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mpv/DOCS/man/options.rst
Sagnac aab9ab97f0 DOCS/options: fix incorrect labelling of hr-seek default 
The `absolute` value was incorrectly labelled as the default instead of
the value named `default`, which was somewhat confusing. When the newer
default option was added in 679e410 it seems like wm4 forgot to remove
the label in the manual on the previous default.
2022-06-10 13:42:10 +00:00

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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``.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``mpv dvd://1 --alang=hu,en`` chooses the Hungarian language track
on a DVD and falls back on English if Hungarian is not available.
- ``mpv --alang=jpn example.mkv`` plays a Matroska file with Japanese
audio.
``--slang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>``
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``.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: 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.
``--vlang=<...>``
Equivalent to ``--alang`` and ``--slang``, for video tracks.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--aid=<ID|auto|no>``
Select audio track. ``auto`` selects the default, ``no`` disables audio.
See also ``--alang``. mpv normally prints available audio tracks on the
terminal when starting playback of a file.
``--audio`` is an alias for ``--aid``.
``--aid=no`` or ``--audio=no`` or ``--no-audio`` disables audio playback.
(The latter variant does not work with the client API.)
.. note::
The track selection options (``--aid`` but also ``--sid`` and the
others) sometimes expose behavior that may appear strange. Also, the
behavior tends to change around with each mpv release.
The track selection properties will return the option value outside of
playback (as expected), but during playback, the affective track
selection is returned. For example, with ``--aid=auto``, the ``aid``
property will suddenly return ``2`` after playback initialization
(assuming the file has at least 2 audio tracks, and the second is the
default).
At mpv 0.32.0 (and some releases before), if you passed a track value
for which a corresponding track didn't exist (e.g. ``--aid=2`` and there
was only 1 audio track), the ``aid`` property returned ``no``. However if
another audio track was added during playback, and you tried to set the
``aid`` property to ``2``, nothing happened, because the ``aid`` option
still had the value ``2``, and writing the same value has no effect.
With mpv 0.33.0, the behavior was changed. Now track selection options
are reset to ``auto`` at playback initialization, if the option had
tries to select a track that does not exist. The same is done if the
track exists, but fails to initialize. The consequence is that unlike
before mpv 0.33.0, the user's track selection parameters are clobbered
in certain situations.
Also since mpv 0.33.0, trying to select a track by number will strictly
select this track. Before this change, trying to select a track which
did not exist would fall back to track default selection at playback
initialization. The new behavior is more consistent.
Setting a track selection property at runtime, and then playing a new
file might reset the track selection to defaults, if the fingerprint
of the track list of the new file is different.
Be aware of tricky combinations of all of all of the above: for example,
``mpv --aid=2 file_with_2_audio_tracks.mkv file_with_1_audio_track.mkv``
would first play the correct track, and the second file without audio.
If you then go back the first file, its first audio track will be played,
and the second file is played with audio. If you do the same thing again
but instead of using ``--aid=2`` you run ``set aid 2`` while the file is
playing, then changing to the second file will play its audio track.
This is because runtime selection enables the fingerprint heuristic.
Most likely this is not the end.
``--sid=<ID|auto|no>``
Display the subtitle stream specified by ``<ID>``. ``auto`` selects
the default, ``no`` disables subtitles.
``--sub`` is an alias for ``--sid``.
``--sid=no`` or ``--sub=no`` 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.
``--edition=<ID|auto>``
(Matroska files only)
Specify the edition (set of chapters) to use, where 0 is the first. If set
to ``auto`` (the default), mpv will choose the first edition declared as a
default, or if there is no default, the first edition defined.
``--track-auto-selection=<yes|no>``
Enable the default track auto-selection (default: yes). Enabling this will
make the player select streams according to ``--aid``, ``--alang``, and
others. If it is disabled, no tracks are selected. In addition, the player
will not exit if no tracks are selected, and wait instead (this wait mode
is similar to pausing, but the pause option is not set).
This is useful with ``--lavfi-complex``: you can start playback in this
mode, and then set select tracks at runtime by setting the filter graph.
Note that if ``--lavfi-complex`` is set before playback is started, the
referenced tracks are always selected.
``--subs-with-matching-audio=<yes|no>``
When autoselecting a subtitle track, select a non-forced one even if the selected
audio stream matches your preferred subtitle language (default: yes). Disable this
if you'd like to only show subtitles for foreign audio or onscreen text.
Playback Control
----------------
``--start=<relative time>``
Seek to given time position.
The general format for times is ``[+|-][[hh:]mm:]ss[.ms]``. If the time is
prefixed with ``-``, the time is considered relative from the end of the
file (as signaled by the demuxer/the file). A ``+`` is usually ignored (but
see below).
The following alternative time specifications are recognized:
``pp%`` seeks to percent position pp (0-100).
``#c`` seeks to chapter number c. (Chapters start from 1.)
``none`` resets any previously set option (useful for libmpv).
If ``--rebase-start-time=no`` is given, then prefixing times with ``+``
makes the time relative to the start of the file. A timestamp without
prefix is considered an absolute time, i.e. should seek to a frame with a
timestamp as the file contains it. As a bug, but also a hidden feature,
putting 1 or more spaces before the ``+`` or ``-`` always interprets the
time as absolute, which can be used to seek to negative timestamps (useful
for debugging at most).
.. admonition:: Examples
``--start=+56``, ``--start=00:56``
Seeks to the start time + 56 seconds.
``--start=-56``, ``--start=-00:56``
Seeks to the end time - 56 seconds.
``--start=01:10:00``
Seeks to 1 hour 10 min.
``--start=50%``
Seeks to the middle of the file.
``--start=30 --end=40``
Seeks to 30 seconds, plays 10 seconds, and exits.
``--start=-3:20 --length=10``
Seeks to 3 minutes and 20 seconds before the end of the file, plays
10 seconds, and exits.
``--start='#2' --end='#4'``
Plays chapters 2 and 3, and exits.
``--end=<relative time>``
Stop at given time. Use ``--length`` if the time should be relative
to ``--start``. See ``--start`` for valid option values and examples.
``--length=<relative time>``
Stop after a given time relative to the start time.
See ``--start`` for valid option values and examples.
If both ``--end`` and ``--length`` are provided, playback will stop when it
reaches either of the two endpoints.
Obscurity note: this does not work correctly if ``--rebase-start-time=no``,
and the specified time is not an "absolute" time, as defined in the
``--start`` option description.
``--rebase-start-time=<yes|no>``
Whether to move the file start time to ``00:00:00`` (default: yes). This
is less awkward for files which start at a random timestamp, such as
transport streams. On the other hand, if there are 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 ``scaletempo2`` audio
filter.
``--pause``
Start the player in paused state.
``--shuffle``
Play files in random order.
``--playlist-start=<auto|index>``
Set which file on the internal playlist to start playback with. The index
is an integer, with 0 meaning the first file. The value ``auto`` means that
the selection of the entry to play is left to the playback resume mechanism
(default). If an entry with the given index doesn't exist, the behavior is
unspecified and might change in future mpv versions. The same applies if
the playlist contains further playlists (don't expect any reasonable
behavior). Passing a playlist file to mpv should work with this option,
though. E.g. ``mpv playlist.m3u --playlist-start=123`` will work as expected,
as long as ``playlist.m3u`` does not link to further playlists.
The value ``no`` is a deprecated alias for ``auto``.
``--playlist=<filename>``
Play files according to a playlist file. Supports some common formats. If
no format is detected, it will be treated as list of files, separated by
newline characters. You may need this option to load plaintext files as
a playlist. Note that XML playlist formats are not supported.
This option forces ``--demuxer=playlist`` to interpret the playlist file.
Some playlist formats, notably CUE and optical disc formats, need to use
different demuxers and will not work with this option. They still can be
played directly, without using this option.
You can play playlists directly, without this option. Before mpv version
0.31.0, this option disabled any security mechanisms that might be in
place, but since 0.31.0 it uses the same security mechanisms as playing a
playlist file directly. If you trust the playlist file, you can disable
any security checks with ``--load-unsafe-playlists``. Because playlists
can load other playlist entries, consider applying this option only to the
playlist itself and not its entries, using something along these lines:
``mpv --{ --playlist=filename --load-unsafe-playlists --}``
.. warning::
The way older versions of mpv played playlist files via ``--playlist``
was not safe against maliciously constructed files. Such files may
trigger harmful actions. This has been the case for all verions of
mpv prior to 0.31.0, and all MPlayer versions, but unfortunately this
fact was not well documented earlier, and some people have even
misguidedly recommended the use of ``--playlist`` with untrusted
sources. Do NOT use ``--playlist`` with random internet sources or
files you do not trust if you are not sure your mpv is at least 0.31.0.
In particular, playlists can contain entries using protocols other than
local files, such as special protocols like ``avdevice://`` (which are
inherently unsafe).
``--chapter-merge-threshold=<number>``
Threshold for merging almost consecutive ordered chapter parts in
milliseconds (default: 100). Some Matroska files with ordered chapters
have inaccurate chapter end timestamps, causing a small gap between the
end of one chapter and the start of the next one when they should match.
If the end of one playback part is less than the given threshold away from
the start of the next one then keep playing video normally over the
chapter change instead of doing a seek.
``--chapter-seek-threshold=<seconds>``
Distance in seconds from the beginning of a chapter within which a backward
chapter seek will go to the previous chapter (default: 5.0). Past this
threshold, a backward chapter seek will go to the beginning of the current
chapter instead. A negative value means always go back to the previous
chapter.
``--hr-seek=<no|absolute|yes|default>``
Select when to use precise seeks that are not limited to keyframes. Such
seeks require decoding video from the previous keyframe up to the target
position and so can take some time depending on decoding performance. For
some video formats, precise seeks are disabled. This option selects the
default choice to use for seeks; it is possible to explicitly override that
default in the definition of key bindings and in input commands.
:no: Never use precise seeks.
:absolute: Use precise seeks if the seek is to an absolute position in the
file, such as a chapter seek, but not for relative seeks like
the default behavior of arrow keys.
:default: Like ``absolute``, but enable hr-seeks in audio-only cases. The
exact behavior is implementation specific and may change with
new releases (default).
:yes: Use precise seeks whenever possible.
:always: Same as ``yes`` (for compatibility).
``--hr-seek-demuxer-offset=<seconds>``
This option exists to work around failures to do precise seeks (as in
``--hr-seek``) caused by bugs or limitations in the demuxers for some file
formats. Some demuxers fail to seek to a keyframe before the given target
position, going to a later position instead. The value of this option is
subtracted from the time stamp given to the demuxer. Thus, if you set this
option to 1.5 and try to do a precise seek to 60 seconds, the demuxer is
told to seek to time 58.5, which hopefully reduces the chance that it
erroneously goes to some time later than 60 seconds. The downside of
setting this option is that precise seeks become slower, as video between
the earlier demuxer position and the real target may be unnecessarily
decoded.
``--hr-seek-framedrop=<yes|no>``
Allow the video decoder to drop frames during seek, if these frames are
before the seek target. If this is enabled, precise seeking can be faster,
but if you're using video filters which modify timestamps or add new
frames, it can lead to precise seeking skipping the target frame. This
e.g. can break frame backstepping when deinterlacing is enabled.
Default: ``yes``
``--index=<mode>``
Controls how to seek in files. Note that if the index is missing from a
file, it will be built on the fly by default, so you don't need to change
this. But it might help with some broken files.
:default: use an index if the file has one, or build it if missing
:recreate: don't read or use the file's index
.. note::
This option only works if the underlying media supports seeking
(i.e. not with stdin, pipe, etc).
``--load-unsafe-playlists``
Load URLs from playlists which are considered unsafe (default: no). This
includes special protocols and anything that doesn't refer to normal files.
Local files and HTTP links on the other hand are always considered safe.
In addition, if a playlist is loaded while this is set, the added playlist
entries are not marked as originating from network or potentially unsafe
location. (Instead, the behavior is as if the playlist entries were provided
directly to mpv command line or ``loadfile`` command.)
``--access-references=<yes|no>``
Follow any references in the file being opened (default: yes). Disabling
this is helpful if the file is automatically scanned (e.g. thumbnail
generation). If the thumbnail scanner for example encounters a playlist
file, which contains network URLs, and the scanner should not open these,
enabling this option will prevent it. This option also disables ordered
chapters, mov reference files, opening of archives, and a number of other
features.
On older FFmpeg versions, this will not work in some cases. Some FFmpeg
demuxers might not respect this option.
This option does not prevent opening of paired subtitle files and such. Use
``--autoload-files=no`` to prevent this.
This option does not always work if you open non-files (for example using
``dvd://directory`` would open a whole bunch of files in the given
directory). Prefixing the filename with ``./`` if it doesn't start with
a ``/`` will avoid this.
``--loop-playlist=<N|inf|force|no>``, ``--loop-playlist``
Loops playback ``N`` times. A value of ``1`` plays it one time (default),
``2`` two times, etc. ``inf`` means forever. ``no`` is the same as ``1`` and
disables looping. If several files are specified on command line, the
entire playlist is looped. ``--loop-playlist`` is the same as
``--loop-playlist=inf``.
The ``force`` mode is like ``inf``, but does not skip playlist entries
which have been marked as failing. This means the player might waste CPU
time trying to loop a file that doesn't exist. But it might be useful for
playing webradios under very bad network conditions.
``--loop-file=<N|inf|no>``, ``--loop=<N|inf|no>``
Loop a single file N times. ``inf`` means forever, ``no`` means normal
playback. For compatibility, ``--loop-file`` and ``--loop-file=yes`` are
also accepted, and are the same as ``--loop-file=inf``.
The difference to ``--loop-playlist`` is that this doesn't loop the playlist,
just the file itself. If the playlist contains only a single file, the
difference between the two option is that this option performs a seek on
loop, instead of reloading the file.
.. note::
``--loop-file`` counts the number of times it causes the player to
seek to the beginning of the file, not the number of full playthroughs. This
means ``--loop-file=1`` will end up playing the file twice. Contrast with
``--loop-playlist``, which counts the number of full playthroughs.
``--loop`` is an alias for this option.
``--ab-loop-a=<time>``, ``--ab-loop-b=<time>``
Set loop points. If playback passes the ``b`` timestamp, it will seek to
the ``a`` timestamp. Seeking past the ``b`` point doesn't loop (this is
intentional).
If ``a`` is after ``b``, the behavior is as if the points were given in
the right order, and the player will seek to ``b`` after crossing through
``a``. This is different from old behavior, where looping was disabled (and
as a bug, looped back to ``a`` on the end of the file).
If either options are set to ``no`` (or unset), looping is disabled. This
is different from old behavior, where an unset ``a`` implied the start of
the file, and an unset ``b`` the end of the file.
The loop-points can be adjusted at runtime with the corresponding
properties. See also ``ab-loop`` command.
``--ab-loop-count=<N|inf>``
Run A-B loops only N times, then ignore the A-B loop points (default: inf).
Every finished loop iteration will decrement this option by 1 (unless it is
set to ``inf`` or 0). ``inf`` means that looping goes on forever. If this
option is set to 0, A-B looping is ignored, and even the ``ab-loop`` command
will not enable looping again (the command will show ``(disabled)`` on the
OSD message if both loop points are set, but ``ab-loop-count`` is 0).
``--ordered-chapters``, ``--no-ordered-chapters``
Enabled by default.
Disable support for Matroska ordered chapters. mpv will not load or
search for video segments from other files, and will also ignore any
chapter order specified for the main file.
``--ordered-chapters-files=<playlist-file>``
Loads the given file as playlist, and tries to use the files contained in
it as reference files when opening a Matroska file that uses ordered
chapters. This overrides the normal mechanism for loading referenced
files by scanning the same directory the main file is located in.
Useful for loading ordered chapter files that are not located on the local
filesystem, or if the referenced files are in different directories.
Note: a playlist can be as simple as a text file containing filenames
separated by newlines.
``--chapters-file=<filename>``
Load chapters from this file, instead of using the chapter metadata found
in the main file.
This accepts a media file (like mkv) or even a pseudo-format like ffmetadata
and uses its chapters to replace the current file's chapters. This doesn't
work with OGM or XML chapters directly.
``--sstep=<sec>``
Skip <sec> seconds after every frame.
.. note::
Without ``--hr-seek``, skipping will snap to keyframes.
``--stop-playback-on-init-failure=<yes|no>``
Stop playback if either audio or video fails to initialize (default: no).
With ``no``, playback will continue in video-only or audio-only mode if one
of them fails. This doesn't affect playback of audio-only or video-only
files.
``--play-dir=<forward|+|backward|->``
Control the playback direction (default: forward). Setting ``backward``
will attempt to play the file in reverse direction, with decreasing
playback time. If this is set on playback starts, playback will start from
the end of the file. If this is changed at during playback, a hr-seek will
be issued to change the direction.
``+`` and ``-`` are aliases for ``forward`` and ``backward``.
The rest of this option description pertains to the ``backward`` mode.
.. note::
Backward playback is extremely fragile. It may not always work, is much
slower than forward playback, and breaks certain other features. How
well it works depends mainly on the file being played. Generally, it
will show good results (or results at all) only if the stars align.
mpv, as well as most media formats, were designed for forward playback
only. Backward playback is bolted on top of mpv, and tries to make a medium
effort to make backward playback work. Depending on your use-case, another
tool may work much better.
Backward playback is not exactly a 1st class feature. Implementation
tradeoffs were made, that are bad for backward playback, but in turn do not
cause disadvantages for normal playback. Various possible optimizations are
not implemented in order to keep the complexity down. Normally, a media
player is highly pipelined (future data is prepared in separate threads, so
it is available in realtime when the next stage needs it), but backward
playback will essentially stall the pipeline at various random points.
For example, for intra-only codecs are trivially backward playable, and
tools built around them may make efficient use of them (consider video
editors or camera viewers). mpv won't be efficient in this case, because it
uses its generic backward playback algorithm, that on top of it is not very
optimized.
If you just want to quickly go backward through the video and just show
"keyframes", just use forward playback, and hold down the left cursor key
(which on CLI with default config sends many small relative seek commands).
The implementation consists of mostly 3 parts:
- Backward demuxing. This relies on the demuxer cache, so the demuxer cache
should (or must, didn't test it) be enabled, and its size will affect
performance. If the cache is too small or too large, quadratic runtime
behavior may result.
- Backward decoding. The decoder library used (libavcodec) does not support
this. It is emulated by feeding bits of data in forward, putting the
result in a queue, returning the queue data to the VO in reverse, and
then starting over at an earlier position. This can require buffering an
extreme amount of decoded data, and also completely breaks pipelining.
- Backward output. This is relatively simple, because the decoder returns
the frames in the needed order. However, this may cause various problems
because filters see audio and video going backward.
Known problems:
- It's fragile. If anything doesn't work, random non-useful behavior may
occur. In simple cases, the player will just play nonsense and artifacts.
In other cases, it may get stuck or heat the CPU. (Exceeding memory usage
significantly beyond the user-set limits would be a bug, though.)
- Performance and resource usage isn't good. In part this is inherent to
backward playback of normal media formats, and in parts due to
implementation choices and tradeoffs.
- This is extremely reliant on good demuxer behavior. Although backward
demuxing requires no special demuxer support, it is required that the
demuxer performs seeks reliably, fulfills some specific requirements
about packet metadata, and has deterministic behavior.
- Starting playback exactly from the end may or may not work, depending on
seeking behavior and file duration detection.
- Some container formats, audio, and video codecs are not supported due to
their behavior. There is no list, and the player usually does not detect
them. Certain live streams (including TV captures) may exhibit problems
in particular, as well as some lossy audio codecs. h264 intra-refresh is
known not to work due to problems with libavcodec. WAV and some other raw
audio formats tend to have problems - there are hacks for dealing with
them, which may or may not work.
- Backward demuxing of subtitles is not supported. Subtitle display still
works for some external text subtitle formats. (These are fully read into
memory, and only backward display is needed.) Text subtitles that are
cached in the subtitle renderer also have a chance to be displayed
correctly.
- Some features dealing with playback of broken or hard to deal with files
will not work fully (such as timestamp correction).
- If demuxer low level seeks (i.e. seeking the actual demuxer instead of
just within the demuxer cache) are performed by backward playback, the
created seek ranges may not join, because not enough overlap is achieved.
- Trying to use this with hardware video decoding will probably exhaust all
your GPU memory and then crash a thing or two. Or it will fail because
``--hwdec-extra-frames`` will certainly be set too low.
- Stream recording is broken. ``--stream-record`` may keep working if you
backward play within a cached region only.
- Relative seeks may behave weird. Small seeks backward (towards smaller
time, i.e. ``seek -1``) may not really seek properly, and audio will
remain muted for a while. Using hr-seek is recommended, which should have
none of these problems.
- Some things are just weird. For example, while seek commands manipulate
playback time in the expected way (provided they work correctly), the
framestep commands are transposed. Backstepping will perform very
expensive work to step forward by 1 frame.
Tuning:
- Remove all ``--vf``/``--af`` filters you have set. Disable hardware
decoding. Disable idiotic nonsense like SPDIF passthrough.
- Increasing ``--video-reversal-buffer`` might help if reversal queue
overflow is reported, which may happen in high bitrate video, or video
with large GOP. Hardware decoding mostly ignores this, and you need to
increase ``--hwdec-extra-frames`` instead (until you get playback without
logged errors).
- The demuxer cache is essential for backward demuxing. Make sure to set
``--cache=yes``. The cache size might matter. If it's too small, a queue
overflow will be logged, and backward playback cannot continue, or it
performs too many low level seeks. If it's too large, implementation
tradeoffs may cause general performance issues. Use
``--demuxer-max-bytes`` to potentially increase the amount of packets the
demuxer layer can queue for reverse demuxing (basically it's the
``--video-reversal-buffer`` equivalent for the demuxer layer).
- Setting ``--vd-queue-enable=yes`` can help a lot to make playback smooth
(once it works).
- ``--demuxer-backward-playback-step`` also factors into how many seeks may
be performed, and whether backward demuxing could break due to queue
overflow. If it's set too high, the backstep operation needs to search
through more packets all the time, even if the cache is large enough.
- Setting ``--demuxer-cache-wait`` may be useful to cache the entire file
into the demuxer cache. Set ``--demuxer-max-bytes`` to a large size to
make sure it can read the entire cache; ``--demuxer-max-back-bytes``
should also be set to a large size to prevent that tries to trim the
cache.
- If audio artifacts are audible, even though the AO does not underrun,
increasing ``--audio-backward-overlap`` might help in some cases.
``--video-reversal-buffer=<bytesize>``, ``--audio-reversal-buffer=<bytesize>``
For backward decoding. Backward decoding decodes forward in steps, and then
reverses the decoder output. These options control the approximate maximum
amount of bytes that can be buffered. The main use of this is to avoid
unbounded resource usage; during normal backward playback, it's not supposed
to hit the limit, and if it does, it will drop frames and complain about it.
Use this option if you get reversal queue overflow errors during backward
playback. Increase the size until the warning disappears. Usually, the video
buffer will overflow first, especially if it's high resolution video.
This does not work correctly if video hardware decoding is used. The video
frame size will not include the referenced GPU and driver memory. Some
hardware decoders may also be limited by ``--hwdec-extra-frames``.
How large the queue size needs to be depends entirely on the way the media
was encoded. Audio typically requires a very small buffer, while video can
require excessively large buffers.
(Technically, this allows the last frame to exceed the limit. Also, this
does not account for other buffered frames, such as inside the decoder or
the video output.)
This does not affect demuxer cache behavior at all.
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range. ``<bytesize>`` options
accept suffixes such as ``KiB`` and ``MiB``.
``--video-backward-overlap=<auto|number>``, ``--audio-backward-overlap=<auto|number>``
Number of overlapping keyframe ranges to use for backward decoding (default:
auto) ("keyframe" to be understood as in the mpv/ffmpeg specific meaning).
Backward decoding works by forward decoding in small steps. Some codecs
cannot restart decoding from any packet (even if it's marked as seek point),
which becomes noticeable with backward decoding (in theory this is a problem
with seeking too, but ``--hr-seek-demuxer-offset`` can fix it for seeking).
In particular, MDCT based audio codecs are affected.
The solution is to feed a previous packet to the decoder each time, and then
discard the output. This option controls how many packets to feed. The
``auto`` choice is currently hardcoded to 0 for video, and uses 1 for lossy
audio, 0 for lossless audio. For some specific lossy audio codecs, this is
set to 2.
``--video-backward-overlap`` can potentially handle intra-refresh video,
depending on the exact conditions. You may have to use the
``--vd-lavc-show-all`` option as well.
``--video-backward-batch=<number>``, ``--audio-backward-batch=<number>``
Number of keyframe ranges to decode at once when backward decoding (default:
1 for video, 10 for audio). Another pointless tuning parameter nobody should
use. This should affect performance only. In theory, setting a number higher
than 1 for audio will reduce overhead due to less frequent backstep
operations and less redundant decoding work due to fewer decoded overlap
frames (see ``--audio-backward-overlap``). On the other hand, it requires
a larger reversal buffer, and could make playback less smooth due to
breaking pipelining (e.g. by decoding a lot, and then doing nothing for a
while).
It probably never makes sense to set ``--video-backward-batch``. But in
theory, it could help with intra-only video codecs by reducing backstep
operations.
``--demuxer-backward-playback-step=<seconds>``
Number of seconds the demuxer should seek back to get new packets during
backward playback (default: 60). This is useful for tuning backward
playback, see ``--play-dir`` for details.
Setting this to a very low value or 0 may make the player think seeking is
broken, or may make it perform multiple seeks.
Setting this to a high value may lead to quadratic runtime behavior.
Program Behavior
----------------
``--help``, ``--h``
Show short summary of options.
You can also pass a string to this option, which will list all top-level
options which contain the string in the name, e.g. ``--h=scale`` for all
options that contain the word ``scale``. The special string ``*`` lists
all top-level options.
``-v``
Increment verbosity level, one level for each ``-v`` found on the command
line.
``--version, -V``
Print version string and exit.
``--no-config``
Do not load default configuration 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.
See also: ``--config-dir``.
``--list-options``
Prints all available options.
``--list-properties``
Print a list of the available properties.
``--list-protocols``
Print a list of the supported protocols.
``--log-file=<path>``
Opens the given path for writing, and print log messages to it. Existing
files will be truncated. The log level is at least ``-v -v``, but
can be raised via ``--msg-level`` (the option cannot lower it below the
forced minimum log level).
A special case is the macOS bundle, it will create a log file at
``~/Library/Logs/mpv.log`` by default.
``--config-dir=<path>``
Force a different configuration directory. If this is set, the given
directory is used to load configuration files, and all other configuration
directories are ignored. This means the global mpv configuration directory
as well as per-user directories are ignored, and overrides through
environment variables (``MPV_HOME``) are also ignored.
Note that the ``--no-config`` option takes precedence over this option.
``--dump-stats=<filename>``
Write certain statistics to the given file. The file is truncated on
opening. The file will contain raw samples, each with a timestamp. To
make this file into a readable, the script ``TOOLS/stats-conv.py`` can be
used (which currently displays it as a graph).
This option is useful for debugging only.
``--idle=<no|yes|once>``
Makes mpv wait idly instead of quitting when there is no file to play.
Mostly useful in input mode, where mpv can be controlled through input
commands. (Default: ``no``)
``once`` will only idle at start and let the player close once the
first playlist has finished playing back.
``--include=<configuration-file>``
Specify configuration file to be parsed after the default ones.
``--load-scripts=<yes|no>``
If set to ``no``, don't auto-load scripts from the ``scripts``
configuration subdirectory (usually ``~/.config/mpv/scripts/``).
(Default: ``yes``)
``--script=<filename>``, ``--scripts=file1.lua:file2.lua:...``
Load a Lua script. The second option allows you to load multiple scripts by
separating them with the path separator (``:`` on Unix, ``;`` on Windows).
``--scripts`` is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--script-opts=key1=value1,key2=value2,...``
Set options for scripts. A script can query an option by key. If an
option is used and what semantics the option value has depends entirely on
the loaded scripts. Values not claimed by any scripts are ignored.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--merge-files``
Pretend that all files passed to mpv are concatenated into a single, big
file. This uses timeline/EDL support internally.
``--profile=<profile1,profile2,...>``
Use the given profile(s), ``--profile=help`` displays a list of the
defined profiles.
``--reset-on-next-file=<all|option1,option2,...>``
Normally, mpv will try to keep all settings when playing the next file on
the playlist, even if they were changed by the user during playback. (This
behavior is the opposite of MPlayer's, which tries to reset all settings
when starting next file.)
Default: Do not reset anything.
This can be changed with this option. It accepts a list of options, and
mpv will reset the value of these options on playback start to the initial
value. The initial value is either the default value, or as set by the
config file or command line.
In some cases, this might not work as expected. For example, ``--volume``
will only be reset if it is explicitly set in the config file or the
command line.
The special name ``all`` resets as many options as possible.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--reset-on-next-file=pause``
Reset pause mode when switching to the next file.
- ``--reset-on-next-file=fullscreen,speed``
Reset fullscreen and playback speed settings if they were changed
during playback.
- ``--reset-on-next-file=all``
Try to reset all settings that were changed during playback.
``--show-profile=<profile>``
Show the description and content of a profile. Lists all profiles if no
parameter is provided.
``--use-filedir-conf``
Look for a file-specific configuration file in the same directory as the
file that is being played. See `File-specific Configuration Files`_.
.. warning::
May be dangerous if playing from untrusted media.
``--ytdl``, ``--no-ytdl``
Enable the youtube-dl hook-script. It will look at the input URL, and will
play the video located on the website. This works with many streaming sites,
not just the one that the script is named after. This requires a recent
version of youtube-dl to be installed on the system. (Enabled by default.)
If the script can't do anything with an URL, it will do nothing.
This accepts a set of options, which can be passed to it with the
``--script-opts`` option (using ``ytdl_hook-`` as prefix):
``try_ytdl_first=<yes|no>``
If 'yes' will try parsing the URL with youtube-dl first, instead of the
default where it's only after mpv failed to open it. This mostly depends
on whether most of your URLs need youtube-dl parsing.
``exclude=<URL1|URL2|...``
A ``|``-separated list of URL patterns which mpv should not use with
youtube-dl. The patterns are matched after the ``http(s)://`` part of
the URL.
``^`` matches the beginning of the URL, ``$`` matches its end, and you
should use ``%`` before any of the characters ``^$()%|,.[]*+-?`` to
match that character.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--script-opts=ytdl_hook-exclude='^youtube%.com'``
will exclude any URL that starts with ``http://youtube.com`` or
``https://youtube.com``.
- ``--script-opts=ytdl_hook-exclude='%.mkv$|%.mp4$'``
will exclude any URL that ends with ``.mkv`` or ``.mp4``.
See more lua patterns here: https://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/manual.html#5.4.1
``all_formats=<yes|no>``
If 'yes' will attempt to add all formats found reported by youtube-dl
(default: no). Each format is added as a separate track. In addition,
they are delay-loaded, and actually opened only when a track is selected
(this should keep load times as low as without this option).
It adds average bitrate metadata, if available, which means you can use
``--hls-bitrate`` to decide which track to select. (HLS used to be the
only format whose alternative quality streams were exposed in a similar
way, thus the option name.)
Tracks which represent formats that were selected by youtube-dl as
default will have the default flag set. This means mpv should generally
still select formats chosen with ``--ytdl-format`` by default.
Although this mechanism makes it possible to switch streams at runtime,
it's not suitable for this purpose for various technical reasons. (It's
slow, which can't be really fixed.) In general, this option is not
useful, and was only added to show that it's possible.
There are two cases that must be considered when doing quality/bandwidth
selection:
1. Completely separate audio and video streams (DASH-like). Each of
these streams contain either only audio or video, so you can
mix and combine audio/video bandwidths without restriction. This
intuitively matches best with the concept of selecting quality
by track (what ``all_formats`` is supposed to do).
2. Separate sets of muxed audio and video streams. Each version of
the media contains both an audio and video stream, and they are
interleaved. In order not to waste bandwidth, you should only
select one of these versions (if, for example, you select an
audio stream, then video will be downloaded, even if you selected
video from a different stream).
mpv will still represent them as separate tracks, but will set
the title of each track to ``muxed-N``, where ``N`` is replaced
with the youtube-dl format ID of the originating stream.
Some sites will mix 1. and 2., but we assume that they do so for
compatibility reasons, and there is no reason to use them at all.
``force_all_formats=<yes|no>``
If set to 'yes', and ``all_formats`` is also set to 'yes', this will
try to represent all youtube-dl reported formats as tracks, even if
mpv would normally use the direct URL reported by it (default: yes).
It appears this normally makes a difference if youtube-dl works on a
master HLS playlist.
If this is set to 'no', this specific kind of stream is treated like
``all_formats`` is set to 'no', and the stream selection as done by
youtube-dl (via ``--ytdl-format``) is used.
``use_manifests=<yes|no>``
Make mpv use the master manifest URL for formats like HLS and DASH,
if available, allowing for video/audio selection in runtime (default:
no). It's disabled ("no") by default for performance reasons.
``ytdl_path=youtube-dl``
Configure paths to youtube-dl's executable or a compatible fork's. The
paths should be separated by : on Unix and ; on Windows. mpv looks in
order for the configured paths in PATH and in mpv's config directory.
The defaults are "yt-dlp", "yt-dlp_x86" and "youtube-dl". On Windows
the suffix extension ".exe" is always appended.
.. admonition:: Why do the option names mix ``_`` and ``-``?
I have no idea.
``--ytdl-format=<ytdl|best|worst|mp4|webm|...>``
Video format/quality that is directly passed to youtube-dl. The possible
values are specific to the website and the video, for a given url the
available formats can be found with the command
``youtube-dl --list-formats URL``. See youtube-dl's documentation for
available aliases.
(Default: ``bestvideo+bestaudio/best``)
The ``ytdl`` value does not pass a ``--format`` option to youtube-dl at all,
and thus does not override its default. Note that sometimes youtube-dl
returns a format that mpv cannot use, and in these cases the mpv default
may work better.
``--ytdl-raw-options=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]``
Pass arbitrary options to youtube-dl. Parameter and argument should be
passed as a key-value pair. Options without argument must include ``=``.
There is no sanity checking so it's possible to break things (i.e.
passing invalid parameters to youtube-dl).
A proxy URL can be passed for youtube-dl to use it in parsing the website.
This is useful for geo-restricted URLs. After youtube-dl parsing, some
URLs also require a proxy for playback, so this can pass that proxy
information to mpv. Take note that SOCKS proxies aren't supported and
https URLs also bypass the proxy. This is a limitation in FFmpeg.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Example
- ``--ytdl-raw-options=username=user,password=pass``
- ``--ytdl-raw-options=force-ipv6=``
- ``--ytdl-raw-options=proxy=[http://127.0.0.1:3128]``
- ``--ytdl-raw-options-append=proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128``
``--load-stats-overlay=<yes|no>``
Enable the builtin script that shows useful playback information on a key
binding (default: yes). By default, the ``i`` key is used (``I`` to make
the overlay permanent).
``--load-osd-console=<yes|no>``
Enable the built-in script that shows a console on a key binding and lets
you enter commands (default: yes). The ````` key is used to show the
console by default, and ``ESC`` to hide it again.
``--load-auto-profiles=<yes|no|auto>``
Enable the builtin script that does auto profiles (default: auto). See
`Conditional auto profiles`_ for details. ``auto`` will load the script,
but immediately unload it if there are no conditional profiles.
``--player-operation-mode=<cplayer|pseudo-gui>``
For enabling "pseudo GUI mode", which means that the defaults for some
options are changed. This option should not normally be used directly, but
only by mpv internally, or mpv-provided scripts, config files, or .desktop
files. See `PSEUDO GUI MODE`_ for details.
Watch Later
-----------
``--save-position-on-quit``
Always save the current playback position on quit. When this file is
played again later, the player will seek to the old playback position on
start. This does not happen if playback of a file is stopped in any other
way than quitting. For example, going to the next file in the playlist
will not save the position, and start playback at beginning the next time
the file is played.
This behavior is disabled by default, but is always available when quitting
the player with Shift+Q.
See `RESUMING PLAYBACK`_.
``--watch-later-directory=<path>``
The directory in which to store the "watch later" temporary files.
The default is a subdirectory named "watch_later" underneath the
config directory (usually ``~/.config/mpv/``).
``--no-resume-playback``
Do not restore playback position from the ``watch_later`` configuration
subdirectory (usually ``~/.config/mpv/watch_later/``).
``--resume-playback-check-mtime``
Only restore the playback position from the ``watch_later`` configuration
subdirectory (usually ``~/.config/mpv/watch_later/``) if the file's
modification time is the same as at the time of saving. This may prevent
skipping forward in files with the same name which have different content.
(Default: ``no``)
``--watch-later-options=option1,option2,...``
The options that are saved in "watch later" files if they have been changed
since when mpv started. These values will be restored the next time the
files are played. The playback position is always saved as ``start``, so
adding ``start`` to this list has no effect.
When removing options, existing watch later data won't be modified and will
still be applied fully, but new watch later data won't contain these
options.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--watch-later-options-remove=fullscreen``
The fullscreen state won't be saved to watch later files.
- ``--watch-later-options-remove=volume``
``--watch-later-options-remove=mute``
The volume and mute state won't be saved to watch later files.
- ``--watch-later-options-clr``
No option will be saved to watch later files except the starting
position.
``--write-filename-in-watch-later-config``
Prepend the watch later config files with the name of the file they refer
to. This is simply written as comment on the top of the file.
.. warning::
This option may expose privacy-sensitive information and is thus
disabled by default.
``--ignore-path-in-watch-later-config``
Ignore path (i.e. use filename only) when using watch later feature.
(Default: disabled)
Video
-----
``--vo=<driver>``
Specify the video output backend to be used. See `VIDEO OUTPUT DRIVERS`_ for
details and descriptions of available drivers.
``--vd=<...>``
Specify a priority list of video decoders to be used, according to their
family and name. See ``--ad`` for further details. Both of these options
use the same syntax and semantics; the only 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 frame dropping. Not recommended, for testing only.
<vo>
Drop late frames on video output (default). This still decodes and
filters all frames, but doesn't render them on the VO. Drops are
indicated in the terminal status line as ``Dropped:`` field.
In audio sync. mode, this drops frames that are outdated at the time of
display. If the decoder is too slow, in theory all frames would have to
be dropped (because all frames are too late) - to avoid this, frame
dropping stops if the effective framerate is below 10 FPS.
In display-sync. modes (see ``--video-sync``), this affects only how
A/V drops or repeats frames. If this mode is disabled, A/V desync will
in theory not affect video scheduling anymore (much like the
``display-resample-desync`` mode). However, even if disabled, frames
will still be skipped (i.e. dropped) according to the ratio between
video and display frequencies.
This is the recommended mode, and the default.
<decoder>
Old, decoder-based framedrop mode. (This is the same as ``--framedrop=yes``
in mpv 0.5.x and before.) This tells the decoder to skip frames (unless
they are needed to decode future frames). May help with slow systems,
but can produce unwatchable choppy output, or even freeze the display
completely.
This uses a heuristic which may not make sense, and in general cannot
achieve good results, because the decoder's frame dropping cannot be
controlled in a predictable manner. Not recommended.
Even if you want to use this, prefer ``decoder+vo`` for better results.
The ``--vd-lavc-framedrop`` option controls what frames to drop.
<decoder+vo>
Enable both modes. Not recommended. Better than just ``decoder`` mode.
.. note::
``--vo=vdpau`` has its own code for the ``vo`` framedrop mode. Slight
differences to other VOs are possible.
``--video-latency-hacks=<yes|no>``
Enable some things which tend to reduce video latency by 1 or 2 frames
(default: no). Note that this option might be removed without notice once
the player's timing code does not inherently need to do these things
anymore.
This does:
- Use the demuxer reported FPS for frame dropping. This avoids the
player needing to decode 1 frame in advance, lowering total latency in
effect. This also means that if the demuxer reported FPS is wrong, or
the video filter chain changes FPS (e.g. deinterlacing), then it could
drop too many or not enough frames.
- Disable waiting for the first video frame. Normally the player waits for
the first video frame to be fully rendered before starting playback
properly. Some VOs will lazily initialize stuff when rendering the first
frame, so if this is not done, there is some likeliness that the VO has
to drop some frames if rendering the first frame takes longer than needed.
``--override-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.
``--display-fps=<fps>``
Deprecated alias for ``--override-display-fps``.
``--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.
Hardware decoding is not enabled by default, to keep the out-of-the-box
configuration as reliable as possible. However, when using modern hardware,
hardware video decoding should work correctly, offering reduced CPU usage,
and possibly lower power consumption. On older systems, it may be necessary
to use hardware decoding due to insufficient CPU resources; and even on
modern systems, sufficiently complex content (eg: 4K60 AV1) may require it.
.. note::
Use the ``Ctrl+h`` shortcut to toggle hardware decoding at runtime. It
toggles this option between ``auto`` and ``no``.
If you decide you want to use hardware decoding by default, the general
recommendation is to try out decoding with the command line option, and
prove to yourself that it works as desired for the content you care
about. After that, you can add it to your config file.
When testing, you should start by using ``hwdec=auto-safe`` as it will
limit itself to choosing from hwdecs that are actively supported by the
development team. If that doesn't result in working hardware decoding,
you can try ``hwdec=auto`` to have it attempt to load every possible
hwdec, but if ``auto-safe`` didn't work, you will probably need to know
exactly which hwdec matches your hardware and read up on that entry
below.
If ``auto-safe`` or ``auto`` produced the desired results, we recommend
just sticking with that and only setting a specific hwdec in your config
file if it is really necessary.
If you use the Ubuntu package, keep in mind that their
``/etc/mpv/mpv.conf`` contains ``hwdec=vaapi``, which is less than
ideal as it may not be the right choice for your system, and it may end
up using an inefficient wrapper library under the covers. We recommend
removing this line or deleting the file altogether.
.. note::
Even if enabled, hardware decoding is still only white-listed for some
codecs. See ``--hwdec-codecs`` to enable hardware decoding in more cases.
.. admonition:: Which method to choose?
- If you only want to enable hardware decoding at runtime, don't set the
parameter, or put ``hwdec=no`` into your ``mpv.conf`` (relevant on
distros which force-enable it by default, such as on Ubuntu). Use the
``Ctrl+h`` default binding to enable it at runtime.
- If you're not sure, but want hardware decoding always enabled by
default, put ``hwdec=auto-safe`` into your ``mpv.conf``, and
acknowledge that this may cause problems.
- If you want to test available hardware decoding methods, pass
``--hwdec=auto --hwdec-codecs=all`` and look at the terminal output.
- If you're a developer, or want to perform elaborate tests, you may
need any of the other possible option values.
``<api>`` can be one of the following:
:no: always use software decoding (default)
:auto: forcibly enable any hw decoder found (see below)
:yes: exactly the same as ``auto``
:auto-safe: enable any whitelisted hw decoder (see below)
:auto-copy: enable best hw decoder with copy-back (see below)
Actively supported hwdecs:
:d3d11va: requires ``--vo=gpu`` with ``--gpu-context=d3d11`` or
``--gpu-context=angle`` (Windows 8+ only)
:d3d11va-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Windows 8+ only)
:videotoolbox: requires ``--vo=gpu`` (macOS 10.8 and up),
or ``--vo=libmpv`` (iOS 9.0 and up)
:videotoolbox-copy: copies video back into system RAM (macOS 10.8 or iOS 9.0 and up)
:vaapi: requires ``--vo=gpu``, ``--vo=vaapi`` or ``--vo=vaapi-wayland`` (Linux only)
:vaapi-copy: copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs only)
:nvdec: requires ``--vo=gpu`` (Any platform CUDA is available)
:nvdec-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is available)
Other hwdecs (only use if you know you have to):
:dxva2: requires ``--vo=gpu`` with ``--gpu-context=d3d11``,
``--gpu-context=angle`` or ``--gpu-context=dxinterop``
(Windows only)
:dxva2-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Windows only)
:vdpau: requires ``--vo=gpu`` with X11, or ``--vo=vdpau`` (Linux only)
:vdpau-copy: copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs only)
:mediacodec: requires ``--vo=mediacodec_embed`` (Android only)
:mediacodec-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Android only)
:mmal: requires ``--vo=gpu`` (Raspberry Pi only - default if available)
:mmal-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Raspberry Pi only)
:cuda: requires ``--vo=gpu`` (Any platform CUDA is available)
:cuda-copy: copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is available)
:crystalhd: copies video back to system RAM (Any platform supported by hardware)
:rkmpp: requires ``--vo=gpu`` (some RockChip devices only)
``auto`` tries to automatically enable hardware decoding using the first
available method. This still depends what VO you are using. For example,
if you are not using ``--vo=gpu`` or ``--vo=vdpau``, vdpau decoding will
never be enabled. Also note that if the first found method doesn't actually
work, it will always fall back to software decoding, instead of trying the
next method (might matter on some Linux systems).
``auto-safe`` is similar to ``auto``, but allows only whitelisted methods
that are considered "safe". This is supposed to be a reasonable way to
enable hardware decdoding by default in a config file (even though you
shouldn't do that anyway; prefer runtime enabling with ``Ctrl+h``). Unlike
``auto``, this will not try to enable unknown or known-to-be-bad methods. In
addition, this may disable hardware decoding in other situations when it's
known to cause problems, but currently this mechanism is quite primitive.
(As an example for something that still causes problems: certain
combinations of HEVC and Intel chips on Windows tend to cause mpv to crash,
most likely due to driver bugs.)
``auto-copy-safe`` selects the union of methods selected with ``auto-safe``
and ``auto-copy``.
``auto-copy`` selects only modes that copy the video data back to system
memory after decoding. This selects modes like ``vaapi-copy`` (and so on).
If none of these work, hardware decoding is disabled. This mode is usually
guaranteed to incur no additional quality loss compared to software
decoding (assuming modern codecs and an error free video stream), and will
allow CPU processing with video filters. This mode works with all video
filters and VOs.
Because these copy the decoded video back to system RAM, they're often less
efficient than the direct modes, and may not help too much over software
decoding if you are short on CPU resources.
.. note::
Most non-copy methods only work with the OpenGL GPU backend. Currently,
only the ``vaapi``, ``nvdec`` and ``cuda`` methods work with Vulkan.
The ``vaapi`` mode, if used with ``--vo=gpu``, requires Mesa 11, and most
likely works with Intel and AMD GPUs only. It also requires the opengl EGL
backend.
``nvdec`` and ``nvdec-copy`` are the newest, and recommended method to do
hardware decoding on Nvidia GPUs.
``cuda`` and ``cuda-copy`` are an older implementation of hardware decoding
on Nvidia GPUs that uses Nvidia's bitstream parsers rather than FFmpeg's.
This can lead to feature deficiencies, such as incorrect playback of HDR
content, and ``nvdec``/``nvdec-copy`` should always be preferred unless you
specifically need Nvidia's deinterlacing algorithms. To use this
deinterlacing you must pass the option:
``vd-lavc-o=deint=[weave|bob|adaptive]``.
Pass ``weave`` (or leave the option unset) to not attempt any
deinterlacing.
.. admonition:: Quality reduction with hardware decoding
In theory, hardware decoding does not reduce video quality (at least
for the codecs h264 and HEVC). However, due to restrictions in video
output APIs, as well as bugs in the actual hardware decoders, there can
be some loss, or even blatantly incorrect results. This has largely
ceased to be a problem with modern hardware, but there is a lot of
hardware out there, so caveat emptor. Known problems are discussed
below, but the list cannot be considered exhaustive, as even hwdecs that
work well on certain hardware generations may be problematic on other
ones.
In some cases, RGB conversion is forced, which means the RGB conversion
is performed by the hardware decoding API, instead of the shaders
used by ``--vo=gpu``. This means certain colorspaces may not display
correctly, and certain filtering (such as debanding) cannot be applied
in an ideal way. This will also usually force the use of low quality
chroma scalers instead of the one specified by ``--cscale``. In other
cases, hardware decoding can also reduce the bit depth of the decoded
image, which can introduce banding or precision loss for 10-bit files.
``vdpau`` always does RGB conversion in hardware, which does not
support newer colorspaces like BT.2020 correctly. However, ``vdpau``
doesn't support 10 bit or HDR encodings, so these limitations are
unlikely to be relevant.
``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.
``rpi`` always uses the hardware overlay renderer, even with
``--vo=gpu``.
``cuda`` should usually be safe, but depending on how a file/stream
has been mixed, it has been reported to corrupt the timestamps causing
glitched, flashing frames. It can also sometimes cause massive
framedrops for unknown reasons. Caution is advised, and ``nvdec``
should always be preferred.
``crystalhd`` is not safe. It always converts to 4:2:2 YUV, which
may be lossy, depending on how chroma sub-sampling is done during
conversion. It also discards the top left pixel of each frame for
some reason.
If you run into any weird decoding issues, frame glitches or
discoloration, and you have ``--hwdec`` turned on, the first thing you
should try is disabling it.
``--gpu-hwdec-interop=<auto|all|no|name>``
This option is for troubleshooting hwdec interop issues. Since it's a
debugging option, its semantics may change at any time.
This is useful for the ``gpu`` and ``libmpv`` VOs for selecting which
hwdec interop context to use exactly. Effectively it also can be used
to block loading of certain backends.
If set to ``auto`` (default), the behavior depends on the VO: for ``gpu``,
it does nothing, and the interop context is loaded on demand (when the
decoder probes for ``--hwdec`` support). For ``libmpv``, which has
has no on-demand loading, this is equivalent to ``all``.
The empty string is equivalent to ``auto``.
If set to ``all``, it attempts to load all interop contexts at GL context
creation time.
Other than that, a specific backend can be set, and the list of them can
be queried with ``help`` (mpv CLI only).
Runtime changes to this are ignored (the current option value is used
whenever the renderer is created).
The old aliases ``--opengl-hwdec-interop`` and ``--hwdec-preload`` are
barely related to this anymore, but will be somewhat compatible in some
cases.
``--hwdec-extra-frames=<N>``
Number of GPU frames hardware decoding should preallocate (default: see
``--list-options`` output). If this is too low, frame allocation may fail
during decoding, and video frames might get dropped and/or corrupted.
Setting it too high simply wastes GPU memory and has no advantages.
This value is used only for hardware decoding APIs which require
preallocating surfaces (known examples include ``d3d11va`` and ``vaapi``).
For other APIs, frames are allocated as needed. The details depend on the
libavcodec implementations of the hardware decoders.
The required number of surfaces depends on dynamic runtime situations. The
default is a fixed value that is thought to be sufficient for most uses. But
in certain situations, it may not be enough.
``--hwdec-image-format=<name>``
Set the internal pixel format used by hardware decoding via ``--hwdec``
(default ``no``). The special value ``no`` selects an implementation
specific standard format. Most decoder implementations support only one
format, and will fail to initialize if the format is not supported.
Some implementations might support multiple formats. In particular,
videotoolbox is known to require ``uyvy422`` for good performance on some
older hardware. d3d11va can always use ``yuv420p``, which uses an opaque
format, with likely no advantages.
``--cuda-decode-device=<auto|0..>``
Choose the GPU device used for decoding when using the ``cuda`` or
``nvdec`` hwdecs with the OpenGL GPU backend, and with the ``cuda-copy``
or ``nvdec-copy`` hwdecs in all cases.
For the OpenGL GPU backend, the default device used for decoding is the one
being used to provide ``gpu`` output (and in the vast majority of cases,
only one GPU will be present).
For the ``copy`` hwdecs, the default device will be the first device
enumerated by the CUDA libraries - however that is done.
For the Vulkan GPU backend, decoding must always happen on the display
device, and this option has no effect.
``--vaapi-device=<device file>``
Choose the DRM device for ``vaapi-copy``. This should be the path to a
DRM device file. (Default: ``/dev/dri/renderD128``)
``--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-override=<ratio|no>``
Override video aspect ratio, in case aspect information is incorrect or
missing in the file being played.
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.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--video-aspect-override=4:3`` or ``--video-aspect-override=1.3333``
- ``--video-aspect-override=16:9`` or ``--video-aspect-override=1.7777``
- ``--no-video-aspect-override`` or ``--video-aspect-override=no``
``--video-aspect-method=<bitstream|container>``
This sets the default video aspect determination method (if the aspect is
_not_ overridden by the user with ``--video-aspect-override`` or others).
:container: Strictly prefer the container aspect ratio. This is apparently
the default behavior with VLC, at least with Matroska. Note that
if the container has no aspect ratio set, the behavior is the
same as with bitstream.
:bitstream: Strictly prefer the bitstream aspect ratio, unless the bitstream
aspect ratio is not set. This is apparently the default behavior
with XBMC/kodi, at least with Matroska.
The current default for mpv is ``container``.
Normally you should not set this. Try the various choices if you encounter
video that has the wrong aspect ratio in mpv, but seems to be correct in
other players.
``--video-unscaled=<no|yes|downscale-big>``
Disable scaling of the video. If the window is larger than the video,
black bars are added. Otherwise, the video is cropped, 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. 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.)
When using hardware decoding without copy-back, only 90° steps work, while
software decoding and hardware decoding methods that copy the video back to
system memory support all values between 0 and 359.
``--video-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-scale-x=<value>``, ``--video-scale-y=<value>``
Multiply the video display size with the given value (default: 1.0). If a
non-default value is used, this will be different from the window size, so
video will be either cut off, or black bars are added.
This value is multiplied with the value derived from ``--video-zoom`` and
the normal video aspect ratio. This option is disabled if 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.
``--video-margin-ratio-left=<val>``, ``--video-margin-ratio-right=<val>``, ``--video-margin-ratio-top=<val>``, ``--video-margin-ratio-bottom=<val>``
Set extra video margins on each border (default: 0). Each value is a ratio
of the window size, using a range 0.0-1.0. For example, setting the option
``--video-margin-ratio-right=0.2`` at a window size of 1000 pixels will add
a 200 pixels border on the right side of the window.
The video is "boxed" by these margins. The window size is not changed. In
particular it does not enlarge the window, and the margins will cause the
video to be downscaled by default. This may or may not change in the future.
The margins are applied after 90° video rotation, but before any other video
transformations.
This option is disabled if the ``--no-keepaspect`` option is used.
Subtitles still may use the margins, depending on ``--sub-use-margins`` and
similar options.
These options were created for the OSC. Some odd decisions, such as making
the margin values a ratio (instead of pixels), were made for the sake of
the OSC. It's possible that these options may be replaced by ones that are
more generally useful. The behavior of these options may change to fit
OSC requirements better, too.
``--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, seeking (including hr-seeks and backstepping),
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>``
Enable or disable interlacing (default: 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``).
Keep in mind that this **will** conflict with manually inserted
deinterlacing filters, unless you take care. (Since mpv 0.27.0, even the
hardware deinterlace filters will conflict. Also since that version,
``--deinterlace=auto`` was removed, which used to mean that the default
interlacing option of possibly inserted video filters was used.)
Note that this will make video look worse if it's not actually 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,hevc,vp8,vp9,av1``. 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.
.. admonition:: 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``.
Setting this to a higher number might break the playback start fallback: if
a fallback happens, parts of the file will be skipped, approximately by to
the number of packets that could not be decoded. Values below an unspecified
count will not have this problem, because mpv retains the packets.
``--vd-lavc-film-grain=<auto|cpu|gpu>``
Enables film grain application on the GPU. If video decoding is done on
the CPU, doing film grain application on the GPU can speed up decoding.
This option can also help hardware decoding, as it can reduce the number
of frame copies done.
By default, it's set to ``auto``, so if the VO supports film grain
application, then it will be treated as ``gpu``. If the VO does not
support this, then it will be treated as ``cpu``, regardless of the setting.
Currently, only ``gpu-next`` supports film grain application.
``--vd-lavc-dr=<yes|no>``
Enable direct rendering (default: yes). If this is set to ``yes``, the
video will be decoded directly to GPU video memory (or staging buffers).
This can speed up video upload, and may help with large resolutions or
slow hardware. This works only with the following VOs:
- ``gpu``: requires at least OpenGL 4.4 or Vulkan.
- ``libmpv``: The libmpv render API has optional support.
Using video filters of any kind that write to the image data (or output
newly allocated frames) will silently disable the DR code path.
``--vd-lavc-bitexact``
Only use bit-exact algorithms in all decoding steps (for codec testing).
``--vd-lavc-fast`` (MPEG-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``.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: 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.
``--vd-lavc-assume-old-x264=<yes|no>``
Assume the video was encoded by an old, buggy x264 version (default: no).
Normally, this is autodetected by libavcodec. But if the bitstream contains
no x264 version info (or it was somehow skipped), and the stream was in fact
encoded by an old x264 version (build 150 or earlier), and if the stream
uses ``4:4:4`` chroma, then libavcodec will by default show corrupted video.
This option sets the libavcodec ``x264_build`` option to ``150``, which
means that if the stream contains no version info, or was not encoded by
x264 at all, it assumes it was encoded by the old version. Enabling this
option is pretty safe if you want your broken files to work, but in theory
this can break on streams not encoded by x264, or if a stream encoded by a
newer x264 version contains no version info.
``--swapchain-depth=<N>``
Allow up to N in-flight frames. This essentially controls the frame
latency. Increasing the swapchain depth can improve pipelining and prevent
missed vsyncs, but increases visible latency. This option only mandates an
upper limit, the implementation can use a lower latency than requested
internally. A setting of 1 means that the VO will wait for every frame to
become visible before starting to render the next frame. (Default: 3)
Audio
-----
``--audio-pitch-correction=<yes|no>``
If this is enabled (default), playing with a speed different from normal
automatically inserts the ``scaletempo2`` audio filter. 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``. However, the ``--ao`` option will strictly force a
specific AO. To avoid confusion, don't use ``--ao`` and ``--audio-device``
together.
.. admonition:: 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``, ``eac3``, ``truehd``.
Multiple codecs can be specified by separating them with ``,``. ``dts``
refers to low bitrate DTS core, while ``dts-hd`` refers to DTS MA (receiver
and OS support varies). If both ``dts`` and ``dts-hd`` are specified, it
behaves equivalent to specifying ``dts-hd`` only.
In earlier mpv versions you could use ``--ad`` to force the spdif wrapper.
This does not work anymore.
.. admonition:: 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=<decoder1,decoder2,...[-]>``
Specify a priority list of audio decoders to be used, according to their
decoder name. When determining which decoder to use, the first decoder that
matches the audio format is selected. If that is unavailable, the next
decoder is used. Finally, it tries all other decoders that are not
explicitly selected or rejected by the option.
``-`` at the end of the list suppresses fallback on other available
decoders not on the ``--ad`` list. ``+`` in front of an entry forces the
decoder. Both of these should not normally be used, because they break
normal decoder auto-selection! Both of these methods are deprecated.
.. admonition:: Examples
``--ad=mp3float``
Prefer the FFmpeg/Libav ``mp3float`` decoder over all other MP3
decoders.
``--ad=help``
List all available decoders.
.. admonition:: Warning
Enabling compressed audio passthrough (AC3 and DTS via SPDIF/HDMI) with
this option is not possible. 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").
``--replaygain=<no|track|album>``
Adjust volume gain according to replaygain values stored in the file
metadata. With ``--replaygain=no`` (the default), perform no adjustment.
With ``--replaygain=track``, apply track gain. With ``--replaygain=album``,
apply album gain if present and fall back to track gain otherwise.
``--replaygain-preamp=<db>``
Pre-amplification gain in dB to apply to the selected replaygain gain
(default: 0).
``--replaygain-clip=<yes|no>``
Prevent clipping caused by replaygain by automatically lowering the
gain (default). Use ``--replaygain-clip=no`` to disable this.
``--replaygain-fallback=<db>``
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.
``--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``.
See also: ``--volume``.
``--softvol=<no|yes|auto>``
Deprecated/unfunctional. Before mpv 0.18.1, this used to control whether
to use the volume controls of the audio output driver or the internal mpv
volume filter.
The current behavior is that softvol is always enabled, i.e. as if this
option is set to ``yes``. The other behaviors are not available anymore,
although ``auto`` almost matches current behavior in most cases.
The ``no`` behavior is still partially available through the ``ao-volume``
and ``ao-mute`` properties. But there are no options to reset these.
``--audio-demuxer=<[+]name>``
Use this audio demuxer type when using ``--audio-file``. Use a '+' before
the name to force it; this will skip some checks. Give the demuxer name as
printed by ``--audio-demuxer=help``.
``--ad-lavc-ac3drc=<level>``
Select the Dynamic Range Compression level for AC-3 audio streams.
``<level>`` is a float value ranging from 0 to 1, where 0 means no
compression (which is the default) and 1 means full compression (make loud
passages more silent and vice versa). Values up to 6 are also accepted, but
are purely experimental. This option only shows an effect if the AC-3 stream
contains the required range compression information.
The standard mandates that DRC is enabled by default, but mpv (and some
other players) ignore this for the sake of better audio quality.
``--ad-lavc-downmix=<yes|no>``
Whether to request audio channel downmixing from the decoder (default: no).
Some decoders, like AC-3, AAC and DTS, can remix audio on decoding. The
requested number of output channels is set with the ``--audio-channels`` option.
Useful for playing surround audio on a stereo system.
``--ad-lavc-threads=<0-16>``
Number of threads to use for decoding. Whether threading is actually
supported depends on codec. As of this writing, it's supported for some
lossless codecs only. 0 means autodetect number of cores on the
machine and use that, up to the maximum of 16 (default: 1).
``--ad-lavc-o=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]``
Pass AVOptions to libavcodec decoder. Note, a patch to make the o=
unneeded and pass all unknown options through the AVOption system is
welcome. A full list of AVOptions can be found in the FFmpeg manual.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--ad-spdif-dtshd=<yes|no>``, ``--dtshd``, ``--no-dtshd``
If DTS is passed through, use DTS-HD.
.. admonition:: Warning
This and enabling passthrough via ``--ad`` are deprecated in favor of
using ``--audio-spdif=dts-hd``.
``--audio-channels=<auto-safe|auto|layouts>``
Control which audio channels are output (e.g. surround vs. stereo). There
are the following possibilities:
- ``--audio-channels=auto-safe``
Use the system's preferred channel layout. If there is none (such
as when accessing a hardware device instead of the system mixer),
force stereo. Some audio outputs might simply accept any layout and
do downmixing on their own.
This is the default.
- ``--audio-channels=auto``
Send the audio device whatever it accepts, preferring the audio's
original channel layout. Can cause issues with HDMI (see the warning
below).
- ``--audio-channels=layout1,layout2,...``
List of ``,``-separated channel layouts which should be allowed.
Technically, this only adjusts the filter chain output to the best
matching layout in the list, and passes the result to the audio API.
It's possible that the audio API will select a different channel
layout.
Using this mode is recommended for direct hardware output, especially
over HDMI (see HDMI warning below).
- ``--audio-channels=stereo``
Force a plain stereo downmix. This is a special-case of the previous
item. (See paragraphs below for implications.)
If a list of layouts is given, each item can be either an explicit channel
layout name (like ``5.1``), or a channel number. Channel numbers refer to
default layouts, e.g. 2 channels refer to stereo, 6 refers to 5.1.
See ``--audio-channels=help`` output for defined default layouts. This also
lists speaker names, which can be used to express arbitrary channel
layouts (e.g. ``fl-fr-lfe`` is 2.1).
If the list of channel layouts has only 1 item, the decoder is asked to
produce according output. This sometimes triggers decoder-downmix, which
might be different from the normal mpv downmix. (Only some decoders support
remixing audio, like AC-3, AAC or DTS. You can use ``--ad-lavc-downmix=no``
to make the decoder always output its native layout.) One consequence is
that ``--audio-channels=stereo`` triggers decoder downmix, while ``auto``
or ``auto-safe`` never will, even if they end up selecting stereo. This
happens because the decision whether to use decoder downmix happens long
before the audio device is opened.
If the channel layout of the media file (i.e. the decoder) and the AO's
channel layout don't match, mpv will attempt to insert a conversion filter.
You may need to change the channel layout of the system mixer to achieve
your desired output as mpv does not have control over it. Another
work-around for this on some AOs is to use ``--audio-exclusive=yes`` to
circumvent the system mixer entirely.
.. admonition:: Warning
Using ``auto`` can cause issues when using audio over HDMI. The OS will
typically report all channel layouts that _can_ go over HDMI, even if
the receiver does not support them. If a receiver gets an unsupported
channel layout, random things can happen, such as dropping the
additional channels, or adding noise.
You are recommended to set an explicit whitelist of the layouts you
want. For example, most A/V receivers connected via HDMI and that can
do 7.1 would be served by: ``--audio-channels=7.1,5.1,stereo``
``--audio-display=<no|embedded-first|external-first>``
Determines whether to display cover art when playing audio files and with
what priority. It will display the first image found, and additional images
are available as video tracks.
:no: Disable display of video entirely when playing audio
files.
:embedded-first: Display embedded images and external cover art, giving
priority to embedded images (default).
:external-first: Display embedded images and external cover art, giving
priority to external files.
This option has no influence on files with normal video tracks.
``--audio-files=<files>``
Play audio from an external file while viewing a video.
This is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--audio-file=<file>``
CLI/config file only alias for ``--audio-files-append``. Each use of this
option will add a new audio track. The details are similar to how
``--sub-file`` works.
``--audio-format=<format>``
Select the sample format used for output from the audio filter layer to
the sound card. The values that ``<format>`` can adopt are listed below in
the description of the ``format`` audio filter.
``--audio-samplerate=<Hz>``
Select the output sample rate to be used (of course sound cards have
limits on this). If the sample frequency selected is different from that
of the current media, the lavrresample audio filter will be inserted into
the audio filter layer to compensate for the difference.
``--gapless-audio=<no|yes|weak>``
Try to play consecutive audio files with no silence or disruption at the
point of file change. Default: ``weak``.
:no: Disable gapless audio.
:yes: The audio device is opened using parameters chosen 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.
The exact conditions under which the audio device is kept open is
an implementation detail, and can change from version to version.
Currently, the device is kept even if the sample format changes,
but the sample formats are convertible.
If video is still going on when there is still audio, trying to use
gapless is also explicitly given up.
.. note::
This feature is implemented in a simple manner and relies on audio
output device buffering to continue playback while moving from one file
to another. If playback of the new file starts slowly, for example
because it is played from a remote network location or because you have
specified cache settings that require time for the initial cache fill,
then the buffered audio may run out before playback of the new file
can start.
``--initial-audio-sync``, ``--no-initial-audio-sync``
When starting a video file or after events such as seeking, mpv will by
default modify the audio stream to make it start from the same timestamp
as video, by either inserting silence at the start or cutting away the
first samples. Disabling this option makes the player behave like older
mpv versions did: video and audio are both started immediately even if
their start timestamps differ, and then video timing is gradually adjusted
if necessary to reach correct synchronization later.
``--volume-max=<100.0-1000.0>``, ``--softvol-max=<...>``
Set the maximum amplification level in percent (default: 130). A value of
130 will allow you to adjust the volume up to about double the normal level.
``--softvol-max`` is a deprecated alias and should not be used.
``--audio-file-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>``, ``--no-audio-file-auto``
Load additional audio files matching the video filename. The parameter
specifies how external audio files are matched.
:no: Don't automatically load external audio files (default).
:exact: Load the media filename with audio file extension.
:fuzzy: Load all audio files containing the media filename.
:all: Load all audio files in the current and ``--audio-file-paths``
directories.
``--audio-file-paths=<path1:path2:...>``
Equivalent to ``--sub-file-paths`` option, but for auto-loaded audio files.
This is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--audio-client-name=<name>``
The application name the player reports to the audio API. Can be useful
if you want to force a different audio profile (e.g. with PulseAudio),
or to set your own application name when using libmpv.
``--audio-buffer=<seconds>``
Set the audio output minimum buffer. The audio device might actually create
a larger buffer if it pleases. If the device creates a smaller buffer,
additional audio is buffered in an additional software buffer.
Making this larger will make soft-volume and other filters react slower,
introduce additional issues on playback speed change, and block the
player on audio format changes. A smaller buffer might lead to audio
dropouts.
This option should be used for testing only. If a non-default value helps
significantly, the mpv developers should be contacted.
Default: 0.2 (200 ms).
``--audio-stream-silence=<yes|no>``
Cash-grab consumer audio hardware (such as A/V receivers) often ignore
initial audio sent over HDMI. This can happen every time audio over HDMI
is stopped and resumed. In order to compensate for this, you can enable
this option to not to stop and restart audio on seeks, and fill the gaps
with silence. Likewise, when pausing playback, audio is not stopped, and
silence is played while paused. Note that if no audio track is selected,
the audio device will still be closed immediately.
Not all AOs support this.
.. admonition:: Warning
This modifies certain subtle player behavior, like A/V-sync and underrun
handling. Enabling this option is strongly discouraged.
``--audio-wait-open=<secs>``
This makes sense for use with ``--audio-stream-silence=yes``. If this option
is given, the player will wait for the given amount of seconds after opening
the audio device before sending actual audio data to it. Useful if your
expensive hardware discards the first 1 or 2 seconds of audio data sent to
it. If ``--audio-stream-silence=yes`` is not set, this option will likely
just waste time.
Subtitles
---------
.. note::
Changing styling and position does not work with all subtitles. 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-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-files=<file-list>``, ``--sub-file=<filename>``
Add a subtitle file to the list of external subtitles.
If you use ``--sub-file`` only once, this subtitle file is displayed by
default.
If ``--sub-file`` is used multiple times, the subtitle to use can be
switched at runtime by cycling subtitle tracks. It's possible to show
two subtitles at once: use ``--sid`` to select the first 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.)
``--sub-files`` is a path list option (see `List Options`_ for details), and
can take multiple file names separated by ``:`` (Unix) or ``;`` (Windows),
while ``--sub-file`` takes a single filename, but can be used multiple
times to add multiple files. Technically, ``--sub-file`` is a CLI/config
file only alias for ``--sub-files-append``.
``--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-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=<yes|no>``
Use fonts embedded in Matroska container files and ASS scripts (default:
yes). These fonts can be used for SSA/ASS subtitle rendering.
``--sub-pos=<0-150>``
Specify the position of subtitles on the screen. The value is the vertical
position of the subtitle in % of the screen height. 100 is the original
position, which is often not the absolute bottom of the screen, but with
some margin between the bottom and the subtitle. Values above 100 move the
subtitle further down.
.. admonition:: Warning
Text subtitles (as opposed to image subtitles) may be cut off if the
value of the option is above 100. This is a libass restriction.
This affects ASS subtitles as well, and may lead to incorrect subtitle
rendering in addition to the problem above.
Using ``--sub-margin-y`` can achieve this in a better way.
``--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.
.. admonition:: 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.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: 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
.. admonition:: 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-override=<yes|no|force|scale|strip>``
Control whether user style overrides should be applied. Note that all of
these overrides try to be somewhat smart about figuring out whether or not
a subtitle is considered a "sign".
:no: Render subtitles as specified by the subtitle scripts, without
overrides.
:yes: Apply all the ``--sub-ass-*`` style override options. Changing the
default for any of these options can lead to incorrect subtitle
rendering (default).
:force: Like ``yes``, but also force all ``--sub-*`` options. Can break
rendering easily.
:scale: Like ``yes``, but also apply ``--sub-scale``.
:strip: Radically strip all ASS tags and styles from the subtitle. This
is equivalent to the old ``--no-ass`` / ``--no-sub-ass`` options.
This also controls some bitmap subtitle overrides, as well as HTML tags in
formats like SRT, despite the name of the option.
``--sub-ass-force-margins``
Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are
available, if the subtitles are in the ASS format.
Default: no.
``--sub-use-margins``
Enables placing toptitles and subtitles in black borders when they are
available, if the subtitles are in a plain text format (or ASS if
``--sub-ass-override`` is set high enough).
Default: yes.
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-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.
``--image-subs-video-resolution=<yes|no>``
Override the image subtitle resolution with the video resolution
(default: no). Normally, the subtitle canvas is fit into the video canvas
(e.g. letterboxed). Setting this option uses the video size as subtitle
canvas size. Can be useful to test broken subtitles, which often happen
when the video was trancoded, while attempting to keep the old subtitles.
``--sub-ass``, ``--no-sub-ass``
Render ASS subtitles natively (enabled by default).
.. note::
This has been deprecated by ``--sub-ass-override=strip``. You also
may need ``--embeddedfonts=no`` to get the same behavior. Also,
using ``--sub-ass-override=style`` should give better results
without breaking subtitles too much.
If ``--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 and possibly
language suffixes (default).
:fuzzy: Load all subs containing the media filename.
:all: Load all subs in the current and ``--sub-file-paths`` directories.
``--sub-codepage=<codepage>``
You can use this option to specify the subtitle codepage. uchardet will be
used to guess the charset. (If mpv was not compiled with uchardet, then
``utf-8`` is the effective default.)
The default value for this option is ``auto``, which enables autodetection.
The following steps are taken to determine the final codepage, in order:
- if the specific codepage has a ``+``, use that codepage
- if the data looks like UTF-8, assume it is UTF-8
- if ``--sub-codepage`` is set to a specific codepage, use that
- run uchardet, and if successful, use that
- otherwise, use ``UTF-8-BROKEN``
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--sub-codepage=latin2`` Use Latin 2 if input is not UTF-8.
- ``--sub-codepage=+cp1250`` Always force recoding to cp1250.
The pseudo codepage ``UTF-8-BROKEN`` is used internally. If it's set,
subtitles are interpreted as UTF-8 with "Latin 1" as fallback for bytes
which are not valid UTF-8 sequences. iconv is never involved in this mode.
This option changed in mpv 0.23.0. Support for the old syntax was fully
removed in mpv 0.24.0.
.. note::
This works for text subtitle files only. Other types of subtitles (in
particular subtitles in mkv files) are always assumed to be UTF-8.
``--sub-fix-timing=<yes|no>``
Adjust subtitle timing is 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=<auto|yes|no>``
Display only forced subtitles for the DVD subtitle stream selected by e.g.
``--slang`` (default: ``auto``). When set to ``auto``, enabled when the
``--subs-with-matching-audio`` option is on and a non-forced stream is selected.
Enabling this will hide all subtitles in streams that don't make a distinction
between forced and unforced events within a stream.
``--sub-fps=<rate>``
Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: video fps). Affects
text subtitles only.
.. note::
``<rate>`` > video fps speeds the subtitles up for frame-based
subtitle files and slows them down for time-based ones.
See also: ``--sub-speed``.
``--sub-gauss=<0.0-3.0>``
Apply Gaussian blur to image subtitles (default: 0). This can help to make
pixelated DVD/Vobsubs look nicer. A value other than 0 also switches to
software subtitle scaling. Might be slow.
.. note::
Never applied to text subtitles.
``--sub-gray``
Convert image subtitles to grayscale. Can help to make yellow DVD/Vobsubs
look nicer.
.. note::
Never applied to text subtitles.
``--sub-paths=<path1:path2:...>``
Deprecated, use ``--sub-file-paths``.
``--sub-file-paths=<path-list>``
Specify extra directories to search for subtitles matching the video.
Multiple directories can be separated by ":" (";" on Windows).
Paths can be relative or absolute. Relative paths are interpreted relative
to video file directory.
If the file is a URL, only absolute paths and ``sub`` configuration
subdirectory will be scanned.
.. admonition:: Example
Assuming that ``/path/to/video/video.avi`` is played and
``--sub-file-paths=sub:subtitles`` is specified, mpv
searches for subtitle files in these directories:
- ``/path/to/video/``
- ``/path/to/video/sub/``
- ``/path/to/video/subtitles/``
- the ``sub`` configuration subdirectory (usually ``~/.config/mpv/sub/``)
This is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--sub-visibility``, ``--no-sub-visibility``
Can be used to disable display of subtitles, but still select and decode
them.
``--secondary-sub-visibility``, ``--no-secondary-sub-visibility``
Can be used to disable display of secondary subtitles, but still select and
decode them.
``--sub-clear-on-seek``
(Obscure, rarely useful.) Can be used to play broken mkv files with
duplicate ReadOrder fields. ReadOrder is the first field in a
Matroska-style ASS subtitle packets. It should be unique, and libass
uses it for fast elimination of duplicates. This option disables caching
of subtitles across seeks, so after a seek libass can't eliminate subtitle
packets with the same ReadOrder as earlier packets.
``--teletext-page=<1-999>``
This works for ``dvb_teletext`` subtitle streams, and if FFmpeg has been
compiled with support for it.
``--sub-past-video-end``
After the last frame of video, if this option is enabled, subtitles will
continue to update based on audio timestamps. Otherwise, the subtitles
for the last video frame will stay onscreen.
Default: disabled
``--sub-font=<name>``
Specify font to use for subtitles that do not themselves
specify a particular font. The default is ``sans-serif``.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--sub-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'``
- ``--sub-font='Comic Sans MS'``
.. note::
The ``--sub-font`` option (and many other style related ``--sub-``
options) are ignored when ASS-subtitles are rendered, unless the
``--no-sub-ass`` option is specified.
This used to support fontconfig patterns. Starting with libass 0.13.0,
this stopped working.
``--sub-font-size=<size>``
Specify the sub font size. The unit is the size in scaled pixels at a
window height of 720. The actual pixel size is scaled with the window
height: if the window height is larger or smaller than 720, the actual size
of the text increases or decreases as well.
Default: 55.
``--sub-back-color=<color>``
See ``--sub-color``. Color used for sub text background. You can use
``--sub-shadow-offset`` to change its size relative to the text.
``--sub-blur=<0..20.0>``
Gaussian blur factor. 0 means no blur applied (default).
``--sub-bold=<yes|no>``
Format text on bold.
``--sub-italic=<yes|no>``
Format text on italic.
``--sub-border-color=<color>``
See ``--sub-color``. Color used for the sub font border.
``--sub-border-size=<size>``
Size of the sub font border in scaled pixels (see ``--sub-font-size``
for details). A value of 0 disables borders.
Default: 3.
``--sub-color=<color>``
Specify the color used for unstyled text subtitles.
The color is specified in the form ``r/g/b``, where each color component
is specified as number in the range 0.0 to 1.0. It's also possible to
specify the transparency by using ``r/g/b/a``, where the alpha value 0
means fully transparent, and 1.0 means opaque. If the alpha component is
not given, the color is 100% opaque.
Passing a single number to the option sets the sub to gray, and the form
``gray/a`` lets you specify alpha additionally.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--sub-color=1.0/0.0/0.0`` set sub to opaque red
- ``--sub-color=1.0/0.0/0.0/0.75`` set sub to opaque red with 75% alpha
- ``--sub-color=0.5/0.75`` set sub to 50% gray with 75% alpha
Alternatively, the color can be specified as a RGB hex triplet in the form
``#RRGGBB``, where each 2-digit group expresses a color value in the
range 0 (``00``) to 255 (``FF``). For example, ``#FF0000`` is red.
This is similar to web colors. Alpha is given with ``#AARRGGBB``.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--sub-color='#FF0000'`` set sub to opaque red
- ``--sub-color='#C0808080'`` set sub to 50% gray with 75% alpha
``--sub-margin-x=<size>``
Left and right screen margin for the subs in scaled pixels (see
``--sub-font-size`` for details).
This option specifies the distance of the sub to the left, as well as at
which distance from the right border long sub text will be broken.
Default: 25.
``--sub-margin-y=<size>``
Top and bottom screen margin for the subs in scaled pixels (see
``--sub-font-size`` for details).
This option specifies the vertical margins of unstyled text subtitles.
If you just want to raise the vertical subtitle position, use ``--sub-pos``.
Default: 22.
``--sub-align-x=<left|center|right>``
Control to which corner of the screen text subtitles should be
aligned to (default: ``center``).
Never applied to ASS subtitles, except in ``--no-sub-ass`` mode. Likewise,
this does not apply to image subtitles.
``--sub-align-y=<top|center|bottom>``
Vertical position (default: ``bottom``).
Details see ``--sub-align-x``.
``--sub-justify=<auto|left|center|right>``
Control how multi line subs are justified irrespective of where they
are aligned (default: ``auto`` which justifies as defined by
``--sub-align-x``).
Left justification is recommended to make the subs easier to read
as it is easier for the eyes.
``--sub-ass-justify=<yes|no>``
Applies justification as defined by ``--sub-justify`` on ASS subtitles
if ``--sub-ass-override`` is not set to ``no``.
Default: ``no``.
``--sub-shadow-color=<color>``
See ``--sub-color``. Color used for sub text shadow.
.. note::
ignored when ``--sub-back-color`` is
specified (or more exactly: when that option is not set to completely
transparent).
``--sub-shadow-offset=<size>``
Displacement of the sub text shadow in scaled pixels (see
``--sub-font-size`` for details). A value of 0 disables shadows.
Default: 0.
``--sub-spacing=<size>``
Horizontal sub font spacing in scaled pixels (see ``--sub-font-size``
for details). This value is added to the normal letter spacing. Negative
values are allowed.
Default: 0.
``--sub-filter-sdh=<yes|no>``
Applies filter removing subtitle additions for the deaf or hard-of-hearing (SDH).
This is intended for English, but may in part work for other languages too.
The intention is that it can be always enabled so may not remove
all parts added.
It removes speaker labels (like MAN:), upper case text in parentheses and
any text in brackets.
Default: ``no``.
``--sub-filter-sdh-harder=<yes|no>``
Do harder SDH filtering (if enabled by ``--sub-filter-sdh``).
Will also remove speaker labels and text within parentheses using both
lower and upper case letters.
Default: ``no``.
``--sub-filter-regex-...=...``
Set a list of regular expressions to match on text subtitles, and remove any
lines that match (default: empty). This is a string list option. See
`List Options`_ for details. Normally, you should use
``--sub-filter-regex-append=<regex>``, where each option use will append a
new regular expression, without having to fight escaping problems.
List items are matched in order. If a regular expression matches, the
process is stopped, and the subtitle line is discarded. The text matched
against is, by default, the ``Text`` field of ASS events (if the
subtitle format is different, it is always converted). This may include
formatting tags. Matching is case-insensitive, but how this is done depends
on the libc, and most likely works in ASCII only. It does not work on
bitmap/image subtitles. Unavailable on inferior OSes (requires POSIX regex
support).
.. admonition:: Example
``--sub-filter-regex-append=opensubtitles\.org`` filters some ads.
Technically, using a list for matching is redundant, since you could just
use a single combined regular expression. But it helps with diagnosis,
ease of use, and temporarily disabling or enabling individual filters.
.. warning::
This is experimental. The semantics most likely will change, and if you
use this, you should be prepared to update the option later. Ideas
include replacing the regexes with a very primitive and small subset of
sed, or some method to control case-sensitivity.
``--sub-filter-jsre-...=...``
Same as ``--sub-filter-regex`` but with JavaScript regular expressions.
Shares/affected-by all ``--sub-filter-regex-*`` control options (see below),
and also experimental. Requires only JavaScript support.
``--sub-filter-regex-plain=<yes|no>``
Whether to first convert the ASS "Text" field to plain-text (default: no).
This strips ASS tags and applies ASS directives, like ``\N`` to new-line.
If the result is multi-line then the regexp anchors ``^`` and ``$`` match
each line, but still any match discards all lines.
``--sub-filter-regex-warn=<yes|no>``
Log dropped lines with warning log level, instead of verbose (default: no).
Helpful for testing.
``--sub-filter-regex-enable=<yes|no>``
Whether to enable regex filtering (default: yes). Note that if no regexes
are added to the ``--sub-filter-regex`` list, setting this option to ``yes``
has no effect. It's meant to easily disable or enable filtering
temporarily.
``--sub-create-cc-track=<yes|no>``
For every video stream, create a closed captions track (default: no). The
only purpose is to make the track available for selection at the start of
playback, instead of creating it lazily. This applies only to
``ATSC A53 Part 4 Closed Captions`` (displayed by mpv as subtitle tracks
using the codec ``eia_608``). The CC track is marked "default" and selected
according to the normal subtitle track selection rules. You can then use
``--sid`` to explicitly select the correct track too.
If the video stream contains no closed captions, or if no video is being
decoded, the CC track will remain empty and will not show any text.
``--sub-font-provider=<auto|none|fontconfig>``
Which libass font provider backend to use (default: auto). ``auto`` will
attempt to use the native font provider: fontconfig on Linux, CoreText on
macOS, DirectWrite on Windows. ``fontconfig`` forces fontconfig, if libass
was built with support (if not, it behaves like ``none``).
The ``none`` font provider effectively disables system fonts. It will still
attempt to use embedded fonts (unless ``--embeddedfonts=no`` is set; this is
the same behavior as with all other font providers), ``subfont.ttf`` if
provided, and fonts in the ``fonts`` sub-directory if provided. (The
fallback is more strict than that of other font providers, and if a font
name does not match, it may prefer not to render any text that uses the
missing font.)
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.
.. admonition:: 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.
See also ``--fs-screen``.
``--screen-name=<string>``
In multi-monitor configurations, this option tells mpv which screen to
display the video on based on the screen name from the video backend. The
same caveats in the ``--screen`` option also apply here. This option is
ignored and does nothing if ``--screen`` is explicitly set.
``--fullscreen``, ``--fs``
Fullscreen playback.
``--fs-screen=<all|current|0-32>``
In multi-monitor configurations (i.e. a single desktop that spans across
multiple displays), this option tells mpv which screen to go fullscreen to.
If ``current`` is used mpv will fallback on what the user provided with
the ``screen`` option.
.. admonition:: Note (X11)
This option works properly only with window managers which
understand the EWMH ``_NET_WM_FULLSCREEN_MONITORS`` hint.
.. admonition:: Note (macOS)
``all`` does not work on macOS and will behave like ``current``.
See also ``--screen``.
``--fs-screen-name=<string>``
In multi-monitor configurations, this option tells mpv which screen to go
fullscreen to based on the screen name from the video backend. The same
caveats in the ``--fs-screen`` option also apply here. This option is
ignored and does nothing if ``--fs-screen`` is explicitly set.
``--keep-open=<yes|no|always>``
Do not terminate when playing or seeking beyond the end of the file, and
there is not next file to be played (and ``--loop`` is not used).
Instead, pause the player. When trying to seek beyond end of the file, the
player will attempt to seek to the last frame.
Normally, this will act like ``set pause yes`` on EOF, unless the
``--keep-open-pause=no`` option is set.
The following arguments can be given:
:no: If the current file ends, go to the next file or 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.
.. note::
This option is not respected when using ``--frames``. Explicitly
skipping to the next file if the binding uses ``force`` will terminate
playback as well.
Also, if errors or unusual circumstances happen, the player can quit
anyway.
Since mpv 0.6.0, this doesn't pause if there is a next file in the playlist,
or the playlist is looped. Approximately, this will pause when the player
would normally exit, but in practice there are corner cases in which this
is not the case (e.g. ``mpv --keep-open file.mkv /dev/null`` will play
file.mkv normally, then fail to open ``/dev/null``, then exit). (In
mpv 0.8.0, ``always`` was introduced, which restores the old behavior.)
``--keep-open-pause=<yes|no>``
If set to ``no``, instead of pausing when ``--keep-open`` is active, just
stop at end of file and continue playing forward when you seek backwards
until end where it stops again. Default: ``yes``.
``--image-display-duration=<seconds|inf>``
If the current file is an image, play the image for the given amount of
seconds (default: 1). ``inf`` means the file is kept open forever (until
the user stops playback manually).
Unlike ``--keep-open``, the player is not paused, but simply continues
playback until the time has elapsed. (It should not use any resources
during "playback".)
This affects image files, which are defined as having only 1 video frame
and no audio. The player may recognize certain non-images as images, for
example if ``--length`` is used to reduce the length to 1 frame, or if
you seek to the last frame.
This option does not affect the framerate used for ``mf://`` or
``--merge-files``. For that, use ``--mf-fps`` instead.
Setting ``--image-display-duration`` hides the OSC and does not track
playback time on the command-line output, and also does not duplicate
the image frame when encoding. To force the player into "dumb mode"
and actually count out seconds, or to duplicate the image when
encoding, you need to use ``--demuxer=lavf --demuxer-lavf-o=loop=1``,
and use ``--length`` or ``--frames`` to stop after a particular time.
``--force-window=<yes|no|immediate>``
Create a video output window even if there is no video. This can be useful
when pretending that mpv is a GUI application. Currently, the window
always has the size 640x480, and is subject to ``--geometry``,
``--autofit``, and similar options.
.. warning::
The window is created only after initialization (to make sure default
window placement still works if the video size is different from the
``--force-window`` default window size). This can be a problem if
initialization doesn't work perfectly, such as when opening URLs with
bad network connection, or opening broken video files. The ``immediate``
mode can be used to create the window always on program start, but this
may cause other issues.
``--taskbar-progress``, ``--no-taskbar-progress``
(Windows only)
Enable/disable playback progress rendering in taskbar (Windows 7 and above).
Enabled by default.
``--snap-window``
(Windows only) Snap the player window to screen edges.
``--ontop``
Makes the player window stay on top of other windows.
On Windows, if combined with fullscreen mode, this causes mpv to be
treated as exclusive fullscreen window that bypasses the Desktop Window
Manager.
``--ontop-level=<window|system|desktop|level>``
(macOS only)
Sets the level of an ontop window (default: window).
:window: On top of all other windows.
:system: On top of system elements like Taskbar, Menubar and Dock.
:desktop: On top of the Dekstop behind windows and Desktop icons.
:level: A level as integer.
``--focus-on-open``, ``--no-focus-on-open``
(macOS only)
Focus the video window on creation and makes it the front most window. This
is on by default.
``--border``, ``--no-border``
Play video with window border and decorations. Since this is on by
default, use ``--no-border`` to disable the standard window decorations.
``--on-all-workspaces``
(X11 and macOS only)
Show the video window on all virtual desktops.
``--geometry=<[W[xH]][+-x+-y][/WS]>``, ``--geometry=<x:y>``
Adjust the initial window position or size. ``W`` and ``H`` set the window
size in pixels. ``x`` and ``y`` set the window position, measured in pixels
from the top-left corner of the screen to the top-left corner of the image
being displayed. If a percentage sign (``%``) is given after the argument,
it turns the value into a percentage of the screen size in that direction.
Positions are specified similar to the standard X11 ``--geometry`` option
format, in which e.g. +10-50 means "place 10 pixels from the left border and
50 pixels from the lower border" and "--20+-10" means "place 20 pixels
beyond the right and 10 pixels beyond the top border". A trailing ``/``
followed by an integer denotes on which workspace (virtual desktop) the
window should appear (X11 only).
If an external window is specified using the ``--wid`` option, this
option is ignored.
The coordinates are relative to the screen given with ``--screen`` for the
video output drivers that fully support ``--screen``.
.. note::
Generally only supported by GUI VOs. Ignored for encoding.
.. admonition: Note (macOS)
On macOS, the origin of the screen coordinate system is located on the
bottom-left corner. For instance, ``0:0`` will place the window at the
bottom-left of the screen.
.. admonition:: Note (X11)
This option does not work properly with all window managers.
.. admonition:: Examples
``50:40``
Places the window at x=50, y=40.
``50%:50%``
Places the window in the middle of the screen.
``100%:100%``
Places the window at the bottom right corner of the screen.
``50%``
Sets the window width to half the screen width. Window height is set
so that the window has the video aspect ratio.
``50%x50%``
Forces the window width and height to half the screen width and
height. Will show black borders to compensate for the video aspect
ratio (with most VOs and without ``--no-keepaspect``).
``50%+10+10/2``
Sets the window to half the screen widths, and positions it 10
pixels below/left of the top left corner of the screen, on the
second workspace.
See also ``--autofit`` and ``--autofit-larger`` for fitting the window into
a given size without changing aspect ratio.
``--autofit=<[W[xH]]>``
Set the initial window size to a maximum size specified by ``WxH``, without
changing the window's aspect ratio. The size is measured in pixels, or if
a number is followed by a percentage sign (``%``), in percents of the
screen size.
This option never changes the aspect ratio of the window. If the aspect
ratio mismatches, the window's size is reduced until it fits into the
specified size.
Window position is not taken into account, nor is it modified by this
option (the window manager still may place the window differently depending
on size). Use ``--geometry`` to change the window position. Its effects
are applied after this option.
See ``--geometry`` for details how this is handled with multi-monitor
setups.
Use ``--autofit-larger`` instead if you just want to limit the maximum size
of the window, rather than always forcing a window size.
Use ``--geometry`` if you want to force both window width and height to a
specific size.
.. note::
Generally only supported by GUI VOs. Ignored for encoding.
.. admonition:: Examples
``70%``
Make the window width 70% of the screen size, keeping aspect ratio.
``1000``
Set the window width to 1000 pixels, keeping aspect ratio.
``70%x60%``
Make the window as large as possible, without being wider than 70%
of the screen width, or higher than 60% of the screen height.
``--autofit-larger=<[W[xH]]>``
This option behaves exactly like ``--autofit``, except the window size is
only changed if the window would be larger than the specified size.
.. admonition:: Example
``90%x80%``
If the video is larger than 90% of the screen width or 80% of the
screen height, make the window smaller until either its width is 90%
of the screen, or its height is 80% of the screen.
``--autofit-smaller=<[W[xH]]>``
This option behaves exactly like ``--autofit``, except that it sets the
minimum size of the window (just as ``--autofit-larger`` sets the maximum).
.. admonition:: Example
``500x500``
Make the window at least 500 pixels wide and 500 pixels high
(depending on the video aspect ratio, the width or height will be
larger than 500 in order to keep the aspect ratio the same).
``--window-scale=<factor>``
Resize the video window to a multiple (or fraction) of the video size. This
option is applied before ``--autofit`` and other options are applied (so
they override this option).
For example, ``--window-scale=0.5`` would show the window at half the
video size.
``--window-minimized=<yes|no>``
Whether the video window is minimized or not. Setting this will minimize,
or unminimize, the video window if the current VO supports it. Note that
some VOs may support minimization while not supporting unminimization
(eg: Wayland).
Whether this option and ``--window-maximized`` work on program start or
at runtime, and whether they're (at runtime) updated to reflect the actual
window state, heavily depends on the VO and the windowing system. Some VOs
simply do not implement them or parts of them, while other VOs may be
restricted by the windowing systems (especially Wayland).
``--window-maximized=<yes|no>``
Whether the video window is maximized or not. Setting this will maximize,
or unmaximize, the video window if the current VO supports it. See
``--window-minimized`` for further remarks.
``--cursor-autohide=<number|no|always>``
Make mouse cursor automatically hide after given number of milliseconds.
``no`` will disable cursor autohide. ``always`` means the cursor will stay
hidden.
``--cursor-autohide-fs-only``
If this option is given, the cursor is always visible in windowed mode. In
fullscreen mode, the cursor is shown or hidden according to
``--cursor-autohide``.
``--no-fixed-vo``, ``--fixed-vo``
``--no-fixed-vo`` enforces closing and reopening the video window for
multiple files (one (un)initialization for each file).
``--force-rgba-osd-rendering``
Change how some video outputs render the OSD and text subtitles. This
does not change appearance of the subtitles and only has performance
implications. For VOs which support native ASS rendering (like ``gpu``,
``vdpau``, ``direct3d``), this can be slightly faster or slower,
depending on GPU drivers and hardware. For other VOs, this just makes
rendering slower.
``--force-window-position``
Forcefully move mpv's video output window to default location whenever
there is a change in video parameters, video stream or file. This used to
be the default behavior. Currently only affects X11 VOs.
``--no-keepaspect``, ``--keepaspect``
``--no-keepaspect`` will always stretch the video to window size, and will
disable the window manager hints that force the window aspect ratio.
(Ignored in fullscreen mode.)
``--no-keepaspect-window``, ``--keepaspect-window``
``--keepaspect-window`` (the default) will lock the window size to the
video aspect. ``--no-keepaspect-window`` disables this behavior, and will
instead add black bars if window aspect and video aspect mismatch. Whether
this actually works depends on the VO backend.
(Ignored in fullscreen mode.)
``--monitoraspect=<ratio>``
Set the aspect ratio of your monitor or TV screen. A value of 0 disables a
previous setting (e.g. in the config file). Overrides the
``--monitorpixelaspect`` setting if enabled.
See also ``--monitorpixelaspect`` and ``--video-aspect-override``.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--monitoraspect=4:3`` or ``--monitoraspect=1.3333``
- ``--monitoraspect=16:9`` or ``--monitoraspect=1.7777``
``--hidpi-window-scale``, ``--no-hidpi-window-scale``
(macOS, Windows, X11, and Wayland only)
Scale the window size according to the backing scale factor (default: yes).
On regular HiDPI resolutions the window opens with double the size but appears
as having the same size as on non-HiDPI resolutions. This is enabled by
default on macOS.
``--native-fs``, ``--no-native-fs``
(macOS only)
Uses the native fullscreen mechanism of the OS (default: yes).
``--monitorpixelaspect=<ratio>``
Set the aspect of a single pixel of your monitor or TV screen (default:
1). A value of 1 means square pixels (correct for (almost?) all LCDs). See
also ``--monitoraspect`` and ``--video-aspect-override``.
``--stop-screensaver=<yes|no|always>``
Turns off the screensaver (or screen blanker and similar mechanisms) at
startup and turns it on again on exit (default: yes). When using ``yes``,
the screensaver will re-enable when playback is not active. ``always`` will
always disable the screensaver. Note that stopping the screensaver is only
possible if a video output is available (i.e. there is an open mpv window).
This is not supported on all video outputs or platforms. Sometimes it is
implemented, but does not work (especially with Linux "desktops"). Read the
`Disabling Screensaver`_ section very carefully.
``--wid=<ID>``
This tells mpv to attach to an existing window. If a VO is selected that
supports this option, it will use that window for video output. mpv will
scale the video to the size of this window, and will add black bars to
compensate if the aspect ratio of the video is different.
On X11, the ID is interpreted as a ``Window`` on X11. Unlike
MPlayer/mplayer2, mpv always creates its own window, and sets the wid
window as parent. The window will always be resized to cover the parent
window fully. The value ``0`` is interpreted specially, and mpv will
draw directly on the root window.
On win32, the ID is interpreted as ``HWND``. Pass it as value cast to
``intptr_t``. mpv will create its own window, and set the wid window as
parent, like with X11.
On macOS/Cocoa, the ID is interpreted as ``NSView*``. Pass it as value cast
to ``intptr_t``. mpv will create its own sub-view. Because macOS does not
support window embedding of foreign processes, this works only with libmpv,
and will crash when used from the command line.
On Android, the ID is interpreted as ``android.view.Surface``. Pass it as a
value cast to ``intptr_t``. Use with ``--vo=mediacodec_embed`` and
``--hwdec=mediacodec`` for direct rendering using MediaCodec, or with
``--vo=gpu --gpu-context=android`` (with or without ``--hwdec=mediacodec-copy``).
``--no-window-dragging``
Don't move the window when clicking on it and moving the mouse pointer.
``--x11-name``
Set the window class name for X11-based video output methods.
``--x11-netwm=<yes|no|auto>``
(X11 only)
Control the use of NetWM protocol features.
This may or may not help with broken window managers. This provides some
functionality that was implemented by the now removed ``--fstype`` option.
Actually, it is not known to the developers to which degree this option
was needed, so feedback is welcome.
Specifically, ``yes`` will force use of NetWM fullscreen support, even if
not advertised by the WM. This can be useful for WMs that are broken on
purpose, like XMonad. (XMonad supposedly doesn't advertise fullscreen
support, because Flash uses it. Apparently, applications which want to
use fullscreen anyway are supposed to either ignore the NetWM support hints,
or provide a workaround. Shame on XMonad for deliberately breaking X
protocols (as if X isn't bad enough already).
By default, NetWM support is autodetected (``auto``).
This option might be removed in the future.
``--x11-bypass-compositor=<yes|no|fs-only|never>``
If set to ``yes``, then ask the compositor to unredirect the mpv window
(default: ``fs-only``). This uses the ``_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR`` hint.
``fs-only`` asks the window manager to disable the compositor only in
fullscreen mode.
``no`` sets ``_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR`` to 0, which is the default value
as declared by the EWMH specification, i.e. no change is done.
``never`` asks the window manager to never disable the compositor.
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).
.. admonition:: 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.
.. admonition:: 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-probe-info=<yes|no|auto|nostreams>``
Whether to probe stream information (default: auto). Technically, this
controls whether libavformat's ``avformat_find_stream_info()`` function
is called. Usually it's safer to call it, but it can also make startup
slower.
The ``auto`` choice (the default) tries to skip this for a few know-safe
whitelisted formats, while calling it for everything else.
The ``nostreams`` choice only calls it if and only if the file seems to
contain no streams after opening (helpful in cases when calling the function
is needed to detect streams at all, such as with FLV files).
``--demuxer-lavf-probescore=<1-100>``
Minimum required libavformat probe score. Lower values will 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-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.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Example
``--demuxer-lavf-o=fflags=+ignidx``
``--demuxer-lavf-probesize=<value>``
Maximum amount of data to probe during the detection phase. In the
case of MPEG-TS this value identifies the maximum number of TS packets
to scan.
``--demuxer-lavf-buffersize=<value>``
Size of the stream read buffer allocated for libavformat in bytes
(default: 32768). Lowering the size could lower latency. Note that
libavformat might reallocate the buffer internally, or not fully use all
of it.
``--demuxer-lavf-linearize-timestamps=<yes|no|auto>``
Attempt to linearize timestamp resets in demuxed streams (default: auto).
This was tested only for single audio streams. It's unknown whether it
works correctly for video (but likely won't). Note that the implementation
is slightly incorrect either way, and will introduce a discontinuity by
about 1 codec frame size.
The ``auto`` mode enables this for OGG audio stream. This covers the common
and annoying case of OGG web radio streams. Some of these will reset
timestamps to 0 every time a new song begins. This breaks the mpv seekable
cache, which can't deal with timestamp resets. Note that FFmpeg/libavformat's
seeking API can't deal with this either; it's likely that if this option
breaks this even more, while if it's disabled, you can at least seek within
the first song in the stream. Well, you won't get anything useful either
way if the seek is outside of mpv's cache.
``--demuxer-lavf-propagate-opts=<yes|no>``
Propagate FFmpeg-level options to recursively opened connections (default:
yes). This is needed because FFmpeg will apply these settings to nested
AVIO contexts automatically. On the other hand, this could break in certain
situations - it's the FFmpeg API, you just can't win.
This affects in particular the ``--timeout`` option and anything passed
with ``--demuxer-lavf-o``.
If this option is deemed unnecessary at some point in the future, it will
be removed without notice.
``--demuxer-mkv-subtitle-preroll=<yes|index|no>``, ``--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-start-time=<yes|no>``
Check the start time of Matroska files (default: yes). This simply reads the
first cluster timestamps and assumes it is the start time. Technically, this
also reads the first timestamp, which may increase latency by one frame
(which may be relevant for live streams).
``--demuxer-mkv-probe-video-duration=<yes|no|full>``
When opening the file, seek to the end of it, and check what timestamp the
last video packet has, and report that as file 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``.
.. admonition:: 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-cue-codepage=<codepage>``
Specify the CUE sheet codepage. (See ``--sub-codepage`` for details.)
``--demuxer-max-bytes=<bytesize>``
This controls how much the demuxer is allowed to buffer ahead. The demuxer
will normally try to read ahead as much as necessary, or as much is
requested with ``--demuxer-readahead-secs``. The option can be used to
restrict the maximum readahead. This limits 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. ``<bytesize>`` options
accept suffixes such as ``KiB`` and ``MiB``.
``--demuxer-max-back-bytes=<bytesize>``
This controls how much past data the demuxer is allowed to preserve. This
is useful only if the cache is enabled.
Unlike the forward cache, there is no control how many seconds are actually
cached - it will simply use as much memory this option allows. Setting this
option to 0 will strictly disable any back buffer, but this will lead to
the situation that the forward seek range starts after the current playback
position (as it removes past packets that are seek points).
If the end of the file is reached, the remaining unused forward buffer space
is "donated" to the backbuffer (unless the backbuffer size is set to 0, or
``--demuxer-donate-buffer`` is set to ``no``).
This still limits the total cache usage to the sum of the forward and
backward cache, and effectively makes better use of the total allowed memory
budget. (The opposite does not happen: free backward buffer is never
"donated" to the forward buffer.)
Keep in mind that other buffers in the player (like decoders) will cause the
demuxer to cache "future" frames in the back buffer, which can skew the
impression about how much data the backbuffer contains.
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range.
``--demuxer-donate-buffer=<yes|no>``
Whether to let the back buffer use part of the forward buffer (default: yes).
If set to ``yes``, the "donation" behavior described in the option
description for ``--demuxer-max-back-bytes`` is enabled. This means the
back buffer may use up memory up to the sum of the forward and back buffer
options, minus the active size of the forward buffer. If set to ``no``, the
options strictly limit the forward and back buffer sizes separately.
Note that if the end of the file is reached, the buffered data stays the
same, even if you seek back within the cache. This is because the back
buffer is only reduced when new data is read.
``--demuxer-seekable-cache=<yes|no|auto>``
Debugging option to control whether seeking can use the demuxer cache
(default: auto). Normally you don't ever need to set this; the default
``auto`` does the right thing and enables cache seeking it if ``--cache``
is set to ``yes`` (or is implied ``yes`` if ``--cache=auto``).
If enabled, short seek offsets will not trigger a low level demuxer seek
(which means for example that slow network round trips or FFmpeg seek bugs
can be avoided). If a seek cannot happen within the cached range, a low
level seek will be triggered. Seeking outside of the cache will start a new
cached range, but can discard the old cache range if the demuxer exhibits
certain unsupported behavior.
The special value ``auto`` means ``yes`` in the same situation as
``--cache-secs`` is used (i.e. when the stream appears to be a network
stream or the stream cache is enabled).
``--demuxer-force-retry-on-eof=<yes|no>``
Whether to keep retrying making the demuxer thread read more packets each
time the decoder dequeues a packet, even if the end of the file was reached
(default: no). This does not really make sense, but was the default behavior
in mpv 0.32.0 and earlier. This option will be silently removed after a
while, and exists only to restore the old behavior for testing, in case this
was actually needed somewhere. This does _not_ help with files that are
being appended to (in these cases use ``appending://``, or disable the
cache).
``--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 leads to smoother playback,
enables features like prefetching, and prevents that stuck network freezes
the player. On the other hand, it can add overhead, or the background
prefetching can hog CPU resources.
Disabling this option is not recommended. Use it for debugging only.
``--demuxer-termination-timeout=<seconds>``
Number of seconds the player should wait to shutdown the demuxer (default:
0.1). The player will wait up to this much time before it closes the
stream layer forcefully. Forceful closing usually means the network I/O is
given no chance to close its connections gracefully (of course the OS can
still close TCP connections properly), and might result in annoying messages
being logged, and in some cases, confused remote servers.
This timeout is usually only applied when loading has finished properly. If
loading is aborted by the user, or in some corner cases like removing
external tracks sourced from network during playback, forceful closing is
always used.
``--demuxer-readahead-secs=<seconds>``
If ``--demuxer-thread`` is enabled, this controls how much the 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 enabling the cache (such as ``--cache=yes``, or if the input
is considered a network stream, and ``--cache=auto`` is used), this option
is mostly ignored. (``--cache-secs`` will override this. Technically, the
maximum of both options is used.)
The main purpose of this option is to limit the readhead for local playback,
since a large readahead value is not overly useful in this case.
(This value tends to be fuzzy, because many file formats don't store linear
timestamps.)
``--prefetch-playlist=<yes|no>``
Prefetch next playlist entry while playback of the current entry is ending
(default: no).
This does not prefill the cache with the video data of the next URL.
Prefetching video data is supported only for the current playlist entry,
and depends on the demuxer cache settings (on by default). This merely
opens the URL of the next playlist entry as soon the current URL is fully
read.
This does **not** work with URLs resolved by the ``youtube-dl`` wrapper,
and it won't.
This can give subtly wrong results if per-file options are used, or if
options are changed in the time window between prefetching start and next
file played.
This can occasionally make wrong prefetching decisions. For example, it
can't predict whether you go backwards in the playlist, and assumes you
won't edit the playlist.
Highly experimental.
``--force-seekable=<yes|no>``
If the player thinks that the media is not seekable (e.g. playing from a
pipe, or it's an http stream with a server that doesn't support range
requests), seeking will be disabled. This option can forcibly enable it.
For seeks within the cache, there's a good chance of success.
``--demuxer-cache-wait=<yes|no>``
Before starting playback, read data until either the end of the file was
reached, or the demuxer cache has reached maximum capacity. Only once this
is done, playback starts. This intentionally happens before the initial
seek triggered with ``--start``. This does not change any runtime behavior
after the initial caching. This option is useless if the file cannot be
cached completely.
``--rar-list-all-volumes=<yes|no>``
When opening multi-volume rar files, open all volumes to create a full list
of contained files (default: no). If disabled, only the archive entries
whose headers are located within the first volume are listed (and thus
played when opening a .rar file with mpv). Doing so speeds up opening, and
the typical idiotic use-case of playing uncompressed multi-volume rar files
that contain a single media file is made faster.
Opening is still slow, because for unknown, idiotic, and unnecessary reasons
libarchive opens all volumes anyway when playing the main file, even though
mpv iterated no archive entries yet.
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 default-level ("weak") key bindings. These are bindings which config
files like ``input.conf`` can override. It currently affects the builtin key
bindings, and keys which scripts bind using ``mp.add_key_binding`` (but not
``mp.add_forced_key_binding`` because this overrides ``input.conf``).
``--no-input-builtin-bindings``
Disable loading of built-in key bindings during start-up. This option is
applied only during (lib)mpv initialization, and if used then it will not
be not possible to enable them later. May be useful to libmpv clients.
``--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-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-ipc-client=fd://<N>``
Connect a single IPC client to the given FD. This is somewhat similar to
``--input-ipc-server``, except no socket is created, and instead the passed
FD is treated like a socket connection received from ``accept()``. In
practice, you could pass either a FD created by ``socketpair()``, or a pipe.
In both cases, you must sure the FD is actually inherited by mpv (do not
set the POSIX ``CLOEXEC`` flag).
The player quits when the connection is closed.
This is somewhat similar to the removed ``--input-file`` option, except it
supports only integer FDs, and cannot open actual paths.
.. admonition:: Example
``--input-ipc-client=fd://123``
.. note::
Does not and will not work on Windows.
.. warning::
Writing to the ``input-ipc-server`` option at runtime will start another
instance of an IPC client handler for the ``input-ipc-client`` option,
because initialization is bundled, and this thing is stupid. This is a
bug. Writing to ``input-ipc-client`` at runtime will start another IPC
client handler for the new value, without stopping the old one, even if
the FD value is the same (but the string is different e.g. due to
whitespace). This is not a bug.
``--input-gamepad=<yes|no>``
Enable/disable SDL2 Gamepad support. Disabled by default.
``--input-cursor``, ``--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>``
On systems where mpv can choose between receiving media keys or letting
the system handle them - this option controls whether mpv should receive
them.
Default: yes (except for libmpv). macOS and Windows only, because elsewhere
mpv doesn't have a choice - the system decides whether to send media keys
to mpv. For instance, on X11 or Wayland, system-wide media keys are not
implemented. Whether media keys work when the mpv window is focused is
implementation-defined.
``--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``.)
OSD
---
``--osc``, ``--no-osc``
Whether to load the on-screen-controller (default: yes).
``--no-osd-bar``, ``--osd-bar``
Disable display of the OSD 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-on-seek=<no,bar,msg,msg-bar>``
Set what is displayed on the OSD during seeks. The default is ``bar``.
You can configure this on a per-command basis in input.conf using ``osd-``
prefixes, see ``Input Command Prefixes``.
``--osd-duration=<time>``
Set the duration of the OSD messages in ms (default: 1000).
``--osd-font=<name>``
Specify font to use for OSD. The default is ``sans-serif``.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--osd-font='Bitstream Vera Sans'``
- ``--osd-font='Comic Sans MS'``
``--osd-font-size=<size>``
Specify the OSD font size. See ``--sub-font-size`` for details.
Default: 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 as no other message
covers it, and the OSD level isn't changed (see ``--osd-level``).
Expands properties; see `Property Expansion`_.
``--osd-msg2=<string>``
Similar to ``--osd-msg1``, but for OSD level 2. If this is an empty string
(default), then the playback time is shown.
``--osd-msg3=<string>``
Similar to ``--osd-msg1``, but for OSD level 3. If this is an empty string
(default), then the playback time, duration, and some more information is
shown.
This is used for the ``show-progress`` command (by default mapped to ``P``),
and when seeking if enabled with ``--osd-on-seek`` or by ``osd-`` prefixes
in input.conf (see ``Input Command Prefixes``).
``--osd-status-msg`` is a legacy equivalent (but with a minor 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``), and when seeking if
enabled with ``--osd-on-seek`` or ``osd-`` prefixes in input.conf (see
``Input Command Prefixes``). Expands properties. See `Property Expansion`_.
This option has been replaced with ``--osd-msg3``. The only 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-playing-msg-duration=<time>``
Set the duration of ``osd-playing-msg`` in ms. If this is unset,
``osd-playing-msg`` stays on screen for the duration of ``osd-duration``.
``--osd-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 ``--sub-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 ``--sub-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.
``--osd-font-provider=<...>``
See ``--sub-font-provider`` for details and accepted values. Note that
unlike subtitles, OSD never uses embedded fonts from media files.
Screenshot
----------
``--screenshot-format=<type>``
Set the image file type used for saving screenshots.
Available choices:
:png: PNG
:jpg: JPEG (default)
:jpeg: JPEG (alias for jpg)
:webp: WebP
:jxl: JPEG XL
``--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. This will also
include an unused alpha channel in the resulting files if 16 bit is used.
``--screenshot-template=<template>``
Specify the filename template used to save screenshots. The 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.
``--screenshot-webp-lossless=<yes|no>``
Write lossless WebP files. ``--screenshot-webp-quality`` is ignored if this
is set. The default is no.
``--screenshot-webp-quality=<0-100>``
Set the WebP quality level. Higher means better quality. The default is 75.
``--screenshot-webp-compression=<0-6>``
Set the WebP compression level. Higher means better compression, but takes
more CPU time. Note that this also affects the screenshot quality when used
with lossy WebP files. The default is 4.
``--screenshot-jxl-distance=<0-15>``
Set the JPEG XL Butteraugli distance. Lower means better quality. Lossless
is 0.0, and 1.0 is approximately equivalent to JPEG quality 90 for
photographic content. Use 0.1 for "visually lossless" screenshots. The
default is 1.0.
``--screenshot-jxl-effort=<1-9>``
Set the JPEG XL compression effort. Higher effort (usually) means better
compression, but takes more CPU time. The default is 3.
``--screenshot-sw=<yes|no>``
Whether to use software rendering for screenshots (default: no).
If set to no, the screenshot will be rendered by the current VO if possible
(only vo_gpu currently). The advantage is that this will (probably) always
show up as in the video window, because the same code is used for rendering.
But since the renderer needs to be reinitialized, this can be slow and
interrupt playback. (Unless the ``window`` mode is used with the
``screenshot`` command.)
If set to yes, the software scaler is used to convert the video to RGB (or
whatever the target screenshot requires). In this case, conversion will
run in a separate thread and will probably not interrupt playback. The
software renderer may lack some capabilities, such as HDR rendering.
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``.
``--sws-bitexact=<yes|no>``
Unknown functionality (default: no). Consult libswscale source code. The
primary purpose of this, as far as libswscale API goes), is to produce
exactly the same output for the same input on all platforms (output has the
same "bits" everywhere, thus "bitexact"). Typically disables optimizations.
``--sws-fast=<yes|no>``
Allow optimizations that help with performance, but reduce quality (default:
no).
VOs like ``drm`` and ``x11`` will benefit a lot from using ``--sws-fast``.
You may need to set other options, like ``--sws-scaler``. The builtin
``sws-fast`` profile sets this option and some others to gain performance
for reduced quality. Also see ``--sws-allow-zimg``.
``--sws-allow-zimg=<yes|no>``
Allow using zimg (if the component using the internal swscale wrapper
explicitly allows so) (default: yes). In this case, zimg *may* be used, if
the internal zimg wrapper supports the input and output formats. It will
silently or noisily fall back to libswscale if one of these conditions does
not apply.
If zimg is used, the other ``--sws-`` options are ignored, and the
``--zimg-`` options are used instead.
If the internal component using the swscale wrapper hooks up logging
correctly, a verbose priority log message will indicate whether zimg is
being used.
Most things which need software conversion can make use of this.
.. note::
Do note that zimg *may* be slower than libswscale. Usually,
it's faster on x86 platforms, but slower on ARM (due to lack of ARM
specific optimizations). The mpv zimg wrapper uses unoptimized repacking
for some formats, for which zimg cannot be blamed.
``--zimg-scaler=<point|bilinear|bicubic|spline16|spline36|lanczos>``
Zimg luma scaler to use (default: lanczos).
``--zimg-scaler-param-a=<default|float>``, ``--zimg-scaler-param-b=<default|float>``
Set scaler parameters. By default, these are set to the special string
``default``, which maps to a scaler-specific default value. Ignored if the
scaler is not tunable.
``lanczos``
``--zimg-scaler-param-a`` is the number of taps.
``bicubic``
a and b are the bicubic b and c parameters.
``--zimg-scaler-chroma=...``
Same as ``--zimg-scaler``, for for chroma interpolation (default: bilinear).
``--zimg-scaler-chroma-param-a``, ``--zimg-scaler-chroma-param-b``
Same as ``--zimg-scaler-param-a`` / ``--zimg-scaler-param-b``, for chroma.
``--zimg-dither=<no|ordered|random|error-diffusion>``
Dithering (default: random).
``--zimg-threads=<auto|integer>``
Set the maximum number of threads to use for scaling (default: auto).
``auto`` uses the number of logical cores on the current machine. Note that
the scaler may use less threads (or even just 1 thread) depending on stuff.
Passing a value of 1 disables threading and always scales the image in a
single operation. Higher thread counts waste resources, but make it
typically faster.
Note that some zimg git versions had bugs that will corrupt the output if
threads are used.
``--zimg-fast=<yes|no>``
Allow optimizations that help with performance, but reduce quality (default:
yes). Currently, this may simplify gamma conversion operations.
Audio Resampler
---------------
This controls the default options of any resampling done by mpv (but not within
libavfilter, within the system audio API resampler, or any other places).
It also sets the defaults for the ``lavrresample`` audio filter.
``--audio-resample-filter-size=<length>``
Length of the filter with respect to the lower sampling rate. (default:
16)
``--audio-resample-phase-shift=<count>``
Log2 of the number of polyphase entries. (..., 10->1024, 11->2048,
12->4096, ...) (default: 10->1024)
``--audio-resample-cutoff=<cutoff>``
Cutoff frequency (0.0-1.0), default set depending upon filter length.
``--audio-resample-linear=<yes|no>``
If set then filters will be linearly interpolated between polyphase
entries. (default: no)
``--audio-normalize-downmix=<yes|no>``
Enable/disable normalization if surround audio is downmixed to stereo
(default: no). If this is disabled, downmix can cause clipping. If it's
enabled, the output might be too quiet. It depends on the source audio.
Technically, this changes the ``normalize`` suboption of the
``lavrresample`` audio filter, which performs the downmixing.
If downmix happens outside of mpv for some reason, or in the decoder
(decoder downmixing), or in the audio output (system mixer), this has no
effect.
``--audio-resample-max-output-size=<length>``
Limit maximum size of audio frames filtered at once, in ms (default: 40).
The output size size is limited in order to make resample speed changes
react faster. This is necessary especially if decoders or filters output
very large frame sizes (like some lossless codecs or some DRC filters).
This option does not affect the resampling algorithm in any way.
For testing/debugging only. Can be removed or changed any time.
``--audio-swresample-o=<string>``
Set AVOptions on the SwrContext or AVAudioResampleContext. These should
be documented by FFmpeg or Libav.
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
Terminal
--------
``--quiet``
Make console output less verbose; in particular, prevents the status line
(i.e. AV: 3.4 (00:00:03.37) / 5320.6 ...) from being displayed.
Particularly useful on slow terminals or broken ones which do not properly
handle carriage return (i.e. ``\r``).
See also: ``--really-quiet`` and ``--msg-level``.
``--really-quiet``
Display even less output and status messages than with ``--quiet``.
``--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. The verbosity changes from this option are
applied in order from left to right, and each item can override a previous
one.
Run mpv with ``--msg-level=all=trace`` to see all messages mpv outputs. You
can use the module names printed in the output (prefixed to each line in
``[...]``) to limit the output to interesting modules.
This also affects ``--log-file``, and in certain cases libmpv API logging.
.. note::
Some messages are printed before the command line is parsed and are
therefore not affected by ``--msg-level``. To control these messages,
you have to use the ``MPV_VERBOSE`` environment variable; see
`ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES`_ for details.
Available levels:
:no: complete silence
:fatal: fatal messages only
:error: error messages
:warn: warning messages
:info: informational messages
:status: status messages (default)
:v: verbose messages
:debug: debug messages
:trace: very noisy debug messages
.. admonition:: 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`_.
``--term-title=<string>``
Set the terminal title. Currently, this simply concatenates the escape
sequence setting the window title with the provided (property expanded)
string. This will mess up if the expanded string contain bytes that end the
escape sequence, or if the terminal does not understand the sequence. The
latter probably includes the regrettable win32.
Expands properties. See `Property Expansion`_.
``--msg-module``
Prepend module name to each console message.
``--msg-time``
Prepend timing information to each console message. The time is in
seconds since the player process was started (technically, slightly
later actually), using a monotonic time source depending on the OS. This
is ``CLOCK_MONOTONIC`` on sane UNIX variants.
Cache
-----
``--cache=<yes|no|auto>``
Decide whether to use network cache settings (default: auto).
If enabled, use up to ``--cache-secs`` for the cache size (but still limited
to ``--demuxer-max-bytes``), and make the cached data seekable (if possible).
If disabled, ``--cache-pause`` and related are implicitly disabled.
The ``auto`` choice enables this depending on whether the stream is thought
to involve network accesses or other slow media (this is an imperfect
heuristic).
Before mpv 0.30.0, this used to accept a number, which specified the size
of the cache in kilobytes. Use e.g. ``--cache --demuxer-max-bytes=123k``
instead.
``--no-cache``
Turn off input stream caching. See ``--cache``.
``--cache-secs=<seconds>``
How many seconds of audio/video to prefetch if the cache is active. This
overrides the ``--demuxer-readahead-secs`` option if and only if the cache
is enabled and the value is larger. The default value is set to something
very high, so the actually achieved readahead will usually be limited by
the value of the ``--demuxer-max-bytes`` option. Setting this option is
usually only useful for limiting readahead.
``--cache-on-disk=<yes|no>``
Write packet data to a temporary file, instead of keeping them in memory.
This makes sense only with ``--cache``. If the normal cache is disabled,
this option is ignored.
You need to set ``--cache-dir`` to use this.
The cache file is append-only. Even if the player appears to prune data, the
file space freed by it is not reused. The cache file is deleted when
playback is closed.
Note that packet metadata is still kept in memory. ``--demuxer-max-bytes``
and related options are applied to metadata *only*. The size of this
metadata varies, but 50 MB per hour of media is typical. The cache
statistics will report this metadats size, instead of the size of the cache
file. If the metadata hits the size limits, the metadata is pruned (but not
the cache file).
When the media is closed, the cache file is deleted. A cache file is
generally worthless after the media is closed, and it's hard to retrieve
any media data from it (it's not supported by design).
If the option is enabled at runtime, the cache file is created, but old data
will remain in the memory cache. If the option is disabled at runtime, old
data remains in the disk cache, and the cache file is not closed until the
media is closed. If the option is disabled and enabled again, it will
continue to use the cache file that was opened first.
``--cache-dir=<path>``
Directory where to create temporary files (default: none).
Currently, this is used for ``--cache-on-disk`` only.
``--cache-pause=<yes|no>``
Whether the player should automatically pause when the cache runs out of
data and stalls decoding/playback (default: yes). If enabled, it will
pause and unpause once more data is available, aka "buffering".
``--cache-pause-wait=<seconds>``
Number of seconds the packet cache should have buffered before starting
playback again if "buffering" was entered (default: 1). This can be used
to control how long the player rebuffers if ``--cache-pause`` is enabled,
and the demuxer underruns. If the given time is higher than the maximum
set with ``--cache-secs`` or ``--demuxer-readahead-secs``, or prefetching
ends before that for some other reason (like file end or maximum configured
cache size reached), playback resumes earlier.
``--cache-pause-initial=<yes|no>``
Enter "buffering" mode before starting playback (default: no). This can be
used to ensure playback starts smoothly, in exchange for waiting some time
to prefetch network data (as controlled by ``--cache-pause-wait``). For
example, some common behavior is that playback starts, but network caches
immediately underrun when trying to decode more data as playback progresses.
Another thing that can happen is that the network prefetching is so CPU
demanding (due to demuxing in the background) that playback drops frames
at first. In these cases, it helps enabling this option, and setting
``--cache-secs`` and ``--cache-pause-wait`` to roughly the same value.
This option also triggers when playback is restarted after seeking.
``--cache-unlink-files=<immediate|whendone|no>``
Whether or when to unlink cache files (default: immediate). This affects
cache files which are inherently temporary, and which make no sense to
remain on disk after the player terminates. This is a debugging option.
``immediate``
Unlink cache file after they were created. The cache files won't be
visible anymore, even though they're in use. This ensures they are
guaranteed to be removed from disk when the player terminates, even if
it crashes.
``whendone``
Delete cache files after they are closed.
``no``
Don't delete cache files. They will consume disk space without having a
use.
Currently, this is used for ``--cache-on-disk`` only.
``--stream-buffer-size=<bytesize>``
Size of the low level stream byte buffer (default: 128KB). This is used as
buffer between demuxer and low level I/O (e.g. sockets). Generally, this
can be very small, and the main purpose is similar to the internal buffer
FILE in the C standard library will have.
Half of the buffer is always used for guaranteed seek back, which is
important for unseekable input.
There are known cases where this can help performance to set a large buffer:
1. mp4 files. libavformat may trigger many small seeks in both
directions, depending on how the file was muxed.
2. Certain network filesystems, which do not have a cache, and where
small reads can be inefficient.
In other cases, setting this to a large value can reduce performance.
Usually, read accesses are at half the buffer size, but it may happen that
accesses are done alternating with smaller and larger sizes (this is due to
the internal ring buffer wrap-around).
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range. ``<bytesize>`` options
accept suffixes such as ``KiB`` and ``MiB``.
``--vd-queue-enable=<yes|no>, --ad-queue-enable``
Enable running the video/audio decoder on a separate thread (default: no).
If enabled, the decoder is run on a separate thread, and a frame queue is
put between decoder and higher level playback logic. The size of the frame
queue is defined by the other options below.
This is probably quite pointless. libavcodec already has multithreaded
decoding (enabled by default), which makes this largely unnecessary. It
might help in some corner cases with high bandwidth video that is slow to
decode (in these cases libavcodec would block the playback logic, while
using a decoding thread would distribute the decoding time evenly without
affecting the playback logic). In other situations, it will simply make
seeking slower and use significantly more memory.
The queue size is restricted by the other ``--vd-queue-...`` options. The
final queue size is the minimum as indicated by the option with the lowest
limit. Each decoder/track has its own queue that may use the full configured
queue size.
Most queue options can be changed at runtime. ``--vd-queue-enable`` itself
(and the audio equivalent) update only if decoding is completely
reinitialized. However, setting ``--vd-queue-max-samples=1`` should almost
lead to the same behavior as ``--vd-queue-enable=no``, so that value can
be used for effectively runtime enabling/disabling the queue.
This should not be used with hardware decoding. It is possible to enable
this for audio, but it makes even less sense.
``--vd-queue-max-bytes=<bytesize>``, ``--ad-queue-max-bytes``
Maximum approximate allowed size of the queue. If exceeded, decoding will
be stopped. The maximum size can be exceeded by about 1 frame.
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range. ``<bytesize>`` options
accept suffixes such as ``KiB`` and ``MiB``.
``--vd-queue-max-samples=<int>``, ``--ad-queue-max-samples``
Maximum number of frames (video) or samples (audio) of the queue. The audio
size may be exceeded by about 1 frame.
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range.
``--vd-queue-max-secs=<seconds>``, ``--ad-queue-max-secs``
Maximum number of seconds of media in the queue. The special value 0 means
no limit is set. The queue size may be exceeded by about 2 frames. Timestamp
resets may lead to random queue size usage.
See ``--list-options`` for defaults and value range.
Network
-------
``--user-agent=<string>``
Use ``<string>`` as user agent for HTTP streaming.
``--cookies``, ``--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.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
.. admonition:: Example
::
mpv --http-header-fields='Field1: value1','Field2: value2' \
http://localhost:1234
Will generate HTTP request::
GET / HTTP/1.0
Host: localhost:1234
User-Agent: MPlayer
Icy-MetaData: 1
Field1: value1
Field2: value2
Connection: close
``--http-proxy=<proxy>``
URL of the HTTP/HTTPS proxy. If this is set, the ``http_proxy`` environment
is ignored. The ``no_proxy`` environment variable is still respected. This
option is silently ignored if it does not start with ``http://``. Proxies
are not used for https URLs. Setting this option does not try to make the
ytdl script use the proxy.
``--tls-ca-file=<filename>``
Certificate authority database file for use with TLS. (Silently fails with
older FFmpeg 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 (default: 60 seconds). This affects
at least HTTP. The special value 0 uses the FFmpeg/Libav defaults. If a
protocol is used which does not support timeouts, this option is silently
ignored.
.. warning::
This breaks the RTSP protocol, because of inconsistent FFmpeg API
regarding its internal timeout option. Not only does the RTSP timeout
option accept different units (seconds instead of microseconds, causing
mpv to pass it huge values), it will also overflow FFmpeg internal
calculations. The worst is that merely setting the option will put RTSP
into listening mode, which breaks any client uses. At time of this
writing, the fix was not made effective yet. For this reason, this
option is ignored (or should be ignored) on RTSP URLs. You can still
set the timeout option directly with ``--demuxer-lavf-o``.
``--rtsp-transport=<lavf|udp|udp_multicast|tcp|http>``
Select RTSP transport method (default: tcp). This selects the 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-prog=<string>``
This defines the program to tune to. Usually, you may specify this
by using a stream URI like ``"dvb://ZDF HD"``, but you can tune to a
different channel by writing to this property at runtime.
Also see ``dvbin-channel-switch-offset`` for more useful channel
switching functionality.
``--dvbin-card=<0-15>``
Specifies using card number 0-15 (default: 0).
``--dvbin-file=<filename>``
Instructs mpv to read the channels list from ``<filename>``. The 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``
``--dvbin-channel-switch-offset=<integer>``
This value is not meant for setting via configuration, but used in channel
switching. An ``input.conf`` can ``cycle`` this value ``up`` and ``down``
to perform channel switching. This number effectively gives the offset
to the initially tuned to channel in the channel list.
An example ``input.conf`` could contain:
``H cycle dvbin-channel-switch-offset up``, ``K cycle dvbin-channel-switch-offset down``
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).
``--alsa-buffer-time=<microseconds>``
Set the requested buffer time in microseconds. A value of 0 skips requesting
anything from the ALSA API. This and the ``--alsa-periods`` option uses the
ALSA ``near`` functions to set the requested parameters. If doing so results
in an empty configuration set, setting these parameters is skipped.
Both options control the buffer size. A low buffer size can lead to higher
CPU usage and audio dropouts, while a high buffer size can lead to higher
latency in volume changes and other filtering.
``--alsa-periods=<number>``
Number of periods requested from the ALSA API. See ``--alsa-buffer-time``
for further remarks.
GPU renderer options
-----------------------
The following video options are currently all specific to ``--vo=gpu``,
``--vo=libmpv`` and ``--vo=gpu-next``, which are the only VOs that implement
them.
``--scale=<filter>``
The filter function to use when upscaling video.
``bilinear``
Bilinear hardware texture filtering (fastest, very low quality). This
is the default for compatibility reasons.
``spline36``
Mid quality and speed. This is the default when using ``gpu-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``.
Common ``--tscale`` choices include ``oversample``, ``linear``,
``catmull_rom``, ``mitchell``, ``gaussian``, or ``bicubic``. These are
listed in increasing order of smoothness/blurriness, with ``bicubic``
being the smoothest/blurriest and ``oversample`` being the sharpest/least
smooth.
``--scale-param1=<value>``, ``--scale-param2=<value>``, ``--cscale-param1=<value>``, ``--cscale-param2=<value>``, ``--dscale-param1=<value>``, ``--dscale-param2=<value>``, ``--tscale-param1=<value>``, ``--tscale-param2=<value>``
Set filter parameters. By default, these are set to the special string
``default``, which maps to a scaler-specific default value. Ignored if the
filter is not tunable. Currently, this affects the following filter
parameters:
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=<0.0-1.0>``, ``--cscale-clamp``, ``--dscale-clamp``, ``--tscale-clamp``
Specifies a weight bias to multiply into negative coefficients. Specifying
``--scale-clamp=1`` has the effect of removing negative weights completely,
thus effectively clamping the value range to [0-1]. Values between 0.0 and
1.0 can be specified to apply only a moderate diminishment of negative
weights. This is especially useful for ``--tscale``, where it reduces
excessive ringing artifacts in the temporal domain (which typically
manifest themselves as short flashes or fringes of black, mostly around
moving edges) in exchange for potentially adding more blur. The default for
``--tscale-clamp`` is 1.0, the others default to 0.0.
``--scale-cutoff=<value>``, ``--cscale-cutoff=<value>``, ``--dscale-cutoff=<value>``
Cut off the filter kernel prematurely once the value range drops below
this threshold. Doing so allows more aggressive pruning of skippable
coefficients by disregarding parts of the LUT which are effectively zeroed
out by the window function. Only affects polar (EWA) filters. The default
is 0.001 for each, which is perceptually transparent but provides a 10%-20%
speedup, depending on the exact radius and filter kernel chosen.
``--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``, nor does it affect any polar (EWA) scalers.
``--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. By default, these are set to the special string
``default``, which maps to a window-specific default value. Ignored if the
window is not tunable. Currently, this affects the following window
parameters:
kaiser
Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 6.33.
blackman
Window parameter (alpha). Defaults to 0.16.
gaussian
Scale parameter (t). Increasing this makes the window wider. Defaults
to 1.
``--scaler-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``.
``--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.
Note: this option is ignored when using bilinear downscaling (the default).
``--linear-downscaling``
Scale in linear light when downscaling. It should only be used with a
``--fbo-format`` that has at least 16 bit precision. This option
has no effect on HDR content.
``--linear-upscaling``
Scale in linear light when upscaling. Like ``--linear-downscaling``, it
should only be used with a ``--fbo-format`` that has at least 16 bits
precisions. This is not usually recommended except for testing/specific
purposes. Users are advised to either enable ``--sigmoid-upscaling`` or
keep both options disabled (i.e. scaling in gamma light).
``--sigmoid-upscaling``
When upscaling, use a sigmoidal color transform to avoid emphasizing
ringing artifacts. This is incompatible with and replaces
``--linear-upscaling``. (Note that sigmoidization also requires
linearization, so the ``LINEAR`` rendering step fires in both cases)
``--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.
``--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.
``--interpolation-threshold=<0..1,-1>``
Threshold below which frame ratio interpolation gets disabled (default:
``0.01``). This is calculated as ``abs(disphz/vfps - 1) < threshold``,
where ``vfps`` is the speed-adjusted video FPS, and ``disphz`` the
display refresh rate. (The speed-adjusted video FPS is roughly equal to
the normal video FPS, but with slowdown and speedup applied. This matters
if you use ``--video-sync=display-resample`` to make video run synchronously
to the display FPS, or if you change the ``speed`` property.)
The default is intended to enable interpolation in scenarios where
retiming with the ``--video-sync=display-*`` cannot adjust the speed of
the video sufficiently for smooth playback. For example if a video is
60.00 FPS and your display refresh rate is 59.94 Hz, interpolation will
never be activated, since the mismatch is within 1% of the refresh
rate. The default also handles the scenario when mpv cannot determine the
container FPS, such as during certain live streams, and may dynamically
toggle interpolation on and off. In this scenario, the default would be to
not use interpolation but rather to allow ``--video-sync=display-*`` to
retime the video to match display refresh rate. See
``--video-sync-max-video-change`` for more information about how mpv
will retime video.
Also note that if you use e.g. ``--video-sync=display-vdrop``, small
deviations in the rate can disable interpolation and introduce a
discontinuity every other minute.
Set this to ``-1`` to disable this logic.
``--interpolation-preserve``
Preserve the previous frames' interpolated results even when renderer
parameters are changed - with the exception of options related to
cropping and video placement, which always invalidate the cache. Enabling
this option makes dynamic updates of renderer settings slightly smoother at
the cost of slightly higher latency in response to such changes. Defaults
to on. (Only affects ``--vo=gpu-next``, note that ``-vo=gpu`` always
invalidates interpolated frames)
``--opengl-pbo``
Enable use of PBOs. On some drivers this can be faster, 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.
``--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|error-diffusion|no>``
Select dithering algorithm (default: fruit). (Normally, the
``--dither-depth`` option controls whether dithering is enabled.)
The ``error-diffusion`` option requires compute shader support. It also
requires large amount of shared memory to run, the size of which depends on
both the kernel (see ``--error-diffusion`` option below) and the height of
video window. It will fallback to ``fruit`` dithering if there is no enough
shared memory to run the shader.
``--temporal-dither``
Enable temporal dithering. (Only active if dithering is enabled in
general.) This changes between 8 different dithering patterns on each frame
by changing the orientation of the tiled dithering matrix. Unfortunately,
this can lead to flicker on LCD displays, since these have a high reaction
time.
``--temporal-dither-period=<1-128>``
Determines how often the dithering pattern is updated when
``--temporal-dither`` is in use. 1 (the default) will update on every video
frame, 2 on every other frame, etc.
``--error-diffusion=<kernel>``
The error diffusion kernel to use when ``--dither=error-diffusion`` is set.
``simple``
Propagate error to only two adjacent pixels. Fastest but low quality.
``sierra-lite``
Fast with reasonable quality. This is the default.
``floyd-steinberg``
Most notable error diffusion kernel.
``atkinson``
Looks different from other kernels because only fraction of errors will
be propagated during dithering. A typical use case of this kernel is
saving dithered screenshot (in window mode). This kernel produces
slightly smaller file, with still reasonable dithering quality.
There are other kernels (use ``--error-diffusion=help`` to list) but most of
them are much slower and demanding even larger amount of shared memory.
Among these kernels, ``burkes`` achieves a good balance between performance
and quality, and probably is the one you want to try first.
``--gpu-debug``
Enables GPU debugging. What this means depends on the API type. For OpenGL,
it calls ``glGetError()``, and requests a debug context. For Vulkan, it
enables validation layers.
``--opengl-swapinterval=<n>``
Interval in displayed frames between two buffer swaps. 1 is equivalent to
enable VSYNC, 0 to disable VSYNC. Defaults to 1 if not specified.
Note that this depends on proper OpenGL vsync support. On some platforms
and drivers, this only works reliably when in fullscreen mode. It may also
require driver-specific hacks if 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
``--override-display-fps``).
``--vulkan-device=<device name>``
The name of the Vulkan device to use for rendering and presentation. Use
``--vulkan-device=help`` to see the list of available devices and their
names. If left unspecified, the first enumerated hardware Vulkan device will
be used.
``--vulkan-swap-mode=<mode>``
Controls the presentation mode of the vulkan swapchain. This is similar
to the ``--opengl-swapinterval`` option.
auto
Use the preferred swapchain mode for the vulkan context. (Default)
fifo
Non-tearing, vsync blocked. Similar to "VSync on".
fifo-relaxed
Tearing, vsync blocked. Late frames will tear instead of stuttering.
mailbox
Non-tearing, not vsync blocked. Similar to "triple buffering".
immediate
Tearing, not vsync blocked. Similar to "VSync off".
``--vulkan-queue-count=<1..8>``
Controls the number of VkQueues used for rendering (limited by how many
your device supports). In theory, using more queues could enable some
parallelism between frames (when using a ``--swapchain-depth`` higher than
1), but it can also slow things down on hardware where there's no true
parallelism between queues. (Default: 1)
``--vulkan-async-transfer``
Enables the use of async transfer queues on supported vulkan devices. Using
them allows transfer operations like texture uploads and blits to happen
concurrently with the actual rendering, thus improving overall throughput
and power consumption. Enabled by default, and should be relatively safe.
``--vulkan-async-compute``
Enables the use of async compute queues on supported vulkan devices. Using
this, in theory, allows out-of-order scheduling of compute shaders with
graphics shaders, thus enabling the hardware to do more effective work while
waiting for pipeline bubbles and memory operations. Not beneficial on all
GPUs. It's worth noting that if async compute is enabled, and the device
supports more compute queues than graphics queues (bound by the restrictions
set by ``--vulkan-queue-count``), mpv will internally try and prefer the
use of compute shaders over fragment shaders wherever possible. Enabled by
default, although Nvidia users may want to disable it.
``--vulkan-disable-events``
Disable the use of VkEvents, for debugging purposes or for compatibility
with some older drivers / vulkan portability layers that don't provide
working VkEvent support.
``--vulkan-display-display=<n>``
The index of the display, on the selected Vulkan device, to present on when
using the ``displayvk`` GPU context. Use ``--vulkan-display-display=help``
to see the list of available displays. If left unspecified, the first
enumerated display will be used.
``--vulkan-display-mode=<n>``
The index of the display mode, of the selected Vulkan display, to use when
using the ``displayvk`` GPU context. Use ``--vulkan-display-mode=help``
to see the list of available modes. If left unspecified, the first
enumerated mode will be used.
``--vulkan-display-plane=<n>``
The index of the plane, on the selected Vulkan device, to present on when
using the ``displayvk`` GPU context. Use ``--vulkan-display-plane=help``
to see the list of available planes. If left unspecified, the first
enumerated plane will be used.
``--d3d11-exclusive-fs=<yes|no>``
Switches the D3D11 swap chain fullscreen state to 'fullscreen' when
fullscreen video is requested. Also known as "exclusive fullscreen" or
"D3D fullscreen" in other applications. Gives mpv full control of
rendering on the swap chain's screen. Off by default.
``--d3d11-warp=<yes|no|auto>``
Use WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) with the D3D11 GPU
backend (default: auto). This is a high performance software renderer. By
default, it is only used when the system has no hardware adapters that
support D3D11. While the extended GPU features will work with WARP, they
can be very slow.
``--d3d11-feature-level=<12_1|12_0|11_1|11_0|10_1|10_0|9_3|9_2|9_1>``
Select a specific feature level when using the D3D11 GPU backend. By
default, the highest available feature level is used. This option can be
used to select a lower feature level, which is mainly useful for debugging.
Most extended GPU features will not work at 9_x feature levels.
``--d3d11-flip=<yes|no>``
Enable flip-model presentation, which avoids unnecessarily copying the
backbuffer by sharing surfaces with the DWM (default: yes). This may cause
performance issues with older drivers. If flip-model presentation is not
supported (for example, on Windows 7 without the platform update), mpv will
automatically fall back to the older bitblt presentation model.
``--d3d11-sync-interval=<0..4>``
Schedule each frame to be presented for this number of VBlank intervals.
(default: 1) Setting to 1 will enable VSync, setting to 0 will disable it.
``--d3d11-adapter=<adapter name|help>``
Select a specific D3D11 adapter to utilize for D3D11 rendering.
Will pick the default adapter if unset. Alternatives are listed
when the name "help" is given.
Checks for matches based on the start of the string, case
insensitive. Thus, if the description of the adapter starts with
the vendor name, that can be utilized as the selection parameter.
Hardware decoders utilizing the D3D11 rendering abstraction's helper
functionality to receive a device, such as D3D11VA or DXVA2's DXGI
mode, will be affected by this choice.
``--d3d11-output-format=<auto|rgba8|bgra8|rgb10_a2|rgba16f>``
Select a specific D3D11 output format to utilize for D3D11 rendering.
"auto" is the default, which will pick either rgba8 or rgb10_a2 depending
on the configured desktop bit depth. rgba16f and bgra8 are left out of
the autodetection logic, and are available for manual testing.
.. note::
Desktop bit depth querying is only available from an API available
from Windows 10. Thus on older systems it will only automatically
utilize the rgba8 output format.
``--d3d11-output-csp=<auto|srgb|linear|pq|bt.2020>``
Select a specific D3D11 output color space to utilize for D3D11 rendering.
"auto" is the default, which will select the color space of the desktop
on which the swap chain is located.
Values other than "srgb" and "pq" have had issues in testing, so they
are mostly available for manual testing.
.. note::
Swap chain color space configuration is only available from an API
available from Windows 10. Thus on older systems it will not work.
``--d3d11va-zero-copy=<yes|no>``
By default, when using hardware decoding with ``--gpu-api=d3d11``, the
video image will be copied (GPU-to-GPU) from the decoder surface to a
shader resource. Set this option to avoid that copy by sampling directly
from the decoder image. This may increase performance and reduce power
usage, but can cause the image to be sampled incorrectly on the bottom and
right edges due to padding, and may invoke driver bugs, since Direct3D 11
technically does not allow sampling from a decoder surface (though most
drivers support it.)
Currently only relevant for ``--gpu-api=d3d11``.
``--wayland-app-id=<string>``
Set the client app id for Wayland-based video output methods (default: ``mpv``).
``--wayland-disable-vsync=<yes|no>``
Disable vsync for the wayland contexts (default: no). Useful for benchmarking
the wayland context when combined with ``video-sync=display-desync``,
``--no-audio``, and ``--untimed=yes``. Only works with ``--gpu-context=wayland``
and ``--gpu-context=waylandvk``.
``--wayland-edge-pixels-pointer=<value>``
Defines the size of an edge border (default: 10) to initiate client side
resize events in the wayland contexts with the mouse. This is only active if
there are no server side decorations from the compositor.
``--wayland-edge-pixels-touch=<value>``
Defines the size of an edge border (default: 32) to initiate client side
resizes events in the wayland contexts with touch events.
``--spirv-compiler=<compiler>``
Controls which compiler is used to translate GLSL to SPIR-V. This is
(currently) only relevant for ``--gpu-api=vulkan`` and `--gpu-api=d3d11`.
The possible choices are currently only:
auto
Use the first available compiler. (Default)
shaderc
Use libshaderc, which is an API wrapper around glslang. This is
generally the most preferred, if available.
.. note::
This option is deprecated, since there is only one reasonable value.
It may be removed in the future.
``--glsl-shader=<file>``, ``--glsl-shaders=<file-list>``
Custom GLSL hooks. These are a flexible way to add custom fragment shaders,
which can be injected at almost arbitrary points in the rendering pipeline,
and access all previous intermediate textures.
Each use of the ``--glsl-shader`` option will add another file to the
internal list of shaders, while ``--glsl-shaders`` takes a list of files,
and overwrites the internal list with it. The latter is a path list option
(see `List Options`_ for details).
.. admonition:: Warning
The syntax is not stable yet and may change any time.
The general syntax of a user shader looks like this::
//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...
vec4 hook() {
...
return something;
}
//!METADATA ARGS...
//!METADATA ARGS...
...
Each section of metadata, along with the non-metadata lines after it,
defines a single block. There are currently two types of blocks, HOOKs and
TEXTUREs.
A ``TEXTURE`` block can set the following options:
TEXTURE <name> (required)
The name of this texture. Hooks can then bind the texture under this
name using BIND. This must be the first option of the texture block.
SIZE <width> [<height>] [<depth>] (required)
The dimensions of the texture. The height and depth are optional. The
type of texture (1D, 2D or 3D) depends on the number of components
specified.
FORMAT <name> (required)
The texture format for the samples. Supported texture formats are listed
in debug logging when the ``gpu`` VO is initialized (look for
``Texture formats:``). Usually, this follows OpenGL naming conventions.
For example, ``rgb16`` provides 3 channels with normalized 16 bit
components. One oddity are float formats: for example, ``rgba16f`` has
16 bit internal precision, but the texture data is provided as 32 bit
floats, and the driver converts the data on texture upload.
Although format names follow a common naming convention, not all of them
are available on all hardware, drivers, GL versions, and so on.
FILTER <LINEAR|NEAREST>
The min/magnification filter used when sampling from this texture.
BORDER <CLAMP|REPEAT|MIRROR>
The border wrapping mode used when sampling from this texture.
Following the metadata is a string of bytes in hexadecimal notation that
define the raw texture data, corresponding to the format specified by
`FORMAT`, on a single line with no extra whitespace.
A ``HOOK`` block can set the following options:
HOOK <name> (required)
The texture which to hook into. May occur multiple times within a
metadata block, up to a predetermined limit. See below for a list of
hookable textures.
DESC <title>
User-friendly description of the pass. This is the name used when
representing this shader in the list of passes for property
`vo-passes`.
BIND <name>
Loads a texture (either coming from mpv or from a ``TEXTURE`` block)
and makes it available to the pass. When binding textures from mpv,
this will also set up macros to facilitate accessing it properly. See
below for a list. 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 (such as MAIN.width or CHROMA.height),
OUTPUT, or NATIVE_CROPPED (size of an input texture cropped after
pan-and-scan, video-align-x/y, video-pan-x/y, etc. and possibly
prescaled). By default, these are set to HOOKED.w and HOOKED.h,
espectively.
WHEN <szexpr>
Specifies a condition that needs to be true (non-zero) for the shader
stage to be evaluated. If it fails, it will silently be omitted. (Note
that a shader stage like this which has a dependency on an optional
hook point can still cause that hook point to be saved, which has some
minor overhead)
OFFSET <ox oy | ALIGN>
Indicates a pixel shift (offset) introduced by this pass. These pixel
offsets will be accumulated and corrected 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.
A special value of ``ALIGN`` will attempt to fix existing offset of
HOOKED by align it with reference. It requires HOOKED to be resizable
(see below). It works transparently with fragment shader. For compute
shader, the predefined ``texmap`` macro is required to handle coordinate
mapping.
COMPONENTS <n>
Specifies how many components of this pass's output are relevant and
should be stored in the texture, up to 4 (rgba). By default, this value
is equal to the number of components in HOOKED.
COMPUTE <bw> <bh> [<tw> <th>]
Specifies that this shader should be treated as a compute shader, with
the block size bw and bh. The compute shader will be dispatched with
however many blocks are necessary to completely tile over the output.
Within each block, there will be tw*th threads, forming a single work
group. In other words: tw and th specify the work group size, which can
be different from the block size. So for example, a compute shader with
bw, bh = 32 and tw, th = 8 running on a 500x500 texture would dispatch
16x16 blocks (rounded up), each with 8x8 threads.
Compute shaders in mpv are treated a bit different from fragment
shaders. Instead of defining a ``vec4 hook`` that produces an output
sample, you directly define ``void hook`` which writes to a fixed
writeonly image unit named ``out_image`` (this is bound by mpv) using
`imageStore`. To help translate texture coordinates in the absence of
vertices, mpv provides a special function ``NAME_map(id)`` to map from
the texel space of the output image to the texture coordinates for all
bound textures. In particular, ``NAME_pos`` is equivalent to
``NAME_map(gl_GlobalInvocationID)``, although using this only really
makes sense if (tw,th) == (bw,bh).
Each bound mpv texture (via ``BIND``) will make available the 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].
float NAME_mul
The coefficient that needs to be multiplied into the texture contents
in order to normalize it to the range [0,1].
sampler NAME_raw
The raw bound texture itself. The use of this should be avoided unless
absolutely necessary.
Normally, users should use either NAME_tex or NAME_texOff to read from the
texture. For some shaders however , it can be better for performance to do
custom sampling from NAME_raw, in which case care needs to be taken to
respect NAME_mul and NAME_rot.
In addition to these parameters, the following uniforms are also globally
available:
float random
A random number in the range [0-1], different per frame.
int frame
A simple count of frames rendered, increases by one per frame and never
resets (regardless of seeks).
vec2 input_size
The size in pixels of the input image (possibly cropped and prescaled).
vec2 target_size
The size in pixels of the visible part of the scaled (and possibly
cropped) image.
vec2 tex_offset
Texture offset introduced by user shaders or options like panscan, video-align-x/y, video-pan-x/y.
Internally, vo_gpu may generate any number of the following textures.
Whenever a texture is rendered and saved by vo_gpu, all of the passes
that have hooked into it will run, in the order they were added by the
user. This is a list of the legal hook points:
RGB, LUMA, CHROMA, ALPHA, XYZ (resizable)
Source planes (raw). Which of these fire depends on the image format of
the source.
CHROMA_SCALED, ALPHA_SCALED (fixed)
Source planes (upscaled). These only fire on subsampled content.
NATIVE (resizable)
The combined image, in the source colorspace, before 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-upscaling``, ``--linear-downscaling`` or
``--sigmoid-upscaling`` is in effect.
SIGMOID (fixed)
Sigmoidized light, before scaling. This only fires when
``--sigmoid-upscaling`` is in effect.
PREKERNEL (fixed)
The image immediately before the scaler kernel runs.
POSTKERNEL (fixed)
The image immediately after the scaler kernel runs.
SCALED (fixed)
The final upscaled image, before color management.
OUTPUT (fixed)
The final output image, after color management but before dithering and
drawing to screen.
Only the textures labelled with ``resizable`` may be transformed by the
pass. When overwriting a texture marked ``fixed``, the WIDTH, HEIGHT and
OFFSET must be left at their default values.
``--glsl-shader=<file>``
CLI/config file only alias for ``--glsl-shaders-append``.
``--deband``
Enable the debanding algorithm. This greatly reduces the amount of visible
banding, blocking and other quantization artifacts, at the expense of
very slightly blurring some of the finest details. In practice, it's
virtually always an improvement - the only 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 32)
``--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)
``--sharpen=<value>``
If set to a value other than 0, enable an unsharp masking filter. Positive
values will sharpen the image (but add more ringing and aliasing). Negative
values will blur the image. If your GPU is powerful enough, consider
alternatives like the ``ewa_lanczossharp`` scale filter, or the
``--scale-blur`` option. (Only for ``--vo=gpu``)
``--opengl-glfinish``
Call ``glFinish()`` before swapping buffers (default: disabled). Slower,
but might improve results when doing framedropping. Can completely ruin
performance. The details depend entirely on the OpenGL driver.
``--opengl-waitvsync``
Call ``glXWaitVideoSyncSGI`` after each buffer swap (default: 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-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.
``--angle-d3d11-feature-level=<11_0|10_1|10_0|9_3>``
Selects a specific feature level when using the ANGLE backend with D3D11.
By default, the highest available feature level is used. This option can be
used to select a lower feature level, which is mainly useful for debugging.
Note that OpenGL ES 3.0 is only supported at feature level 10_1 or higher.
Most extended OpenGL features will not work at lower feature levels
(similar to ``--gpu-dumb-mode``).
Windows with ANGLE only.
``--angle-d3d11-warp=<yes|no|auto>``
Use WARP (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) when using the ANGLE
backend with D3D11 (default: auto). This is a high performance software
renderer. By default, it is used when the Direct3D hardware does not
support Direct3D 11 feature level 9_3. While the extended OpenGL features
will work with WARP, they can be very slow.
Windows with ANGLE only.
``--angle-egl-windowing=<yes|no|auto>``
Use ANGLE's built in EGL windowing functions to create a swap chain
(default: auto). If this is set to ``no`` and the D3D11 renderer is in use,
ANGLE's built in swap chain will not be used and a custom swap chain that
is optimized for video rendering will be created instead. If set to
``auto``, a custom swap chain will be used for D3D11 and the built in swap
chain will be used for D3D9. This option is mainly for debugging purposes,
in case the custom swap chain has poor performance or does not work.
If set to ``yes``, the ``--angle-max-frame-latency``,
``--angle-swapchain-length`` and ``--angle-flip`` options will have no
effect.
Windows with ANGLE only.
``--angle-flip=<yes|no>``
Enable flip-model presentation, which avoids unnecessarily copying the
backbuffer by sharing surfaces with the DWM (default: yes). This may cause
performance issues with older drivers. If flip-model presentation is not
supported (for example, on Windows 7 without the platform update), mpv will
automatically fall back to the older bitblt presentation model.
If set to ``no``, the ``--angle-swapchain-length`` option will have no
effect.
Windows with ANGLE only.
``--angle-renderer=<d3d9|d3d11|auto>``
Forces a specific renderer when using the ANGLE backend (default: auto). In
auto mode this will pick D3D11 for systems that support Direct3D 11 feature
level 9_3 or higher, and D3D9 otherwise. This option is mainly for
debugging purposes. Normally there is no reason to force a specific
renderer, though ``--angle-renderer=d3d9`` may give slightly better
performance on old hardware. Note that the D3D9 renderer only supports
OpenGL ES 2.0, so most extended OpenGL features will not work if this
renderer is selected (similar to ``--gpu-dumb-mode``).
Windows with ANGLE only.
``--macos-force-dedicated-gpu=<yes|no>``
Deactivates the automatic graphics switching and forces the dedicated GPU.
(default: no)
macOS only.
``--cocoa-cb-sw-renderer=<yes|no|auto>``
Use the Apple Software Renderer when using cocoa-cb (default: auto). If set
to ``no`` the software renderer is never used and instead fails when a the
usual pixel format could not be created, ``yes`` will always only use the
software renderer, and ``auto`` only falls back to the software renderer
when the usual pixel format couldn't be created.
macOS only.
``--cocoa-cb-10bit-context=<yes|no>``
Creates a 10bit capable pixel format for the context creation (default: yes).
Instead of 8bit integer framebuffer a 16bit half-float framebuffer is
requested.
macOS only.
``--macos-title-bar-appearance=<appearance>``
Sets the appearance of the title bar (default: auto). Not all combinations
of appearances and ``--macos-title-bar-material`` materials make sense or
are unique. Appearances that are not supported by you current macOS version
fall back to the default value.
macOS and cocoa-cb only
``<appearance>`` can be one of the following:
:auto: Detects the system settings and sets the title
bar appearance appropriately. On macOS 10.14 it
also detects run time changes.
:aqua: The standard macOS Light appearance.
:darkAqua: The standard macOS Dark appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
:vibrantLight: Light vibrancy appearance with.
:vibrantDark: Dark vibrancy appearance with.
:aquaHighContrast: Light Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
:darkAquaHighContrast: Dark Accessibility appearance. (macOS 10.14+)
:vibrantLightHighContrast: Light vibrancy Accessibility appearance.
(macOS 10.14+)
:vibrantDarkHighContrast: Dark vibrancy Accessibility appearance.
(macOS 10.14+)
``--macos-title-bar-material=<material>``
Sets the material of the title bar (default: titlebar). All deprecated
materials should not be used on macOS 10.14+ because their functionality
is not guaranteed. Not all combinations of materials and
``--macos-title-bar-appearance`` appearances make sense or are unique.
Materials that are not supported by you current macOS version fall back to
the default value.
macOS and cocoa-cb only
``<material>`` can be one of the following:
:titlebar: The standard macOS titel bar material.
:selection: The standard macOS selection material.
:menu: The standard macOS menu material. (macOS 10.11+)
:popover: The standard macOS popover material. (macOS 10.11+)
:sidebar: The standard macOS sidebar material. (macOS 10.11+)
:headerView: The standard macOS header view material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:sheet: The standard macOS sheet material. (macOS 10.14+)
:windowBackground: The standard macOS window background material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:hudWindow: The standard macOS hudWindow material. (macOS 10.14+)
:fullScreen: The standard macOS full screen material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:toolTip: The standard macOS tool tip material. (macOS 10.14+)
:contentBackground: The standard macOS content background material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:underWindowBackground: The standard macOS under window background material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:underPageBackground: The standard macOS under page background material.
(deprecated in macOS 10.14+)
:dark: The standard macOS dark material.
(deprecated in macOS 10.14+)
:light: The standard macOS light material.
(macOS 10.14+)
:mediumLight: The standard macOS mediumLight material.
(macOS 10.11+, deprecated in macOS 10.14+)
:ultraDark: The standard macOS ultraDark material.
(macOS 10.11+ deprecated in macOS 10.14+)
``--macos-title-bar-color=<color>``
Sets the color of the title bar (default: completely transparent). Is
influenced by ``--macos-title-bar-appearance`` and
``--macos-title-bar-material``.
See ``--sub-color`` for color syntax.
``--macos-fs-animation-duration=<default|0-1000>``
Sets the fullscreen resize animation duration in ms (default: default).
The default value is slightly less than the system's animation duration
(500ms) to prevent some problems when the end of an async animation happens
at the same time as the end of the system wide fullscreen animation. Setting
anything higher than 500ms will only prematurely cancel the resize animation
after the system wide animation ended. The upper limit is still set at
1000ms since it's possible that Apple or the user changes the system
defaults. Anything higher than 1000ms though seems too long and shouldn't be
set anyway.
(macOS and cocoa-cb only)
``--macos-app-activation-policy=<regular|accessory|prohibited>``
Changes the App activation policy. With accessory the mpv icon in the Dock
can be hidden. (default: regular)
macOS only.
``--macos-geometry-calculation=<visible|whole>``
This changes the rectangle which is used to calculate the screen position
and size of the window (default: visible). ``visible`` takes the the menu
bar and Dock into account and the window is only positioned/sized within the
visible screen frame rectangle, ``whole`` takes the whole screen frame
rectangle and ignores the menu bar and Dock. Other previous restrictions
still apply, like the window can't be placed on top of the menu bar etc.
macOS only.
``--android-surface-size=<WxH>``
Set dimensions of the rendering surface used by the Android gpu context.
Needs to be set by the embedding application if the dimensions change during
runtime (i.e. if the device is rotated), via the surfaceChanged callback.
Android with ``--gpu-context=android`` only.
``--gpu-sw``
Continue even if a software renderer is detected.
``--gpu-context=<sys>``
The value ``auto`` (the default) selects the GPU context. You can also pass
``help`` to get a complete list of compiled in backends (sorted by
autoprobe order).
auto
auto-select (default)
cocoa
Cocoa/macOS (deprecated, use --vo=libmpv instead)
win
Win32/WGL
winvk
VK_KHR_win32_surface
angle
Direct3D11 through the OpenGL ES translation layer ANGLE. This supports
almost everything the ``win`` backend does (if the ANGLE build is new
enough).
dxinterop (experimental)
Win32, using WGL for rendering and Direct3D 9Ex for presentation. Works
on Nvidia and AMD. Newer Intel chips with the latest drivers may also
work.
d3d11
Win32, with native Direct3D 11 rendering.
x11
X11/GLX
x11vk
VK_KHR_xlib_surface
wayland
Wayland/EGL
waylandvk
VK_KHR_wayland_surface
drm
DRM/EGL
displayvk
VK_KHR_display. This backend is roughly the Vukan equivalent of
DRM/EGL, allowing for direct rendering via Vulkan without a display
manager.
x11egl
X11/EGL
android
Android/EGL. Requires ``--wid`` be set to an ``android.view.Surface``.
``--gpu-api=<type>``
Controls which type of graphics APIs will be accepted:
auto
Use any available API (default)
opengl
Allow only OpenGL (requires OpenGL 2.1+ or GLES 2.0+)
vulkan
Allow only Vulkan (requires a valid/working ``--spirv-compiler``)
d3d11
Allow only ``--gpu-context=d3d11``
``--opengl-es=<mode>``
Controls which type of OpenGL context will be accepted:
auto
Allow all types of OpenGL (default)
yes
Only allow GLES
no
Only allow desktop/core GL
``--fbo-format=<fmt>``
Selects the internal format of textures used for FBOs. The format can
influence performance and quality of the video output. ``fmt`` can be one
of: rgb8, rgb10, rgb10_a2, rgb16, rgb16f, rgb32f, rgba12, rgba16, rgba16f,
rgba16hf, rgba32f.
Default: ``auto``, which first attempts to utilize 16bit float
(rgba16f, rgba16hf), and falls back to rgba16 if those are not available.
Finally, attempts to utilize rgb10_a2 or rgba8 if all of the previous formats
are not available.
``--gamma-factor=<0.1..2.0>``
Set an additional raw gamma factor (default: 1.0). If gamma is adjusted in
other ways (like with the ``--gamma`` option or key bindings and the
``gamma`` property), the value is multiplied with the other gamma value.
Recommended values based on the environmental brightness:
1.0
Pitch black or dimly lit room (default)
1.1
Moderately lit room, home
1.2
Brightly illuminated room, office
NOTE: This is based around the assumptions of typical movie content, which
contains an implicit end-to-end of about 0.8 from scene to display. For
bright environments it can be useful to cancel that out.
``--gamma-auto``
Automatically corrects the gamma value depending on ambient lighting
conditions (adding a gamma boost for bright rooms).
With ambient illuminance of 16 lux, mpv will pick the 1.0 gamma value (no
boost), and slightly increase the boost up until 1.2 for 256 lux.
NOTE: Only implemented on macOS.
``--image-lut=<file>``
Specifies a custom LUT file (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to the colors
during image decoding. The exact interpretation of the LUT depends on
the value of ``--image-lut-type``. (Only for ``--vo=gpu-next``)
``--image-lut-type=<value>``
Controls the interpretation of color values fed to and from the LUT
specified as ``--image-lut``. Valid values are:
auto
Chooses the interpretation of the LUT automatically from tagged
metadata, and otherwise falls back to ``native``. (Default)
native
Applied to the raw image contents in its native colorspace, before
decoding to RGB. For example, for a HDR10 image, this would be fed
PQ-encoded YCbCr values in the range 0.0 - 1.0.
normalized
Applied to the normalized RGB image contents, after decoding from
its native color encoding, but before linearization.
conversion
Fully replaces the color decoding. A LUT of this type should ingest the
image's native colorspace and output normalized non-linear RGB.
``--target-colorspace-hint``
Automatically configure the output colorspace of the display to pass
through the input values of the stream (e.g. for HDR passthrough), if
possible. Requires a supporting driver and ``--vo=gpu-next``.
``--target-prim=<value>``
Specifies the primaries of the display. Video colors will be adapted to
this colorspace when ICC color management is not being used. Valid values
are:
auto
Disable any adaptation, except for atypical color spaces. Specifically,
wide/unusual gamuts get automatically adapted to BT.709, while standard
gamut (i.e. BT.601 and BT.709) content is not touched. (default)
bt.470m
ITU-R BT.470 M
bt.601-525
ITU-R BT.601 (525-line SD systems, eg. NTSC), SMPTE 170M/240M
bt.601-625
ITU-R BT.601 (625-line SD systems, eg. PAL/SECAM), ITU-R BT.470 B/G
bt.709
ITU-R BT.709 (HD), IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB), SMPTE RP177 Annex B
bt.2020
ITU-R BT.2020 (UHD)
apple
Apple RGB
adobe
Adobe RGB (1998)
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
cie1931
CIE 1931 RGB (not to be confused with CIE XYZ)
dci-p3
DCI-P3 (Digital Cinema Colorspace), SMPTE RP431-2
v-gamut
Panasonic V-Gamut (VARICAM) primaries
s-gamut
Sony S-Gamut (S-Log) primaries
``--target-trc=<value>``
Specifies the transfer characteristics (gamma) of the display. Video colors
will be adjusted to this curve when ICC color management is not being used.
Valid values are:
auto
Disable any adaptation, except for atypical transfers. Specifically,
HDR or linear light source material gets automatically converted to
gamma 2.2, while SDR content is not touched. (default)
bt.1886
ITU-R BT.1886 curve (assuming infinite contrast)
srgb
IEC 61966-2-4 (sRGB)
linear
Linear light output
gamma1.8
Pure power curve (gamma 1.8), also used for Apple RGB
gamma2.0
Pure power curve (gamma 2.0)
gamma2.2
Pure power curve (gamma 2.2)
gamma2.4
Pure power curve (gamma 2.4)
gamma2.6
Pure power curve (gamma 2.6)
gamma2.8
Pure power curve (gamma 2.8), also used for BT.470-BG
prophoto
ProPhoto RGB (ROMM)
pq
ITU-R BT.2100 PQ (Perceptual quantizer) curve, aka SMPTE ST2084
hlg
ITU-R BT.2100 HLG (Hybrid Log-gamma) curve, aka ARIB STD-B67
v-log
Panasonic V-Log (VARICAM) curve
s-log1
Sony S-Log1 curve
s-log2
Sony S-Log2 curve
.. note::
When using HDR output formats, mpv will encode to the 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-peak=<auto|nits>``
Specifies the measured peak brightness of the output display, in cd/m^2
(AKA nits). The interpretation of this brightness depends on the configured
``--target-trc``. In all cases, it imposes a limit on the signal values
that will be sent to the display. If the source exceeds this brightness
level, a tone mapping filter will be inserted. For HLG, it has the
additional effect of parametrizing the inverse OOTF, in order to get
colorimetrically consistent results with the mastering display. For SDR, or
when using an ICC (profile (``--icc-profile``), setting this to a value
above 203 essentially causes the display to be treated as if it were an HDR
display in disguise. (See the note below)
In ``auto`` mode (the default), the chosen peak is an appropriate value
based on the TRC in use. For SDR curves, it uses 203. For HDR curves, it
uses 203 * the transfer function's nominal peak.
.. note::
When using an SDR transfer function, this is normally not needed, and
setting it may lead to very unexpected results. The one time it *is*
useful is if you want to calibrate a HDR display using traditional
transfer functions and calibration equipment. In such cases, you can
set your HDR display to a high brightness such as 800 cd/m^2, and then
calibrate it to a standard curve like gamma2.8. Setting this value to
800 would then instruct mpv to essentially treat it as an HDR display
with the given peak. This may be a good alternative in environments
where PQ or HLG input to the display is not possible, and makes it
possible to use HDR displays with mpv regardless of operating system
support for HDMI HDR metadata.
In such a configuration, we highly recommend setting ``--tone-mapping``
to ``mobius`` or even ``clip``.
``--target-lut=<file>``
Specifies a custom LUT file (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to the colors
before display on-screen. This LUT is fed values in normalized RGB, after
encoding into the target colorspace, so after the application of
``--target-trc``. (Only for ``--vo=gpu-next``)
``--tone-mapping=<value>``
Specifies the algorithm used for tone-mapping images onto the target
display. This is relevant for both HDR->SDR conversion as well as gamut
reduction (e.g. playing back BT.2020 content on a standard gamut display).
Valid values are:
auto
Choose the best curve according to internal heuristics. (Default)
clip
Hard-clip any out-of-range values. Use this when you care about
perfect color accuracy for in-range values at the cost of completely
distorting out-of-range values. Not generally recommended.
mobius
Generalization of Reinhard to a Möbius transform with linear section.
Smoothly maps out-of-range values while retaining contrast and colors
for in-range material as much as possible. Use this when you care about
color accuracy more than detail preservation. This is somewhere in
between ``clip`` and ``reinhard``, depending on the value of
``--tone-mapping-param``.
reinhard
Reinhard tone mapping algorithm. Very simple continuous curve.
Preserves overall image brightness but uses nonlinear contrast, which
results in flattening of details and degradation in color accuracy.
hable
Similar to ``reinhard`` but preserves both dark and bright details
better (slightly sigmoidal), at the cost of slightly darkening /
desaturating everything. Developed by John Hable for use in video
games. Use this when you care about detail preservation more than
color/brightness accuracy. This is roughly equivalent to
``--tone-mapping=reinhard --tone-mapping-param=0.24``. If possible,
you should also enable ``--hdr-compute-peak`` for the best results.
bt.2390
Perceptual tone mapping curve (EETF) specified in ITU-R Report BT.2390.
gamma
Fits a logarithmic transfer between the tone curves.
linear
Linearly stretches the entire reference gamut to (a linear multiple of)
the display.
spline
Perceptually linear single-pivot polynomial. (``--vo=gpu-next`` only)
bt.2446a
HDR<->SDR mapping specified in ITU-R Report BT.2446, method A. This is
the recommended curve for well-mastered content. (``--vo=gpu-next``
only)
``--tone-mapping-param=<value>``
Set tone mapping parameters. By default, this is set to the special string
``default``, which maps to an algorithm-specific default value. Ignored if
the tone mapping algorithm is not tunable. This affects the following tone
mapping algorithms:
clip
Specifies an extra linear coefficient to multiply into the signal
before clipping. Defaults to 1.0.
mobius
Specifies the transition point from linear to mobius transform. Every
value below this point is guaranteed to be mapped 1:1. The higher the
value, the more accurate the result will be, at the cost of losing
bright details. Defaults to 0.3, which due to the steep initial slope
still preserves in-range colors fairly accurately.
reinhard
Specifies the local contrast coefficient at the display peak. Defaults
to 0.5, which means that in-gamut values will be about half as bright
as when clipping.
gamma
Specifies the exponent of the function. Defaults to 1.8.
linear
Specifies the scale factor to use while stretching. Defaults to 1.0.
spline
Specifies the knee point (in PQ space). Defaults to 0.30.
``--inverse-tone-mapping``
If set, allows inverse tone mapping (expanding SDR to HDR). Not supported
by all tone mapping curves. Use with caution. (``--vo=gpu-next`` only)
``--tone-mapping-crosstalk=<0.0..0.30>``
If nonzero, apply an extra crosstalk matrix before tone mapping. Can help
improve the appearance of strongly saturated monochromatic highlights.
(Default: 0.04, only affects ``--vo=gpu-next``)
``--tone-mapping-max-boost=<1.0..10.0>``
Upper limit for how much the tone mapping algorithm is allowed to boost
the average brightness by over-exposing the image. The default value of 1.0
allows no additional brightness boost. A value of 2.0 would allow
over-exposing by a factor of 2, and so on. Raising this setting can help
reveal details that would otherwise be hidden in dark scenes, but raising
it too high will make dark scenes appear unnaturally bright. (``-vo=gpu``
only)
``--tone-mapping-mode``
Controls how the tone mapping function is applied to colors.
auto
Choose the best mode automatically. (Default)
rgb
Tone-map per-channel (RGB). Has a tendency to severely distort colors,
desaturate highlights, and is generally not very recommended. However,
this is the mode used in many displays and TVs (especially early ones),
and so sometimes it's needed to reproduce the artistic intent a film
was mastered with.
max
Tone-map on the brightest component in the video. Has a tendency to
lead to weirdly oversaturated colors, and loss of dark details.
hybrid
A hybrid approach that uses linear tone-mapping for midtones and
per-channel tone mapping for highlights.
luma
Luminance-based method from ITU-R BT.2446a, including fixed gamut
reductions to account for brightness-related perceptual nonuniformity.
(``--vo=gpu-next`` only)
``--gamut-mapping-mode``
Specifies the algorithm used for reducing the gamut of images for the
target display, after any tone mapping is done.
auto
Choose the best mode automatically. (Default)
clip
Hard-clip to the gamut (per-channel).
warn
Simply highlight out-of-gamut pixels.
desaturate
Chromatically desaturate out-of-gamut colors towards white.
darken
Linearly darken the entire image, then clip to the color volume. Unlike
``clip``, this does not destroy detail in saturated regions, but comes
at the cost of sometimes significantly lowering output brightness.
(``--vo=gpu-next`` only)
``--hdr-compute-peak=<auto|yes|no>``
Compute the HDR peak and frame average brightness per-frame instead of
relying on tagged metadata. These values are averaged over local regions as
well as over several frames to prevent the value from jittering around too
much. This option basically gives you dynamic, per-scene tone mapping.
Requires compute shaders, which is a fairly recent OpenGL feature, and will
probably also perform horribly on some drivers, so enable at your own risk.
The special value ``auto`` (default) will enable HDR peak computation
automatically if compute shaders and SSBOs are supported.
``--allow-delayed-peak-detect``
When using ``--hdr-compute-peak``, allow delaying the detected peak by a
frame when beneficial for performance. In particular, this is required to
avoid an unnecessary FBO indirection when no advanced rendering is required
otherwise. Has no effect if there already is an indirect pass, such as when
advanced scaling is enabled. Defaults to on. (Only affects
``--vo=gpu-next``, note that ``--vo=gpu`` always delays the peak.)
``--hdr-peak-decay-rate=<1.0..1000.0>``
The decay rate used for the HDR peak detection algorithm (default: 100.0).
This is only relevant when ``--hdr-compute-peak`` is enabled. Higher values
make the peak decay more slowly, leading to more stable values at the cost
of more "eye adaptation"-like effects (although this is mitigated somewhat
by ``--hdr-scene-threshold``). A value of 1.0 (the lowest possible) disables
all averaging, meaning each frame's value is used directly as measured,
but doing this is not recommended for "noisy" sources since it may lead
to excessive flicker. (In signal theory terms, this controls the time
constant "tau" of an IIR low pass filter)
``--hdr-scene-threshold-low=<0.0..100.0>``, ``--hdr-scene-threshold-high=<0.0..100.0>``
The lower and upper thresholds (in dB) for a brightness difference
to be considered a scene change (default: 5.5 low, 10.0 high). This is only
relevant when ``--hdr-compute-peak`` is enabled. Normally, small
fluctuations in the frame brightness are compensated for by the peak
averaging mechanism, but for large jumps in the brightness this can result
in the frame remaining too bright or too dark for up to several seconds,
depending on the value of ``--hdr-peak-decay-rate``. To counteract this,
when the brightness between the running average and the current frame
exceeds the low threshold, mpv will make the averaging filter more
aggressive, up to the limit of the high threshold (at which point the
filter becomes instant).
``--use-embedded-icc-profile``
Load the embedded ICC profile contained in media files such as PNG images.
(Default: yes). Note that this option only works when also using a display
ICC profile (``--icc-profile`` or ``--icc-profile-auto``), and also
requires LittleCMS 2 support.
``--icc-profile=<file>``
Load an ICC profile and use it to transform video RGB to screen output.
Needs LittleCMS 2 support compiled in. This option 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.
Applications using libmpv with the render API need to provide the ICC
profile via ``MPV_RENDER_PARAM_ICC_PROFILE``.
``--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-force-contrast=<no|0-1000000|inf>``
Override the target device's detected contrast ratio by a specific value.
This is detected automatically from the profile if possible, but for some
profiles it might be missing, causing the contrast to be assumed as
infinite. As a result, video may appear darker than intended. If this is
the case, setting this option might help. This only affects BT.1886
content. The default of ``no`` means to use the profile values. The special
value ``inf`` causes the BT.1886 curve to be treated as a pure power gamma
2.4 function.
``--lut=<file>``
Specifies a custom LUT (in Adobe .cube format) to apply to the colors
as part of color conversion. The exact interpretation depends on the value
of ``--lut-type``. (Only for ``--vo=gpu-next``)
``--lut-type=<value>``
Controls the interpretation of color values fed to and from the LUT
specified as ``--lut``. Valid values are:
auto
Chooses the interpretation of the LUT automatically from tagged
metadata, and otherwise falls back to ``native``. (Default)
native
Applied to raw image contents in its native RGB colorspace (non-linear
light), before conversion to the output color space.
normalized
Applied to the normalized RGB image contents, in linear light, before
conversion to the output color space.
conversion
Fully replaces the conversion from the image color space to the output
color space. If such a LUT is present, it has the highest priority, and
overrides any ICC profiles, as well as options related to tone mapping
and output colorimetry (``--target-prim``, ``--target-trc`` etc.).
``--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``, ``--gamma-factor`` and ``--glsl-shaders``. 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) or if
you make the background color transparent. 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 ``--fbo-format``
option to a non-default value, a format with alpha must be specified,
or this won't work. Whether this really works depends on the windowing
system and desktop environment.
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 the
``--sub-color`` option for how colors are defined.
``--gpu-tex-pad-x``, ``--gpu-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).
On macOS this is always deactivated because it only causes performance
problems and other regressions.
``--gpu-dumb-mode=<yes|no|auto>``
This mode is extremely restricted, and will disable most extended
features. That includes high quality scalers and custom shaders!
It is intended for hardware that does not support FBOs (including GLES,
which supports it insufficiently), or to get some more performance out of
bad or old hardware.
This mode is forced automatically if needed, and this option is mostly
useful for debugging. The default of ``auto`` will enable it automatically
if nothing uses features which require FBOs.
This option might be silently removed in the future.
``--gpu-shader-cache-dir=<dirname>``
Store and load compiled GLSL shaders in this directory. Normally, shader
compilation is very fast, so this is usually not needed. It mostly matters
for GPU APIs that require internally recompiling shaders to other languages,
for example anything based on ANGLE or Vulkan. Enabling this can improve
startup performance on these platforms.
NOTE: This is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused cache files may
stick around indefinitely.
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.
This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--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-timing-offset=<seconds>``
Control how long before video display target time the frame should be
rendered (default: 0.050). If a video frame should be displayed at a
certain time, the VO will start rendering the frame earlier, and then will
perform a blocking wait until the display time, and only then "swap" the
frame to display. The rendering cannot start before the previous frame is
displayed, so this value is implicitly limited by the video framerate. With
normal video frame rates, the default value will ensure that rendering is
always immediately started after the previous frame was displayed. On the
other hand, setting a too high value can reduce responsiveness with low
FPS value.
This option is interesting for client API users using the render API
because you can stop it from limiting your FPS
(see ``mpv_render_context_render()`` documentation).
This applies only to audio timing modes (e.g. ``--video-sync=audio``). In
other modes (``--video-sync=display-...``), video timing relies on vsync
blocking, and this option is not used.
``--video-sync=<audio|...>``
How the player synchronizes audio and video.
If you use this option, you usually want to set it to ``display-resample``
to enable a timing mode that tries to not skip or repeat frames when for
example playing 24fps video on a 24Hz screen.
The modes starting with ``display-`` try to output video frames 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).
Under some circumstances, the player automatically reverts to ``audio`` mode
for some time or permanently. This can happen on very low framerate video,
or if the framerate cannot be detected.
Also in display-sync modes it can happen that interruptions to video
playback (such as toggling fullscreen mode, or simply resizing the window)
will skip the video frames that should have been displayed, while ``audio``
mode will display them after the renderer has resumed (typically resulting
in a short A/V desync and the video "catching up").
Before mpv 0.30.0, there was a fallback to ``audio`` mode on severe A/V
desync. This was changed for the sake of not sporadically stopping. Now,
``display-desync`` does what it promises and may desync with audio by an
arbitrary amount, until it is manually fixed with a seek.
These modes also require a vsync blocked presentation mode. For OpenGL, this
translates to ``--opengl-swapinterval=1``. For Vulkan, it translates to
``--vulkan-swap-mode=fifo`` (or ``fifo-relaxed``).
The modes with ``desync`` in their names do not attempt to keep 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.
:audio: Time video frames to audio. This is the most robust
mode, because the player doesn't have to assume anything
about how the display behaves. The disadvantage is that
it can lead to occasional frame drops or repeats. If
audio is disabled, this uses the system clock. This is
the default mode.
:display-resample: Resample audio to match the video. This mode will also
try to adjust audio speed to compensate for other drift.
(This means it will play the audio at a different speed
every once in a while to reduce the A/V difference.)
:display-resample-vdrop: Resample audio to match the video. Drop video
frames to compensate for drift.
:display-resample-desync: Like the previous mode, but no A/V compensation.
:display-vdrop: Drop or repeat video frames to compensate desyncing
video. (Although it should have the same effects as
``audio``, the implementation is very different.)
:display-adrop: Drop or repeat audio data to compensate desyncing
video. This mode will cause severe audio artifacts if
the real monitor refresh rate is too different from
the reported or forced rate. Since mpv 0.33.0, this
acts on entire audio frames, instead of single samples.
:display-desync: Sync video to display, and let audio play on its own.
:desync: Sync video according to system clock, and let audio play
on its own.
``--video-sync-max-factor=<value>``
Maximum multiple for which to try to fit the video's FPS to the display's
FPS (default: 5).
For example, if this is set to 1, the video FPS is forced to an integer
multiple of the display FPS, as long as the speed change does not exceed
the value set by ``--video-sync-max-video-change``.
See ``--interpolation-threshold`` for how this option affects
interpolation.
This is mostly for testing, and the option may be randomly changed in the
future without notice.
``--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.
``--mf-fps=<value>``
Framerate used when decoding from multiple PNG or JPEG files with ``mf://``
(default: 1).
``--mf-type=<value>``
Input file type for ``mf://`` (available: jpeg, png, tga, sgi). By default,
this is guessed from the file extension.
``--stream-dump=<destination-filename>``
Instead of playing a file, read its byte stream and write it to the given
destination file. The destination is overwritten. Can be useful to test
network-related behavior.
``--stream-lavf-o=opt1=value1,opt2=value2,...``
Set AVOptions on streams opened with libavformat. Unknown or 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.)
This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--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.
Possible values of ``<prio>``:
idle|belownormal|normal|abovenormal|high|realtime
.. 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-files=<file-list>``
Load a file and add all of its tracks. This is useful to play different
files together (for example audio from one file, video from another), or
for advanced ``--lavfi-complex`` used (like playing two video files at
the same time).
Unlike ``--sub-files`` and ``--audio-files``, this includes all tracks, and
does not cause default stream selection over the "proper" file. This makes
it slightly less intrusive. (In mpv 0.28.0 and before, this was not quite
strictly enforced.)
This is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--external-file=<file>``
CLI/config file only alias for ``--external-files-append``. Each use of this
option will add a new external file.
``--cover-art-files=<file-list>``
Use an external file as cover art while playing audio. This makes it appear
on the track list and subject to automatic track selection. Options like
``--audio-display`` control whether such tracks are supposed to be selected.
(The difference to loading a file with ``--external-files`` is that video
tracks will be marked as being pictures, which affects the auto-selection
method. If the passed file is a video, only the first frame will be decoded
and displayed. Enabling the cover art track during playback may show a
random frame if the source file is a video. Normally you're not supposed to
pass videos to this option, so this paragraph describes the behavior
coincidentally resulting from implementation details.)
This is a path list option. See `List Options`_ for details.
``--cover-art-file=<file>``
CLI/config file only alias for ``--cover-art-files-append``. Each use of this
option will add a new external file.
``--cover-art-auto=<no|exact|fuzzy|all>``
Whether to load _external_ cover art automatically. Similar to
``--sub-auto`` and ``--audio-file-auto``. If a video already has tracks
(which are not marked as cover art), external cover art will not be loaded.
:no: Don't automatically load cover art.
:exact: Load the media filename with an image file extension (default).
:fuzzy: Load all cover art containing the media filename.
:all: Load all images in the current directory.
See ``--cover-art-files`` for details about what constitutes cover art.
See ``--audio-display`` how to control display of cover art (this can be
used to disable cover art that is part of the file).
``--cover-art-whitelist=<no|yes>``
Whether to load filenames in an internal whitelist, such as ``cover.jpg``,
as cover art. If ``cover-art-auto`` is set to ``no``, the whitelisted
filenames are never loaded even if this option is set to ``yes``.
Default: ``yes``.
``--autoload-files=<yes|no>``
Automatically load/select external files (default: yes).
If set to ``no``, then do not automatically load external files as specified
by ``--sub-auto``, ``--audio-file-auto`` and ``--cover-art-auto``. If
external files are forcibly added (like with ``--sub-files``), they will
not be auto-selected.
This does not affect playlist expansion, redirection, or other loading of
referenced files like with ordered chapters.
``--record-file=<file>``
Deprecated, use ``--stream-record``, or the ``dump-cache`` command.
Record the current stream to the given target file. The target file will
always be overwritten without asking.
This was deprecated because it isn't very nice to use. For one, seeking
while this is enabled will be directly reflected in the output, which was
not useful and annoying.
``--stream-record=<file>``
Write received/read data from the demuxer to the given output file. The
output file will always be overwritten without asking. The output format
is determined by the extension of the output file.
Switching streams or seeking during recording might result in recording
being stopped and/or broken files. Use with care.
Seeking outside of the demuxer cache will result in "skips" in the output
file, but seeking within the demuxer cache should not affect recording. One
exception is when you seek back far enough to exceed the forward buffering
size, in which case the cache stops actively reading. This will return in
dropped data if it's a live stream.
If this is set at runtime, the old file is closed, and the new file is
opened. Note that this will write only data that is appended at the end of
the cache, and the already cached data cannot be written. You can try the
``dump-cache`` command as an alternative.
External files (``--audio-file`` etc.) are ignored by this, it works on the
"main" file only. Using this with files using ordered chapters or EDL files
will also not work correctly in general.
There are some glitches with this because it uses FFmpeg's libavformat for
writing the output file. For example, it's typical that it will only work if
the output format is the same as the input format. This is the case even if
it works with the ``ffmpeg`` tool. One reason for this is that ``ffmpeg``
and its libraries contain certain hacks and workarounds for these issues,
that are unavailable to outside users.
This replaces ``--record-file``. It is similar to the ancient/removed
``--stream-capture``/``-capture`` options, and provides better behavior in
most cases (i.e. actually works).
``--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.
It's not possible to change the tracks connected to the filter at runtime,
unless you explicitly change the ``lavfi-complex`` property and set new
track assignments. When the graph is changed, the track selection is changed
according to the used labels as well.
Other tracks, as long as they're not connected to the filter, and the
corresponding output is not connected to the filter, can still be freely
changed with the normal methods.
Note that the normal filter chains (``--af``, ``--vf``) are applied between
the complex graphs (e.g. ``ao`` label) and the actual output.
.. admonition:: Examples
- ``--lavfi-complex='[aid1] [aid2] amix [ao]'``
Play audio track 1 and 2 at the same time.
- ``--lavfi-complex='[vid1] [vid2] vstack [vo]'``
Stack video track 1 and 2 and play them at the same time. Note that
both tracks need to have the same width, or filter initialization
will fail (you can add ``scale`` filters before the ``vstack`` filter
to fix the size).
To load a video track from another file, you can use
``--external-file=other.mkv``.
- ``--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]'``
A libavfilter source-only filter (Conways' Life Game).
See the FFmpeg libavfilter documentation for details on the available
filters.
``--metadata-codepage=<codepage>``
Codepage for various input metadata (default: ``utf-8``). This affects how
file tags, chapter titles, etc. are interpreted. You can for example set
this to ``auto`` to enable autodetection of the codepage. (This is not the
default because non-UTF-8 codepages are an obscure fringe use-case.)
See ``--sub-codepage`` option on how codepages are specified and further
details regarding autodetection and codepage conversion. (The underlying
code is the same.)
Conversion is not applied to metadata that is updated at runtime.
Debugging
---------
``--unittest=<name>``
Run an internal unit test. There are multiple, and the name specifies which.
The special value ``all-simple`` runs all tests which do not need further
setup (other arguments and such). Some tests may need additional arguments
to do anything useful.
On success, the player binary exits with exit status 0, otherwise it returns
with an undefined non-0 exit status (it may crash or abort itself on test
failures).
This is only enabled if built with ``--enable-tests``, and should normally
be enabled and used by developers only.
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