mpv is a free and open sourcemedia player based on MPlayer and mplayer2.[2] The project focuses mainly on modern systems and encourages developer activity, which has led to removal of large portions of code originating from MPlayer as well as the introduction of many new features and improvements at the cost of compatibility with its predecessors due to changed behavior and configuration options.
A distinguishing change for developers who wish to integrate mpv into their applications is the deprecation of the previous way to control running mpv processes programmatically—the so-called “slave mode”—due to various shortcomings and broken compatibility,[3] instead allowing mpv to be compiled and used as a library which exposes a client API to control the player. Media encoding functionality (previously a separate program called MEncoder) has been reintroduced to the player itself as audio and video output drivers using FFmpeg libraries.[4]
mpv includes a technique called smoothmotion, which is a form of video processing in which frames that lie on the transition between source frames are blended together from the two conflicting source frames by means of interpolation. This reduces the effect of judder caused by a mismatch between the source and display frame rates.[5]