MPV Player 0.28 Adds Initial Vulkan Support

[Gusar]

Just compiled mpv git with installed vulkan dev files but did not see vulkan with --vo=help.

That's because there's now a generic --vo=gpu with its various backends (opengl, vulkan, d3d11) selectable with the --gpu-api or --gpu-context options.

Note that unless you're using the proprietary Nvidia driver, you also need shaderc (Google's C wrapper around glslang) prior to compiling mpv, it will be used to translate mpv's GLSL shaders into spirv.

Mainly I wanted to test vaapi and nvdec with it.

No vaapi interop yet, as I wrote above. No clue about nvdec, but I think that one too is limited to opengl interop.

[nanonyme]

That's because there's now a generic --vo=gpu with its various backends (opengl, vulkan, d3d11) selectable with the --gpu-api or --gpu-context options.

Note that unless you're using the proprietary Nvidia driver, you also need shaderc (Google's C wrapper around glslang) prior to compiling mpv, it will be used to translate mpv's GLSL shaders into spirv.


No vaapi interop yet, as I wrote above. No clue about nvdec, but I think that one too is limited to opengl interop.

Is this a one-time translation during build time only?

[Gusar]

Is this a one-time translation during build time only?

No, mpv generates a shader on-the-fly each frame (but only compiles it if it's different from the previous frame's shader). So the translation happens every time a new shader is generated, like when you change scaling options or do anything else that affects how the video is rendered. There is also a shader cache, though I think it's off by default, the manpage documents the option.

[timofonic]

timofonic : VLC is a lot more popular for one simple reason - it has a GUI. That makes it much more user-friendly, particularly on Windows. mpv though is for video nerds, as you've said, and very popular among the anime crowd, due to its advanced scalers and filtering abilities (user shaders!)

shmerl : There's no VAAPI/Vulkan interop yet, though considering how low-level Vulkan is, one could possibly import raw memory from the hardware decoder into a Vulkan context with the VK_KHR_external_memory extension and then go from there. But no one has been working on that yet.

mpv doesn't include a GUI, that's true. I consider it positive, as they concentrate on other aspects of the software with a lot of potential.

But YOU CAN have a GUI with mpv, and the project aims to make their code be as most reusable as possible:
- mpv can be compiled as a library (libmpv).
-The relicensing to LGPL is going to make it even a lot more easier. It has potential to even surpass GStreamer project because not onlyis becoming more multi-platform and more featured, but developed with efficiency and quality in mind.

In fact, there's already many GUIs to choose from...

GUI frontends

• Baka MPlayer:
  A cross-platform media player based on libmpv.
• Deepin Movies:
  Deepin movie is Deepin Desktop Environment Movie Player.
• gnome-mpv:
  A simple GTK+ frontend for mpv.
• IINA:
  A media player for macOS 10.10+ based on mpv.
• Kawaii-Player:
  Multimedia player, Library Manager and portable media server based on python3 and pyqt5.
• mpc-qt:
  A media player based on libmpv which aims to reproduce most of the interface and functionality of mpc-hc.
• mpv-android:
  A media player for Android devices based on libmpv.
• mpv.net:
  Simple dotnet based player built with libmpv.
• OvoPlayer:
  Multi-platform audio player & manager using libmpv & other backends.
• SMPlayer:
  A cross-platform graphical front-end for MPlayer and forks of Mplayer using GUI widgets offered by Qt.
• xt7-player-mpv:
  A frontend to mpv with extra features.

Please look here for more information

[thebombzen]

As for Vulkan's native hardware decoding support, decoding directly to GPU textures is currently unimplemented in Vulkan but the copyback modes still work.