5 ms·

This has always worked well for me, handling anything that’s thrown at it with ease. Things may have changed since then, but when I first encountered the proje

This has always worked well for me, handling anything that’s thrown at it with ease. Things may have changed since then, but when I first encountered the project several years ago it seemed like the thing that made this project stand out compared to other player projects was a big emphasis on correctness and accurate playback. There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly.

Bluestein 2y ago
> There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly. Given how VLC is basically bulletproof and will play absolutely anything thrown at it - it's great to hear that mpv is up there ...
- mixmastamyk 2y ago
  While great in general, vlc has many small seek/sync issues, and also seems to be in maintenance mode.
  - Bluestein 2y ago
    > to be in maintenance mode. Sad to hear.- PS. On a tangent, rethorically - baring bugs and security - at one point is (if ever) software "finished"? "We built this search engine. It works. The infrastructure has team enough to run it. But we have this huge payroll of people." So "improvements" and "features" (and constant UI and UX changes) ... ... "enshittification" ensues.- When is "good enough" ... good enough?
    - nine_k 2y ago
      A web search engine is never done because spammers never cease attempts to.game it in new ways, and because new phenomena keep appearing on the web, from presidents posting official news on twitter to the proliferation of AI-generated texts with subtly incorrect information. A media player, though, has fewer challenges.
      - hollerith 2y ago
        Media player projects are in an arms race with exploit devs, though, especially since Google keeps introducing and popularizing new media formats. Speaking of which: which project tkaes security more seriously, vlc or mpv?
    - latexr 2y ago
      > PS. On a tangent, rethorically - baring bugs and security - at one point is (if ever) software "finished"? “PS” originates from “post scriptum”, meaning “written after”. It doesn’t make sense to have it at the start of the text. But to answer your question, yes, it is definitely possible for software to be done and finished. I’ve done it multiple times, where I have built something that does exactly what I set it out to do, it does it fast and without bugs and has been doing so for years and years with zero maintenance needs. The general obsession with the idea that “software is never done, only abandoned” needs to end, it’s harmful to good software and its users. Here’s millions more examples of finished software, in a single word: games.
      - Bluestein 2y ago
        > The general obsession with the idea that “software is never done, only abandoned” needs to end, My thinking was along those lines. Or at least along the lines of "engineering and/or organizational processes should exist to know when to stop".- PS. Thanks for your attention to detail. It was a "PS" to an otherwise one-sentence comment.-
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
    What non-maintenance work needs doing? From the outside, it plays basically all the formats. There is always the potential for improving algorithms, but it strikes me as pretty feature complete.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      > has many small seek/sync issues Playback issues... scrub problems mentioned elsewhere, audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot; need to hit left arrow to reset, speed changes lag when changed a lot, when there's a short clip it can end audio early, etc, etc. Not a huge deal, but if you use it every day for video and audio file testing/lyric transcribing these little bugs get old. The playback core needs a rewrite to be "preemptive" I'd guess.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41278499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41278499
      - d110af5ccf 2y ago
        > audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot I have a very similar issue with subtitles in MPV sometimes. Some unknown (at least to me) combination of codec, encoding settings, subtitle format, switching subtitle tracks, and seeking will utterly break it to the point that I have to exit and reopen the file. I can't be bothered to debug the issue (so far). In general I don't understand the negative comments I see VLC get. I've never encountered major problems with either piece of software. I've encountered minor bugs and annoyances with both.
        mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Lots more folks use vlc I’d guess. The media players we have on mobile don’t suffer from these issues, so they must be solvable.
arp242 2y ago
> There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly. This has long since been the case, even back in the MPlayer days in the early 2000s. I'm not really sure why this is the case though, because I believe both largely rely on the same libraries for many codecs.
- jwells89 2y ago
  The explanation I’ve read in the past is that the difference lies in how VLC was initially focused on playback of video streamed over a network (hence the name Video LAN Client), which was generally more rocky a couple decades ago when the quality and bandwidth of the average connection was lower and the only routes between the client and server could be highly indirect or routed through weak nodes. In that environment, playing at all without constantly dropping out or buffering is the goal, which is more achievable when fudging accuracy/correctness (which wouldn’t have been possible anyway). Not sure how true that is though, it’s not something I’ve ever verified.
loeg 2y ago
Hm, I've had (significant) issues with color representation playing back "HDR" media in mpv.
- jwells89 2y ago
  Not something I have experience with so can’t speak to that.
- SSLy 2y ago
  was the material purple-green by chance?
  - loeg 2y ago
    Yeah. I did try playing around with some of the colorspace options you can find googling, but nothing seemed to work.
    - SSLy 2y ago
      That's a Dolby Vision Profile 5 file. A format that's very very proprietary. The only PC apps that can play them at all are https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p9zh5fl1bfk?hl=en-ms&gl=MS https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p9zh5fl1bfk?hl=en-ms&gl=M... and https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse
      - talliedthoughts 2y ago
        Is there a way to use Infuse on PC? The only links I see are to the App Store
        SSLy 2y ago
        Macs are PC's, you can also make a hackintosh. EDIT2: if you consider an ARM board that you can install custom OS on as a PC – admittedly, bit of a stretch – then you can grab UGOOS AM6B plus / AM6 plus / Minix u22x-j max install CoreELEC on it and enjoy DV. https://github.com/CoreELEC/CoreELEC/releases https://github.com/CoreELEC/CoreELEC/releases https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/dolby-vision-for-minix-u22x-j-max-and-ugoos-am6/24273 https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/dolby-vision-for-minix-u22x... Recommended settings: https://justpaste.it/divn9 https://justpaste.it/divn9 Installation instructions 1: https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-coreelec-installation-and-faqs/51231 https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-co... Installation instructions 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_rejoice_the_coreelec_team_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_... EDIT: I forgot that for Windows playback, you also need the HEVC and DoVi codec packages. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P9ZH5FL1BFK https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P9ZH5FL1BFK https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PLTG1LWPHLF https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PLTG1LWPHLF https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7 https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7

Bluestein 2y ago

> There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly. Given how VLC is basically bulletproof and will play absolutely anything thrown at it - it's great to hear that mpv is up there ...

mixmastamyk 2y ago
While great in general, vlc has many small seek/sync issues, and also seems to be in maintenance mode.
- Bluestein 2y ago
  > to be in maintenance mode. Sad to hear.- PS. On a tangent, rethorically - baring bugs and security - at one point is (if ever) software "finished"? "We built this search engine. It works. The infrastructure has team enough to run it. But we have this huge payroll of people." So "improvements" and "features" (and constant UI and UX changes) ... ... "enshittification" ensues.- When is "good enough" ... good enough?
  - nine_k 2y ago
    A web search engine is never done because spammers never cease attempts to.game it in new ways, and because new phenomena keep appearing on the web, from presidents posting official news on twitter to the proliferation of AI-generated texts with subtly incorrect information. A media player, though, has fewer challenges.
    - hollerith 2y ago
      Media player projects are in an arms race with exploit devs, though, especially since Google keeps introducing and popularizing new media formats. Speaking of which: which project tkaes security more seriously, vlc or mpv?
  - latexr 2y ago
    > PS. On a tangent, rethorically - baring bugs and security - at one point is (if ever) software "finished"? “PS” originates from “post scriptum”, meaning “written after”. It doesn’t make sense to have it at the start of the text. But to answer your question, yes, it is definitely possible for software to be done and finished. I’ve done it multiple times, where I have built something that does exactly what I set it out to do, it does it fast and without bugs and has been doing so for years and years with zero maintenance needs. The general obsession with the idea that “software is never done, only abandoned” needs to end, it’s harmful to good software and its users. Here’s millions more examples of finished software, in a single word: games.
    - Bluestein 2y ago
      > The general obsession with the idea that “software is never done, only abandoned” needs to end, My thinking was along those lines. Or at least along the lines of "engineering and/or organizational processes should exist to know when to stop".- PS. Thanks for your attention to detail. It was a "PS" to an otherwise one-sentence comment.-
- 0cf8612b2e1e 2y ago
  What non-maintenance work needs doing? From the outside, it plays basically all the formats. There is always the potential for improving algorithms, but it strikes me as pretty feature complete.
  - mixmastamyk 2y ago
    > has many small seek/sync issues Playback issues... scrub problems mentioned elsewhere, audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot; need to hit left arrow to reset, speed changes lag when changed a lot, when there's a short clip it can end audio early, etc, etc. Not a huge deal, but if you use it every day for video and audio file testing/lyric transcribing these little bugs get old. The playback core needs a rewrite to be "preemptive" I'd guess.
    - mixmastamyk 2y ago
      Also, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41278499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41278499
    - d110af5ccf 2y ago
      > audio/video get out of sync when seeking a lot I have a very similar issue with subtitles in MPV sometimes. Some unknown (at least to me) combination of codec, encoding settings, subtitle format, switching subtitle tracks, and seeking will utterly break it to the point that I have to exit and reopen the file. I can't be bothered to debug the issue (so far). In general I don't understand the negative comments I see VLC get. I've never encountered major problems with either piece of software. I've encountered minor bugs and annoyances with both.
      - mixmastamyk 2y ago
        Lots more folks use vlc I’d guess. The media players we have on mobile don’t suffer from these issues, so they must be solvable.

arp242 2y ago

> There have files I’ve encountered that for example VLC will play with quirks (color reproduction is not quite right, etc) that mpv plays perfectly. This has long since been the case, even back in the MPlayer days in the early 2000s. I'm not really sure why this is the case though, because I believe both largely rely on the same libraries for many codecs.

jwells89 2y ago
The explanation I’ve read in the past is that the difference lies in how VLC was initially focused on playback of video streamed over a network (hence the name Video LAN Client), which was generally more rocky a couple decades ago when the quality and bandwidth of the average connection was lower and the only routes between the client and server could be highly indirect or routed through weak nodes. In that environment, playing at all without constantly dropping out or buffering is the goal, which is more achievable when fudging accuracy/correctness (which wouldn’t have been possible anyway). Not sure how true that is though, it’s not something I’ve ever verified.

loeg 2y ago

Hm, I've had (significant) issues with color representation playing back "HDR" media in mpv.

jwells89 2y ago
Not something I have experience with so can’t speak to that.
SSLy 2y ago
was the material purple-green by chance?
- loeg 2y ago
  Yeah. I did try playing around with some of the colorspace options you can find googling, but nothing seemed to work.
  - SSLy 2y ago
    That's a Dolby Vision Profile 5 file. A format that's very very proprietary. The only PC apps that can play them at all are https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p9zh5fl1bfk?hl=en-ms&gl=MS https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9p9zh5fl1bfk?hl=en-ms&gl=M... and https://firecore.com/infuse https://firecore.com/infuse
    - talliedthoughts 2y ago
      Is there a way to use Infuse on PC? The only links I see are to the App Store
      - SSLy 2y ago
        Macs are PC's, you can also make a hackintosh. EDIT2: if you consider an ARM board that you can install custom OS on as a PC – admittedly, bit of a stretch – then you can grab UGOOS AM6B plus / AM6 plus / Minix u22x-j max install CoreELEC on it and enjoy DV. https://github.com/CoreELEC/CoreELEC/releases https://github.com/CoreELEC/CoreELEC/releases https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/dolby-vision-for-minix-u22x-j-max-and-ugoos-am6/24273 https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/dolby-vision-for-minix-u22x... Recommended settings: https://justpaste.it/divn9 https://justpaste.it/divn9 Installation instructions 1: https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-coreelec-installation-and-faqs/51231 https://discourse.coreelec.org/t/guide-s922x-j-ugoos-am6b-co... Installation instructions 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_rejoice_the_coreelec_team_has/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1ajszn9/remux_lovers_... EDIT: I forgot that for Windows playback, you also need the HEVC and DoVi codec packages. https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P9ZH5FL1BFK https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P9ZH5FL1BFK https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PLTG1LWPHLF https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9PLTG1LWPHLF https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7 https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9nmzlz57r3t7