The team that powers VLC (2019)
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When some student was spotted consuming most of the bandwidth by downloading 'Linux distros' on P2P networks, such traffic cone would be placed in front of his room door, to designate the culprit. It might be one of the reason of the VLC icon choice.
Told by my brother in law, who was president of the VIA[0] student association of the Ecole Centrale de Paris.
My personal memory that this happened because the people there were collecting cones at a high rate to play in the corridor of the floor (the 2H) of the student residence most of the VideoLAN / Via people were occupying at that time. This trend was certainly started by someone who became Debian Project Leader at some point and who was also enjoying eating regularly at a fast food restaurant in town. On their way back, these young and stupid boys were stealing the cones from a nearby gas station and bringing them back.
This lead to various uses such as the creation of an unofficial acrobatic cone launch federation (« la federation internationale de cone ball » I tried to find a picture of a now prominent Google SRE in action but my google-fu escaped me) and various costumes[1].
The cone used as an icon was also illustrating the fact that most of the code was heavily in progress at that time and so definitely not usable.
We were young!
1: http://sam.zoy.org/photos/20001011%20-%202H/016%20-%20la%20d...
I have a gallery view (for the playlist) and a contact sheet view (for the current file) that both have thumbnails. For the life of me I can't figure out how to get this in VLC (surely there must be a way, right? But the documentation is crap and I can't find it anywhere in the menus or preferences window. All I can find is the playlist view that doesn't have thumbnails.)
But the big differences which enable everything else is better documentation, particularly for the scripting and IPC interfaces. If you can find the documentation for VLC's Lua interface please let me know, because as far as I can tell that documentation is nonexistent. It's certainly not in the manpage, nor the worthless F1 window, nor can I find it on the VLC wiki). It's difficult to figure out what VLC's Lua interface is even capable of, but if you go by the addons listed on VLC's website the sole advantage of VLC's Lua scripting seems to be the ability to create basic GUIs.
I've never encountered a case where VLC did not load "instantaneously". Unless you're using a baked potato this should always be the case. If you have proper benchmarks for different video files and different hardware, cite them. "Instantaneously" doesn't mean a thing.
Your other points are equally subjective and meaningless. Especially vim bindings, really? That is now considered a feature? And I don't get how directly changing the configuration from the GUI where each option is explained in detail is simpler than a error-prone process of modifying a text configuration.
I just want to play videos, what is the benefit of MPV? I used it for a while, because it was "better" but now I wonder "better how"?
It certainly does not. You can launch mpv by clicking/doubleclicking on any media file in your file manager, the same as any other. You can also drag media files to your mpv icon, or drag media files to a running mpv instance.
Edit: Also I don't know where you found that "migaku" guide, but it's crap. Why is guide written in english telling people to download a config file that sets Japanese as the default audio and subtitle language? Why the hell is it turning hardware decoding off by default? Also, sudo to curl into usr/local/bin/youtube-dl when you could just put yt-dlp/youtube-dl in the regular mpv configuration directory? Fucking... why?
Do yourself a favor and read the official documentation if you really want to give mpv a try.
It is true that mpv usually doesn't have a GUI menu for this (I believe it does on MacOS, but lets ignore that.) However it's not true that doing so requires using a command line. Speed is changed using the [ and ] keys, which is documented in the manual. Obviously this is not friendly to novices, but it certainly does not require using the command line.
> Its minimalist for no good reason
It's minimal for a very good reason: because some people like it that way. Obviously it's not for everybody, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would never consider recommending it for everybody, but I object to the implicit assertion that all software must aspire to be good for everybody.
> what is the benefit of the design?
To you? Probably none. So I don't recommend it to you.
Its very much like learning CLI, except you need to memorize the keys on a GUI medial player.
>It's minimal for a very good reason: because some people like it that way. Obviously it's not for everybody, and there is nothing wrong with that. I would never consider recommending it for everybody, but I object to the implicit assertion that all software must aspire to be good for everybody.
Its minimalist enough to not have a help menu or list of commands, where is the manual for it even? Even in shells I can type man. What is the benefit of not having a right click menu or something like F1 not bringing up help. I am not against learning how to use tools, but who do you recommend this player to? People who want to memorize keys for their media player? Is that not like a CLI user?
It's very much like learning to play a piano by the same twisted logic.
> where is the manual for it even?
Here: https://mpv.io/manual/ Linked from straight from the mpv homepage. Also linked from the github page. You can also read it here: https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv/blob/master/DOCS/man/mpv.r... Or you can read the local manpage on your computer using the manpage reader of your choice (I prefer KHelpCenter, but you can use `man` if you like that more...) If you have trouble finding the manpage, then you've definitely taken a wrong turn somewhere and should
> What is the benefit of not having a right click menu
The mpv psuedo-gui is drawn using the libass subtitle rendering library. There are advantages and disadvantages to this. It's cross platform, so the same psuedo-gui code works the same on every platform (unlike the MacOS specific menu code.) It can be modified, extended, replaced or supplemented using Lua or JS user-scripts using the same libass techniques (the psuedo-gui mpv ships with is implemented as a builtin Lua script.) The biggest downsides to this are being limited to doing things subtitles can do (which doesn't include right-click menus) and the fundamental weirdness of using a subtitle library to render a GUI in the first place (personally I think it's endearing, but I acknowledge that it's weird.)
> People who want to memorize keys for their media player? Is that not like a CLI user?
No? Shortcut-focused GUIs and command line interfaces are not the same thing. Incidentally, mpv does have a embedded REPL if you do want to control it using a commandline interface. You can access it by pressing `. It is useful in some scenarios but you'll soon find it's a hell of a lot more convenient to use keyboard shortcuts instead. I virtually never use it except for testing when I'm writing mpv user-scripts.
> but who do you recommend this player to?
Only to people who are able and eager to hack on their media player. Suppose you want to control your media player from another application; vlc can support this with the telnet interface, but it's very limited and poorly documented. mpv's IPC interface is extremely powerful and well documented.
>There are advantages and disadvantages to this. It's cross platform, so the same psuedo-gui code works the same on every platform
I can't find it on iOS anyway but VLC is there, I don't know the benefit of having the same UI on mobile and desktop so its probably lost on me. Having a manual in the program or it bringing up a text file in the program can't be that against MPV sensibilities can it?
>No? Shortcut-focused GUIs and command line interfaces are not the same thing.
I agree, I can use shortcuts on VLC as well, but it has a GUI and help file, but MPV is like starting a program in your shell with no man files.
>Suppose you want to control your media player from another application
I can control through d-bus and control VLC with SSH with ncurses. https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:Modules/ncurses/
I can start virtually any program in a shell if I want to, VLC included. And I can't imagine what you mean by "with no man files" since mpv has a superb manpage.
> I can control through d-bus
Extremely limited. As far as I've been able to tell it doesn't allow you to run arbitrary commands or observe arbitrary properties, making it barely more capable than an old IR remote control. If my VLC lua scripts can send arbitrary messages across that interface, I haven't been able to find it documented anywhere.
> ncurses
I've controlled ncurses interfaces before using Tcl/Expect. It's a world of hurt. Besides, I thought you hated terminal emulators (frankly, I do...)
Can I open help from the program's GUI? Is it done on purpose to make it hard to learn from the application, and if not, what practical use is it?
>Extremely limited. As far as I've been able to tell it doesn't allow you to run arbitrary commands or observe arbitrary properties, making it barely more capable than an old IR remote control.
>I've controlled ncurses interfaces before using Tcl/Expect. It's a world of hurt. Besides, I thought you hated terminal emulators (frankly, I do...)
What problems does that have? What arbitrary commands do you have? I have a BT keyboard I can use too, so I don't even use app remote control, just saying that you can if you wanted to. Maybe I don't appreciate it because I don't know about how to use it properly, what does it do that VLC can't?
I don't hate CLI, I hate having a GUI that is more complex than a GUI for playing videos. I can map CLI controls to a GUI on my phone, I don't like how MPV is like a a CLI because it has poor accessibility as a feature, is there a practical reason to not have F1 invoke the shortcuts or it can't display them without an external application?
But, if somebody is the sort of user who might find themselves wanting to consult the VLC documentation, say because they are trying to write their own extension to VLC, recommending mpv instead is a no brainer for me. mpv doesn't give you an F1 window with a clickable URL to the manual, but anybody who's capable and inclined to write scripts to extend their video editor will not be hung up by such a minor omission. And when they do manage to land on the documentation for either editor, mpv's documentation has a much better chance of actually having the information they're looking for.
> What problems does that have? What arbitrary commands do you have?
Concrete example: I control mpv from a media library application on my desktop. I can load a playlist of files from that media library into mpv. When mpv starts playing the next file, it can send a message to the media library notifying it of this. VLC can do all of that too; so far so good. In addition to playing the playlist, from within mpv I can also select files (without playing them), tag them, or delete them. When my mpv scripts do these things, they send events to the library application over the same interface that the library application is using to control mpv. As far as I've been able to determine, there is no VLC equivalent so I would need to open another communication channel between the two (instead of doing this, I decided to drop VLC support entirely.)
> I don't hate CLI, I hate having a GUI that is more complex than a GUI for playing videos
I'm starting to think we're having a fundamental communication breakdown here, because this seems completely backwards to me. VLC is the one with a complex GUI, not mpv. mpv has a very simple GUI; too simple to a fault [from the perspective of most users, who are better served by VLC.] If your needs are solely to play a file, just drag and drop the file into mpv and it will play just fine. It only gets more unfriendly when you want to change parameters and configuration, which VLC has very complicated GUIs for while mpv does not.
> Is there a practical reason to not have F1 invoke the shortcuts
In principle it could display shortcuts in the psuedo-GUI. Displaying the shortcuts in another window or in another application would require platform-specific code to be maintained for this, and I'm guessing that none of the mpv developers think that is worth their effort.
That's just the manpage in html format, are you kidding? We're not in the era of text terminals, there are so many tools for writing good documentation that this is just inexcusable. Take a look at VLC documentation (https://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation:User_Guide/), that's a proper documentation with screenshots that looks like someone actually put some effort into writing that so that it is understandable to new users instead of plugging words into a troff file.
Except for the edge case of controlling a media player from another application you've put no convincing use case for using mpv over vlc. So it's a personal preference not that mpv is superior to vlc in anyway (actually far inferior for most use cases).
Trust me, I have. Extensively. The mpv manpage (which is actually written in the reStructuredText markup lanugage) is comprehensive and easy to read. Era of text terminals? Give me a break, I just gave you a link for reading it in your browser, just like the VLC wiki, except the mpv manual is very comprehensive and up to date, while the VLC manual is scattered, sparse, and frequently out of date. I practice terminal emulator avoidance; I don't edit text in a terminal emulator, I don't read manpages in a terminal emulator, and I almost never start mpv from a terminal emulator either.
> So it's a personal preference not that mpv is superior to vlc [...] most use cases [...]
I have been upfront about that. I recommend VLC to the vast majority of users, including all of my family and most of my friends.
The only upside of the VLC manual is that only one in a thousand VLC users will ever need to look at it in the first place. mpv's manual is necessary but high quality, while VLC's manual is low quality but extraneous.
It's not having good information that is important, what's critical is finding relevant information quickly, tagging and linking it to other parts of the document and external sources. Also information does not have to be limited to text format, especially for manuals a graphic or a small video can be worth more than thousand written words. Welcome to 21st century. All information you'll ever need is present in the source code, then why even bother creating a documentation? Manpage is limited for even text terminals, texinfo is so much better.
I agree regarding the need to keep the documentation updated. However, it's quite easy to get support from the community and putting a request to update an outdated article or section.
Manual is the same as everything else on the system; `man mpv`.
That's the difference to OpenSSL!
Which is quite handy for videos that don't belong in eg. Plex.
Once I got it working, I liked the built-in DLNA media server in my particular ASUS router enough that I retired my Jellyfin server.
The team that powers VLC - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21620300 - Nov 2019 (49 comments)
I remember watching 1080p blurry rips in MPC without any problems in 2008 while VLC would spend 1 year doing some sort of buffering upon opening then struggling to play the video correctly.
I've been gone from the Internet for 8 years. Before I left I used VLC for everything. When I just got a laptop I was convinced to install PotPlayer as "being better". Having been gone for such a long time I assumed there was a tectonic shift in the media player space. Perhaps I was wrong?
"MPC-HC is not under development since 2017. Please switch to something else."
I also believed this until I got a family support case a couple of weeks ago.
I learned that if the bitrate is too high for the PC to handle vlc badly fails. (This was a fanless Intel PC, so the CPU is very much low end despite not being particularly old.) Of course I would not expect vlc to do any miracles here, but at least I would expect an error message explaining the problem. ffmpeg gives me warnings all the time if buffers are too small etc. In vlc I'd expect it a bit less cryptic...
Ideally it would still play the video with reduced quality. Whether that's at all doable I don't know. Just decoding I-frames would be the most naive approach, but probably also a not lead to very much usable results.
Actually the family member found one solution themselves: Play it at reduced speed. VLC could have figured out that automatically. (And of course give a clear message to the user why it does that.)
It isn't really. It's possible if the video has B-frames but it's hard to predict how much dropping will cause how much recovery, and if you drop almost anything else the possible error is unbounded.
Last I checked the recommended method to play h.265 files in VLC was to re-encode them.
[1] Or at least was, my recollections regarding this are nearly 10-15 years old at this point.
[2] There was one specific person, Daiz from the Underwater/UTW fansub group, that was one of the first people to start encoding his releases in H.264/10bit, and he would get a lot of hate because they tended not to play very well on improper setups, vanilla VLC being among those. "Dammit Daiz", they would say. He eventually bruteforced a tripcode to have H.264 in it just to mess back at them for all the hate. Fun memories.
edit: here we go, a contemporary HN rant from the man himself regarding MPC vs VLC. Looks like summoning Daiz works here too
What else is there to think about?
Personally, I have never once had trouble getting VLC to run a media file, and I can't say that for any other media player. Granted, I don't know any other media players, and I don't know if it's hard to make a good one -- but that's kind of the point. I want a limited range of features from a media player: ability to make sound really loud, adjust timing of subtitles, speed up / slow down. All of those "just work" for VLC and have very basic navigation (that's good). VLC has allowed me to be comfortably oblivious to all the codec crap I remember dealing with over a decade ago.
VLC just works now, its on every platform, and I used it to run any video that MPC couldn't play. Then I just used it to play everything, and I can do that on every platform I use, they all have VLC.