Linux MPV tips and tricks for playing files on your Linux box.

The MPV media player is a great application for playing movies on a Linux machine.

To change the aspect ratio of a file, while it is playing, press Shift-A. This is the default keybinding hardcoded in the binary.

You may watch a Youtube video using MPV and select the vertical resolution of the video using this one-liner.

┌──(john㉿DESKTOP-PF01IEE)-[/mnt/c/Users/Intel i5/Videos]
└─$ mpv --ytdl-format="bestvideo[ext=mp4][height<=?360]+bestaudio[ext=m4a]" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBfHw0WD1_c

This is a very useful MPV Youtube trick.

Download an entire Youtube playlist as MP3 files using this long command example.

┌──(john㉿DESKTOP-PF01IEE)-[/mnt/c/Users/Intel i5/Music/Youtube2]
└─$ youtube-dl -x --audio-format "mp3" --embed-thumbnail --yes-playlist --output "%(title)s.%(ext)s" -i PLyPYOzurbMk7hXJEJPlMeRySoPyC-63-0

This embeds the Youtube thumbnail as the album art as well. Plus sets the ID3 tags. A very useful example indeed.

The MPV player can be used to rip part of a video to a WebM file for sharing online.

http://securitronlinux.com/debian-testing/how-to-encode-a-section-of-a-movie-to-a-webm-file-with-mpv/.

Play movies from your collection randomly.

http://securitronlinux.com/debian-testing/how-to-shuffle-play-a-directory-full-of-movies-with-mpv-on-linux/.

Play Youtube videos with the MPV media player.

http://securitronlinux.com/bejiitaswrath/watch-youtube-videos-with-the-mpv-movie-player-this-is-a-very-simple-process/.

This is the default /etc/input.conf https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mpv-player/mpv/master/etc/input.conf.

DVB-T broadcasts may also be watched with MPV. Place channels.conf file in the ~/.config/mpv/channels.conf file and then it will work.

jason@Yog-Sothoth » ~ » $ mpv dvb://"SBS ONE HD(SBS)"
Playing: dvb://SBS ONE HD(SBS)
[dvbin] dvb_tune DVB-T Freq: 613500000
 (+) Video --vid=1 (h264 1920x1080 25.000fps)
 (+) Audio --aid=1 (mp2 2ch 48000Hz)
File tags:
 Title: SBS ONE HD(SBS)
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz stereo 2ch s16
[ffmpeg/video] h264: co located POCs unavailable
[ffmpeg/video] h264: co located POCs unavailable
[ffmpeg/video] h264: co located POCs unavailable
[ffmpeg/video] h264: mmco: unref short failure
[ffmpeg/video] h264: mmco: unref short failure
VO: [opengl] 1920x1080 yuv420p
AV: 00:00:06 / 00:00:00 A-V:  0.000 Cache:  4s+0KB

That is how easy MPV is to use.

A very useful addon script to convert or crop videos from within MPV.

https://gist.github.com/Zehkul/25ea7ae77b30af959be0.

Play a video with MPV audio-only.

jason@Yog-Sothoth » Videos » $ mpv --vid no stalkersoc.avi 
Playing: stalkersoc.avi
     Video --vid=1 (mjpeg 1920x1080 30.000fps)
 (+) Audio --aid=1 (pcm_s16le 2ch 48000Hz)
AO: [pulse] 48000Hz stereo 2ch s16
A: 00:00:21 / 00:01:19 (27%)

These tips should be very useful to a new or experienced mplayer user who is transitioning to mpv as their main media player.