plex-mpv-shim 1.7.0

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

Plex MPV Shim

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

Getting Started

If you are on Windows, simply download the binary. If you are using Linux, please see the Linux Installation section below.

To use the client, simply launch it and cast your media from another Plex application. The mobile and web applications are supported. You do not have to log in to the client or set it up in any other way.

If you are using the web application to cast, please note that the client must be running on a network where there is a Plex server present. It does not have to be the plex server that the media you are casting resides on. An empty Plex server will work.

The application runs with a notification icon by default. You can use this to view the application log, open the config folder, and open the application menu.

Advanced Features

Menu

To open the menu, press c on your computer or home within the Plex mobile apps.

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. (The option for remote controls is shown next to the name of the client when you select it from the cast menu.)

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.

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. When you launch the program, the location of the config file will be printed. The locations are:

• Windows - %appdata%\plex-mpv-shim\conf.json
• Linux - ~/.config/plex-mpv-shim/conf.json
• Mac OSX - Library/Application Support/plex-mpv-shim/conf.json
• CygWin - ~/.config/plex-mpv-shim/conf.json

Transcoding

You can adjust the basic transcoder settings via the menu.

• always_transcode - This will tell the client to always transcode, without asking. Default: false
  • This may be useful if you are using limited hardware that cannot handle advanced codecs.
  • You may have some luck changing client_profile in the configuration to a more restrictive one.
• auto_transcode - This will ask the server to determine if transcoding is suggested. Default: true
  • transcode_kbps - Transcode bandwidth to request. Default: 2000
  • direct_limit - Also limit direct play to transcode_kbps. Default: false
  • Note that direct_limit cannot be overriden without changing transcode_kbps.
  • If direct_limit is not set, the player assumes the server will set the limit.
• adaptive_transcode - Tell the server to adjust the quality while streaming. 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.

Subtitle Visual Settings

All of these settings apply to direct play and are adjustable through the controlling app. Note that some may not work depending on the subtitle codec. Subtitle position and color are not available for transcodes.

• 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

Other Configuration Options

• player_name - The name of the player that appears in the cast menu. Initially set from your hostname.
• http_port - The TCP port to listen on for Plex to control the player. Default: 3000
• enable_play_queue - Enable play queue support. Default: true
  • If you disable this, the application will queue media based on the series.
  • This is a legacy feature. It is not regularly tested.
• client_uuid - The identifier for the client. Set to a random value on first run.
• audio_output - If set to hdmi it disables volume adjustment. Default: hdmi
• audio_ac3passthrough - Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: false
• audio_dtspassthrough - Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: false
• allow_http - Allow insecure Plex server connections. Default: false
  • This may be useful if you are using a Plex server offline or not signed in.
• client_profile - The client profile for transcoding. Default: Plex Home Theater
  • It may be useful to change this on limited hardware.
  • If you change this, it should be changed to a profile that supports hls streaming.
• sanitize_output - Prevent Plex tokens from being printed to the console. Default: true
• fullscreen - Fullscreen the player when starting playback. Default: true
• enable_gui - Enable the system tray icon and GUI features. Default: true

MPV Configuration

You can configure mpv directly using the mpv.conf file. (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.

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 and requests. 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.

If you are using a local firewall, you'll want to allow inbound connections on TCP 3000 and UDP 32410, 32412, 32413, and 32414. The TCP port is for the web server the client uses to recieve commands. The UDP ports are for the GDM discovery protocol.

This project 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.

Linux Installation

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

sudo pip3 install --upgrade plex-mpv-shim

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

sudo pip3 install pystray
sudo apt install python3-tk

The current Debian package for libmpv1 doesn't support the on-screen controller. If you'd like this, or need codecs that aren't packaged with Debian, you need to build mpv from source. 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

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.)

1. Install Python3 with PATH enabled. Install 7zip.
2. After installing python3, open cmd as admin and run pip install --upgrade pyinstaller python-mpv requests pywin32 pystray.
3. Download libmpv.
4. Extract the mpv-1.dll from the file and move it to the plex-mpv-shim folder.
5. Open a regular cmd prompt. Navigate to the plex-mpv-shim folder.
6. Run pyinstaller -wF --add-binary "mpv-1.dll;." --add-binary "plex_mpv_shim\systray.png;." --icon media.ico run.py.