mpv

mpv is a free (as in freedom) media player for the command line. It supports a wide variety of media file formats, audio and video codecs, and subtitle types. System requirements include a not too ancient Linux, Windows 10 1607 or later, or macOS 10.15 or later. A somewhat capable CPU is needed, with hardware decoding available via the --hwdec option if the CPU is too slow. The main video output uses shaders for video rendering and scaling rather than GPU fixed function hardware. On low power GPUs, the --profile=fast option is recommended for smooth playback. The project provides a Wiki, FAQ, Manual, and User Scripts. There is no complete changelog, but interface changes, client API changes, and default key binding changes are documented. Releases are cut once or twice a year from the current development state. Compilation requires meson and development files for several external libraries including FFmpeg libraries, libplacebo, zlib, libass, and various X and audio output development headers. Optional dependencies include Lua (for the OSC pseudo-GUI and youtube-dl integration), libjpeg, uchardet, and hardware decoding libraries. A separately available build wrapper (mpv-build) can compile FFmpeg libraries and libass before compiling the player statically linked against those. The software is based on the MPlayer project and was briefly developed under the mplayer2 project. It is licensed under GPLv2 "or later" by default, or LGPLv2.1 "or later" with -Dgpl=false. Bug reports and feature requests are handled through the GitHub issue tracker, with discussions available on GitHub Discussions and IRC.