this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Excuse my silly question, but what does mpv do that vlc doesn't?
MPV has automatic native wayland support, VLC doesn’t (yet, see https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VLC_media_player#Wayland_support)
I haven’t found any other large differences in functionality when it comes to simply playing video (only thing I use either one for).
VLC is also less accurate to the source than mpv is.
See the notice on this wiki that contains some comparisons.
I don't know the full details but this is a quote I have seen from reddit about VLC:
It is probably possible to get things in order by digging into the settings in VLC, but mpv prioritizes accuracy by default.
For me I got mad at VLC cause it was opening video track in separate window for some reason.
MPV handles decoding much better than VLC, in my experience trying to watch fansubs
Both are comparable in terms of video playback (both use hardware acceleration and ffmpeg) but mpv's appeal is that it's ultimately a minimal (as in lack of apparent GUI) command line tool rather than a fully featured application like VLC. I like mpv because of it's non-features which is why it's the backend for a lot of Desktop environment video players.
If you want minimalism I advise you to use a tiling window manager instead of Gnome. If you want Wayland absolutely, use Hyprland.
I use POP!_OS right now so I'm waiting for System76 to release their
cosmic-epoch
to have the definitive non-GNOME/KDE wayland desktop environment.