Video Backends

Video Backends

For video wallpapers the plugin offers two engines.

Backend	When to use	Trade-offs
QtMultimedia (default)	Works out of the box; uses GStreamer under the hood.	GStreamer codec packages must be installed — gst-libav (Arch) or gstreamer1-libav (Fedora) covers most formats.
MPV	Best playback fidelity, hardware decoding.	Requires the MPV-enabled build of the plugin (the source builds in Installation already include it on both Arch and Fedora).

Switch backends in the plugin's General/Settings tab.

Troubleshooting video

• Choppy playback → try the other backend.
• Black frame, no video → try the other backend; check codec packages installed.
• No sound → check the plugin's mute toggle; for QtMultimedia, install gst-plugins-good, gst-plugins-bad, gst-plugins-ugly.
• Hardware decoding not engaging on MPV → verify with vainfo (Intel/AMD) or vdpauinfo (NVIDIA).

Why two backends?

QtMultimedia is universally available — every Qt6 install has it — so it makes a safe default. MPV is faster, supports more containers, and integrates with the scene renderer's video-texture pipeline (used by some Scene wallpapers that embed a video as a layer; see Scene Renderer → SceneScript IVideoTexture).