jellyfin-mpv-shim 1.5.10

Cast media from Jellyfin Mobile and Web apps to MPV. (Unofficial)

Jellyfin MPV Shim

Jellyfin MPV Shim is a simple and lightweight Jellyfin client, with support for Windows and Linux. Think of it as an open source Chromecast for Jellyfin. You can cast almost anything from Jellyfin and it will Direct Play. Subtitles are fully supported, and there are tools to manage them like no other Jellyfin client.

Getting Started

If you are on Windows, simply download the binary. If you are using Linux, you can install via flathub or install via pip. If you are on OSX, see the OSX Installation section below.

Desktop Client

Launch the client. You should see the Jellyfin web app. Log in to your server and use it as normal. All videos will load in MPV just like MPV Shim.

Please note: The desktop client for Windows contains significantly more files than MPV Shim, so it is distributed as an installer. It will work without admin rights.

MPV Shim

To use the client, simply launch it and log into your Jellyfin server. You’ll need to enter the URL to your server, for example http://server_ip:8096 or https://secure_domain. Make sure to include the subdirectory and port number if applicable. You can then cast your media from another Jellyfin application.

The application runs with a notification icon by default. You can use this to edit the server settings, view the application log, open the config folder, and open the application menu. Unlike Plex MPV Shim, authorization tokens for your server are stored on your device, but you are able to cast to the player regardless of location.

Note: Due to the huge number of questions and issues that have been submitted about URLs, I now tolerate bare IP addresses and not specifying the port by default. If you want to connect to port 80 instead of 8096, you must add the :80 to the URL because :8096 is now the default.

Limitations

• Music playback and Live TV are not supported.
• The client can’t be shared seamlessly between multiple users on the same server. (Link to issue.)

Advanced Features

Menu

To open the menu, press c on your computer. Depending on what app you are using to control Jellyfin, you may also be able to open the menu using that app. The web application currently doesn't have the required buttons to do so.

The menu enables you to:

• Adjust video transcoding quality.
• Change the default transcoder settings.
• Change subtitles or audio, while knowing the track names.
• Change subtitles or audio for an entire series at once.
• Mark the media as unwatched and quit.

On your computer, use the arrow keys, enter, and escape to navigate. On your phone, use the arrow buttons, ok, back, and home to navigate.

Please also note that the on-screen controller for MPV (if available) cannot change the audio and subtitle track configurations for transcoded media. It also cannot load external subtitles. You must either use the menu or the application you casted from.

Display Mirroring

This feature allows media previews to show on your display before you cast the media, similar to Chromecast. It is not enabled by default. To enable it, do one of the following:

• Using the systray icon, click "Application Menu". Go to preferences and enable display mirroring.
  • Use the arrow keys, escape, and enter to navigate the menu.
• Cast media to the player and press c. Go to preferences and enable display mirroring.
• In the config file (see below), change display_mirroring to true.

Then restart the application for the change to take effect. To quit the application on Windows with display mirroring enabled, press Alt+F4.

Keyboard Shortcuts

This program supports most of the keyboard shortcuts from MPV. The custom keyboard shortcuts are:

• < > to skip episodes
• q to close player
• w to mark watched and skip
• u to mark unwatched and quit
• c to open the menu

Here are the notable MPV keyboard shortcuts:

• space - Pause/Play
• left/right - Seek by 5 seconds
• up/down - Seek by 1 minute
• s - Take a screenshot
• S - Take a screenshot without subtitles
• f - Toggle fullscreen
• ,/. - Seek by individual frames
• [/] - Change video speed by 10%
• {/} - Change video speed by 50%
• backspace - Reset speed
• m - Mute
• d - Enable/disable deinterlace
• Ctrl+Shift+Left/Right - Adjust subtitle delay.

Configuration

The configuration file is located in different places depending on your platform. You can also open the configuration folder using the systray icon if you are using the shim version. When you launch the program on Linux or OSX from the terminal, the location of the config file will be printed. The locations are:

• Windows - %appdata%\jellyfin-mpv-shim\conf.json
• Linux - ~/.config/jellyfin-mpv-shim/conf.json
• Linux (Flatpak) - ~/.var/app/com.github.iwalton3.jellyfin-mpv-shim/config/jellyfin-mpv-shim/conf.json
• Mac OSX - Library/Application Support/jellyfin-mpv-shim/conf.json
• CygWin - ~/.config/jellyfin-mpv-shim/conf.json

You can specify a custom configuration folder with the --config option.

Transcoding

You can adjust the basic transcoder settings via the menu.

• always_transcode - This will tell the client to always transcode. Default: false
  • This may be useful if you are using limited hardware that cannot handle advanced codecs.
• transcode_h265 - Force transcode HEVC videos to h264. Default: false
• transcode_hi10p - Force transcode 10 bit color videos to 8 bit color. Default: false
• remote_kbps - Bandwidth to permit for remote streaming. Default: 10000
• local_kbps - Bandwidth to permit for local streaming. Default: 2147483
• direct_paths - Play media files directly from the SMB or NFS source. Default: false
  • remote_direct_paths - Apply this even when the server is detected as remote. Default: false
• transcode_to_h265 - Allow the server to transcode media to hevc. Default: false

Shell Command Triggers

You can execute shell commands on media state using the config file:

• media_ended_cmd - When all media has played.
• pre_media_cmd - Before the player displays. (Will wait for finish.)
• stop_cmd - After stopping the player.
• idle_cmd - After no activity for idle_cmd_delay seconds.
• idle_when_paused - Consider the player idle when paused. Default: false
• stop_idle - Stop the player when idle. (Requires idle_when_paused.) Default: false

Subtitle Visual Settings

These settings may not works for some subtitle codecs or if subtitles are being burned in during a transcode. You can configure custom styled subtitle settings through the MPV config file.

• subtitle_size - The size of the subtitles, in percent. Default: 100
• subtitle_color - The color of the subtitles, in hex. Default: #FFFFFFFF
• subtitle_position - The position (top, bottom, middle). Default: bottom

External MPV

The client now supports using an external copy of MPV, including one that is running prior to starting the client. This may be useful if your distribution only provides MPV as a binary executable (instead of as a shared library), or to connect to MPV-based GUI players. Please note that SMPlayer exhibits strange behaviour when controlled in this manner. External MPV is currently the only working backend for media playback on OSX.

• mpv_ext - Enable usage of the external player by default. Default: false
  • The external player may still be used by default if libmpv1 is not available.
• mpv_ext_path - The path to the mpv binary to use. By default it uses the one in the PATH. Default: null
  • If you are using Windows, make sure to use two backslashes. Example: C:\\path\\to\\mpv.exe
• mpv_ext_ipc - The path to the socket to control MPV. Default: null
  • If unset, the socket is a randomly selected temp file.
  • On Windows, this is just a name for the socket, not a path like on Linux.
• mpv_ext_start - Start a managed copy of MPV with the client. Default: true
  • If not specified, the user must start MPV prior to launching the client.
  • MPV must be launched with --input-ipc-server=[value of mpv_ext_ipc].

Keyboard Shortcuts

You can reconfigure the custom keyboard shortcuts. You can also set them to null to disable the shortcut. Please note that disabling keyboard shortcuts may make some features unusable. Additionally, if you remap q, using the default shortcut will crash the player.

• kb_stop - Stop playback and close MPV. (Default: q)
• kb_prev - Go to the previous video. (Default: <)
• kb_next - Go to the next video. (Default: >)
• kb_watched - Mark the video as watched and skip. (Default: w)
• kb_unwatched - Mark the video as unwatched and quit. (Default: u)
• kb_menu - Open the configuration menu. (Default: c)
• kb_menu_esc - Leave the menu. Exits fullscreen otherwise. (Default: esc)
• kb_menu_ok - "ok" for menu. (Default: enter)
• kb_menu_left - "left" for menu. Seeks otherwise. (Default: left)
• kb_menu_right - "right" for menu. Seeks otherwise. (Default: right)
• kb_menu_up - "up" for menu. Seeks otherwise. (Default: up)
• kb_menu_down - "down" for menu. Seeks otherwise. (Default: down)
• kb_pause - Pause. Also "ok" for menu. (Default: space)
• kb_debug - Trigger pdb debugger. (Default: ~)
• seek_up - Time to seek for "up" key. (Default: 60)
• seek_down - Time to seek for "down" key. (Default: -60)
• seek_right - Time to seek for "right" key. (Default: 5)
• seek_left - Time to seek for "left" key. (Default: -5)

Other Configuration Options

• player_name - The name of the player that appears in the cast menu. Initially set from your hostname.
• client_uuid - The identifier for the client. Set to a random value on first run.
• audio_output - Currently has no effect. Default: hdmi
• fullscreen - Fullscreen the player when starting playback. Default: true
• enable_gui - Enable the system tray icon and GUI features. Default: true
• media_key_seek - Use the media next/prev keys to seek instead of skip episodes. Default: false
• enable_osc - Enable the MPV on-screen controller. Default: true
  • It may be useful to disable this if you are using an external player that already provides a user interface.
• use_web_seek - Use the seek times set in Jellyfin web for arrow key seek. Default: false
• display_mirroring - Enable webview-based display mirroring (content preview). Default: false
• log_decisions - Log the full media decisions and playback URLs. Default: false
• mpv_log_level - Log level to use for mpv. Default: info
  • Options: fatal, error, warn, info, v, debug, trace
• enable_desktop - Use the desktop client. Default: false
  • You can also use it by running the jellyfin-mpv-desktop.
  • If you are using the Windows build, you must download the desktop version.
• desktop_fullscreen - Run the desktop client in fullscreen. Default: false
• desktop_remember_pos - Remember the position of the desktop client. Default: true

MPV Configuration

You can configure mpv directly using the mpv.conf and input.conf files. (It is in the same folder as conf.json.) This may be useful for customizing video upscaling, keyboard shortcuts, or controlling the application via the mpv IPC server.

Authorization

The cred.json file contains the authorization information. If you are having problems with the client, such as the Now Playing not appearing or want to delete a server, you can delete this file and add the servers again.

Tips and Tricks

Various tips have been found that allow the media player to support special functionality, albeit with more configuration required.

Open on Specific Monitor (#19)

Please note: Edits to the mpv.conf will not take effect until you restart the application. You can open the config directory by using the menu option in the system tray icon.

Option 1: Select fullscreen output screen through MPV. Determine which screen you would like MPV to show up on.

• If you are on Windows, right click the desktop and select "Display Settings". Take the monitor number and subtract one.
• If you are on Linux, run xrandr. The screen number is the number you want. If there is only one proceed to Option 2.

Add the following to your mpv.conf in the config directory, replacing 0 with the number from the previous step:

fs=yes
fs-screen=0

Option 2: (Linux Only) If option 1 does not work, both of your monitors are likely configured as a single "screen".

Run xrandr. It should look something like this:

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3520 x 1080, maximum 16384 x 16384
VGA-0 connected 1920x1080+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 521mm x 293mm
   1920x1080     60.00*+
   1680x1050     59.95  
   1440x900      59.89  
   1280x1024     75.02    60.02  
   1280x960      60.00  
   1280x800      59.81  
   1280x720      60.00  
   1152x864      75.00  
   1024x768      75.03    70.07    60.00  
   800x600       75.00    72.19    60.32    56.25  
   640x480       75.00    59.94  
LVDS-0 connected 1600x900+1920+180 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 309mm x 174mm
   1600x900      59.98*+

If you want MPV to open on VGA-0 for instance, add the following to your mpv.conf in the config directory:

fs=yes
geometry=1920x1080+0+0

Option 3: (Linux Only) If your window manager supports it, you can tell the window manager to always open on a specific screen.

• For OpenBox: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=1199
• For i3: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/96798/i3wm-start-applications-on-specific-workspaces-when-i3-starts/363848#363848

Control Volume with Mouse Wheel (#48)

Add the following to input.conf:

WHEEL_UP add volume 5
WHEEL_DOWN add volume -5

MPRIS Plugin (#54)

Set mpv_ext to true in the config. Add script=/path/to/mpris.so to mpv.conf.

Run Multiple Instances (#45)

You can pass --config /path/to/folder to run another copy of the player. Please note that running multiple copies of the desktop client is currently not supported.

Audio Passthrough

You can edit mpv.conf to support audio passthrough. A user on Reddit had luck with this config:

audio-spdif=ac3,dts,eac3 # (to use the passthrough to receiver over hdmi)
audio-channels=2 # (not sure this is necessary, but i keep it in because it works)
af=scaletempo,lavcac3enc=yes:640:3 # (for aac 5.1 tracks to the receiver)

MPV Crashes with "The sub-scale option must be a floating point number or a ratio"

Run the jellyfin-mpv-shim program with LC_NUMERIC=C.

Use with gnome-mpv/celluloid (#61)

You can use gnome-mpv with MPV Shim, but you must launch gnome-mpv separately before MPV Shim. (gnome-mpv doesn't support the MPV command options directly.)

Configure MPV Shim with the following options (leave the other ones):

{
    "mpv_ext": true,
    "mpv_ext_ipc": "/tmp/gmpv-socket",
    "mpv_ext_path": null,
    "mpv_ext_start": false,
    "enable_osc": false
}

Then within gnome-mpv, click the application icon (top left) > Preferences. Configure the following Extra MPV Options:

--idle --input-ipc-server=/tmp/gmpv-socket

Heavy Memory Usage

A problem has been identified where MPV can use a ton of RAM after media has been played, and this RAM is not always freed when the player goes into idle mode. Some users have found that using external MPV lessens the memory leak. To enable external MPV on Windows:

• Download a copy of MPV
• Unzip it with 7zip.
• Configure mpv_ext to true. (See the config section.)
• Configure mpv_ext_path to C:\\replace\\with\\path\\to\\mpv.exe. (Note usage of two \\.)
• Run the program and wait. (You'll probably have to use it for a while.)
• Let me know if the high memory usage is with mpv.exe or the shim itself.

On Linux, the process is similar, except that you don't need to set the mpv_ext_path variable. On OSX, external MPV is already the default and is the only supported player mode.

In the long term, I may look into a method of terminating MPV when not in use. This will require a lot of changes to the software.

Development

If you'd like to run the application without installing it, run ./run.py. The project is written entierly in Python 3. There are no closed-source components in this project. It is fully hackable.

The project is dependent on python-mpv, python-mpv-jsonipc, and jellyfin-apiclient-python. If you are using Windows and would like mpv to be maximize properly, pywin32 is also needed. The GUI component uses pystray and tkinter, but there is a fallback cli mode. The mirroring dependencies are Jinja2 and pywebview, along with platform-specific dependencies. (See the installation and building guides for details on platform-specific dependencies for display mirroring.) The desktop client depends on pywebview, Flask, and Werkzeug.

This project is based Plex MPV Shim, which is based on https://github.com/wnielson/omplex, which is available under the terms of the MIT License. The project was ported to python3, modified to use mpv as the player, and updated to allow all features of the remote control api for video playback.

The Jellyfin API client comes from Jellyfin for Kodi. The API client was originally forked for this project and is now a separate package.

The css file for desktop mirroring is from jellyfin-chromecast and is subject to GPL v2.0.

Local Dev Installation

If you are on Windows there are additional dependencies. Please see the Windows Build Instructions.

1. Install the dependencies: sudo pip3 install --upgrade python-mpv jellyfin-apiclient-python pystray Jinja2 pywebview python-mpv-jsonipc Flask Werkzeug.
2. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/iwalton3/jellyfin-mpv-shim
3. cd to the repository: cd jellyfin-mpv-shim
4. Download the web client and place the contents of the dist folder inside a folder named webclient in the webclient_view folder.
5. Ensure you have a copy of libmpv1 or mpv available.
6. Install any platform-specific dependencies from the respective install tutorials.
7. You should now be able to run the program with ./run.py or ./run-desktop.py. Installation is possible with sudo pip3 install ..

Linux Installation

You can install the software from flathub. The pip installation is less integrated but takes up less space if you're not already using flatpak.

If you are on Linux, you can install via pip. You'll need libmpv1 or mpv installed.

sudo pip3 install --upgrade jellyfin-mpv-shim

If you would like the Desktop client (run with jellyfin-mpv-desktop), also install:

sudo apt install python3-flask python3-webview python3-werkzeug
# -- OR --
sudo pip3 install jellyfin-mpv-shim[desktop]
sudo apt install gir1.2-webkit2-4.0

If you would like the GUI and systray features, also install pystray and tkinter:

sudo pip3 install pystray
sudo apt install python3-tk

If you would like display mirroring support, install the mirroring dependencies:

sudo apt install python3-jinja2 python3-webview
# -- OR --
sudo pip3 install jellyfin-mpv-shim[mirror]
sudo apt install gir1.2-webkit2-4.0

You can build mpv from source to get better codec support. Execute the following:

sudo pip3 install --upgrade python-mpv
sudo apt install autoconf automake libtool libharfbuzz-dev libfreetype6-dev libfontconfig1-dev libx11-dev libxrandr-dev libvdpau-dev libva-dev mesa-common-dev libegl1-mesa-dev yasm libasound2-dev libpulse-dev libuchardet-dev zlib1g-dev libfribidi-dev git libgnutls28-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libsdl2-dev cmake wget python g++ libluajit-5.1-dev
git clone https://github.com/mpv-player/mpv-build.git
cd mpv-build
echo --enable-libmpv-shared > mpv_options
./rebuild -j4
sudo ./install
sudo ldconfig

OSX Installation

Currently on OSX only the external MPV backend seems to be working. I cannot test on OSX, so please report any issues you find.

To install the CLI version:

1. Install brew. (Instructions)
2. Install python3 and mpv. brew install python mpv
3. Install jellyfin-mpv-shim. pip3 install --upgrade jellyfin-mpv-shim
4. Run jellyfin-mpv-shim.

If you'd like to install the desktop client (currently requires python from brew):

1. Install brew. (Instructions)
2. Install python3 and mpv. brew install python mpv
3. Install jellyfin-mpv-shim. pip3 install --upgrade 'jellyfin-mpv-shim[desktop]'
4. Run jellyfin-mpv-desktop.

If you'd like to install the GUI version, you need a working copy of tkinter.

1. Install pyenv. (Instructions)
2. Install TK and mpv. brew install tcl-tk mpv
3. Install python3 with TK support. FLAGS="-I$(brew --prefix tcl-tk)/include" pyenv install 3.8.1
4. Set this python3 as the default. pyenv global 3.8.1
5. Install jellyfin-mpv-shim and pystray. pip3 install --upgrade 'jellyfin-mpv-shim[gui]'
6. Run jellyfin-mpv-shim.

Display mirroring is not tested on OSX, but may be installable with 'pip3 install --upgrade 'jellyfin-mpv-shim[mirror]'`.

Building on Windows

There is a prebuilt version for Windows in the releases section. When following these directions, please take care to ensure both the python and libmpv libraries are either 64 or 32 bit. (Don't mismatch them.)

If you'd like to build the installer, please install Inno Setup to build the installer. If you'd like to build a 32 bit version, download the 32 bit version of mpv-1.dll and copy it into a new folder called mpv32. You'll also need WebBrowserInterop.x86.dll. You may also need to edit the batch file for 32 bit builds to point to the right python executable.

1. Install Git for Windows. Open Git Bash and run git clone https://github.com/iwalton3/jellyfin-mpv-shim; cd jellyfin-mpv-shim.
2. Install Python3 with PATH enabled. Install 7zip.
3. After installing python3, open cmd as admin and run pip install --upgrade pyinstaller python-mpv jellyfin-apiclient-python pywin32 pystray Jinja2 pywebview[cef] python-mpv-jsonipc Flask Werkzeug.
4. Download libmpv.
5. Extract the mpv-1.dll from the file and move it to the jellyfin-mpv-shim folder.
6. Open a regular cmd prompt. Navigate to the jellyfin-mpv-shim folder.
7. (Edge Build, disabled by default) Download WebBrowserInterop.x64.dll and Winforms Webview.
8. (Edge Build, disabled by default) Rename the *.nupkg to a *.zip file and extract lib\net462\Microsoft.Toolkit.Forms.UI.Controls.WebView.dll to the project root.
9. (CEF Desktop Client) Copy the folder AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python37\Lib\site-packages\cefpython3 to cef\cefpython3.
10. Download the web client build and unzip it into jellyfin_mpv_shim\webclient_view\webclient.
11. Run build-win.bat.