Friday, October 30, 2015

SMPlayer 15.9 (Stable) Released With mpv Support, More

SMPlayer, a Qt front-end for mplayer, has reached version 15.9.0 recently, this being the first stable version to support mpv. There are various other new features as well, like support for 3D stereo filter, MPRIS v2 support, a new default theme and more.

SMPlayer

Note that if you've been using the official SMPlayer PPA, you've got SMPlayer with mpv support for quite some time - that's because the SMPlayer developers have been updating this PPA for a while with SVN builds which had this feature.

mpv is a media player based on mplayer2 (and MPlayer), which comes with extra features and improvements, like native support for VAAPI and VDA along with improved VDPAU video output, precise seeking, gapeless audio support, better MKV support (including ordered chapters, 3D metadata) and more. You can see a list of changes / differences between mpv and mplayer2, HERE.

Changes in SMPlayer 15.9:
  • mpv can now be used instead of mplayer;
  • mpv only features:
    • you can now use two subtitles in the same time;
    • it's now possible to play videos from streaming websites like DailyMotion, Vimeo, Vevo and many others (previously, only YouTube was supported). mpv uses youtube-dl so you'll be able to play videos from any website supported by it;
    • added an option to step back one frame;
    • a new option was added which allows setting a template for screenshots;
  • support for the 3D stereo filter;
  • better support for YouTube (VEVO videos);
  • you can now use a proxy with SMPlayer;
  • added a new action (assigned by default to key "I") which shows the current playback time, total time and percentage, for 2 seconds on the OSD;
  • added the possibility to use the mouse buttons for "next chapter" and "previous chapter";
  • a new option was added which allows deleting a file in the playlist from the filesystem;
  • MPRIS v2 support;
  • a new theme, called H2O is now the default theme.

To be able to use SMPlayer with mpv, you'll need mpv 0.6.2 or newer! Also, some mpv-only features may require an even newer mpv version (for instance, to be able to play videos from websites such as DailyMotion, Vimeo, etc., you'll need mpv 0.7.0 or newer).

The new default theme is only used for new installs and if you don't like it, you can go back to the previous style from the SMPlayer Preferences > Interface (select "Default" for the "Icon set" - in my test, this also affected the UI colors for some reason).


Install SMPlayer and mpv in Ubuntu or Linux Mint


To add the official SMPlayer PPA and install the latest SMPlayer 15.9 in Ubuntu or Linux Mint, use the following commands:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rvm/smplayer
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install smplayer

For Ubuntu 15.04 and 15.10, mpv is available in the official repositories so to install it, simply use the following command:
sudo apt-get install mpv

For Ubuntu 14.04 / Linux Mint 17.x, the mpv version available in the repositories is very old and not compatible with SMPlayer. However, you can install a newer version by using Doug McMahon's PPA. To add the PPA and install mpv, use the following command:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mc3man/mpv-tests
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install mpv

To configure SMPlayer to use mpv, open its Preferences and under "General", on the "General" tab, set "mpv" (without the quotes" as the "MPlayer/MPV executable" and click Apply:

SMPlayer

And an extra tip: to be able to play videos from all the streaming websites supported by youtube-dl (again: this requires mpv 0.7.0 or newer), in the SMPlayer Preferences click "Network" on the left and check the "Enable MPV's support for streaming websites" checkbox:

SMPlayer

This feature requires youtube-dl so make sure you've installed it (I recommend installing it via the main failsdownloads PPA to get the latest version).

For other Linux distributions and Windows, see the SMPlayer downloads page.
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