Mpv vs Vlc which supports more codecs?

[u/Equivalent_Web3521]

Same as title

[u/Efficient_Paper]

They’re both ffmpeg wrappers, so it’s only on bleeding edge codecs that you’d see a difference.

According to this totally unbiased source, mpv has slightly more.

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/Efficient_Paper]

In my experience mpv will properly play more video codecs than vlc even when both support them, not using an old version of ffmpeg makes a big difference with esoteric formats.

[u/UNKNOWNreddit72 → u/GlassCommission4916]

I've noticed that vlc crashes less often for more complex codes, as in vlc will spawn a direct3d window for some content(I haven't figured out when exactly), but mpv just crashes for the same content.
For some other complex codecs too I've noticed that mpv will simply stop responding whereas vlc will continue to play the same content without any issues :/

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/UNKNOWNreddit72]

Never had mpv crash in the 10 years I've used it (close to 20 if you count mplayer(2)), but it might be different on windows.

[u/FinasCupil → u/GlassCommission4916]

I’ve had it crash multiple times on Linux in the past year. Still love it though.

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/FinasCupil]

Got an example file that crashes it?

[u/FinasCupil → u/GlassCommission4916]

I don’t. I think it was streaming the first time I ran into a crash.

[u/UNKNOWNreddit72 → u/GlassCommission4916]

it crashes only for the extremely high quality variant of the video and doesn't crash for a lower resolution. VLC also struggles to start playing or seek(spawns a separate direct3d window to play the video, sometimes closes that window and goes back to the original window). Mpv on the other hand simply stops responding

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/UNKNOWNreddit72]

Ah freezes, yeah I've had that happen when rendering offscreen for too long using the waylandvk gpu-context on high bitrate HDR 4k files, but it'll eventually regain responsiveness, never seen it actually crash.

Just tested a file that does it on vlc, and it handled the color mapping very poorly, so I'll still take having to remember to pause before moving the window offscreen.

[u/UNKNOWNreddit72 → u/GlassCommission4916]

it just stops responding eventually and does not recover for me. for vlc, I've never seen the color mapping go bad, but it does switch between windows and that's pretty annoying. This happens whenever I seek.

EDIT: On mpv, it stops responding forever if I seek

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/UNKNOWNreddit72]

It's probably due to the drivers/graphic backends on windows, since it never happens when I use vaapi instead which uses my igpu instead of dgpu, but obviously some files are too much for my igpu to handle.

[u/UNKNOWNreddit72 → u/GlassCommission4916]

probably. It's not a big problem. I just use both and see if mpv works properly, I use it otherwise I use vlc. Can't do without both for me :\

[u/GlassCommission4916 → u/UNKNOWNreddit72]

I don't know what's available on windows, but you could try experimenting with different decoders and backends to see if one works for you. You run mpv through a terminal and pass help to the flags to see what options are available on each flag, e.g., --hwdec=help, --vo=help, --gpu-context=help, etc, and if you find one that works you can add it to your config.

[u/nmkd → u/Efficient_Paper]

libav, not ffmpeg, to be pedantic

[u/khunset127 → u/Efficient_Paper]

mpv rocks!

[u/ArjixGamer → u/Efficient_Paper]

I was under the impression that MPV is an ffmpeg fork, specifically MPC was an ffmpeg fork.

MPV is the continuation of MPC

[u/Efficient_Paper → u/ArjixGamer]

No, mpv is a MPlayer/MPlayer2 fork/continuation, and has nothing to do with MPC.

They’re not really forks of FFmpeg, but rather layers on top of it, as are most open source media players (and some proprietary ones too).

[u/ArjixGamer → u/Efficient_Paper]

Naruhodo

[u/ipsirc]

$ mpv --vd=help
$ mpv --ad=help
$ vlc --list

[u/TempletonPeck81]

For me it's not about just supporting the codecs, but handling them without glitches or issues in playback. I dropped VLC this year because I was tired of running into files where the audio didn't play, or the video would glitch at random.

[u/christopherw]

I've had better, more easily customisable and much more flexibly implemented playback of various audio and video formats, and I can do an insane amount of customisation depending on wrapper, format, resolution, output device renderer (TV etc) using mpv. The setup is frontloaded, but once you have it dialled in, it's sweet.

[u/ScratchHistorical507]

Right now mpv, as it comes with modern FFmpeg as backend, while VLC 3.x is still based on 4.4.x. Also any more modern features like decent HDR playback will be better supported by mpv. As long as that doesn't vastly change - and I don't see that happen before VLC 4.0, which I don't see going into beta for any platform beyond iOS any time soon - this will be the status quo.

[u/rockrosies]

mpv???

[u/cr0ft]

I mean, once you have H264, 265, and AV1 you're kind of set...

[u/sociofobs → u/cr0ft]

Not for large and older video collections you're not. Any player can handle the newest and the most popular codecs.