What is mpv FOR LINUX?

VLC is the most popular video/media player to date, that's a fact. While I admire its general appeal, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the be-all-end-all solution.

Interestingly enough, one product that does (almost) everything even better is based on the same adored multimedia framework, namely FFmpeg. That product in question is called mpv and, just like VLC, it's free, open-source, and cross-platform.

It's also arguably better suited to the Linux environment than VLC because of its arguably steeper learning curve.

I'm really not against simple things or software that "just works," but the fact that mpv might be a bit tricky to use at first for a typical user comes with a lot of advantages when it comes to video scaling, color management, frame timing, interpolation, HDR, and many more such as aspects.

mpv is, at heart, a media player for the command line. It's really minimalist in the sense that it doesn't provide a typical GUI (like VLC, for instance). As mentioned before, it's based on FFmpeg, but also on MPlayer, and mplayer2.

Just like VLC, the app supports almost every type of media format you can throw at it (media files, audio and video codecs, subtitles, and so forth). mpv also has OpenGL, Vulkan and D3D11 based vide output which only further adds to its power and flexibility.

Speaking of flexibility, even though it's a command-line-based app, the app is remarkably configurable. In fact, one of the most interesting points of the app is the fact that it's designed to be easy to integrate into other apps (thanks to its simple but efficient C API - you can use mpv as a library for your projects).

Not only that but thanks to its powerful scripting capabilities, you can pretty much make mpv perfectly suited for "everything."

At the end of the day, mpv is a more powerful solution than many video/media players out there. It's true that because it doesn't have a "proper GUI," it's not instantly attractive for everyone, but when it comes to flexibility, configuration, and video playing "power," I dare argue that it's in a league of its own.

For more details about the application, feel free to check out the app's main website, and the official GitHub repository.

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