mpvf

Interface to select a youtube-dl format for streaming stuff with mpv.

If you select a format with video only, automatically adds 'bestaudio' to the format.

Usage: mpvf URL [OPTION]...
Interface to select a youtube-dl format for streaming stuff with mpv.

Pass the URL to stream from as the first argument.
Additional options/arguments are passed onto mpv.

You can set the MPVF_DL environment variable to download
the selected format code instead, like:
MPVF_DL=1 mpvf https://... [youtube-dl OPTION...]

You can set the MPVF_PICKER environment variable to use dmenu/rofi instead of fzf:

export MPVF_PICKER=rofi
mpvf 'https://...'
export MPVF_PICKER=dmenu
mpvf 'https://...'

Installation

Dependencies: mpv, youtube-dl, fzf (or specify dmenu/rofi as alternative)

Install each dependency if not already installed and then download/copy mpvf to somewhere on your $PATH

Could also use basher:

basher install purarue/mpvf

Notes

If you want to stream just the audio, you can select the audio format, or pass the --no-video mpv flag.

I've further wrapped this script as well:

• bound to different keybinds:
  • grab URL from my clipboard and stream using mpvf
  • or, grab the URL and just stream audio
  • or, grab the URL and stream video, stickying the video in the bottom right of the screen ('picture in picture'-like), using this
  • have other related variations; to grab the URL and stream at different resolutions, often called from my RSS reader
• twitch: streams a twitch stream using mpvf. See this blog post for more context.
• mediaproxyvideo: mostly a copy of mpvf, which prompts me to select a format, ssh's onto my server, youtube-dl/ffmpeg's that video onto my server, and copies the public link its hosted on onto my clipboard.

Manual Install

wget https://github.com/purarue/mpvf/raw/refs/heads/master/mpvf
chmod +x ./mpvf
sudo mv ./mpvf /usr/bin/