OPTIONS

Track Selection

--alang=<languagecode[,languagecode,...]>

Specify a priority list of audio languages to use, as IETF language tags. Equivalent ISO 639-1 two-letter and ISO 639-2 three-letter codes are treated the same. The first tag in the list whose language matches a track in the file will be used. A track that matches more subtags will be preferred over one that matches fewer, with preference given to earlier subtags over later ones. See also --aid.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

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,...]>

Equivalent to --alang, for subtitle tracks.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

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.
mpv --slang=pt-BR example.mkv plays a Matroska file with Brazilian Portuguese subtitles if available, and otherwise any Portuguese 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 full/non-forced one even if the selected audio stream matches your preferred subtitle language (default: yes). If this option is set to no, a non-forced subtitle track that matches the audio language will never be autoselected by mpv regardless of the value of --slang or --subs-fallback.

--subs-match-os-language=<yes|no>

When autoselecting a subtitle track, select the track that matches the language of your OS if the audio stream is in a different language if suitable (default track or a forced track under the right conditions). Note that if -slang is set, this will be completely ignored (default: yes).

--subs-fallback=<yes|default|no>

When autoselecting a subtitle track, if no tracks match your preferred languages, select a full track even if it doesn't match your preferred subtitle language (default: default). Setting this to default means that only streams flagged as default will be selected.

--subs-fallback-forced=<yes|no|always>

When autoselecting a subtitle track, the default value of yes will prefer using a forced subtitle track if the subtitle language matches the audio language and matches your list of preferred languages. The special value always will only select forced subtitle tracks and never fallback on a non-forced track. Conversely, no will never select a forced subtitle track.

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).

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 versions 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-direction=<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 functions 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-direction 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 or any user files. This prevents loading of both the user-level and system-wide mpv.conf and input.conf files. Other user files are blocked as well, such as resume playback files and cache files. This option only takes effect when used as a command line flag.

Note

Files explicitly requested by command line options, like --include or --use-filedir-conf, will still be loaded.

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-dir=<path>

The directory in which to store the "watch later" temporary files.

--watch-later-directory is an alias for --watch-later-dir.

If this option is unset, the files will be stored in a subdirectory named "watch_later" underneath the local state directory (usually ~/.local/state/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. Note that the playback position is saved via the start option.

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.

See --help=watch-later-options for the list of the properties that are restored by default.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

Examples

--watch-later-options-remove=sid The subtitle track selection will not be restored.
--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=start No option will be saved to watch later files, except the playback 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, 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. Using this option is known to break other options such as interpolation, so it is not recommended to enable this.

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.

--display-fps-override=<fps>

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

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

--hwdec=<api1,api2,...|no|auto|auto-safe|auto-copy>

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-safe 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.

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.

This option accepts a comma delimited list of api types, along with certain special values:

no:	always use software decoding (default)
auto-safe:	enable any whitelisted hw decoder (see below)
auto:	forcibly enable any hw decoder found (see below)
yes:	exactly the same as `auto-safe`
auto-copy:	enable best hw decoder with copy-back (see below)

Note

Special values can be mixed with api names. eg: vaapi,auto will try and use the vaapi hwdec, and if that fails, will run through the normal auto logic.

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=dmabuf-wayland` (Linux only)
vaapi-copy:	copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs or Windows)
nvdec:	requires `--vo=gpu` (Any platform CUDA is available)
nvdec-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Any platform CUDA is available)
drm:	requires `--vo=gpu` (Linux only)
drm-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Linux only)
vulkan:	requires `--vo=gpu-next` (Any platform with Vulkan Video Decoding)
vulkan-copy:	copies video back to system RAM (Any platform with Vulkan Video Decoding)

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 `--gpu-context=x11`, or `--vo=vdpau` (Linux only)
vdpau-copy:	copies video back into system RAM (Linux with some GPUs only)
mediacodec:	requires `--vo=gpu --gpu-context=android` or `--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, cuda and vulkan 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.

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.

mediacodec is not safe. It forces RGB conversion (not with -copy) and how well it handles non-standard colorspaces is not known. In the rare cases where 10-bit is supported the bit depth of the output will be reduced to 8.

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).

--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|adapter name>

Choose the DRM device for vaapi-copy. This should be the path to a DRM device file. (Default: /dev/dri/renderD128)

On Windows this takes adapter name as an input. Will pick the default adapter if unset. Alternatives are listed when the name "help" is given.

--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.

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 video fullscreen on a 1920x1080 screen with --video-pan-x=-0.1 would move the video 192 pixels to the left and --video-pan-y=-0.1 would move the video 108 pixels up.

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-crop=<[W[xH]][+x+y]>, --video-crop=<x:y>

Crop the video by starting at the x, y offset for w, h pixels. The crop is applied to the source video rectangle (before anamorphic stretch) by the VO. A crop rectangle that is not within the video rectangle will be ignored. This works with hwdec, unlike the equivalent 'lavfi-crop'. When offset is omitted, the central area will be cropped. Setting the crop to empty one --video-crop=0x0+0+0 overrides container crop and disables cropping. Setting the crop to --video-crop="" disables manual cropping and restores the container crop if it's specified.

--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 --container-fps-override 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.

--container-fps-override=<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.

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=<auto|yes|no>

Enable direct rendering (default: auto). 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.

The auto option will try to guess whether DR can improve performance on your particular hardware. Currently this enables it on AMD or NVIDIA if using OpenGL or unconditionally if using Vulkan.

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-1/2 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.

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, HEVC only)

Skips the loop filter (AKA deblocking) during 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. Codecs other than H.264 or HEVC may have partial support for this option (often only all and none).

<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-1/2/4 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.

--vd-apply-cropping

Certain video codecs support cropping, meaning that only a sub-rectangle of the decoded frame is intended for display. This option controls how cropping is handled by libavcodec. Cropping during decoding has certain limitations with regards to alignment and hardware decoding. If this option is enabled, decoder will apply the crop, else VO will handle it. Enabled by default.

--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. You can insert filters besides scaletempo2 and modify their params using Conditional auto profiles:

[af_insert]
profile-cond=speed ~= 1
profile-restore=copy
af-add=scaletempo2=search-interval=50 # Insert filter and params here.

Filters set this way replace the scaletempo2 default, instead of overlapping with it. If there are multiple audio filters inserted that can do pitch correction, then only the last one in the filter chain is used. For details on the specifics of each available filter, see the 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.

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, coreaudio and pipewire. Other audio outputs silently ignore this option. 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, 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.

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.

Examples

--ad=mp3float: Prefer the FFmpeg/Libav mp3float decoder over all other MP3 decoders.
--ad=help: List all available decoders.

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>

Allow the volume gain to clip (default: no). If this option is not enabled, mpv automatically will prevent clipping by lowering the gain.

--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.

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.

--sub-demuxer=<[+]name>

Force subtitle demuxer type for --sub-file. Give the demuxer name as printed by --sub-demuxer=help.

--sub-delay=<sec>

Delays primary subtitles by <sec> seconds. Can be negative.

--secondary-sub-delay=<sec>

Delays secondary 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 by default, 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.

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.

--secondary-sub-pos=<0-150>

Specify the position of secondary subtitles on the screen. This is similar to --sub-pos but for secondary subtitles.

--sub-speed=<0.1-10.0>

Multiply the subtitle event timestamps with the given value. Can be used to fix the playback speed for frame-based subtitle formats. Affects text subtitles only.

Example

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

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

Override some style or script info parameters.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

Examples

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

Note

Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.

--sub-ass-hinting=<none|light|normal|native>

Set font hinting type. <type> can be:

none:	no hinting (default)
light:	FreeType autohinter, light mode
normal:	FreeType autohinter, normal mode
native:	font native hinter

Warning

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

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

Set line spacing value for SSA/ASS renderer.

--sub-ass-shaper=<simple|complex>

Set the text layout engine used by libass.

simple:	uses Fribidi only, fast, doesn't render some languages correctly
complex:	uses HarfBuzz, slower, wider language support

complex is the default. If libass hasn't been compiled against HarfBuzz, libass silently reverts to simple.

--sub-ass-styles=<filename>

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

Note

Using this option may lead to incorrect subtitle rendering.

--sub-ass-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.

--secondary-sub-ass-override=<yes|no|force|scale|strip>

Control whether user secondary substyle overrides should be applied. This works exactly like --sub-ass-override.

Default: strip.

--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.

--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-auto-exts=ext1,ext2,...

Subtitle extentions to try and match when using --sub-auto. Note that modifying this list will also affect what mpv recognizes as subtitles when using drag and drop.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

--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

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.

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-stretch-durations=<yes|no>

Stretch a subtitle duration so it ends when the next one starts. Should help with subtitles which erroneously have zero durations.

Note

Only applies to text subtitles.

--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-events-only=<yes|no>

Enabling this displays only forced events within subtitle streams. Only some bitmap subtitle formats (such as DVD or PGS) are capable of having a mixture of forced and unforced events within the stream. Enabling this on text subtitles will cause no subtitles to be displayed (default: no).

--sub-fps=<rate>

Specify the framerate of the subtitle file (default: video fps). Affects text subtitles only.

Note

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

Window

--title=<string>

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

Properties are expanded. (See `Property Expansion`_.)

Warning

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

--screen=<default|0-32>

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

Note (X11)

This option does not work properly with all window managers. In these cases, you can try to use --geometry to position the window explicitly. It's also possible that the window manager provides native features to control which screens application windows should use.

Note (Wayland)

This option does not actually work on wayland since window placement is not allowed. However setting this option does influence mpv's initial guess at finding an output which may be useful for options like --geometry or --autofit which depend on the monitor resolution.

Disc Devices

--cdda-device=<path>

Specify the CD device for CDDA playback (default: /dev/cdrom).

--dvd-device=<path>

Specify the DVD device or .iso filename (default: /dev/dvd). You can also specify a directory that contains files previously copied directly from a DVD (with e.g. vobcopy).

Example

mpv dvd:// --dvd-device=/path/to/dvd/

--bluray-device=<path>

(Blu-ray only) Specify the Blu-ray disc location. Must be a directory with Blu-ray structure.

Example

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

--cdda-...

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

--cdda-speed=<value>

Set CD spin speed.

--cdda-paranoia=<0-2>

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

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

--cdda-sector-size=<value>

Set atomic read size.

--cdda-overlap=<value>

Force minimum overlap search during verification to <value> sectors.

--cdda-toc-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.

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>

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.

--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.

Example

Play a raw YUV sample:

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

--demuxer-rawvideo-format=<value>

Color space (fourcc) in hex or string for --demuxer=rawvideo (default: YV12).

--demuxer-rawvideo-mp-format=<value>

Color space by internal video format for --demuxer=rawvideo. Use --demuxer-rawvideo-mp-format=help for a list of possible formats.

--demuxer-rawvideo-codec=<value>

Set the video codec instead of selecting the rawvideo codec when using --demuxer=rawvideo. This uses the same values as codec names in --vd (but it does not accept decoder names).

--demuxer-rawvideo-size=<value>

Frame size in bytes when using --demuxer=rawvideo.

--demuxer-max-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-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.)

--demuxer-hysteresis-secs=<seconds>

Once the demuxer limit is reached (--demuxer-max-bytes, --demuxer-readahead-secs or --cache-secs), this value can be used to specify a hysteresis before the demuxer will buffer ahead again. This specifies the maximum number of seconds from the current playback position that needs to be remaining in the cache before the demuxer will continue buffering ahead.

For example, with a value of 10 seconds specified, the demuxer will buffer ahead up to the demuxer limit and won't start buffering ahead again until there is only 10 seconds of content left in the cache.

This can provide significant power savings and reduce load by making the demuxer only buffer ahead in chunks at a time rather than buffering ahead nonstop to keep the cache filled.

If you want to save power and reduce load, configure this to a small number that's much lower than --cache-secs or --demuxer-readahead-secs. If it takes a long time to buffer anything at all for a given stream (like when reading from a very slow disk is involved), then the hysteresis value should be larger to compensate.

The default value is 0 seconds, which disables the caching hysteresis. A value of 10 seconds probably works well for most usecases.

--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.

--directory-mode=<auto|lazy|recursive|ignore>

When opening a directory, open subdirectories lazily, recursively or not at all. The default is auto, which behaves like recursive with --shuffle, and like lazy otherwise.

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.

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-cursor-passthrough, --no-input-cursor-passthrough

Tell the backend windowing system to allow pointer events to passthrough the mpv window. This allows windows under mpv to instead receive pointer events as if the mpv window was never there.

--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

(macOS 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.

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.

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-bar-border-size=<size>

Size of the border of the OSD bar in scaled pixels (see --sub-font-size for details).

Default: 1.2.

--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.

--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.

Note

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

--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.

--osd-fonts-dir=<path>

See --sub-fonts-dir for details. Defaults to ~~/fonts.

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
avif:	AVIF

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

Tag screenshots with the appropriate colorspace (default: yes).

Note that not all formats support this. When it is unsupported, or when this option is disabled, screenshots will be converted to sRGB before being written.

--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-dir=<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.

--screenshot-directory is an alias for --screenshot-dir.

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 4.

--screenshot-avif-encoder=<encoder>

Specify the AV1 encoder to be used by libavcodec for encoding avif screenshots.

Default: libaom-av1

--screenshot-avif-pixfmt=<format>

Specify the pixel format for the libavcodec encoder. Defaults to empty, which lets mpv pick one close to the source format.

--screenshot-avif-opts=key1=value1,key2=value2,...

Specifies libavcodec options for selected encoder. For more information, consult the FFmpeg documentation.

Default: usage=allintra,crf=0,cpu-used=8

Note: the default is only guaranteed to work with the libaom-av1 encoder. Above options may not be valid and or optimal for other encoders.

This is a key/value list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

Example

"--screenshot-avif-opts=crf=23,aq-mode=complexity": sets the crf to 23 and quantization (aq-mode) to complexity based.

--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 (only vo_gpu or vo_gpu_next 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.

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. If window mode is used, the image will also be scaled in software which may not accurately reflect the actual visible result.

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 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

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-remaining-playtime, --no-term-remaining-playtime

When printing out the time on the terminal, show the remaining time adjusted by playback speed. Default: yes

--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.

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.

--demuxer-cache-dir=<path>

Directory where to create temporary files. Cache is stored in the system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is unset.

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.

--demuxer-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:

mp4 files. libavformat may trigger many small seeks in both directions, depending on how the file was muxed.

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.

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,isdbt} (based on your card type) or channels.conf as a last resort. Please note that using specific file name with card type is recommended, since the legacy channel format is not fully standardized so autodetection of the delivery system may fail otherwise. 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 when using the fast profile.

lanczos

Lanczos scaling. Provides good balance between quality and performance. This is the default for scale. 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. This is the default when using the high-quality profile.

ewa_lanczos4sharpest

Very sharp scaler, but also slightly slower than ewa_lanczossharp. Prone to ringing, so it's recommended to combine this with an anti-ringing shader. On --vo=gpu-next, setting this filter enables built-in anti-ringing, so no extra action needs to be taken.

mitchell

Mitchell-Netravali. The B and C parameters can be set with --scale-param1 and --scale-param2.

hermite

Hermite spline. Similar to bicubic but with B set to 0.0. This filter has the special property of having a support of radius 1.0, making it very fast in comparison, but prone to blocking. This is the default for --dscale.

catmull_rom

Catmull-Rom. A Cubic filter in the same vein as mitchell, where the B and C parameters are 0.0 and 0.5 respectively. This filter is sharper than mitchell, but it results in more ringing.

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 can also be used for frame mixing, where it is commonly 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. If this option is unset, the filter implied by --scale will be applied.

--dscale=<filter>

Like --scale, but apply these filters on downscaling instead.

--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 oversample.

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:

bicubic: Spline parameters (B and C). Defaults to B=1 and C=0.
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>, --cscale-blur=<value>, --dscale-blur=<value>, --tscale-blur=<value>

Kernel 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-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-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. Enabled by default.

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 with --vo=gpu.

--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. Enabled by default.

--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. Enabled by default. 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: auto.

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 --display-fps-override).

--vulkan-device=<device name|UUID>

The name or UUID of the Vulkan device to use for rendering and presentation. Use --vulkan-device=help to see the list of available devices and their names and UUIDs. 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-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-configure-bounds=<auto|yes|no>

Controls whether or not mpv opts into the configure bounds event if sent by the compositor (default: auto). This restricts the initial size of the mpv window to a certain maximum size intended by the compositor. In most cases, this simply just prevents the mpv window from being larger than the size of the monitor when it first renders. With the default value of auto, configure-bounds will silently be ignored if any autofit or geometry type option is also set.

--wayland-content-type=<auto|none|photo|video|game>

If supported by the compositor, mpv will send a hint using the content-type protocol telling the compositor what type of content is being displayed. auto (default) will automatically switch between telling the compositor the content is a photo, video or possibly none depending on internal heuristics.

--wayland-disable-vsync=<yes|no>

Disable mpv's internal vsync for Wayland-based video output (default: no). This is mainly useful for benchmarking wayland VOs when combined with video-sync=display-desync, --no-audio, and --untimed=yes.

--wayland-edge-pixels-pointer=<value>

Defines the size of an edge border (default: 16) 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 only relevant for --gpu-api=d3d11 with --vo=gpu. The possible choices are currently:

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 usable 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).

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.

--glsl-shader-opts=param1=value1,param2=value2,...

Specifies the options to use for tunable shader parameters. You can target specific named shaders by prefixing the shader name with a /, e.g. shader/param=value. Without a prefix, parameters affect all shaders. The shader name is the base part of the shader filename, without the extension. (--vo=gpu-next only)

--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=<0..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 48)

--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 32)

--corner-rounding=<0..1>

If set to a value above 0.0, the output will be rendered with rounded corners, as if an alpha transparency mask had been applied. The value indicates the relative fraction of the side length to round - a value of 1.0 rounds the corners as much as possible. (--vo=gpu-next only)

--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>

(Windows only) 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.

--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-flip option 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 and cocoa-cb 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 and cocoa-cb 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 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 only

<material> can be one of the following:

titlebar:	The standard macOS title 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)

--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.

--macos-render-timer=<timer>

Sets the mode (default: callback) for syncing the rendering of frames to the display's vertical refresh rate. macOS and Vulkan (macvk) only.

<timer> can be one of the following:

callback:	Syncs to the CVDisplayLink callback
precise:	Syncs to the time of the next vertical display refresh reported by the CVDisplayLink callback provided information
system:	No manual syncing, depend on the layer mechanic and the next drawable

--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)
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 (deprecated/legacy, EGL is preferred these days)
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.
macvk: Vulkan on macOS with a metal surface through a translation layer (experimental)

--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.

This option is deprecated and may be removed in the future.

--gamma-auto

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

This option is deprecated and may be removed in the future.

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-contrast=<auto|10-1000000|inf>

Specifies the measured contrast of the output display. --target-contrast in conjunction with --target-peak value is used to calculate display black point. Used in black point compensation during HDR tone-mapping. auto is the default and assumes 1000:1 contrast as a typical SDR display would have or an infinite contrast when HDR --target-trc is used. inf contrast specifies display with perfect black level, in practice OLED. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)

--target-gamut=<value>

Constrains the gamut of the display. You can use this option to output e.g. DCIP3-in-BT.2020. Set --target-prim to the primaries of the containing colorspace (into which values will be encoded), and --target-gamut to the gamut you want to limit colors to. Takes the same values as --target-prim. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)

--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)
st2094-40: Dynamic HDR10+ tone-mapping method specified in SMPTE ST2094-40 Annex B. In the absence of metadata, falls back to a fixed spline matched to the input/output average brightness characteristics. (--vo=gpu-next only)
st2094-10: Dynamic tone-mapping method specified in SMPTE ST2094-10 Annex B.2. Conceptually simpler than ST2094-40, and generally produces worse results.

--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.
bt.2390: Specifies the offset for the knee point. Defaults to 1.0, which is higher than the value from the original ITU-R specification (0.5). (--vo=gpu-next only)
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.
st2094-10: Specifies the contrast (slope) at the knee point. Defaults to 1.0.

--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-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-visualize

Display a (PQ-PQ) graph of the active tone-mapping LUT. Intended only for debugging purposes. The X axis shows PQ input values, the Y axis shows PQ output values. The tone-mapping curve is shown in green/yellow. Yellow means the brightness has been boosted from the source, dark blue regions show where the brightness has been reduced. The extra colored regions and lines indicate various monitor limits, as well a reference diagonal (neutral tone-mapping) and source scene average brightness information (if available). (--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). Very low quality, but free.
perceptual: Performs a perceptually balanced gamut mapping using a soft knee function to roll-off clipped regions, and a hue shifting function to preserve saturation. (--vo=gpu-next only)
relative: Performs relative colorimetric clipping, while maintaining an exponential relationship between brightness and chromaticity. (--vo=gpu-next only)
saturation: Performs simple RGB->RGB saturation mapping. The input R/G/B channels are mapped directly onto the output R/G/B channels. Will never clip, but will distort all hues and/or result in a faded look. (--vo=gpu-next only)
absolute: Performs absolute colorimetric clipping. Like relative, but does not adapt the white point. (--vo=gpu-next only)
desaturate: Performs constant-luminance colorimetric clipping, desaturing colors towards white until they're in-range.
darken: Uniformly darkens the input slightly to prevent clipping on blown-out highlights, then clamps colorimetrically to the input gamut boundary, biased slightly to preserve chromaticity over luminance. (--vo=gpu-next only)
warn: Performs no gamut mapping, but simply highlights out-of-gamut pixels.
linear: Linearly/uniformly desaturates the image in order to bring the entire image into the target gamut. (--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 no. (Only affects --vo=gpu-next, note that --vo=gpu always delays the peak.)

--hdr-peak-percentile=<0.0..100.0>

Which percentile of the input image brightness histogram to consider as the true peak of the scene. If this is set to 100 (default), the brightest pixel is measured. Otherwise, the top of the frequency distribution is progressively cut off. Setting this too low will cause clipping of very bright details, but can improve the dynamic brightness range of scenes with very bright isolated highlights. Values other than 100 come with a small performance penalty. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)

--hdr-peak-decay-rate=<0.0..1000.0>

The decay rate used for the HDR peak detection algorithm (default: 20.0). 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 0.0 (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: 1.0 low, 3.0 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).

--hdr-contrast-recovery=<0.0..2.0>, --hdr-contrast-smoothness=<1.0..100.0>

Enables the HDR contrast recovery algorithm, which is to designed to enhance contrast of HDR video after tone mapping. The strength (default: 0.0) indicates the degree of contrast recovery, with 0.0 being completely disabled and 1.0 being 100% strength. Values higher than 1.0 are allowed, but may result in excessive sharpening. The smoothness (default: 3.5) indicates the degree to which the HDR source is low-passed in order to obtain contrast information - a value of 2.0 corresponds to 2x downscaling. Users on low DPI displays (<= 100) may want to lower this value, while users on very high DPI displays ("retina") may want to increase it. (Only for vo=gpu-next)

--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

Store and load 3DLUTs created from the ICC profile on disk in the cache directory (Default: yes). 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: On --vo=gpu, this is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused cache files may stick around indefinitely.

--icc-cache-dir

The directory where icc cache is stored. Cache is stored in the system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is unset.

--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=<auto|RxGxB>

Size of the 3D LUT generated from the ICC profile in each dimension. The default of auto means to pick the size automatically based on the profile characteristics. Sizes may range from 2 to 512.

NOTE: Setting this option to anything other than auto is strongly discouraged, except for testing.

--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.

--icc-use-luma

Use ICC profile luminance value. (Only for --vo=gpu-next)

--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

Store and load compiled GLSL shaders in the cache directory (Default: yes). Normally, shader compilation is very fast, so this is not usually needed. It mostly matters for anything based on D3D11 (including ANGLE), as well as on some other proprietary drivers. Enabling this can improve startup performance on these platforms.

NOTE: On --vo=gpu, is not cleaned automatically, so old, unused cache files may stick around indefinitely.

--gpu-shader-cache-dir

The directory where gpu shader cache is stored. Cache is stored in the system's cache directory (usually ~/.cache/mpv) if this is unset.

--libplacebo-opts=<key>=<value>[,<key>=<value>[,...]]

Passes extra raw option to the libplacebo rendering backend (used by --vo=gpu-next). May override the effects of any other options set using the normal options system. Requires libplacebo v6.309 or higher. Included for debugging purposes only. For more information, see:

https://libplacebo.org/options/

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-tempo:	Same as `display-resample`, but apply audio speed changes to audio filters instead of resampling to avoid the change in pitch. Beware that some audio filters don't do well with a speed close to 1. It is recommend to use a conditional profile to automatically switch to `display-resample` when speed gets too close to 1 for your filter setup. Use (speed * video_speed_correction) to get the actual playback speed in the condition. See `Conditional auto profiles`_ for details.
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.

--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 --video-sync=display-tempo avoids this pitch change.

Also note that in the --video-sync=display-resample or --video-sync=display-tempo 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.

--backdrop-type=<auto|none|mica|acrylic|mica-alt>

(Windows only) Controls the backdrop/border style.

auto:	Default Windows behavior
none:	The backdrop will be black or white depending on the system's theme settings.
mica:	Enables the Mica style, which is the default on Windows 11.
acrylic:	Enables the Acrylic style (frosted glass look).
mica-alt:	Same as Mica, except reversed.

--window-affinity=<default|excludefromcmcapture|monitor>

(Windows only) Controls the window affinity behavior of mpv.

default:	Default Windows behavior
excludefromcapture:	mpv's window will be completely excluded from capture by external applications or screen recording software.
monitor:	Blacks out the mpv window

--vo-mmcss-profile=<name>

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

--priority=<prio>

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

Warning

Using realtime priority can cause system lockup.

--force-media-title=<string>

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

--external-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-auto-exts=ext1,ext2,...

Cover art extentions to try and match when using cover-art-auto.

This is a string list option. See `List Options`_ for details.

--cover-art-whitelist=<no|yes>

Whether to load files with a filename among "AlbumArt", "Album", "cover", "front", "AlbumArtSmall", "Folder", ".folder", "thumb", and an extension in --cover-art-auto-exts, as cover art. This has no effect if cover-art-auto is no.

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.

--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.

--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.

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='[vid1] [vid2] [vid3] hstack=inputs=3 [vo]' Use the inputs option to stack more than 2 tracks.
--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.

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

--metadata-codepage=<codepage>

Codepage for various input metadata (default: auto). This affects how file tags, chapter titles, etc. are interpreted. In most cases, this merely evaluates to UTF-8 as non-UTF-8 codepages are obscure.

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.

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.

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.

window:	On top of all other windows.
system:	On top of system elements like Taskbar, Menubar and Dock.
desktop:	On top of the Desktop behind windows and Desktop icons.
level:	A level as integer.

default:	Let the system decide whether or not to round window corners
donotround:	Never round window corners
round:	Round the corners if appropriate
roundsmall:	Round the corners if appropriate, with a small radius

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options.rst

options.rst

OPTIONS

Track Selection

Playback Control

Program Behavior

Watch Later

Video

Audio

Subtitles

Window

Disc Devices

Equalizer

Demuxer

Input

OSD

Screenshot

Software Scaler

Audio Resampler

Terminal

Cache

Network

DVB

ALSA audio output options

GPU renderer options

Miscellaneous

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.

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.

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

Files

options.rst

Latest commit

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options.rst

File metadata and controls

OPTIONS

Track Selection

Playback Control

Program Behavior

Watch Later

Video

Audio

Subtitles

Window

Disc Devices

Equalizer

Demuxer

Input

OSD

Screenshot

Software Scaler

Audio Resampler

Terminal

Cache

Network

DVB

ALSA audio output options

GPU renderer options

Miscellaneous