MPV Builder with VVC

This is a collection of scripts to build mpv, ffmpeg, libass, and various dependencies more easily.

Overview

As VVC video has begun trickling into the Internet, it is a conundrum that H.266 is nearly impossible to play back alongside its common audio pairing, xHE-AAC/USAC. While FFmpeg recently included a native ffvvc decoder, it is not nearly as performant as Fraunhofer's vvdec. It may be someday, but not right now. FDK-AAC is also necessary to play back xHE-AAC audio, and it is under a non-free license which means FFmpeg binaries compiled with xHE-AAC support cannot be redistributed.

To address these issues and more, this modified version of the mpv-build scripting suite adds FFmpeg compilation support for the following libraries:

• FDK-AAC
• vvdec
• dav1d
• libjxl

It is important to note that non-free software builds are not to be redistributed. I do not endorse illicit redistribution of non-free software compiled with this tool.

Generic Instructions

Make sure git is installed. Also check that the dependencies listed in the next section are installed.

Clone this repo:

git clone https://github.com/gianni-rosato/mpv-build-vvc
cd mpv-build

To get the sources and build them, run the command:

./rebuild -j4

The -j4 asks it to use 4 parallel processes.

Note that this command implicitly does an update followed by a full cleanup (even if nothing changes), which is supposed to reduce possible problems with incremental builds. You can do incremental builds by explicitly calling ./build. This can be faster on minor updates, but breaks sometimes, e.g. the FFmpeg build system can sometimes be a bit glitchy.

Install mpv with:

sudo ./install

It is worth noting that the resulting mpv binary doesn't need to be installed. The binary ./mpv/build/mpv can be used as-is. You can copy it to your /usr/local/bin manually, and even rename it if you'd like. Note that libass and ffmpeg will be statically linked with mpv when using the provided scripts, and no ffmpeg or libass libraries are/need to be installed. There are no required config or data files either.

NOTE: If you are on debian, you may need to install meson from backports in order to get a non-ancient version. Alternatively, you can install it from PyPi.

Dependencies

Essential dependencies (incomplete list):

• gcc or clang, yasm, git, meson, ninja
• cmake
• webp, libavif
• autoconf/autotools (for libass)
• X development headers (xlib, X extensions, vdpau, GL, Xv, ...)
• Audio output development headers (libasound, pulseaudio)
• fribidi, freetype, fontconfig development headers (for libass)
• libjpeg
• OpenSSL or GnuTLS development headers if you want to open https links (this is also needed to make youtube-dl interaction work)
• youtube-dl (at runtime) if you want to play Youtube videos directly (a builtin mpv script will call it)
• libx264/libmp3lame/libfdk-aac if you want to use encoding (you have to add these options explicitly to the ffmpeg options, as ffmpeg won't autodetect these libraries; see next section)

Note: most dependencies are optional and autodetected. If they're missing, these features will be disabled silently. This includes some dependencies which could be considered essential.

For addition information, visit the original mpv-build repository.