MPV Shim for 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.

Source Repository: https://github.com/iwalton3/plex-mpv-shim

Getting Started

If you are on Windows, simply download the binary. If you are using Linux or OSX, please see the Linux Installation or OSX Installation sections 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 want to use the web application to cast, you must either be on the same network as a Plex server (an empty one will work) or install the MPV Shim Local Connection user script.

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. You can open the configuration folder using the systray icon. 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%\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.

- This will tell the client to always transcode, without asking. Default: 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.

- This will ask the server to determine if transcoding is suggested. Default: 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.

- When all media has played. pre_media_cmd - Before the player displays. (Will wait for finish.)

- Before the player displays. (Will wait for finish.) stop_cmd - After stopping the player.

- 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

- The size of the subtitles, in percent. Default: subtitle_color - The color of the subtitles, in hex. Default: #FFFFFFFF

- The color of the subtitles, in hex. Default: 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.

- Enable usage of the external player by default. Default: 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

- The path to the binary to use. By default it uses the one in the PATH. Default: 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.

- The path to the socket to control MPV. Default: 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] .

- Start a managed copy of MPV with the client. Default:

Other Configuration Options

player_name - The name of the player that appears in the cast menu. Initially set from your hostname.

- 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

- The TCP port to listen on for Plex to control the player. Default: 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.

- Enable play queue support. Default: client_uuid - The identifier for the client. Set to a random value on first run.

- The identifier for the client. Set to a random value on first run. audio_ac3passthrough - Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: false

- Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: audio_dtspassthrough - Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: false

- Does not work. Currently only changes transcoder settings. Default: 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.

- Allow insecure Plex server connections. Default: 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.

- The client profile for transcoding. Default: sanitize_output - Prevent Plex tokens from being printed to the console. Default: true

- Prevent Plex tokens from being printed to the console. Default: fullscreen - Fullscreen the player when starting playback. Default: true

- Fullscreen the player when starting playback. Default: enable_gui - Enable the system tray icon and GUI features. Default: true

- Enable the system tray icon and GUI features. Default: media_key_seek - Use the media next/prev keys to seek instead of skip episodes. Default: false

- Use the media next/prev keys to seek instead of skip episodes. Default: 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.

- Enable the MPV on-screen controller. Default: log_decisions - Log the full playback URLs. Default: false

- Log the full playback URLs. Default: mpv_log_level - Log level to use for mpv. Default: info Options: fatal, error, warn, info, v, debug, trace

- Log level to use for mpv. Default:

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.

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 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 or mpv installed.

sudo pip3 install --upgrade plex-mpv-shim

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

sudo pip3 install pystray sudo apt install python3-tk

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:

Install brew. (Instructions) Install python3 and mpv. brew install python mpv Install jellyfin-mpv-shim. pip3 install --upgrade plex-mpv-shim Run plex-mpv-shim .

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

Install pyenv. (Instructions) Install TK and mpv. brew install tcl-tk mpv Install python3 with TK support. FLAGS="-I$(brew --prefix tcl-tk)/include" pyenv install 3.8.1 Set this python3 as the default. pyenv global 3.8.1 Install jellyfin-mpv-shim and pystray. pip3 install --upgrade plex-mpv-shim pystray Run plex-mpv-shim .

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.)