Since I switched to linux, I have only used mpv. It is far more costumizable, has a ton of keybinds. Also in my expirience it has a lot less bugs, however my usecase is pretty common.
Ever since VLC came on the scene it has been my go-to. Just a really functional player that plays almost anything I throw at it, and I like the UI well enough. For now I have no reason to use anything else. I'm not hating on other players, but VLC works for me.
mpv. I like the minimalist UI. I have it configured to show no titlebar, just the video, and open by default in the corner of my screen at up to half the width of my display. It's easy to customize with keyboard shortcuts, and by default it has sensible shortcuts for nearly everything. It's easy to make videos with hardcoded letterboxing fit my full screen. It handles HDR and even Dolby videos (use gpu-next if you aren't already). I can set default brightness/contrast/gamma settings, and then adjust them during playback if necessary with a single keystroke. I can adjust playback speed with a single keystroke. I can fix the aspect ratio of warped videos, again with a single keystroke.
As for VLC, well, it's fine, really, and I'm not in the best position to say since it's been a very long time since I used it regularly. So my experience is likely outdated. But back then, I found the UI a bit much, putting playlists front-and-center when I really just wanted to play individual files 99.99% of the time. It had too much going on besides the video. The GUI is great for discoverability but the more time I spend using something, the more I appreciate command-line usage and simple text-based config files.
VLC is my go-to recommendation for beginners, because everything is in the GUI, but mpv suits me better.
Functionally, both are similar. A few times over the years, one has adopted a critical feature a little bit before the other, like hardware acceleration for some specific codec, but for most videos they both do the job just fine.
I just installed the Mac version again to test it, and the first thing that appears is the playlist window with an icon telling me to "drop media here".
Opening a file also shows the playlist window, which then expands to show the video instead. When you close the video, you're left with the playlist, which now contains that file.
Good to see I'm not the only one having issues. VLC videos start mute and the volume can't be turned up, so it's basically unusable. Switched to mpv a couple months ago when I started having issues and last week I made it the default
Switched to mpv a decade ago. Love the minimal UI and how snappy it is. Used VLC or MPC-HC on Windows. Moved to linux and used SMplayer or VLC until mpv came around.
edit2:
also to clarify my original comment was meant as both are good. For example you can't easily install MPV on Bazzite and VLC does as good of a job. I do tend to use MPV over VLC but I don't ever crave the other one as I have at least one of those available. I did run into few videos that I had issues running with MPV and vice-versa but those are rare and specific cases. Always the other player did the job so I also can't say that both are perfect.
IMO bloat is something that is on your PC which YOU did not install and you actively want to get rid off. Also something that you don't use and is just running in the background using resources. Otherwise it's not bloat, it just takes some space on the drive and has no other negative effect on anything. It just sits there waiting to be used. You could at that point argue that your old photo album is bloat because you're not actively looking at the pictures.
i find the first reply to yours absolutely insane and completely off-base. so i continued in the same vein. turns out the guy was being completely serious.
Bloat can also mean a program that does 1000 things and you use only a few things of it. Or if you have one application that loads ton of stuff into RAM just to watch a video. Another day you load the same application to edit a source code, but it still loads ton of stuff into RAM. That one application in this case is the bloat, even if its used regularly. The threshold of bloat, even if the definition is the same, is also different for every person to person. That adds up to the confusion or misunderstanding.
After the discussions with him, I think he is just trolling (lime!). At one point, his suggestion was no need for an entire operating system, other than the Kernel and a Browser.
I mean... if I use Blender only for sculpting but the whole application loads all of it's features.. I can hardly argue it's a bloat because the app works as intended. It's not the applications problem that I don't use all it's features. It is a 3D modeler, video editor, image editor, texture editor, etc...
If I for example open Edge and Copilot and OneDrive activate with it and keep pestering me to try them then yes, that's bloat because I'm getting pestered to use something that is NOT part of the web-browsing experience.
I can agree with you at least that this definition does differ person to person.
I personally couldn't care less about RAM usage as long as it's reasonable and have RAM to spare.
This seems simultaneously overkill and extremely minimalist at the same time.
Firefox can open videos, but if I try to skip ahead on a HEVC encode I only get audio and there's performance issues in general. Also no way to change audio tracks and no subtitles.
No thanks. I use a fast video player to play a video, instead loading up a browser all the time. Using a separate video player is not bloat. Using two separate video player for the same task is bloat, when it is not needed. Don't compare browsers to video players.
all major browsers have built-in fully functioning video players, ergo they are video players. and most people have a browser running anyway so startup is likely faster than a standalone application. using a separate video player is bloat. same with music players, and text editors, and pdf viewers.
Using a full blown browser to do everything is bloat. I keep using optimized tools for specific tasks. You completely changed the topic. It was about using two programs for the same task. Video players are optimized to play videos. I try to avoid using bloated browsers that does everything, but nothing well (besides browsing web) and fill the RAM for no reason.
Bloat Browser = bloat
Optimized video player to play videos = not bloat
Two optimized video player to play videos when not really needed = bloat
Hope that is clear now. I tried to make it simple and understandable as possible. The guy asked why not install both video players and I gave him a reason not to do. There was no browser in the discussion until you brought it up.
I don't know if you are trolling, but that is a nonsense reply. The original question was why not install MPV and VLC at the same time. I don't use a browser for everything, because its bloat. I use dedicated applications that does one job, and does it well. You can keep using your browser for everything, but that is not what this post topic is about.
@thakur0
VideoLAN (VLC) it plays media that MPV can't and has a wide range of direct-from-the-hardware streaming results. I'll look a closer look at MPV, take it a bit more seriously and see if it's upgraded to meet my needs.
Count me in on the minimalist interface preference gang. I've been using it for probably more than a decade. Less nowadays that I watch content on my TV through my media center server, but on the off occurrence that I need to watch a file on my computer, mpv is my boo.
I always went with VLC until something got messed up with new laptops nVidia drivers. For whatever reason VLC could not properly use dedicated GPU acceleration with open drivers.
That's when I tried out MPV. I like it, I like the minimalism, I like the CLI. It's been working great so far.
For someone more technical MPV, for anyone else I'd still recommend VLC.
I use MPV, mostly because I like the simplicity of the on-screen interface.
But both are great players. No issues with VLC and it is a go-to if I ever have a file I can't play otherwise (which is a vanishingly rare occurrence).
Despite MPV being simpler VLC usually has less problems to play something than MPV. I don't really like VLC's interface, but I DO like how powerful it is without having to read any manuals.
While they're technically the same type of software, it's still sort of like comparing apples to oranges.
VLC is your kitchen skink media players that comes bundled with basically everything possible.
mpv is more of a minimalist media player that let's the user add the features themselves using add-ons.
Me personally prefer mpv since it's minimal in every regard. I have turned of the OSC, and I use the keyboard for everything. I don't use a lot of extras, but the ones I have, is add-ons I couldn't probably live without, like yt-dlp and SponsorBlock (for YouTube).
I even use mpv as my music player with playlist that I manage using Neovim and the tool echo (to add new tracks to my playlists).
Fun fact: VLC still supports Android 4.2 (Nov, 2012) which i use to play local media on my old tablet(4.4) through f-droid. Works well with old formats.
On PC, I use MPV because I've gotten used to its command line and shortcuts.
I used VLC for years and years but mainly on Windows. When I moved to Linux exclusively for my personal machines a few years ago, I started using MPV just because that's what was installed. I play all videos from a bash command line that launches gamescope to get HDR support for videos that support it (currently stuck on Nvidia). Works really well.
Nowadays I only really use Jellyfin, but before that I exclusively used mpv. As for why, I just felt it worked a bit better (not sure if it has to do with codecs) and I liked how it suited terminal based workflows.
VLC is great and I had been using it for years. However, MPV is simple, yet powerful and is naturally part of my Linux distribution due to being a dependency of other stuff I use.
That said, MPV has been my go-to mediaplayer for years now.
I like the simplicity of MPV and use it whenever I can. However, it does not work as a DLNA client, at least not natively. I keep VLC nearby for such cases.
I watch quite a bit of anime and a lot of subtitles seem to be in a format that includes advanced features such as stretching/shrinking text, rotation, karaoke effects and what have you. I think the sub format is actually called .ass or .ssa, but don't quote me on that.
Anywho, I tried watching some random anime a few years back and was using VLC at the time. VLC detected the subtitles, but couldn't do anything outside of just displaying them. It couldn't do the advanced effects. So, I switched to MPV which just worked and have been using it ever since. As I said, this was a few years back and VLC probably can do advanced subtitles at this point, but eh. I'm too used to MPV now.
VLC is bloated garbage that takes ~5x more space because of the added crap that's better done by avidemux. Even mpv + avidemux smaller than VLC. MPVs config file seems more reliable than VLC menus that are frustrating AF to navigate (especially when they don't work).
87 replies
Since I switched to linux, I have only used mpv. It is far more costumizable, has a ton of keybinds. Also in my expirience it has a lot less bugs, however my usecase is pretty common.
mpv, it just fits me better, I don't really do playlists for videos outside of the TV, where I've got kodi.
I launch many videos from the terminal, since sometimes big AV1 videos need my big GPU (DRI_PRIME)
In the 15 years I have used vlc there has only been one file it couldn't play and so I have had no need to try another player.
Its not about only playing a video, its about more things too, like, colours, decoding etc
VLC decodes everything
I think VLC and MPV both run ffmpeg, which means they both open everything.
Ever since VLC came on the scene it has been my go-to. Just a really functional player that plays almost anything I throw at it, and I like the UI well enough. For now I have no reason to use anything else. I'm not hating on other players, but VLC works for me.
Every time I find a new file format I just huck it at VLC to see what it'll do. Most times nothing, but some interesting results have been observed.
I use VLC. I have no real reason for choosing it other than knowing it since I was a kid, and it doing the job I need perfectly fine so far
mpv. I like the minimalist UI. I have it configured to show no titlebar, just the video, and open by default in the corner of my screen at up to half the width of my display. It's easy to customize with keyboard shortcuts, and by default it has sensible shortcuts for nearly everything. It's easy to make videos with hardcoded letterboxing fit my full screen. It handles HDR and even Dolby videos (use gpu-next if you aren't already). I can set default brightness/contrast/gamma settings, and then adjust them during playback if necessary with a single keystroke. I can adjust playback speed with a single keystroke. I can fix the aspect ratio of warped videos, again with a single keystroke.
As for VLC, well, it's fine, really, and I'm not in the best position to say since it's been a very long time since I used it regularly. So my experience is likely outdated. But back then, I found the UI a bit much, putting playlists front-and-center when I really just wanted to play individual files 99.99% of the time. It had too much going on besides the video. The GUI is great for discoverability but the more time I spend using something, the more I appreciate command-line usage and simple text-based config files.
VLC is my go-to recommendation for beginners, because everything is in the GUI, but mpv suits me better.
Functionally, both are similar. A few times over the years, one has adopted a critical feature a little bit before the other, like hardware acceleration for some specific codec, but for most videos they both do the job just fine.
I don't remember VLC's playlist showing up at all unless you open multiple files at once
You can toggle it with the playlist button even if there's no videos in the list at all
I know it's available, but it doesn't pop up on its own unless you're loading multiple files.
Perhaps this is specific to the Mac port.
I just installed the Mac version again to test it, and the first thing that appears is the playlist window with an icon telling me to "drop media here".
Opening a file also shows the playlist window, which then expands to show the video instead. When you close the video, you're left with the playlist, which now contains that file.
VLC seems to be the gold standard. If you want to play something, it will. That should be more than enough for common users.
VLC can play anything because of its reliance on the amazing ffmpeg. MPV also uses ffmpeg, as does any video tool worth it's salt.
mpv for about 6 years now. Like VLC it plays pretty much anything I need to, but it feels snappier
VLC has been disintegrating on Wayland, mpv became the default
Good to see I'm not the only one having issues. VLC videos start mute and the volume can't be turned up, so it's basically unusable. Switched to mpv a couple months ago when I started having issues and last week I made it the default
Switched to mpv a decade ago. Love the minimal UI and how snappy it is. Used VLC or MPC-HC on Windows. Moved to linux and used SMplayer or VLC until mpv came around.
Why not both?
edit: wtf are these replies :D
edit2: also to clarify my original comment was meant as both are good. For example you can't easily install MPV on Bazzite and VLC does as good of a job. I do tend to use MPV over VLC but I don't ever crave the other one as I have at least one of those available. I did run into few videos that I had issues running with MPV and vice-versa but those are rare and specific cases. Always the other player did the job so I also can't say that both are perfect.
This mindset contributes to bloat, unless it is needed. Or install the alternative when really needed.
a separate video player is bloat. just use a browser.
Vim is bloat. Just read the source in vi.
ED! ED! ED IS THE STANDARD!!!
You are right, professionals have standards.
please, tell me your definition of bloat
more than one program
IMO bloat is something that is on your PC which YOU did not install and you actively want to get rid off. Also something that you don't use and is just running in the background using resources. Otherwise it's not bloat, it just takes some space on the drive and has no other negative effect on anything. It just sits there waiting to be used. You could at that point argue that your old photo album is bloat because you're not actively looking at the pictures.
oh you're the thread starter! ahem...
i find the first reply to yours absolutely insane and completely off-base. so i continued in the same vein. turns out the guy was being completely serious.
All good. I wasn't meaning to reply to you before but to the guy you've originally replied to :)
Bloat can also mean a program that does 1000 things and you use only a few things of it. Or if you have one application that loads ton of stuff into RAM just to watch a video. Another day you load the same application to edit a source code, but it still loads ton of stuff into RAM. That one application in this case is the bloat, even if its used regularly. The threshold of bloat, even if the definition is the same, is also different for every person to person. That adds up to the confusion or misunderstanding.
After the discussions with him, I think he is just trolling (lime!). At one point, his suggestion was no need for an entire operating system, other than the Kernel and a Browser.
I mean... if I use Blender only for sculpting but the whole application loads all of it's features.. I can hardly argue it's a bloat because the app works as intended. It's not the applications problem that I don't use all it's features. It is a 3D modeler, video editor, image editor, texture editor, etc... If I for example open Edge and Copilot and OneDrive activate with it and keep pestering me to try them then yes, that's bloat because I'm getting pestered to use something that is NOT part of the web-browsing experience.
I can agree with you at least that this definition does differ person to person.
I personally couldn't care less about RAM usage as long as it's reasonable and have RAM to spare.
For offline videos?
just drag and drop
This seems simultaneously overkill and extremely minimalist at the same time.
Firefox can open videos, but if I try to skip ahead on a HEVC encode I only get audio and there's performance issues in general. Also no way to change audio tracks and no subtitles.
Video is bloat
No thanks. I use a fast video player to play a video, instead loading up a browser all the time. Using a separate video player is not bloat. Using two separate video player for the same task is bloat, when it is not needed. Don't compare browsers to video players.
all major browsers have built-in fully functioning video players, ergo they are video players. and most people have a browser running anyway so startup is likely faster than a standalone application. using a separate video player is bloat. same with music players, and text editors, and pdf viewers.
the browser is truly the new emacs.
Using a full blown browser to do everything is bloat. I keep using optimized tools for specific tasks. You completely changed the topic. It was about using two programs for the same task. Video players are optimized to play videos. I try to avoid using bloated browsers that does everything, but nothing well (besides browsing web) and fill the RAM for no reason.
Hope that is clear now. I tried to make it simple and understandable as possible. The guy asked why not install both video players and I gave him a reason not to do. There was no browser in the discussion until you brought it up.
using a full-blown operating system to do everything is bloat when the browser can already do it all. just kernel and browser should be enough.
I don't know if you are trolling, but that is a nonsense reply. The original question was why not install MPV and VLC at the same time. I don't use a browser for everything, because its bloat. I use dedicated applications that does one job, and does it well. You can keep using your browser for everything, but that is not what this post topic is about.
MPV. I like the minimalism. and everything I need is under the hood in MPV.
@thakur0
VideoLAN (VLC) it plays media that MPV can't and has a wide range of direct-from-the-hardware streaming results. I'll look a closer look at MPV, take it a bit more seriously and see if it's upgraded to meet my needs.
Okay! I prefer using this https://mpv.rocks/
@thakur0 Ah, a trap question.
No, it is just my answer to Why?. It is not my website either it is just listed on fmhy
MPV, better colors , faster , lighter and has everything I need and nothing I dont
Count me in on the minimalist interface preference gang. I've been using it for probably more than a decade. Less nowadays that I watch content on my TV through my media center server, but on the off occurrence that I need to watch a file on my computer, mpv is my boo.
mpv on linux, vlc whenever i'm on windows.
no particular reason, just habit.
I use VLC on my PC, but MVP on my phone, because it has better zoom. But to be fair, I rarely use it on my phone.
MPV, I can add custom scripts like cutting black bars for ultrawide monitors. And I like how customizable it is.
you can crop those bars with VLC
AFAIK, you can't crop them automatically and even dynamically if a movie has more than one aspect ratio.
You also then get problems with image-based subtitles (PGS), which you can fix automatically in mpv.
I always went with VLC until something got messed up with new laptops nVidia drivers. For whatever reason VLC could not properly use dedicated GPU acceleration with open drivers.
That's when I tried out MPV. I like it, I like the minimalism, I like the CLI. It's been working great so far.
For someone more technical MPV, for anyone else I'd still recommend VLC.
I use MPV, mostly because I like the simplicity of the on-screen interface.
But both are great players. No issues with VLC and it is a go-to if I ever have a file I can't play otherwise (which is a vanishingly rare occurrence).
Despite MPV being simpler VLC usually has less problems to play something than MPV. I don't really like VLC's interface, but I DO like how powerful it is without having to read any manuals.
MPV>VLC
While they're technically the same type of software, it's still sort of like comparing apples to oranges.
VLC is your kitchen skink media players that comes bundled with basically everything possible.
mpv is more of a minimalist media player that let's the user add the features themselves using add-ons.
Me personally prefer mpv since it's minimal in every regard. I have turned of the OSC, and I use the keyboard for everything. I don't use a lot of extras, but the ones I have, is add-ons I couldn't probably live without, like yt-dlp and SponsorBlock (for YouTube).
I even use mpv as my music player with playlist that I manage using Neovim and the tool
echo(to add new tracks to my playlists).how do you use echo to add songs to a playlist?
It's as simple as:
echo "example.ogg >> mixtape.m3uTIL mpv had addons! sponsorblock seems useful
:D
I switched to MPV when I got an HDR display because VLC won’t play HDR on my setup. I still use VLC for the lectures I leave on while working though.
Fun fact: VLC still supports Android 4.2 (Nov, 2012) which i use to play local media on my old tablet(4.4) through f-droid. Works well with old formats.
On PC, I use MPV because I've gotten used to its command line and shortcuts.
I used VLC for years and years but mainly on Windows. When I moved to Linux exclusively for my personal machines a few years ago, I started using MPV just because that's what was installed. I play all videos from a bash command line that launches gamescope to get HDR support for videos that support it (currently stuck on Nvidia). Works really well.
mpv, very easy to configure and use
i use mpc-be on m$win because of occasional glitch with mpv though, might be my system's issue
Mpv cause you can use keyboard shortcuts from the terminal.
Thanks to this I can ssh from the phone, connect to my tmux mpv session, and use that as remote control.
Nowadays I only really use Jellyfin, but before that I exclusively used mpv. As for why, I just felt it worked a bit better (not sure if it has to do with codecs) and I liked how it suited terminal based workflows.
While VLC is great, I have had cases where it failed me regarding hardware accelerated decoding.
mpvhas never let me down with this.For basic functionality both are great, but if I want to customise its settings VLC far more friendly.
MPV for what I read it is very powerful for customising everything but everything is hidden behind scripts.
vlc for watching.
mpv for listening.
Just be aware, mpv still doesn't properly do replaygain.
SMP (SM Player) seems better than MPV, and even VLC in various ways.
I use the SMPlayer, it does the same as the VLC, but it's way faster and easier to handle.
VLC is great and I had been using it for years. However, MPV is simple, yet powerful and is naturally part of my Linux distribution due to being a dependency of other stuff I use. That said, MPV has been my go-to mediaplayer for years now.
Yeah vlc has been so good for so long!
I like the simplicity of MPV and use it whenever I can. However, it does not work as a DLNA client, at least not natively. I keep VLC nearby for such cases.
VLC for everyone that doesn't use terminal. MPV for me
I like to use both, I use MPV as my main player but if a format isn't supported I use VLC.
I watch quite a bit of anime and a lot of subtitles seem to be in a format that includes advanced features such as stretching/shrinking text, rotation, karaoke effects and what have you. I think the sub format is actually called .ass or .ssa, but don't quote me on that.
Anywho, I tried watching some random anime a few years back and was using VLC at the time. VLC detected the subtitles, but couldn't do anything outside of just displaying them. It couldn't do the advanced effects. So, I switched to MPV which just worked and have been using it ever since. As I said, this was a few years back and VLC probably can do advanced subtitles at this point, but eh. I'm too used to MPV now.
VLC is bloated garbage that takes ~5x more space because of the added crap that's better done by avidemux. Even mpv + avidemux smaller than VLC. MPVs config file seems more reliable than VLC menus that are frustrating AF to navigate (especially when they don't work).