MPlayer2 Gone Dark, MPV Is Still Happening

[johnc]

I am not looking into starting any sort of flamewar. I couldn't care less. But I'm curious. I have switched to VLC a long time ago. It seems more robust, more complete, and it plays well with tv-maxe. All codecs are built in, etc.

But there muse be a reason why many people prefer MPlayer, any thoughts? Thanks!

I initially preferred it because it supported VDPAU when (at the time) VLC didn't. Otherwise I think the VLC interface looks a bit cheesy but that's just a superficial comment. Some people say the colors and post-processing are off in VLC but that could be just FUD.

[Daktyl198]

Some people say the colors and post-processing are off in VLC but that could be just FUD.

From my personal experience, VLC's color is is off compared to MPlayer2/MPV. This is most likely caused by the default filters VLC has enabled, and if you took the time to set it up right you could probably get a great picture out of VLC... but I'd rather just use MPV and not have to mess with it :P

I am not looking into starting any sort of flamewar. I couldn't care less. But I'm curious. I have switched to VLC a long time ago. It seems more robust, more complete, and it plays well with tv-maxe. All codecs are built in, etc.

But there muse be a reason why many people prefer MPlayer, any thoughts? Thanks!

Well, most of VLC's built-in codecs are provided by the libavcodec library from the FFmpeg project, which means they contain the same codecs as MPV (which dynamically links to whichever ffmpeg/libav you have installed). Depending on your distribution, this could mean that MPV has newer codec version than VLC.

As for being "more robust", I'm not sure. Overall, MPV has features that VLC doesn't have, but VLC has a few features that MPV doesn't have, so they're kind of on-par. MPV may be seen as being "lighter weight" since it dosn't come with a full-fledged GUI (though it does come with a perfectly usable OSD) but it has demanding options as well (--vo=opengl-hq for instance).

I don't know what tv-maxe is, so I can't comment on that.

[jevans101]

Very pleased.

I have been using MPV for about a month now. As a fussy user, I am very pleased.

[profoundWHALE]

I tried to install cmplayer but it was basically impossible running Ubuntu 14.04 due to clutter, and when trying to install that I ended up breaking something and I still haven't figured out what and I don't have to time to figure out what I uninstalled. As far as the built in interface is concerned, I was thoroughly impressed. I was nice on the eyes, but ridiculously simple.

Other people are correct about vlc colour being off. Back when I had crunchbang on an old pentium 4, vlc was the only player that could manage 720p playback. Windows XP vlc couldn't even do that good.

But the colour was off, it was as if someone turned up the brightness or down the contrast, or both. For whatever reason the blacks were always darker on mplayer.

[GreatEmerald]

I am not looking into starting any sort of flamewar. I couldn't care less. But I'm curious. I have switched to VLC a long time ago. It seems more robust, more complete, and it plays well with tv-maxe. All codecs are built in, etc.

But there muse be a reason why many people prefer MPlayer, any thoughts? Thanks!

I used to use VLC as the main player, but its small bugs just piled on me. First there were a lot of issues with PulseAudio (echo and noise) which made audio completely unbearable. Then with network streams, the buffering method VLC uses seems to be less efficient and results in either a lot of periods of buffering, or having one really long period of buffering at the beginning. MPlayer2 has more flexibility in that regard. And then with DVDs, I find MPlayer2 to have a lot of very useful video configuration options (both the video backend and the deinterlacing settings). So all in all MPlayer2 provides me with no bugs and more flexibility, so that's what I'm using.

[curaga]

I prefer mplayer over vlc because it's lighter, and doesn't require a gui. Those few % of saved cpu do add up when you have a high-bitrate video and no gpu accel.

[Mike Frett]

Sorry dude. It is just ridiculous to use the cli to play videos in these days.

If we are to adopt a more robust user base migrating from Windows and OSX, I completely agree. However, if we wish to remain a "Hobby OS" in the minds of potential converts; then by all means, let's be ridiculous.

[Daktyl198]

Sorry dude. It is just ridiculous to use the cli to play videos in these days.

I have it set as my default video player... I just double-click the file...

[mmstick]

I am not looking into starting any sort of flamewar. I couldn't care less. But I'm curious. I have switched to VLC a long time ago. It seems more robust, more complete, and it plays well with tv-maxe. All codecs are built in, etc.

But there muse be a reason why many people prefer MPlayer, any thoughts? Thanks!

Well here is a good one. VLC can't play MKVs with Opus audio. It just segfaults. It also has much higher CPU usage. I reported the MKV/Opus bug 2 weeks ago but it still hasn't been fixed. Meanwhile, mpv plays everything perfectly.

[CFWhitman]

I am not looking into starting any sort of flamewar. I couldn't care less. But I'm curious. I have switched to VLC a long time ago. It seems more robust, more complete, and it plays well with tv-maxe. All codecs are built in, etc.

But there muse be a reason why many people prefer MPlayer, any thoughts? Thanks!

Well, one thing is that mplayer, mplayer2, mpv, and for that matter xine are all much lighter weight than VLC. This is true even if you use a third party GUI like SMPlayer to drive mplayer or mplayer 2. If you are using a modern powerhouse computer, then that might not mean much, but on older or underpowered hardware it can mean a lot. I just found that a recent kernel update made an old IBM ThinkPad R31 with a Pentium 3 based Mobile Celeron processor, old Intel video, and 256 MB of RAM (not sure a RAM upgrade on this thing is worth the money) run correctly again. I can download video files from YouTube and they run fine through SMPlayer with mplayer2. I don't think VLC would run so well on that machine.