemeter filter.
--lavfi-complex='[aid1] [aid2] amix [ao]' Play audio track 1 and 2 at the same time.
--lavfi-complex='[vid1] [vid2] vstack [vo]' Stack video track 1 and 2 and play them at the same time. Note that both tracks need to have the same width, or filter initialization will fail (you can add scale filters before the vstack filter to fix the size).
--lavfi-complex='[aid1] asplit [ao] [t] ; [t] aphasemeter [t2] ; [vid1] [t2] overlay [vo]' Play audio track 1, and overlay its visualization over video track 1.
--lavfi-complex='[aid1] asplit [t1] [ao] ; [t1] showvolume [t2] ; [vid1] [t2] overlay [vo]' Play audio track 1, and overlay the measured volume for each speaker over video track 1.
null:// --lavfi-complex='life [vo]' Conways' Life Game.

See the FFmpeg libavfilter documentation for details on the available filters.

AUDIO OUTPUT DRIVERS

Audio output drivers are interfaces to different audio output facilities. The syntax is:

--ao=<driver1,driver2,...[,]>: Specify a priority list of audio output drivers to be used.

If the list has a trailing ',', mpv will fall back on drivers not contained in the list.

--ao-defaults=<driver1[:parameter1:parameter2:...],driver2,...>

Set defaults for each driver.

Deprecated. No replacement.

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 BSD systems, --ao=oss or --ao=sndio may work (the latter being experimental).

Available audio output drivers are:

alsa (Linux only)

ALSA audio output driver

See ALSA audio output options for options specific to this AO.

Warning

To get multichannel/surround audio, use --audio-channels=auto. The default for this option is auto-safe, which makes this audio otuput explicitly reject multichannel output, as there is no way to detect whether a certain channel layout is actually supported.

You can also try using the upmix plugin. This setup enables multichannel audio on the default device with automatic upmixing with shared access, so playing stereo and multichannel audio at the same time will work as expected.

oss

OSS audio output driver

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--oss-device: Sets the audio output device (default: /dev/dsp). Deprecated, use --audio-device.
--oss-mixer-device: Sets the audio mixer device (default: /dev/mixer).
--oss-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.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--jack-port=<name>: Connects to the ports with the given name (default: physical ports).
--jack-name=<client>: Client name that is passed to JACK (default: mpv). Useful if you want to have certain connections established automatically.
--jack-autostart=<yes|no>: Automatically start jackd if necessary (default: disabled). Note that this tends to be unreliable and will flood stdout with server messages.
--jack-connect=<yes|no>: Automatically create connections to output ports (default: enabled). When enabled, the maximum number of output channels will be limited to the number of available output ports.
--jack-std-channel-layout=<waveext|any>: Select the standard channel layout (default: waveext). JACK itself has no notion of channel layouts (i.e. 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. 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 AudioUnits and the CoreAudio sound server.

Automatically redirects to coreaudio_exclusive when playing compressed formats.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--coreaudio-change-physical-format=<yes|no>: Change the physical format to one similar to the requested audio format (default: no). This has the advantage that multichannel audio output will actually work. The disadvantage is that it will change the system-wide audio settings. This is equivalent to changing the Format setting in the Audio Devices dialog in the Audio MIDI Setup utility. Note that this does not affect the selected speaker setup.
--coreaudio-exclusive: Deprecated, use --audio-exclusive. Use exclusive mode access. This merely redirects to coreaudio_exclusive, but should be preferred over using that AO directly.

coreaudio_exclusive (Mac OS X only)

Native Mac OS X audio output driver using direct device access and exclusive mode (bypasses the sound server).

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

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--pulse-host=<host>, --pulse-sink=<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). Deprecated, use --audio-device.

--pulse-buffer=<1-2000|native>

Set the audio buffer size in milliseconds. A higher value buffers more data, and has a lower probability of buffer underruns. A smaller value makes the audio stream react faster, e.g. to playback speed changes. Default: 250.

--pulse-latency-hacks=<yes|no>

Enable hacks to workaround PulseAudio timing bugs (default: no). 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 or some plugins, while enabling it might help in some unknown situations (it used to be required to get good behavior on old PulseAudio versions).

If you have stuttering video when using pulse, try to enable this option. (Or try to update PulseAudio.)

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.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--sdl-buflen=<length>: Sets the audio buffer length in seconds. Is used only as a hint by the sound system. Playing a file with -v will show the requested and obtained exact buffer size. A value of 0 selects the sound system default.
--sdl-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. You can use --ao=null --ao-null-untimed for benchmarking.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--ao-null-untimed: Do not simulate timing of a perfect audio device. This means audio decoding will go as fast as possible, instead of timing it to the system clock.
--ao-null-buffer: Simulated buffer length in seconds.
--ao-null-outburst: Simulated chunk size in samples.
--ao-null-speed: Simulated audio playback speed as a multiplier. Usually, a real audio device will not go exactly as fast as the system clock. It will deviate just a little, and this option helps to simulate this.
--ao-null-latency: Simulated device latency. This is additional to EOF.
--ao-null-broken-eof: Simulate broken audio drivers, which always add the fixed device latency to the reported audio playback position.
--ao-null-broken-delay: Simulate broken audio drivers, which don't report latency correctly.
--ao-null-channel-layouts: If not empty, this is a , separated list of channel layouts the AO allows. This can be used to test channel layout selection.

pcm

Raw PCM/WAVE file writer audio output

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--ao-pcm-waveheader=<yes|no>: Include or do not include the WAVE header (default: included). When not included, raw PCM will be generated.
--ao-pcm-file=<filename>: Write the sound to <filename> instead of the default audiodump.wav. If no-waveheader is specified, the default is audiodump.pcm.
--ao-pcm-append=<yes|no>: Append to the file, instead of overwriting it. Always use this with the no-waveheader option - with waveheader it's broken, because it will write a WAVE header every time the file is opened.

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.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--rsound-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 '/'.
--rsound-port=<number>: Set the TCP port used for connecting to the server (default: 12345). Not used if connecting to a Unix domain socket.

These options are deprecated. If anyone cares enough, their functionality can be added back using --audio-device.

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.)

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--ao-sndio-device=<device>: sndio device to use (default: $AUDIODEVICE, resp. snd0). Deprecated, use --audio-device.

wasapi

Audio output to the Windows Audio Session API.

The following global options are supported by this audio output:

--ao-wasapi-exclusive

Deprecated, use --audio-exclusive. Requests exclusive, direct hardware access. By definition prevents sound playback of any other program until mpv exits.

--ao-wasapi-device=<id>

Deprecated, use --audio-device.

Uses the requested endpoint instead of the system's default audio endpoint. Both an ordinal number (0,1,2,...) and the GUID String are valid; the GUID string is guaranteed to not change unless the driver is uninstalled.

Also supports searching active devices by human-readable name. If more than one device matches the name, refuses loading it.

VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS

Video output drivers are interfaces to different video output facilities. The syntax is:

--vo=<driver1,driver2,...[,]>: Specify a priority list of video output drivers to be used.

If the list has a trailing ,, mpv will fall back on drivers not contained in the list.

--vo-defaults=<driver1[:parameter1:parameter2:...],driver2,...>

Set defaults for each driver.

Deprecated. No replacement.

Note

See --vo=help for a list of compiled-in video output drivers.

The recommended output driver is --vo=opengl, which is the default. All other drivers are for compatibility or special purposes. If the default does not work, it will fallback to other drivers (in the same order as listed by --vo=help).

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.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--xv-adaptor=<number>

Select a specific XVideo adapter (check xvinfo results).

--xv-port=<number>

Select a specific XVideo port.

--xv-ck=<cur|use|set>

Select the source from which the color key is taken (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.

--xv-ck-method=<none|man|bg|auto>

Sets the color key drawing method (default: man).

none: Disables color-keying.
man: Draw the color key manually (reduces flicker in some cases).
bg: Set the color key as window background.
auto: Let Xv draw the color key.

--xv-colorkey=<number>

Changes the color key to an RGB value of your choice. 0x000000 is black and 0xffffff is white.

--xv-buffers=<number>

Number of image buffers to use for the internal ringbuffer (default: 2). Increasing this will use more memory, but might help with the X server not responding quickly enough if video FPS is close to or higher than the display refresh rate.

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.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-vdpau-sharpen=<-1-1>

(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)

For positive values, apply a sharpening algorithm to the video, for negative values a blurring algorithm (default: 0).

--vo-vdpau-denoise=<0-1>

(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)

Apply a noise reduction algorithm to the video (default: 0; no noise reduction).

--vo-vdpau-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.

--vo-vdpau-chroma-deint

(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)

Makes temporal deinterlacers operate both on luma and chroma (default). Use no-chroma-deint to solely use luma and speed up advanced deinterlacing. Useful with slow video memory.

--vo-vdpau-pullup

(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)

Try to apply inverse telecine, needs motion adaptive temporal deinterlacing.

--vo-vdpau-hqscaling=<0-9>

(Deprecated. See note about vdpaupp.)

0: Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9: Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable hardware).

--vo-vdpau-fps=<number>

Override autodetected display refresh rate value (the value is needed for framedrop to allow video playback rates higher than display refresh rate, and for vsync-aware frame timing adjustments). Default 0 means use autodetected value. A positive value is interpreted as a refresh rate in Hz and overrides the autodetected value. A negative value disables all timing adjustment and framedrop logic.

--vo-vdpau-composite-detect

NVIDIA's current VDPAU implementation behaves somewhat differently under a compositing window manager and does not give accurate frame timing information. With this 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 --vo-vdpau-composite-detect=no to disable.

--vo-vdpau-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.

--vo-vdpau-output-surfaces=<2-15>

Allocate this many output surfaces to display video frames (default: 3). See below for additional information.

--vo-vdpau-colorkey=<#RRGGBB|#AARRGGBB>

Set the VDPAU presentation queue background color, which in practice is the colorkey used if VDPAU operates in overlay mode (default: #020507, some shade of black). If the alpha component of this value is 0, the default VDPAU colorkey will be used instead (which is usually green).

--vo-vdpau-force-yuv

Never accept RGBA input. This means mpv will insert a 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 (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, and where ANGLE does not perform well.

Note

Before to 0.21.0, direct3d_shaders and direct3d were different, with direct3d not using shader by default. Now both use shaders by default, and direct3d_shaders is a deprecated alias. Use the --vo-direct3d-prefer-stretchrect or the --vo-direct3d-disable-shaders options to get the old behavior of direct3d.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-direct3d-prefer-stretchrect: Use IDirect3DDevice9::StretchRect over other methods if possible.
--vo-direct3d-disable-stretchrect: Never render the video using IDirect3DDevice9::StretchRect.
--vo-direct3d-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.
--vo-direct3d-disable-shaders: Never use shaders when rendering video.
--vo-direct3d-only-8bit: Never render YUV video with more than 8 bits per component. Using this flag will force software conversion to 8-bit.
--vo-direct3d-disable-texture-align: Normally texture sizes are always aligned to 16. With this option enabled, the video texture will always have exactly the same size as the video itself.

Debug options. These might be incorrect, might be removed in the future, might crash, might cause slow downs, etc. Contact the developers if you actually need any of these for performance or proper operation.

--vo-direct3d-force-power-of-2

Always force textures to power of 2, even if the device reports non-power-of-2 texture sizes as supported.

--vo-direct3d-texture-memory=<mode>

Only affects operation with shaders/texturing enabled, and (E)OSD. Possible values:

default (default): Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM texture for locking. If the driver supports D3DDEVCAPS_TEXTURESYSTEMMEMORY, D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM is used directly.
default-pool: Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT. (Like default, but never use a shadow-texture.)
default-pool-shadow: Use D3DPOOL_DEFAULT, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM texture for locking. (Like default, but always force the shadow-texture.)
managed: Use D3DPOOL_MANAGED.
scratch: Use D3DPOOL_SCRATCH, with a D3DPOOL_SYSTEMMEM texture for locking.

--vo-direct3d-swap-discard

Use D3DSWAPEFFECT_DISCARD, which might be faster. Might be slower too, as it must(?) clear every frame.

--vo-direct3d-exact-backbuffer

Always resize the backbuffer to window size.

opengl

OpenGL video output driver. It supports extended scaling methods, dithering and color management.

See OpenGL renderer options for options specific to this VO.

By default, it tries to use fast and fail-safe settings. Use the opengl-hq profile to use this driver with defaults set to high quality rendering. (This profile is also the replacement for --vo=opengl-hq.) The profile can be applied with --profile=opengl-hq and its contents can be viewed with --show-profile=opengl-hq.

Requires at least OpenGL 2.1.

Some features are available with OpenGL 3 capable graphics drivers only (or if the necessary extensions are available).

OpenGL ES 2.0 and 3.0 are supported as well.

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.

opengl makes use of FBOs by default. Sometimes you can achieve better quality or performance by changing the --opengl-fbo-format option 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. If you have problems, you can also try enabling the --opengl-dumb-mode=yes option.

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.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--sdl-sw: Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
--sdl-switch-mode: Instruct SDL to switch the monitor video mode when going fullscreen.

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.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-vaapi-scaling=<algorithm>

default: Driver default (mpv default as well).
fast: Fast, but low quality.
hq: Unspecified driver dependent high-quality scaling, slow.
nla: non-linear anamorphic scaling

--vo-vaapi-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).

--vo-vaapi-scaled-osd=<yes|no>

If enabled, then the OSD is rendered at video resolution and scaled to display resolution. By default, this is disabled, and the OSD is rendered at display resolution if the driver supports it.

null

Produces no video output. Useful for benchmarking.

Usually, it's better to disable video with --no-video instead.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-null-fps=<value>: Simulate display FPS. This artificially limits how many frames the VO accepts per second.

caca

Color ASCII art video output driver that works on a text console.

Note

This driver is a joke.

tct

Color Unicode art video output driver that works on a text console. Depends on support of true color by modern terminals to display the images at full color range. On Windows it requires an ansi terminal such as mintty.

--vo-tct-algo=<algo>

Select how to write the pixels to the terminal.

half-blocks: Uses unicode LOWER HALF BLOCK character to achieve higher vertical resolution. (Default.)
plain: Uses spaces. Causes vertical resolution to drop twofolds, but in theory works in more places.

--vo-tct-width=<width> --vo-tct-height=<height>

Assume the terminal has the specified character width and/or height. These default to 80x25 if the terminal size cannot be determined.

--vo-tct-256=<yes|no> (default: no)

Use 256 colors - for terminals which don't support true color.

image

Output each frame into an image file in the current directory. Each file takes the frame number padded with leading zeros as name.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-image-format=<format>

Select the image file format.

jpg: JPEG files, extension .jpg. (Default.)
jpeg: JPEG files, extension .jpeg.
png: PNG files.
ppm: Portable bitmap format.
pgm: Portable graymap format.
pgmyuv: Portable graymap format, using the YV12 pixel format.
tga: Truevision TGA.

--vo-image-png-compression=<0-9>

PNG compression factor (speed vs. file size tradeoff) (default: 7)

--vo-image-png-filter=<0-5>

Filter applied prior to PNG compression (0 = none; 1 = sub; 2 = up; 3 = average; 4 = Paeth; 5 = mixed) (default: 5)

--vo-image-jpeg-quality=<0-100>

JPEG quality factor (default: 90)

--vo-image-jpeg-progressive=<yes|no>

Specify standard or progressive JPEG (default: no).

--vo-image-jpeg-baseline=<yes|no>

Specify use of JPEG baseline or not (default: yes).

--vo-image-jpeg-optimize=<0-100>

JPEG optimization factor (default: 100)

--vo-image-jpeg-smooth=<0-100>

smooth factor (default: 0)

--vo-image-jpeg-dpi=<1->

JPEG DPI (default: 72)

--vo-image-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.

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--vo-wayland-alpha: Use a buffer format that supports videos and images with alpha information
--vo-wayland-rgb565: Use RGB565 as buffer format. This format is implemented on most platforms, especially on embedded where it is far more efficient then RGB8888.
--vo-wayland-triple-buffering: Use 3 buffers instead of 2. This can lead to more fluid playback, but uses more memory.

opengl-cb

For use with libmpv direct OpenGL embedding; useless in any other contexts. (See <mpv/opengl_cb.h>.)

This also supports many of the options the opengl VO has.

rpi (Raspberry Pi)

Native video output on the Raspberry Pi using the MMAL API.

This is deprecated. Use --vo=opengl instead, which is the default and provides the same functionality. The rpi VO will be removed in mpv 0.22.0. Its functionality was folded into --vo=opengl, which now uses RPI hardware decoding by treating it as a hardware overlay (without applying GL filtering). Also to be changed in 0.22.0: the --fs flag will be reset to "no" by default (like on the other platforms).

The following deprecated global options are supported by this video output:

--rpi-display=<number>: Select the display number on which the video overlay should be shown (default: 0).
--rpi-layer=<number>: Select the dispmanx layer on which the video overlay should be shown (default: -10). Note that mpv will also use the 2 layers above the selected layer, to handle the window background and OSD. Actual video rendering will happen on the layer above the selected layer.
--rpi-background=<yes|no>: Whether to render a black background behind the video (default: no). Normally it's better to kill the console framebuffer instead, which gives better performance.
--rpi-osd=<yes|no>: Enabled by default. If disabled with no, no OSD layer is created. This also means there will be no subtitles rendered.

drm (Direct Rendering Manager)

Video output driver using Kernel Mode Setting / Direct Rendering Manager. Should be used when one doesn't want to install full-blown graphical environment (e.g. no X). Does not support hardware acceleration (if you need this, check the drm backend for opengl VO).

The following global options are supported by this video output:

--drm-connector=[<gpu_number>.]<name>: Select the connector to use (usually this is a monitor.) If <name> is empty or auto, mpv renders the output on the first available connector. Use --drm-connector=help to get list of available connectors. When using multiple graphic cards, use the <gpu_number> argument to disambiguate. (default: empty)
--drm-mode=<number>: Mode ID to use (resolution, bit depth and frame rate). (default: 0)

AUDIO FILTERS

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.

Also, keep in mind that most actual filters are available via the lavfi wrapper, which gives you access to most of libavfilter's filters. This includes all filters that have been ported from MPlayer to libavfilter.

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:....)
normalize=<yes|no|auto>: Whether to normalize when remixing channel layouts (default: auto). auto uses the value set by --audio-normalize-downmix.
o=<string>: Set AVOptions on the SwrContext or AVAudioResampleContext. These should be documented by FFmpeg or Libav.

lavcac3enc[=options]

Encode multi-channel audio to AC-3 at runtime using libavcodec. Supports 16-bit native-endian input format, maximum 6 channels. The output is big-endian when outputting a raw AC-3 stream, 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

minch=<n>

If the input channel number is less than <minch>, the filter will detach itself (default: 3).

encoder=<name>

Select the libavcodec encoder used. Currently, this should be an AC-3 encoder, and using another codec will fail horribly.

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)

Example

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.

Examples

mpv --af=channels=4:[0-1,1-0,2-2,3-3] 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

Does not do any format conversion itself. Rather, it may cause the filter system to insert necessary conversion filters before or after this filter if needed. It is primarily useful for controlling the audio format going into other filters. To specify the format for audio output, see --audio-format, --audio-samplerate, and --audio-channels. This filter is able to force a particular format, whereas --audio-* may be overridden by the ao based on output compatibility.

All parameters are optional. The first 3 parameters restrict what the filter accepts as input. They will therefore cause conversion filters to be inserted before this one. The out- parameters tell the filters or audio outputs following this filter how to interpret the data without actually doing a conversion. Setting these will probably just break things unless you really know you want this for some reason, such as testing or dealing with broken media.

<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>

NOTE: this filter used to be named force. The old format filter used to do conversion itself, unlike this one which lets the filter system handle the conversion.

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.

replaygain-fallback

Gain in dB to apply if the file has no replay gain tags. This option is always applied if the replaygain logic is somehow inactive. If this is applied, no other replaygain options are applied.

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.)

Example

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.

Examples

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.

This filter supports the following af-command commands:

set-matrix: Set the <matrix> argument dynamically. This can be used to change the mixing matrix at runtime, without reinitializing the entire filter chain.

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.

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 this to your input.conf to step by musical semi-tones:

[ multiply speed 0.9438743126816935
] multiply speed 1.059463094352953

Warning

Loses sync with video.

both

Scale both tempo and pitch.

none

Ignore speed changes.

Examples

mpv --af=scaletempo --speed=1.2 media.ogg: Would play media at 1.2x normal speed, with audio at normal pitch. Changing playback speed would change 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=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.

rubberband

High quality pitch correction with librubberband. This can be used in place of scaletempo, and will be used to adjust audio pitch when playing at speed different from normal. It can also be used to adjust audio pitch without changing playback speed.

<pitch-scale>: Sets the pitch scaling factor. Frequencies are multiplied by this value.

This filter has a number of additional sub-options. You can list them with mpv --af=rubberband=help. This will also show the default values for each option. The options are not documented here, because they are merely passed to librubberband. Look at the librubberband documentation to learn what each option does: http://breakfastquay.com/rubberband/code-doc/classRubberBand_1_1RubberBandStretcher.html (The mapping of the mpv rubberband filter sub-option names and values to those of librubberband follows a simple pattern: "Option" + Name + Value.)

This filter supports the following af-command commands:

set-pitch: Set the <pitch-scale> argument dynamically. This can be used to change the playback pitch at runtime. Note that speed is controlled using the standard speed property, not af-command.

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

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.

Example

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).

Example

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.

no:	Disable accurate rounding (default).
yes:	Enable accurate rounding.

dsize[=w:h:aspect-method:r:aspect]

Changes the intended display aspect at an arbitrary point in the filter chain. Aspect can be given as a fraction (4/3) or floating point number (1.33). 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 the correct aspect.

<w>,<h>

New aspect ratio given by a display width and height. Unlike older mpv versions or MPlayer, this does not set the display size.

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.

Example

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.

Example

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=<value>:colormatrix=<value>:...

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: don't change).

<outfmt>

Format name that should be substituted for the output. If they do not have the same bytes per pixel and chroma subsampling, it will fail.

<colormatrix>

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.

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

<colorlevels>

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)

<primaries>

RGB primaries the source file was encoded with. Normally this should be set in the file header, but when playing broken or mistagged files this can be used to override the setting.

This option only affects video output drivers that perform color management, for example opengl with the target-prim or icc-profile suboptions set.

If this option is set to auto (which is the default), the video's primaries flag will be used. If that flag is 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)
apple:	Apple RGB
adobe:	Adobe RGB (1998)
prophoto:	ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
cie1931:	CIE 1931 RGB
dci-p3:	DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema)
v-gamut:	Panasonic V-Gamut primaries

<gamma>

Gamma function the source file was encoded with. Normally this should be set in the file header, but when playing broken or mistagged files this can be used to override the setting.

This option only affects video output drivers that perform color management.

If this option is set to auto (which is the default), the gamma will be set to BT.1886 for YCbCr content, sRGB for RGB content and Linear for XYZ content.

Available gamma functions are:

auto:	automatic selection (default)
bt.1886:	ITU-R BT.1886 (EOTF corresponding to BT.601/BT.709/BT.2020)
srgb:	IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB)
linear:	Linear light
gamma1.8:	Pure power curve (gamma 1.8)
gamma2.2:	Pure power curve (gamma 2.2)
gamma2.8:	Pure power curve (gamma 2.8)
prophoto:	ProPhoto RGB (ROMM) curve
st2084:	SMPTE ST2084 (HDR) curve
std-b67:	ARIB STD-B67 (Hybrid Log-gamma) curve
v-log:	Panasonic V-Log transfer curve

<peak>

Reference peak illumination for the video file. This is mostly interesting for HDR, but it can also be used tone map SDR content to a darker or brighter exposure.

The default of 0.0 will default to the display's reference brightness for SDR and the source's reference brightness for HDR.

<stereo-in>

Set the stereo mode the video is assumed to be encoded in. Takes the same values as the --video-stereo-mode option.

<stereo-out>

Set the stereo mode the video should be displayed as. Takes the same values as the --video-stereo-mode option.

<rotate>

Set the rotation the video is assumed to be encoded with in degrees. The special value -1 uses the input format.

<dw>, <dh>

Set the display size. Note that setting the display size such that the video is scaled in both directions instead of just changing the aspect ratio is an implementation detail, and might change later.

<dar>

Set the display aspect ratio of the video frame. This is a float, but values such as [16:9] can be passed too ([...] for quoting to prevent the option parser from interpreting the : character).

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).

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.

Examples

-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.

Example

'--vf=lavfi=yadif:o="threads=2,thread_type=slice"': forces a specific threading configuration.

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).

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 process video with slight blurring between the fields, but may also cause 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.

yadif=[mode:interlaced-only]

Yet another deinterlacing filter

<mode>

frame-nospatial:
frame:	Output 1 frame for each frame.
field:	Output 1 frame for each field (default).
	Like `frame` but skips spatial interlacing check.
field-nospatial:
	Like `field` but skips spatial interlacing check.

<interlaced-only>

no:	Deinterlace all frames.
yes:	Only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced (default).

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 a deinterlacer twice when inserting yadif with --vf, so using the above methods is recommended.

sub=[=bottom-margin:top-margin]

Moves subtitle rendering to an arbitrary point in the filter chain, or force subtitle rendering in the video filter as opposed to using video output OSD support.

<bottom-margin>: Adds a black band at the bottom of the frame. The SSA/ASS renderer can place subtitles there (with --sub-use-margins).
<top-margin>: Black band on the top for toptitles (with --sub-use-margins).

Examples

--vf=sub,eq: Moves sub rendering before the eq filter. This will put both subtitle colors and video under the influence of the video equalizer settings.

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.

Warning

This filter is deprecated.

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.

Example:

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 request in reverse direction. E.g. if buffered-frames=5, and the script just requested frame 15, it can still request frame 10, but frame 9 is not available anymore. If it requests frame 30, mpv will decode 15 more frames, and keep only frames 25-30.

The 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. 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.

By default, this uses the special value auto, which sets the option to the number of detected logical CPU cores.

The following variables are defined by mpv:

video_in

The mpv video source as vapoursynth clip. Note that this has no length set, which confuses many filters. Using Trim on the clip with a high dummy length can turn it into a finite clip.

video_in_dw, video_in_dh

Display size of the video. Can be different from video size if the video does not use square pixels (e.g. DVD).

container_fps

FPS value as reported by file headers. This value can be wrong or completely broken (e.g. 0 or NaN). Even if the value is correct, if another filter changes the real FPS (by dropping or inserting frames), the value of this variable might not be useful. Note that the --fps command line option overrides this value.

Useful for some filters which insist on having a FPS.

display_fps

Refresh rate of the current display. Note that this value can be 0.

vapoursynth-lazy

The same as vapoursynth, but doesn't load Python scripts. Instead, a custom backend using Lua and the raw VapourSynth API is used. The syntax is completely different, and absolutely no convenience features are provided. There's no type checking either, and you can trigger crashes.

Example:

video_out = invoke("morpho", "Open", {clip = video_in})

The special variable video_in is the mpv video source, while the special variable video_out is used to read video from. The 1st argument is the plugin (queried with getPluginByNs), the 2nd is the filter name, and the 3rd argument is a table with the arguments. Positional arguments are not supported. The types must match exactly. Since Lua is terrible and can't distinguish integers and floats, integer arguments must be prefixed with i_, in which case the prefix is removed and the argument is cast to an integer. Should the argument's name start with i_, you're out of luck.

Clips (VSNodeRef) are passed as light userdata, so trying to pass any other userdata type will result in hard crashes.

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).
weave, motion-adaptive, motion-compensated: Advanced deinterlacing algorithms. Whether these actually work depends on the GPU hardware, the GPU drivers, driver bugs, and mpv bugs.

<interlaced-only>

no:	Deinterlace all frames.
yes:	Only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced (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.

interlaced-only=<yes|no>

If yes (default), only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced.

hqscaling=<0-9>

0: Use default VDPAU scaling (default).
1-9: Apply high quality VDPAU scaling (needs capable hardware).

vdpaurb

This filter is deprecated. Use --hwdec=vdpau-copy instead.

VDPAU video read back. Works with --vo=vdpau and --vo=opengl only. This filter will read back frames decoded by VDPAU so that other filters, which are not normally compatible with VDPAU, can be used like normal. This filter must be specified before vdpaupp in the filter chain if vdpaupp is used.

d3d11vpp

Direct3D 11 video post processing. Currently requires D3D11 hardware decoding for use.

deint=<yes|no>: Whether deinterlacing is enabled (default: no).
interlaced-only=<yes|no>: If yes (default), only deinterlace frames marked as interlaced.
mode=<blend|bob|adaptive|mocomp|ivctc|none>: Tries to select a video processor with the given processing capability. If a video processor supports multiple capabilities, it is not clear which algorithm is actually selected. none always falls back. On most if not all hardware, this option will probably do nothing, because a video processor usually supports all modes or none.

buffer=<num>

Buffer <num> frames in the filter chain. This filter is probably pretty useless, except for debugging. (Note that this won't help to smooth out latencies with decoding, because the filter will never output a frame if the buffer isn't full, except on EOF.)

ENCODING

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.

Example

"--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.

Examples

"--ovc=mpeg4 --ovcopts=qscale=5": selects constant quantizer scale 5 for MPEG-4 encoding.
"--ovc=libx264 --ovcopts=crf=23": selects VBR quality factor 23 for H.264 encoding.

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).

COMMAND INTERFACE

The mpv core can be controlled with commands and properties. A number of ways to interact with the player use them: key bindings (input.conf), OSD (showing information with properties), JSON IPC, the client API (libmpv), and the classic slave mode.

input.conf

The input.conf file consists of a list of key bindings, for example:

s screenshot      # take a screenshot with the s key
LEFT seek 15      # map the left-arrow key to seeking forward by 15 seconds

Each line maps a key to an input command. Keys are specified with their literal value (upper case if combined with Shift), or a name for special keys. For example, a maps to the a key without shift, and A maps to a with shift.

The file is located in the mpv configuration directory (normally at ~/.config/mpv/input.conf depending on platform). The default bindings are defined here:

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/etc/input.conf

A list of special keys can be obtained with

mpv --input-keylist

In general, keys can be combined with Shift, Ctrl and Alt:

ctrl+q quit

mpv can be started in input test mode, which displays key bindings and the commands they're bound to on the OSD, instead of executing the 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.)

General Input Command Syntax

[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.

List of Input Commands

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.

Change the playback position. By default, seeks by a relative amount of seconds.

The second argument consists of flags controlling the seek mode:

relative (default): Seek relative to current position (a negative value seeks backwards).
absolute: Seek to a given time (a negative value starts from the end of the file).
absolute-percent: Seek to a given percent position.
relative-percent: Seek relative to current position in percent.
keyframes: Always restart playback at keyframe boundaries (fast).
exact: Always do exact/hr/precise seeks (slow).

Multiple flags can be combined, e.g.: absolute+keyframes.

By default, keyframes is used for relative seeks, and exact is used for absolute seeks.

Before mpv 0.9, the keyframes and exact flags had to be passed as 3rd parameter (essentially using a space instead of +). The 3rd parameter is still parsed, but is considered deprecated.

revert-seek [mode]

Undoes the seek command, and some other commands that seek (but not necessarily all of them). Calling this command once will jump to the playback position before the seek. Calling it a second time undoes the revert-seek command itself. This only works within a single file.

The first argument is optional, and can change the behavior:

mark: Mark the current time position. The next normal revert-seek command will seek back to this point, no matter how many seeks happened since last time.

Using it without any arguments gives you the default behavior.

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.
<each-frame>: Take a screenshot each frame. Issue this command again to stop taking screenshots. Note that you should disable frame-dropping when using this mode - or you might receive duplicate images in cases when a frame was dropped. This flag can be combined with the other flags, e.g. video+each-frame.

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.

If the file already exists, it's overwritten.

Like all input command parameters, the filename is subject to property expansion as described in Property Expansion.

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|append-play [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. (Always starts with the added file, even if the playlist was not empty before running this command.)

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.)

playlist-shuffle

Shuffle the playlist. This is similar to what is done on start if the --shuffle option is used.

run "command" "arg1" "arg2" ...

Run the given command. Unlike in MPlayer/mplayer2 and earlier versions of mpv (0.2.x and older), this doesn't call the shell. Instead, the command is run directly, with each argument passed separately. Each argument is expanded like in Property Expansion. 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.

Example

run "/bin/sh" "-c" "echo ${title} > /tmp/playing"

This is not a particularly good example, because it doesn't handle escaping, and a specially prepared file might allow an attacker to execute arbitrary shell 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>" [<flags> [<title> [<lang>]]]

Load the given subtitle file. It is selected as current subtitle after loading.

The flags args is one of the following values:

Select the subtitle immediately.

<auto>

Don't select the subtitle. (Or in some special situations, let the default stream selection mechanism decide.)

Select the subtitle. If a subtitle with the same filename was already added, that one is selected, instead of loading a duplicate entry. (In this case, title/language are ignored, and if the was changed since it was loaded, these changes won't be reflected.)

The title argument sets the track title in the UI.

The lang argument sets the track language, and can also influence stream selection with flags set to auto.

sub-remove [<id>]

Remove the given subtitle track. If the id argument is missing, remove the current track. (Works on external subtitle files only.)

sub-reload [<id>]

Reload the given subtitle tracks. If the id argument is missing, reload the current track. (Works on external subtitle files only.)

This works by unloading and re-adding the subtitle track.

sub-step <skip>

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.

For embedded subtitles (like with Matroska), this works only with subtitle events that have already been displayed, or are within a short prefetch range.

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.

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.

mouse <x> <y> [<button> [single|double]]

Send a mouse event with given coordinate (<x>, <y>).

Second argument:

<button>: The button number of clicked mouse button. This should be one of 0-19. If <button> is omitted, only the position will be updated.

Third argument:

<single> (default): The mouse event represents regular single click.
<double>: The mouse event represents double-click.

keypress <key_name>

Send a key event through mpv's input handler, triggering whatever behavior is configured to that key. key_name uses the input.conf naming scheme for keys and modifiers. Useful for the client API: key events can be sent to libmpv to handle internally.

keydown <key_name>

Similar to keypress, but sets the KEYDOWN flag so that if the key is bound to a repeatable command, it will be run repeatedly with mpv's key repeat timing until the keyup command is called.

keyup [<key_name>]

Set the KEYUP flag, stopping any repeated behavior that had been triggered. key_name is optional. If key_name is not given or is an empty string, KEYUP will be set on all keys. Otherwise, KEYUP will only be set on the key specified by key_name.

audio-add "<file>" [<flags> [<title> [<lang>]]]

Load the given audio file. See sub-add command.

audio-remove [<id>]

Remove the given audio track. See sub-remove command.

audio-reload [<id>]

Reload the given audio tracks. See sub-reload command.

rescan-external-files [<mode>]

Rescan external files according to the current --sub-auto and --audio-file-auto settings. This can be used to auto-load external files after the file was loaded.

The mode argument is one of the following:

<reselect> (default): Select the default audio and subtitle streams, which typically selects external files with the highest preference. (The implementation is not perfect, and could be improved on request.)
<keep-selection>: Do not change current track selections.

Input Commands that are Possibly Subject to Change

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.

The argument is always needed. E.g. in case of clr use vf clr "".

You can assign labels to filter by prefixing them with @name: (where name is a user-chosen arbitrary identifier). Labels can be used to refer to filters by name in all of the filter chain 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.

Example for input.conf

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 (as long as the rest of the arguments are the same).

Note that there is a static limit of (as of this writing) 10 arguments (this limit could be raised on demand).

enable-section "<section>" [flags]

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.)

The flags parameter can be a combination (separated by +) of the following flags:

<exclusive>: All sections enabled before the newly enabled section are disabled. They will be re-enabled as soon as all exclusive sections above them are removed. In other words, the new section shadows all previous sections.
<allow-hide-cursor>: This feature can't be used through the public API.
<allow-vo-dragging>: Same.

disable-section "<section>"

Disable the named input section. Undoes enable-section.

define-section "<section>" "<contents>" [default|force]

Create a named input section, or replace the contents of an already existing input section. The contents parameter uses the same syntax as the input.conf file (except that using the section syntax in it is not allowed), including the need to separate bindings with a newline character.

If the contents parameter is an empty string, the section is removed.

The section with the name default is the normal input section.

In general, input sections have to be enabled with the enable-section command, or they are ignored.

The last parameter has the following meaning:

<default> (also used if parameter omitted): Use a key binding defined by this section only if the user hasn't already bound this key to a command.
<force>: Always bind a key. (The input section that was made active most recently wins if there are ambiguities.)

This command can be used to dispatch arbitrary keys to a script or a client API user. If the input section defines script-binding commands, it is also possible to get separate events on key up/down, and relatively detailed information about the key state. The special key name unmapped can be used to match any unmapped key.

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.

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.

x and y specify the position where the OSD should be displayed.

file specifies the file the raw image data is read from. It can be either a numeric UNIX file descriptor prefixed with @ (e.g. @4), or a filename. The file will be mapped into memory with mmap(), copied, and unmapped before the command returns (changed in mpv 0.18.1).

It is also possible to pass a raw memory address for use as bitmap memory by passing a memory address as integer prefixed with an & character. Passing the wrong thing here will crash the player. This mode might be useful for use with libmpv. The offset parameter is simply added to the memory address (since mpv 0.8.0, ignored before).

offset is the byte offset of the first pixel in the source file. (The current implementation always mmap's the whole file from position 0 to the end of the image, so large offsets should be avoided. Before mpv 0.8.0, the offset was actually passed directly to mmap, but it was changed to make using it easier.)

fmt is a string identifying the image format. Currently, only bgra is defined. This format has 4 bytes per pixels, with 8 bits per component. The least significant 8 bits are blue, and the most significant 8 bits are alpha (in little endian, the 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.)

Note

Before mpv 0.18.1, you had to do manual "double buffering" when updating an overlay by replacing it with a different memory buffer. Since mpv 0.18.1, the memory is simply copied and doesn't reference any of the memory indicated by the command's arguments after the commend returns. If you want to use this command before mpv 0.18.1, reads the old docs to see how to handle this correctly.

overlay-remove <id>

Remove an overlay added with overlay-add and the same ID. Does nothing if no overlay with this ID exists.

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().

script-binding "<name>"

Invoke a script-provided key binding. This can be used to remap key bindings provided by external Lua scripts.

The argument is the name of the binding.

It can optionally be prefixed with the name of the script, using / as separator, e.g. script-binding scriptname/bindingname.

For completeness, here is how this command works internally. The details could change any time. On any matching key event, script-message-to or script-message is called (depending on whether the script name is included), with the following arguments:

The string key-binding.
The name of the binding (as established above).
The key state as string (see below).
The key name (since mpv 0.15.0).

The key state consists of 2 letters:

One of d (key was pressed down), u (was released), r (key is still down, and was repeated; only if key repeat is enabled for this binding), p (key was pressed; happens if up/down can't be tracked).
Whether the event originates from the mouse, either m (mouse button) or - (something else).

ab-loop

Cycle through A-B loop states. The first command will set the A point (the ab-loop-a property); the second the B point, and the third will clear both points.

drop-buffers

Drop audio/video/demuxer buffers, and restart from fresh. Might help with unseekable streams that are going out of sync. This command might be changed or removed in the future.

screenshot-raw [subtitles|video|window]

Return a screenshot in memory. This can be used only through the client API. The MPV_FORMAT_NODE_MAP returned by this command has the w, h, stride fields set to obvious contents. A format field is set to bgr0 by default. This format is organized as B8G8R8X8 (where B is the LSB). The contents of the padding X is undefined. The data field is of type MPV_FORMAT_BYTE_ARRAY with the actual image data. The image is freed as soon as the result node is freed.

vf-command "<label>" "<cmd>" "<args>"

Send a command to the filter with the given <label>. Use all to send it to all filters at once. The command and argument string is filter specific. Currently, this only works with the lavfi filter - see the libavfilter documentation for which commands a filter supports.

Note that the <label> is a mpv filter label, not a libavfilter filter name.

af-command "<label>" "<cmd>" "<args>"

Same as vf-command, but for audio filters.

apply-profile "<name>"

Apply the contents of a named profile. This is like using profile=name in a config file, except you can map it to a key binding to change it at runtime.

There is no such thing as "unapplying" a profile - applying a profile merely sets all option values listed within the profile.

load-script "<path>"

Load a script, similar to the --script option.

Undocumented commands: tv-last-channel (TV/DVB only), ao-reload (experimental/internal).

Hooks

Hooks are synchronous events between player core and a script or similar. This applies to client API (including the Lua scripting interface). Normally, events are supposed to be asynchronous, and the hook API provides an awkward and obscure way to handle events that require stricter coordination. There are no API stability guarantees made. Not following the protocol exactly can make the player freeze randomly. Basically, nobody should use this API.

There are two special commands involved. Also, the client must listen for client messages (MPV_EVENT_CLIENT_MESSAGE in the C API).

hook-add <hook-name> <id> <priority>

Subscribe to the hook identified by the first argument (basically, the name of event). The id argument is an arbitrary integer chosen by the user. priority is used to sort all hook handlers globally across all clients. Each client can register multiple hook handlers (even for the same hook-name). Once the hook is registered, it cannot be unregistered.

When a specific event happens, all registered handlers are run serially. This uses a protocol every client has to follow explicitly. When a hook handler is run, a client message (MPV_EVENT_CLIENT_MESSAGE) is sent to the client which registered the hook. This message has the following arguments:

the string hook_run
the id argument the hook was registered with as string (this can be used to correctly handle multiple hooks registered by the same client, as long as the id argument is unique in the client)
something undefined, used by the hook mechanism to track hook execution (currently, it's the hook-name, but this might change without warning)

Upon receiving this message, the client can handle the event. While doing this, the player core will still react to requests, but playback will typically be stopped.

When the client is done, it must continue the core's hook execution by running the hook-ack command.

hook-ack <string>

Run the next hook in the global chain of hooks. The argument is the 3rd argument of the client message that starts hook execution for the current client.

The following hooks are currently defined:

on_load

Called when a file is to be opened, before anything is actually done. For example, you could read and write the stream-open-filename property to redirect an URL to something else (consider support for streaming sites which rarely give the user a direct media URL), or you could set per-file options with by setting the property file-local-options/<option name>. The player will wait until all hooks are run.

on_preloaded

Called after a file has been opened, and before tracks are selected and decoders are created. This has some usefulness if an API users wants to select tracks manually, based on the set of available tracks. It's also useful to initialize --lavfi-complex in a specific way by API, without having to "probe" the available streams at first.

Note that this does not yet apply default track selection. Which operations exactly can be done and not be done, and what information is available and what is not yet available yet, is all subject to change.

on_unload

Run before closing a file, and before actually uninitializing everything. It's not possible to resume playback in this state.

Input Command Prefixes

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.
repeatable: For some commands, keeping a key pressed doesn't run the command repeatedly. This prefix forces enabling key repeat in any case.

All of the osd prefixes are still overridden by the global --osd-level settings.

Input Sections

Input sections group a set of bindings, and enable or disable them at once. In input.conf, each key binding is assigned to an input section, rather than actually having explicit text sections.

See also: enable-section and disable-section commands.

Predefined bindings:

default: Bindings without input section are implicitly assigned to this section. It is enabled by default during normal playback.
encode: Section which is active in encoding mode. It is enabled exclusively, so that bindings in the default sections are ignored.

Properties

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.

Property list

Note

Most options can be set as runtime via properties as well. Just remove the leading -- from the option name. These are not documented. Only properties which do not exist as option with the same name, or which have very different behavior from the options are documented below.

audio-speed-correction, video-speed-correction

Factor multiplied with speed at which the player attempts to play the file. Usually it's exactly 1. (Display sync mode will make this useful.)

OSD formatting will display it in the form of +1.23456%, with the number being (raw - 1) * 100 for the given raw property value.

display-sync-active

Return whether --video-sync=display is actually active.

filename

Currently played file, with path stripped. If this is an URL, try to undo percent encoding as well. (The result is not necessarily correct, but looks better for display purposes. Use the path property to get an unmodified filename.)

This has a sub-property:

filename/no-ext: Like the filename property, but if the text contains a ., strip all text after the last .. Usually this removes the file extension.

file-size

Length in bytes of the source file/stream. (This is the same as ${stream-end}. For 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. Usually this is exactly the same string you pass on the mpv command line or the loadfile command, even if it's a relative path. If you expect an absolute path, you will have to determine it yourself, for example by using the working-directory property.

media-title

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.

file-format

Symbolic name of the file format. In some cases, this is a comma-separated list of format names, e.g. mp4 is mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2 (the list may grow in the future for any format).

current-demuxer

Name of the current demuxer. (This is useless.)

(Renamed from demuxer.)

stream-path

Filename (full path) of the stream layer filename. (This is probably useless. It looks like this can be different from path only when using e.g. ordered chapters.)

stream-pos

Raw byte position in source stream. Technically, this returns the position of the most recent packet passed to a decoder.

stream-end

Raw end position in bytes in source stream.

duration

Duration of the current file in seconds. If the duration is unknown, the property is unavailable. Note that the file duration is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.

This replaces the length property, which was deprecated after the mpv 0.9 release. (The semantics are the same.)

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

Video frames dropped by decoder, because video is too far behind audio (when using --framedrop=decoder). Sometimes, this may be incremented in other situations, e.g. when video packets are damaged, or the decoder doesn't follow the usual rules. Unavailable if video is disabled.

vo-drop-frame-count

Frames dropped by VO (when using --framedrop=vo).

mistimed-frame-count

Number of video frames that were not timed correctly in display-sync mode for the sake of keeping A/V sync. This does not include external circumstances, such as video rendering being too slow or the graphics driver somehow skipping a vsync. It does not include rounding errors either (which can happen especially with bad source timestamps). For example, using the display-desync mode should never change this value from 0.

vsync-ratio

For how many vsyncs a frame is displayed on average. This is available if display-sync is active only. For 30 FPS video on a 60 Hz screen, this will be 2. This is the moving average of what actually has been scheduled, so 24 FPS on 60 Hz will never remain exactly on 2.5, but jitter depending on the last frame displayed.

vo-delayed-frame-count

Estimated number of frames delayed due to external circumstances in display-sync mode. Note that in general, mpv has to guess that this is happening, and the guess can be inaccurate.

percent-pos (RW)

Position in current file (0-100). The advantage over using this instead of calculating it out of other properties is that it properly falls back to estimating the playback position from the byte position, if the file duration is not known.

time-pos (RW)

Position in current file in seconds.

time-start

Deprecated. Always returns 0. Before mpv 0.14, this used to return the start time of the file (could affect e.g. transport streams). See --rebase-start-time option.

time-remaining

Remaining length of the file in seconds. Note that the file duration is not always exactly known, so this is an estimate.

audio-pts (R)

Current audio playback position in current file in seconds. Unlike time-pos, this updates more often than once per frame. For audio-only files, it is mostly equivalent to time-pos, while for video-only files this property is not available.

playtime-remaining

time-remaining scaled by the current speed.

playback-time (RW)

Position in current file in seconds. Unlike time-pos, the time is clamped to the range of the file. (Inaccurate file durations etc. could make it go out of range. Useful on attempts to seek outside of the file, as the seek target time is considered the current position during seeking.)

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.

This has a number of sub-properties. Replace N with the 0-based edition index.

disc-titles/count: Number of titles.
disc-titles/id: Title ID as integer. Currently, this is the same as the title index.
disc-titles/length: Length in seconds. Can be unavailable in a number of cases (currently it works for libdvdnav only).

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
        "length"            MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE

disc-title-list

List of BD/DVD titles.

disc-title (RW)

Current BD/DVD title number. Writing works only for dvdnav:// and bd:// (and aliases for these).

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)

filtered-metadata

Like metadata, but includes only fields listed in the --display-tags option. This is the same set of tags that is printed to the terminal.

chapter-metadata

Metadata of current chapter. Works similar to metadata property. It also allows the same access methods (using sub-properties).

Per-chapter metadata is very rare. Usually, only the chapter name (title) is set.

For accessing other information, like chapter start, see the chapter-list property.

vf-metadata/<filter-label>

Metadata added by video filters. Accessed by the filter label, which, if not explicitly specified using the @filter-label: syntax, will be <filter-name>NN.

Works similar to metadata property. It allows the same access methods (using sub-properties).

An example of this kind of metadata are the cropping parameters added by --vf=lavfi=cropdetect.

af-metadata/<filter-label>

Equivalent to vf-metadata/<filter-label>, but for audio filters.

idle-active

Return yes if no file is loaded, but the player is staying around because of the --idle option.

(Renamed from idle.)

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.

This also returns yes if playback is restarting or if nothing is playing at all. In other words, it's only no if there's actually video playing. (Behavior since mpv 0.7.0.)

cache

Network cache fill state (0-100.0).

cache-size (RW)

Network cache size in KB. This is similar to --cache. This allows setting 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.

This does not include the backbuffer size (changed after mpv 0.10.0).

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-speed (R)

Current I/O read speed between the cache and the lower layer (like network). This gives the number bytes per seconds over a 1 second window (using the type MPV_FORMAT_INT64 for the client API).

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-time

Approximate time of video buffered in the demuxer, in seconds. Same as demuxer-cache-duration but returns the last timestamp of buffered data in demuxer.

demuxer-cache-idle

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.

cache-buffering-state

Return the percentage (0-100) of the cache fill status until the player will unpause (related to paused-for-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.)

mixer-active

Return yes if the audio mixer is active, no otherwise.

This option is relatively useless. Before mpv 0.18.1, it could be used to infer behavior of the volume property.

ao-volume (RW)

System volume. This property is available only if mpv audio output is currently active, and only if the underlying implementation supports volume control. What this option does depends on the API. For example, on ALSA this usually changes system-wide audio, while with PulseAudio this controls per-application volume.

ao-mute (RW)

Similar to ao-volume, but controls the mute state. May be unimplemented even if ao-volume works.

audio-codec

Audio codec selected for decoding.

audio-codec-name

Audio codec.

audio-params

Audio format as output by the audio decoder. This has a number of sub-properties:

audio-params/format: The sample format as string. This uses the same names as used in other places of mpv.
audio-params/samplerate: Samplerate.
audio-params/channels: The channel layout as a string. This is similar to what the --audio-channels accepts.
audio-params/hr-channels: As channels, but instead of the possibly cryptic actual layout sent to the audio device, return a hopefully more human readable form. (Usually only audio-out-params/hr-channels makes sense.)
audio-params/channel-count: Number of audio channels. This is redundant to the channels field described above.

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
    "format"            MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "samplerate"        MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "channels"          MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "channel-count"     MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "hr-channels"       MPV_FORMAT_STRING

audio-out-params

Same as audio-params, but the format of the data written to the audio API.

colormatrix (R)

Redirects to video-params/colormatrix. This parameter (as well as similar ones) can be overridden with the format video filter.

colormatrix-input-range (R)

See colormatrix.

colormatrix-primaries (R)

See colormatrix.

hwdec (RW)

Reflects the --hwdec option.

Writing to it may change the currently used hardware decoder, if possible. (Internally, the player may reinitialize the decoder, and will perform a seek to refresh the video properly.) You can watch the other hwdec properties to see whether this was successful.

Unlike in mpv 0.9.x and before, this does not return the currently active hardware decoder. Since mpv 0.18.0, hwdec-current is available for this purpose.

hwdec-current

Return the current hardware decoding in use. If decoding is active, return one of the values used by the hwdec option/property. no indicates software decoding. If no decoder is loaded, the property is unavailable.

hwdec-interop

This returns the currently loaded hardware decoding/output interop driver. This is known only once the VO has opened (and possibly later). With some VOs (like opengl), this might be never known in advance, but only when the decoder attempted to create the hw decoder successfully. (Using --hwdec-preload can load it eagerly.) If there are multiple drivers loaded, they will be separated by ,.

If no VO is active or no interop driver is known, this property is unavailable.

This does not necessarily use the same values as hwdec. There can be multiple interop drivers for the same hardware decoder, depending on platform and VO.

video-format

Video format as string.

video-codec

Video codec selected for decoding.

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/average-bpp: Average bits-per-pixel as integer. Subsampled planar formats use a different resolution, which is the reason this value can sometimes be odd or confusing. Can be unavailable with some formats.
video-params/plane-depth: Bit depth for each color component as integer. This is only exposed for planar or single-component formats, and is unavailable for other formats.
video-params/w, video-params/h: Video size as integers, with no aspect correction applied.
video-params/dw, video-params/dh: Video size as integers, scaled for correct aspect ratio.
video-params/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/gamma: The gamma function in use as string. (Exact values subject to change.)
video-params/nom-peak: The video encoding's nominal peak brightness as float.
video-params/sig-peak: The video file's tagged signal peak as float.
video-params/chroma-location: Chroma location as string. (Exact values subject to change.)
video-params/rotate: Intended display rotation in degrees (clockwise).
video-params/stereo-in: Source file stereo 3D mode. (See --video-stereo-mode option.)

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
    "pixelformat"       MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "w"                 MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "h"                 MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "dw"                MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "dh"                MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "aspect"            MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
    "par"               MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
    "colormatrix"       MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "colorlevels"       MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "primaries"         MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "gamma"             MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "nom-peak"          MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
    "sig-peak"          MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
    "chroma-location"   MPV_FORMAT_STRING
    "rotate"            MPV_FORMAT_INT64
    "stereo-in"         MPV_FORMAT_STRING

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-dec-params

Exactly like video-params, but no overrides applied.

video-out-params

Same as video-params, but after video filters have been applied. If there are no video filters in use, this will contain the same values as video-params. Note that this is still not necessarily what the video window uses, since the user can change the window size, and all real VOs do their own scaling independently from the filter chain.

Has the same sub-properties as video-params.

video-frame-info

Approximate information of the current frame. Note that if any of these are used on OSD, the information might be off by a few frames due to OSD redrawing and frame display being somewhat disconnected, and you might have to pause and force a redraw.

Sub-properties:

video-frame-info/picture-type video-frame-info/interlaced video-frame-info/tff video-frame-info/repeat

container-fps

Container FPS. This can easily contain bogus values. For videos that use modern container formats or video codecs, this will often be incorrect.

(Renamed from fps.)

estimated-vf-fps

Estimated/measured FPS of the video filter chain output. (If no filters are used, this corresponds to decoder output.) This uses the average of the 10 past frame durations to calculate the FPS. It will be inaccurate if frame-dropping is involved (such as when framedrop is explicitly enabled, or after precise seeking). Files with imprecise timestamps (such as Matroska) might lead to 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.

window-minimized

Return whether the video window is minimized or not.

display-names

Names of the displays that the mpv window covers. On X11, these are the xrandr names (LVDS1, HDMI1, DP1, VGA1, etc.). On Windows, these are the GDI names (\.DISPLAY1, \.DISPLAY2, etc.) and the first display in the list will be the one that Windows considers associated with the window (as determined by the MonitorFromWindow API.)

display-fps (RW)

The refresh rate of the current display. Currently, this is the lowest FPS of any display covered by the video, as retrieved by the underlying system APIs (e.g. xrandr on X11). It is not the measured FPS. It's not necessarily available on all platforms. Note that any of the listed facts may change any time without a warning.

estimated-display-fps

Only available if display-sync mode (as selected by --video-sync) is active. Returns the actual rate at which display refreshes seem to occur, measured by system time.

vsync-jitter

Estimated deviation factor of the vsync duration.

video-aspect (RW)

Video aspect, see --video-aspect.

If video is active, this reports the effective aspect value, instead of the value of the --video-aspect option.

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).

program (W)

Switch TS program (write-only).

dvb-channel (W)

Pair of integers: card,channel of current DVB stream. Can be switched to switch to another channel on the same card.

dvb-channel-name (RW)

Name of current DVB program. On write, a channel-switch to the named channel on the same card is performed. Can also be used for channel switching.

sub-text

Return the current subtitle text. Formatting is stripped. If a subtitle is selected, but no text is currently visible, or the subtitle is not text-based (i.e. DVD/BD subtitles), an empty string is returned.

This property is experimental and might be removed in the future.

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-pos-1 (RW)

Same as playlist-pos, but 1-based.

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.
playlist/N/current, playlist/N/playing: yes if this entry is currently playing (or being loaded). Unavailable or no otherwise. When changing files, current and playing can be different, because the currently playing file hasn't been unloaded yet; in this case, current refers to the new selection. (Since mpv 0.7.0.)
playlist/N/title: Name of the Nth entry. Only available if the playlist file contains such fields, and only if mpv's parser supports it for the given playlist format.

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
        "current"   MPV_FORMAT_FLAG (might be missing; since mpv 0.7.0)
        "playing"   MPV_FORMAT_FLAG (same)
        "title"     MPV_FORMAT_STRING (optional)

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/forced: yes if the track has the forced 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.
track-list/N/ff-index: The stream index as usually used by the FFmpeg utilities. Note that this can be potentially wrong if a demuxer other than libavformat (--demuxer=lavf) is used. For mkv files, the index will usually match even if the default (builtin) demuxer is used, but there is no hard guarantee.
track-list/N/decoder-desc: If this track is being decoded, the human-readable decoder name,
track-list/N/demux-w, track-list/N/demux-h: Video size hint as indicated by the container. (Not always accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-channel-count: Number of audio channels as indicated by the container. (Not always accurate - in particular, the track could be decoded as a different number of channels.)
track-list/N/demux-channels: Channel layout as indicated by the container. (Not always accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-samplerate: Audio sample rate as indicated by the container. (Not always accurate.)
track-list/N/demux-fps: Video FPS as indicated by the container. (Not always accurate.)
track-list/N/audio-channels (deprecated): Deprecated alias for track-list/N/demux-channel-count.
track-list/N/replaygain-track-peak, track-list/N/replaygain-track-gain: Per-track replaygain values. Only available for audio tracks with corresponding information stored in the source file.
track-list/N/replaygain-album-peak, track-list/N/replaygain-album-gain: Per-album replaygain values. If the file has per-track but no per-album information, the per-album values will be copied from the per-track values currently. It's possible that future mpv versions will make these properties unavailable instead in this case.

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
        "forced"            MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
        "selected"          MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
        "external"          MPV_FORMAT_FLAG
        "external-filename" MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "codec"             MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "ff-index"          MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "decoder-desc"      MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "demux-w"           MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "demux-h"           MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "demux-channel-count" MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "demux-channels"    MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "demux-samplerate"  MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "demux-fps"         MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
        "audio-channels"    MPV_FORMAT_INT64
        "replaygain-track-peak" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
        "replaygain-track-gain" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
        "replaygain-album-peak" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE
        "replaygain-album-gain" MPV_FORMAT_DOUBLE

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, vf (RW)

See --vf/--af and the vf/af 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.

partially-seekable

Return yes if the current file is considered seekable, but only because the cache is active. This means small relative seeks may be fine, but larger seeks may fail anyway. Whether a seek will succeed or not is generally not known in advance.

If this property returns true, seekable will also return true.

playback-abort

Return whether playback is stopped or is to be stopped. (Useful in obscure situations like during on_load hook processing, when the user can stop playback, but the script has to explicitly end processing.)

cursor-autohide (RW)

See --cursor-autohide. Setting this to a new value will always update the cursor, and reset the internal timer.

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.

Example

--osd-status-msg='This is ${osd-ass-cc/0}{\\b1}bold text'
show-text "This is ${osd-ass-cc/0}{\b1}bold text"

Any ASS override tags as understood by libass can be used.

Note that you need to escape the \ character, because the string is processed for C escape sequences before passing it to the OSD code.

A list of tags can be found here: http://docs.aegisub.org/latest/ASS_Tags/

vo-configured

Return whether the VO is configured right now. Usually this corresponds to whether the video window is visible. If the --force-window option is used, this is usually always returns yes.

vo-performance

Some video output performance metrics. Not implemented by all VOs. This has a number of sup-properties, of the form vo-performance/<metric>-<value>, all of them in milliseconds.

<metric> refers to one of:

upload: Time needed to make the frame available to the GPU (if necessary).
render: Time needed to perform all necessary video postprocessing and rendering passes (if necessary).
present: Time needed to present a rendered frame on-screen.

When a step is unnecessary or skipped, it will have the value 0.

<value> refers to one of:

last: Last measured value.
avg: Average over a fixed number of past samples. (The exact timeframe varies, but it should generally be a handful of seconds)
peak: The peak (highest value) within this averaging range.

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
    "<metric>-<value>"  MPV_FORMAT_INT64

(One entry for each <metric> and <value> combination)

video-bitrate, audio-bitrate, sub-bitrate

Bitrate values calculated on the packet level. This works by dividing the bit size of all packets between two keyframes by their presentation timestamp distance. (This uses the timestamps are stored in the file, so e.g. playback speed does not influence the returned values.) In particular, the video bitrate will update only per keyframe, and show the "past" bitrate. To make the property more UI friendly, updates to these properties are throttled in a certain way.

The unit is bits per second. OSD formatting turns these values in kilobits (or megabits, if appropriate), which can be prevented by using the raw property value, e.g. with ${=video-bitrate}.

Note that the accuracy of these properties is influenced by a few factors. If the underlying demuxer rewrites the packets on demuxing (done for some file formats), the bitrate might be slightly off. If timestamps are bad or jittery (like in Matroska), even constant bitrate streams might show fluctuating bitrate.

How exactly these values are calculated might change in the future.

In earlier versions of mpv, these properties returned a static (but bad) guess using a completely different method.

packet-video-bitrate, packet-audio-bitrate, packet-sub-bitrate

Old and deprecated properties for video-bitrate, audio-bitrate, sub-bitrate. They behave exactly the same, but return a value in kilobits. Also, they don't have any OSD formatting, though the same can be achieved with e.g. ${=video-bitrate}.

These properties shouldn't be used anymore.

audio-device-list

Return the list of discovered audio devices. This is mostly for use with the client API, and reflects what --audio-device=help with the command line player returns.

When querying the property with the client API using MPV_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 device entry)
        "name"          MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "description"   MPV_FORMAT_STRING

The name is what is to be passed to the --audio-device option (and often a rather cryptic audio API-specific ID), while description is human readable free form text. The description is set to the device name (minus mpv-specific <driver>/ prefix) if no description is available or the description would have been an empty string.

The special entry with the name set to auto selects the default audio output driver and the default device.

The property can be watched with the property observation mechanism in the client API and in Lua scripts. (Technically, change notification is enabled the first time this property is read.)

audio-device (RW)

Set the audio device. This directly reads/writes the --audio-device option, but on write accesses, the audio output will be scheduled for reloading.

Writing this property while no audio output is active will not automatically enable audio. (This is also true in the case when audio was disabled due to reinitialization failure after a previous write access to audio-device.)

This property also doesn't tell you which audio device is actually in use.

How these details are handled may change in the future.

current-vo

Current video output driver (name as used with --vo).

current-ao

Current audio output driver (name as used with --ao).

audio-out-detected-device

Return the audio device selected by the AO driver (only implemented for some drivers: currently only coreaudio).

working-directory

Return the working directory of the mpv process. Can be useful for JSON IPC users, because the command line player usually works with relative paths.

protocol-list

List of protocol prefixes potentially recognized by the player. They are returned without trailing :// suffix (which is still always required). In some cases, the protocol will not actually be supported (consider https if ffmpeg is not compiled with TLS support).

decoder-list

List of decoders supported. This lists decoders which can be passed to --vd and --ad.

family: Decoder driver. Usually lavc for libavcodec.
codec: Canonical codec name, which identifies the format the decoder can handle.
driver: The name of the decoder itself. Often, this is the same as codec. Sometimes it can be different. It is used to distinguish multiple decoders for the same codec.
description: Human readable description of the decoder and codec.

When querying the property with the client API using MPV_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 decoder entry)
        "family"        MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "codec"         MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "driver"        MPV_FORMAT_STRING
        "description"   MPV_FORMAT_STRING

encoder-list

List of libavcodec encoders. This has the same format as decoder-list. The encoder names (driver entries) can be passed to --ovc and --oac (without the lavc: prefix required by --vd and --ad).

mpv-version

Return the mpv version/copyright string. Depending on how the binary was built, it might contain either a release version, or just a git hash.

mpv-configuration

Return the configuration arguments which were passed to the build system (typically the way ./waf configure ... was invoked).

ffmpeg-version

Return the contents of the av_version_info() API call. This is a string which identifies the build in some way, either through a release version number, or a git hash. This applies to Libav as well (the property is still named the same.) This property is unavailable if mpv is linked against older FFmpeg and Libav versions.

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.

There shouldn't be any reason to access options/<name> instead of <name>, except in situations in which the properties have different behavior or conflicting semantics.

file-local-options/<name>

Similar to options/<name>, but when setting an option through this property, the option is reset to its old value once the current file has stopped playing. Trying to write an option while no file is playing (or is being loaded) results in an error.

(Note that if an option is marked as file-local, even options/ will access the local value, and the old value, which will be restored on end of playback, cannot be read or written until end of playback.)

option-info/<name>

Additional per-option information.

This has a number of sub-properties. Replace <name> with the name of a top-level option. No guarantee of stability is given to any of these sub-properties - they may change radically in the feature.

option-info/<name>/name: Returns the name of the option.
option-info/<name>/type: Return the name of the option type, like String or Integer. For many complex types, this isn't very accurate.
option-info/<name>/set-from-commandline: Return yes if the option was set from the mpv command line, no otherwise. What this is set to if the option is e.g. changed at runtime is left undefined (meaning it could change in the future).
option-info/<name>/set-locally: Return yes if the option was set per-file. This is the case with automatically loaded profiles, file-dir configs, and other cases. It means the option value will be restored to the value before playback start when playback ends.
option-info/<name>/default-value: The default value of the option. May not always be available.
option-info/<name>/min, option-info/<name>/max: Integer minimum and maximum values allowed for the option. Only available if the options are numeric, and the minimum/maximum has been set internally. It's also possible that only one of these is set.
option-info/<name>/choices: If the option is a choice option, the possible choices. Choices that are integers may or may not be included (they can be implied by min and max). Note that options which behave like choice options, but are not actual choice options internally, may not have this info available.

property-list

Return the list of top-level properties.

profile-list

Return the list of profiles and their contents. This is highly implementation-specific, and may change any time. Currently, it returns an array of options for each profile. Each option has a name and a value, with the value currently always being a string. Note that the options array is not a map, as order matters and duplicate entries are possible. Recursive profiles are not expanded, and show up as special profile options.

Inconsistencies between options and properties

You can access (almost) all options as properties, though there are some caveats with some properties (due to historical reasons):

vid, aid, sid

While playback is active, you can set existing tracks only. (The option allows setting any track ID, and which tracks to enable is chosen at loading time.)

Option changes at runtime are affected by this as well.

deinterlace

While video is active, this behaves differently from the option. It will never return the auto value (but the state as observed by the video chain). If you set auto, the property will set this as the option value, and will return the actual video chain state as observed instead of auto.

video-aspect

While video is active, always returns the effective aspect ratio. Setting a special value (like no, values <= 0) will make the property set this as option, and return whatever actual aspect was derived from the option setting.

brightness (and other color options)

If --vo=xv is used, these properties may return the adapter's current values instead of the option values.

display-fps

If a VO is created, this will return either the actual display FPS, or an invalid value, instead of the option value.

vf, af

If you set the properties during playback, and the filter chain fails to reinitialize, the new value will be rejected. Setting the option or setting the property outside of playback will always succeed/fail in the same way. Also, there are no vf-add etc. properties, but you can use the vf/af group of commands to achieve the same.

Option changes at runtime are affected by this as well.

edition

While a file is loaded, the property will always return the effective edition, and setting the auto value will show somewhat strange behavior (the property eventually switching to whatever is the default edition).

playlist

The property is read-only and returns the current internal playlist. The option is for loading playlist during command line parsing. For client API uses, you should use the loadlist command instead.

window-scale

Might verify the set value when setting while a window is created.

audio-file, sub-file, external-file

These options/properties are actually lists of filenames. To make the command-line interface easier, each --audio-file=... option appends the full string to the internal list. However, when used as properties, every time you set the property as a string the internal list will be replaced with a single entry containing the string you set. , or other separators are never used. You have to use MPV_FORMAT_NODE_ARRAY (or corresponding API, e.g. mp.set_property_native() with a table in Lua) to set multiple entries.

Strictly speaking, option access via API (e.g. mpv_set_option_string()) has the same problem, and it's only a difference between CLI/API.

demuxer, idle, length, audio-samplerate, audio-channels, audio-format, fps, cache, playlist-pos, chapter

These behave completely different as property, but are deprecated (newer aliases which don't conflict have been added). After the deprecation period they will be changed to the proper option behavior.

Property Expansion

All string arguments to input commands as well as certain options (like --term-playing-msg) are subject to property expansion. Note that property expansion does not work in places where e.g. numeric parameters are expected. (For example, the add command does not do property expansion. The set command is an exception and not a general rule.)

Example for input.conf

i show-text "Filename: ${filename}": shows the filename of the current file when pressing the i key

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 \

Raw and Formatted Properties

Normally, properties are formatted as human-readable text, meant to be displayed on OSD or on the terminal. It is possible to retrieve an 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.

Examples

${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.

ON SCREEN CONTROLLER

The On Screen Controller (short: OSC) is a minimal GUI integrated with mpv to offer basic mouse-controllability. It is intended to make 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.

Using the OSC

By default, the OSC will show up whenever the mouse is moved inside the player window and will hide if the mouse is not moved outside the OSC for 0.5 seconds or if the mouse leaves the window.

The Interface

+---------+----------+----------------------------+-------------+
| pl prev | pl next  |  title                     |       cache |
+------+--+---+------+---------+-----------+------+-------+-----+
| play | skip | skip | time    |  seekbar  | time | audio | sub |
|      | back | frwd | elapsed |           | left |       |     |
+------+------+------+---------+-----------+------+-------+-----+

pl prev

left-click	play previous file in playlist
right-click	show playlist
shift+L-click	show playlist

pl next

left-click	play next file in playlist
right-click	show 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

cache

Shows current cache fill status

play

left-click

toggle play/pause

skip back

left-click	go to beginning of chapter / previous chapter
right-click	show chapters
shift+L-click	show chapters

skip frwd

left-click	go to next chapter
right-click	show chapters
shift+L-click	show chapters

time elapsed

Shows current playback position timestamp

left-click

toggle displaying timecodes with milliseconds

seekbar

Indicates current playback position and position of chapters

left-click

seek to position

time left

Shows remaining playback time timestamp

left-click

toggle between total and remaining time

audio and sub

Displays selected track and amount of available tracks

left-click	cycle audio/sub tracks forward
right-click	cycle audio/sub tracks backwards
shift+L-click	show available audio/sub tracks

Key Bindings

These key bindings are active by default if nothing else is already bound to these keys. In case of collision, the function needs to be bound to a different key. See the Script Commands section.

del	Cycles visibility between never / auto (mouse-move) / always

Configuration

The OSC offers limited configuration through a config file lua-settings/osc.conf placed in mpv's user dir and through the --script-opts command-line option. Options provided through the command-line will override those from the config file.

Config Syntax

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.

Command-line Syntax

To avoid collisions with other scripts, all options need to be prefixed with osc-.

Example:

--script-opts=osc-optionA=value1,osc-optionB=value2

Configurable Options

layout

Default: bottombar

The layout for the OSC. Currently available are: box, slimbox, bottombar and topbar. Default pre-0.21.0 was 'box'.

seekbarstyle

Default: bar

Sets the style of the seekbar, slider (diamond marker), knob (circle marker with guide), or bar (fill). Default pre-0.21.0 was 'slider'.

deadzonesize

Default: 0.5

Size of the deadzone. The deadzone is an area that makes the mouse act like leaving the window. Movement there won't make the OSC show up and it will hide immediately if the mouse enters it. The deadzone starts at the window border opposite to the OSC and the size controls how much of the window it will span. Values between 0.0 and 1.0, where 0 means the OSC will always popup with mouse movement in the window, and 1 means the OSC will only show up when the mouse hovers it. Default pre-0.21.0 was 0.

minmousemove

Default: 0

Minimum amount of pixels the mouse has to move between ticks to make the OSC show up. Default pre-0.21.0 was 3.

showwindowed

Default: yes

Enable the OSC when windowed

showfullscreen

Default: yes

Enable the OSC when fullscreen

scalewindowed

Default: 1.0

Scale factor of the OSC when windowed.

scalefullscreen

Default: 1.0

Scale factor of the OSC when fullscreen

scaleforcedwindow

Default: 2.0

Scale factor of the OSC when rendered on a forced (dummy) window

vidscale

Default: yes

Scale the OSC with the video no tries to keep the OSC size constant as much as the window size allows

valign

Default: 0.8

Vertical alignment, -1 (top) to 1 (bottom)

halign

Default: 0.0

Horizontal alignment, -1 (left) to 1 (right)

barmargin

Default: 0

Margin from bottom (bottombar) or top (topbar), in pixels

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, must not be negative

fadeduration

Default: 200

Duration of fade out in ms, 0 = no fade

tooltipborder

Default: 1

Size of the tooltip outline when using bottombar or topbar layouts

timetotal

Default: no

Show total time instead of time remaining

timems

Default: no

Display timecodes with milliseconds

visibility

Default: auto (auto hide/show on mouse move)

Also supports never and always

Script Commands

The OSC script listens to certain script commands. These commands can bound in input.conf, or sent by other scripts.

osc-message: Show a message on screen using the OSC. First argument is the message, second the duration in seconds.
osc-visibility: Controls visibility mode never / auto (on mouse move) / always and also cycle to cycle between the modes

Example

You could put this into input.conf to hide the OSC with the a key and to set auto mode (the default) with b:

a script-message osc-visibility never
b script-message osc-visibility auto

osc-playlist, osc-chapterlist, osc-tracklist: Shows a limited view of the respective type of list using the OSC. First argument is duration in seconds.

LUA SCRIPTING

mpv can load Lua scripts. Scripts passed to the --script option, or found in the scripts subdirectory of the mpv configuration directory (usually ~/.config/mpv/scripts/) will be loaded on program start. mpv also appends the scripts 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 contains functions to send commands to the mpv core and to retrieve information about playback state, user settings, file information, and so on.

These scripts can be used to control mpv in a similar way to slave mode. Technically, the Lua code uses the client API internally.

Example

A script which leaves fullscreen mode when the player is paused:

function on_pause_change(name, value)
    if value == true then
        mp.set_property("fullscreen", "no")
    end
end
mp.observe_property("pause", "bool", on_pause_change)

Details on the script initialization and lifecycle

Your script will be loaded by the player at program start from the scripts configuration subdirectory, or from a path specified with the --script option. Some scripts are loaded internally (like --osc). Each script runs in its own thread. Your script is first run "as is", and once that is done, the event loop is entered. This event loop will 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.

mp functions

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.

By default, this will show something on the OSD (depending on the command), as if it was used in input.conf. See Input Command Prefixes how to influence OSD usage per command.

Returns true on success, or nil, error on error.

mp.commandv(arg1, arg2, ...)

Similar to mp.command, but pass each command argument as separate parameter. This has the advantage that you don't have to care about quoting and escaping in some cases.

Example:

mp.command("loadfile " .. filename .. " append")
mp.commandv("loadfile", filename, "append")

These two commands are equivalent, except that the first version breaks if the filename contains spaces or certain special 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.

Unlike mp.command, this will not use OSD by default either (except for some OSD-specific commands).

mp.command_native(table [,def])

Similar to mp.commandv, but pass the argument list as table. This has the advantage that in at least some cases, arguments can be passed as native types.

Returns a result table on success (usually empty), or def, error on error. def is the second parameter provided to the function, and is nil if it's missing.

mp.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 cannot 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 [,flags]])

Register callback to be run on a key binding. The binding will be mapped to the given key, which is a string describing the physical key. This uses the same key names as in input.conf, and also allows combinations (e.g. ctrl+a). If the key is empty or nil, no physical key is registered, but the user still can create own bindings (see below).

After calling this function, key presses will cause the function fn to be called (unless the user remapped the key with another binding).

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.

The last argument is used for optional flags. This is a table, which can have the following entries:

repeatable

If set to true, enables key repeat for this specific binding.

complex

If set to true, then fn is called on both key up and down events (as well as key repeat, if enabled), with the first argument being a table. This table has an event entry, which is set to one of the strings down, repeat, up or press (the latter if key up/down can't be tracked). It further has an is_mouse entry, which tells whether the event was caused by a mouse button.

Internally, key bindings are dispatched via the script-message-to or script-binding input commands and mp.register_script_message.

Trying to map multiple commands to a key will essentially prefer a random binding, while the other bindings are not called. It is guaranteed that user defined bindings in the central input.conf are preferred over bindings added with this function (but see mp.add_forced_key_binding).

Example:

function something_handler()
    print("the key was pressed")
end
mp.add_key_binding("x", "something", something_handler)

This will print the message the key was pressed when x was pressed.

The user can remap these key bindings. Then the user has to put the following into his input.conf to remap the command to the y key:

y script-binding something

This will print the message when the key y is pressed. (x will still work, unless the user remaps it.)

You can also explicitly send a message to a named script only. Assume the above script was using the filename fooscript.lua:

y script-binding fooscript/something

mp.add_forced_key_binding(...)

This works almost the same as mp.add_key_binding, but registers the key binding in a way that will overwrite the user's custom bindings in 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.

is_enabled()

Whether the timer is currently enabled or was previously disabled (e.g. by stop() or kill()).

timeout (RW)

This field contains the current timeout period. This value is not updated as time progresses. It's only used to calculate when the timer should fire next when the timer expires.

If you write this, you can call t:kill() ; t: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).

Note that these are method, and you have to call them using : instead of . (Refer to http://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/manual.html#3.4.9 .)

Example:

seconds = 0
timer = mp.add_periodic_timer(1, function()
    print("called every second")
    # stop it after 10 seconds
    seconds = seconds + 1
    if seconds >= 10 then
        timer:kill()
    end
end)

mp.get_opt(key)

Return a setting from the --script-opts option. It's up to the user and the script how this mechanism is used. Currently, all scripts can access this equally, so you should be careful about collisions.

mp.get_script_name()

Return the name of the current script. The name is usually made of the filename of the script, with directory and file extension removed. If there are several scripts which would have the same name, it's made unique by appending a number.

Example

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).

Advanced mp functions

These also live in the mp module, but are documented separately as they are useful only in special situations.

mp.suspend()

This function has been deprecated in mpv 0.21.0 (no replacement).

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.

Before mpv 0.17.0, this was automatically called by the event handler.

mp.resume()

This function has been deprecated in mpv 0.21.0 (no replacement).

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 function has been deprecated in mpv 0.21.0 (no replacement).

This resets the internal suspend counter and resumes the player. (It's like calling mp.resume() until the player is actually resumed.)

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.

mp.register_idle(fn)

Register an event loop idle handler. Idle handlers are called before the script goes to sleep after handling all new events. This can be used for example to delay processing of property change events: if you're observing multiple properties at once, you might not want to act on each property change, but only when all change notifications have been received.

mp.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.

mp.msg functions

This module allows outputting messages to the terminal, and can be loaded with require 'mp.msg'.

msg.log(level, ...)

The level parameter is the message priority. It's a string and one of fatal, error, warn, info, v, debug. 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.

mp.options functions

mpv comes with a built-in module to manage options from config-files and the command-line. All you have to do is to supply a table with default options to the read_options function. The function will overwrite the default values with values found in the config-file and the command-line (in that order).

options.read_options(table [, identifier])

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,
}
read_options(options, "myscript")
print(options.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 --script-opts parameter. To avoid collisions, all keys have to be prefixed with identifier-.

Example command-line:

--script-opts=myscript-optionA=TEST,myscript-optionB=0,myscript-optionC=yes

mp.utils functions

This built-in module provides generic helper functions for Lua, and have strictly speaking nothing to do with mpv or video/audio playback. They are provided for convenience. Most compensate for Lua's scarce standard library.

Be warned that any of these functions might disappear any time. They are not strictly part of the guaranteed API.

utils.getcwd()

Returns the directory that mpv was launched from. On error, nil, error is returned.

utils.readdir(path [, filter])

Enumerate all entries at the given path on the filesystem, and return them as array. Each entry is a directory entry (without the path). The list is unsorted (in whatever order the operating system returns it).

If the filter argument is given, it must be one of the following strings:

files

List regular files only. This excludes directories, special files (like UNIX device files or FIFOs), and dead symlinks. It includes UNIX symlinks to regular files.

dirs

List directories only, or symlinks to directories. . and .. are not included.

normal

Include the results of both files and dirs. (This is the default.)

all

List all entries, even device files, dead symlinks, 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 `p2 is an absolute path, p2 is returned without change.

utils.subprocess(t)

Runs an external process and waits until it exits. Returns process status and the captured output.

The parameter t is a table. The function reads the following entries:

args

Array of strings. The first array entry is the executable. This can be either an absolute path, or a filename with no path components, in which case the PATH environment variable is used to resolve the executable. The other array elements are passed as command line arguments.

cancellable

Optional. If set to true (default), then if the user stops playback or goes to the next file while the process is running, the process will be killed.

max_size

Optional. The maximum size in bytes of the data that can be captured from stdout. (Default: 16 MB.)

The function returns a table as result with the following entries:

status

The raw exit status of the process. It will be negative on error.

stdout

Captured output stream as string, limited to max_size.

error

nil on success. The string killed if the process was terminated in an unusual way. The string init if the process could not be started.

On Windows, killed is only returned when the process has been killed by mpv as a result of cancellable being set to true.

killed_by_us

Set to true if the process has been killed by mpv as a result of cancellable being set to true.

utils.subprocess_detached(t)

Runs an external process and detaches it from mpv's control.

The parameter t is a table. The function reads the following entries:

args

Array of strings of the same semantics as the args used in the subprocess function.

The function returns nil.

utils.parse_json(str [, trail])

Parses the given string argument as JSON, and returns it as a Lua table. On error, returns nil, error. (Currently, error is just a string reading error, because there is no fine-grained error reporting of any kind.)

The returned value uses similar conventions as mp.get_property_native() to distinguish empty objects and arrays.

If the trail parameter is true (or any value equal to true), then trailing non-whitespace text is tolerated by the function, and the trailing text is returned as 3rd return value. (The 3rd return value is always there, but with trail set, no error is raised.)

utils.format_json(v)

Format the given Lua table (or value) as a JSON string and return it. On error, returns nil, error. (Errors usually only happen on value types incompatible with JSON.)

The argument value uses similar conventions as mp.set_property_native() to distinguish empty objects and arrays.

utils.to_string(v)

Turn the given value into a string. Formats tables and their contents. This doesn't do anything special; it is only needed because Lua is terrible.

Events

Events are notifications from player core to scripts. You can register an event handler with mp.register_event.

Note that all scripts (and other parts of the player) receive events equally, and there's no such thing as blocking other scripts from receiving events.

Example:

function my_fn(event)
    print("start of playback!")
end

mp.register_event("file-loaded", my_fn)

List of events

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.

The event has the reason field, which takes one of these values:

eof: The file has ended. This can (but doesn't have to) include incomplete files or broken network connections under circumstances.
stop: Playback was ended by a command.
quit: Playback was ended by sending the quit command.
error: An error happened. In this case, an error field is present with the error string.
redirect: Happens with playlists and similar. Details see MPV_END_FILE_REASON_REDIRECT in the C API.
unknown: Unknown. Normally doesn't happen, unless the Lua API is out of sync with the C API. (Likewise, it could happen that your script gets reason strings that did not exist yet at the time your script was written.)

file-loaded

Happens after a file was loaded and begins playback.

seek

Happens on seeking. (This might include cases when the player seeks internally, even without user interaction. This includes e.g. segment changes when playing ordered chapters Matroska files.)

playback-restart

Start of playback after seek or after file was loaded.

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.

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 Details on the script initialization and lifecycle.

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. The text will end with a newline character. Sometimes it can contain multiple lines.

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).

client-message

Undocumented (used internally).

video-reconfig

Happens on video output or filter reconfig.

audio-reconfig

Happens on audio output or filter reconfig.

The following events also happen, but are deprecated: tracks-changed, track-switched, pause, unpause, metadata-update, chapter-change. Use mp.observe_property() instead.

Extras

This documents experimental features, or features that are "too special" to guarantee a stable interface.

mp.add_hook(type, priority, fn)

Add a hook callback for type (a string identifying a certain kind of hook). These hooks allow the player to call script functions and wait for their result (normally, the Lua scripting interface is asynchronous from the point of view of the player core). priority is an arbitrary integer that allows ordering among hooks of the same kind. Using the value 50 is recommended as neutral default value. fn is the function that will be called during execution of the hook.

See Hooks for currently existing hooks and what they do - only the hook list is interesting; handling hook execution is done by the Lua script function automatically.

JSON IPC

mpv can be controlled by external programs using the JSON-based IPC protocol. It can be enabled by specifying the path to a unix socket or a named pipe using the option --input-ipc-server. Clients can connect to this socket and send commands to the player or receive events from it.

Warning

This is not intended to be a secure network protocol. It is explicitly insecure: there is no authentication, no encryption, and the commands themselves are insecure too. For example, the run command is exposed, which can run arbitrary system commands. The use-case is controlling the player locally. This is not different from the MPlayer slave protocol.

Socat example

You can use the socat tool to send commands (and receive replies) from the shell. Assuming mpv was started with:

mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=/tmp/mpvsocket

Then you can control it using socat:

> echo '{ "command": ["get_property", "playback-time"] }' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket
{"data":190.482000,"error":"success"}

In this case, socat copies data between stdin/stdout and the mpv socket connection.

See the --idle option how to make mpv start without exiting immediately or playing a file.

It's also possible to send input.conf style text-only commands:

> echo 'show-text ${playback-time}' | socat - /tmp/mpvsocket

But you won't get a reply over the socket. (This particular command shows the playback time on the player's OSD.)

Command Prompt example

Unfortunately, it's not as easy to test the IPC protocol on Windows, since Windows ports of socat (in Cygwin and MSYS2) don't understand named pipes. In the absence of a simple tool to send and receive from bidirectional pipes, the echo command can be used to send commands, but not receive replies from the command prompt.

Assuming mpv was started with:

mpv file.mkv --input-ipc-server=\\.\pipe\mpvsocket

You can send commands from a command prompt:

echo show-text ${playback-time} >\\.\pipe\mpvsocket

To be able to simultaneously read and write from the IPC pipe, like on Linux, it's necessary to write an external program that uses overlapped file I/O (or some wrapper like .NET's NamedPipeClientStream.)

Protocol

Clients can execute commands on the player by sending JSON messages of the following form:

{ "command": ["command_name", "param1", "param2", ...] }

where command_name is the name of the command to be executed, followed by a list of parameters. Parameters must be formatted as native JSON values (integers, strings, booleans, ...). Every message must be terminated with \n. Additionally, \n must not appear anywhere inside the message. In practice this means that messages should be minified before being sent to mpv.

mpv will then send back a reply indicating whether the command was run correctly, and an additional field holding the command-specific return data (it can also be null).

{ "error": "success", "data": null }

mpv will also send events to clients with JSON messages of the following form:

{ "event": "event_name" }

where event_name is the name of the event. Additional event-specific fields can also be present. See List of events for a list of all supported events.

Because events can occur at any time, it may be difficult at times to determine which response goes with which command. Commands may optionally include a request_id which, if provided in the command request, will be copied verbatim into the response. mpv does not intrepret the request_id in any way; it is solely for the use of the requester.

For example, this request:

{ "command": ["get_property", "time-pos"], "request_id": 100 }

Would generate this response:

{ "error": "success", "data": 1.468135, "request_id": 100 }

All commands, replies, and events are separated from each other with a line break character (\n).

If the first character (after skipping whitespace) is not {, the command will be interpreted as non-JSON text command, as they are used in input.conf (or mpv_command_string() in the client API). Additionally, lines starting with # and empty lines are ignored.

Currently, embedded 0 bytes terminate the current line, but you should not rely on this.

Commands

In addition to the commands described in List of Input Commands, a few extra commands can also be used as part of the protocol:

client_name

Return the name of the client as string. This is the string ipc-N with N being an integer number.

get_time_us

Return the current mpv internal time in microseconds as a number. This is basically the system time, with an arbitrary offset.

get_property

Return the value of the given property. The value will be sent in the data field of the replay message.

Example:

{ "command": ["get_property", "volume"] }
{ "data": 50.0, "error": "success" }

get_property_string

Like get_property, but the resulting data will always be a string.

Example:

{ "command": ["get_property_string", "volume"] }
{ "data": "50.000000", "error": "success" }

set_property

Set the given property to the given value. See Properties for more information about properties.

Example:

{ "command": ["set_property", "pause", true] }
{ "error": "success" }

set_property_string

Like set_property, but the argument value must be passed as string.

Example:

{ "command": ["set_property_string", "pause", "yes"] }
{ "error": "success" }

observe_property

Watch a property for changes. If the given property is changed, then an event of type property-change will be generated

Example:

{ "command": ["observe_property", 1, "volume"] }
{ "error": "success" }
{ "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": 52.0, "name": "volume" }

observe_property_string

Like observe_property, but the resulting data will always be a string.

Example:

{ "command": ["observe_property_string", 1, "volume"] }
{ "error": "success" }
{ "event": "property-change", "id": 1, "data": "52.000000", "name": "volume" }

unobserve_property

Undo observe_property or observe_property_string. This requires the numeric id passed to the observed command as argument.

Example:

{ "command": ["unobserve_property", 1] }
{ "error": "success" }

request_log_messages

Enable output of mpv log messages. They will be received as events. The parameter to this command is the log-level (see mpv_request_log_messages C API function).

Log message output is meant for humans only (mostly for debugging). Attempting to retrieve information by parsing these messages will just lead to breakages with future mpv releases. Instead, make a feature request, and ask for a proper event that returns the information you need.

enable_event, disable_event

Enables or disables the named event. Mirrors the mpv_request_event C API function. If the string all is used instead of an event name, all events are enabled or disabled.

By default, most events are enabled, and there is not much use for this command.

suspend

Deprecated, will be removed completely in 0.21.0.

resume

Deprecated, will be removed completely in 0.21.0.

Undo one suspend call. suspend increments an internal counter, and resume decrements it. When 0 is reached, the player is actually resumed.

get_version

Returns the client API version the C API of the remote mpv instance provides.

See also: DOCS/client-api-changes.rst.

UTF-8

Normally, all strings are in UTF-8. Sometimes it can happen that strings are in some broken encoding (often happens with file tags and such, and filenames on many Unixes are not required to be in UTF-8 either). This means that mpv sometimes sends invalid JSON. If that is a problem for the client application's parser, it should filter the raw data for invalid UTF-8 sequences and perform the desired replacement, before feeding the data to its JSON parser.

mpv will not attempt to construct invalid UTF-8 with broken escape sequences.

CHANGELOG

There is no real changelog, but you can look at the following things:

The release changelog, which should contain most user-visible changes, including new features and bug fixes:

https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/releases
The git log, which is the "real" changelog
The files client-api-changes.rst and interface-changes.rst in the DOCS sub directoryon the git repository, which document API and user interface changes (the latter usually documents breaking changes only, rather than additions).
The file mplayer-changes.rst in the DOCS sub directory on the git repository, which used to be in place of this section. It documents some changes that happened since mplayer2 forked off MPlayer. (Not updated anymore.)

EMBEDDING INTO OTHER PROGRAMS (LIBMPV)

mpv can be embedded into other programs as video/audio playback backend. The recommended way to do so is using libmpv. See libmpv/client.h in the mpv source code repository. This provides a C API. Bindings for other languages might be available (see wiki).

Since libmpv merely allows access to underlying mechanisms that can control mpv, further documentation is spread over a few places:

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

There are a number of environment variables that can be used to control the behavior of mpv.

HOME, XDG_CONFIG_HOME

Used to determine mpv config directory. If XDG_CONFIG_HOME is not set, $HOME/.config/mpv is used.

$HOME/.mpv is always added to the list of config search paths with a lower priority.

XDG_CONFIG_DIRS

If set, XDG-style system configuration directories are used. Otherwise, the UNIX convention (PREFIX/etc/mpv/) is used.

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.

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 to get the disc key. This can fail if the drive does not recognize any of the player keys.
disc: is a fallback method when key has failed. Instead of using player keys, libdvdcss will crack the disc key using a brute force algorithm. This process is CPU intensive and requires 64 MB of memory to store temporary data.
title: is the fallback when all other methods have failed. It does not rely on a key exchange with the DVD drive, but rather uses a crypto attack to guess the title key. On rare cases this may fail because there is not enough encrypted data on the disc to perform a statistical attack, but on the other hand it is the only way to decrypt a DVD stored on a hard disc, or a DVD with the wrong region on an RPC2 drive.

DVDCSS_RAW_DEVICE

Specify the raw device to use. Exact usage will depend on your operating system, the Linux utility to set up raw 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.

EXIT CODES

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).

4: Quit due to a signal, Ctrl+c in a VO window (by default), or from the default quit key bindings in encoding mode.

Note that quitting the player manually will always lead to exit code 0, overriding the exit code that would be returned normally. Also, the quit input command can take an exit code: in this case, that exit code is returned.

FILES

For Windows-specifics, see FILES ON WINDOWS section.

/usr/local/etc/mpv/mpv.conf

mpv system-wide settings (depends on --prefix passed to configure - mpv in default configuration will use /usr/local/etc/mpv/ as config directory, while most Linux distributions will set it to /etc/mpv/).

~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf

mpv user settings (see CONFIGURATION FILES section)

~/.config/mpv/input.conf

key bindings (see INPUT.CONF section)

~/.config/mpv/scripts/

All files in this directory are loaded as if they were passed to the --script option. They are loaded in alphabetical order, and sub-directories and files with no .lua extension are ignored. The --load-scripts=no option disables loading these files.

~/.config/mpv/watch_later/

Contains temporary config files needed for resuming playback of files with the watch later feature. See for example the Q key binding, or the quit-watch-later input command.

Each file is a small config file which is loaded if the corresponding media file is loaded. It contains the playback position and some (not necessarily all) settings that were changed during playback. The filenames are hashed from the full paths of the media files. It's in general not possible to extract the media filename from this hash. However, you can set the --write-filename-in-watch-later-config option, and the player will add the media filename to the contents of the resume config file.

~/.config/mpv/lua-settings/osc.conf

This is loaded by the OSC script. See the ON SCREEN CONTROLLER docs for details.

Other files in this directory are specific to the corresponding scripts as well, and the mpv core doesn't touch them.

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.

FILES ON WINDOWS

On win32 (if compiled with MinGW, but not Cygwin), the default config file locations are different. They are generally located under %APPDATA%/mpv/. For example, the path to mpv.conf is %APPDATA%/mpv/mpv.conf, which maps to a system and user-specific path, for example

C:\users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\mpv\mpv.conf

You can find the exact path by running echo %APPDATA%\mpv\mpv.conf in cmd.exe.

Other config files (such as input.conf) are in the same directory. See the FILES section above.

The environment variable $MPV_HOME completely overrides these, like on UNIX.

If a directory named portable_config next to the mpv.exe exists, all config will be loaded from this directory only. Watch later config files are written to this directory as well. (This exists on Windows only and is redundant with $MPV_HOME. However, since Windows is very scripting unfriendly, a wrapper script just setting $MPV_HOME, like you could do it on other systems, won't work. portable_config is provided for convenience to get around this restriction.)

Config files located in the same directory as mpv.exe are loaded with lower priority. Some config files are loaded only once, which means that e.g. of 2 input.conf files located in two config directories, only the one from the directory with higher priority will be loaded.

A third config directory with the lowest priority is the directory named mpv in the same directory as mpv.exe. This used to be the directory with the highest priority, but is now discouraged to use and might be removed in the future.

Note that mpv likes to mix / and \ path separators for simplicity. kernel32.dll accepts this, but cmd.exe does not.

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).
4:	Quit due to a signal, Ctrl+c in a VO window (by default), or from the default quit key bindings in encoding mode.