For me MPV is the best.
MPV>VLC
While they’re technically the same type of software, it’s still sort of like comparing apples to oranges.
VLC is your kitchen skink media players that comes bundled with basically everything possible.
mpv is more of a minimalist media player that let’s the user add the features themselves using add-ons.
Me personally prefer mpv since it’s minimal in every regard. I have turned of the OSC, and I use the keyboard for everything. I don’t use a lot of extras, but the ones I have, is add-ons I couldn’t probably live without, like yt-dlp and SponsorBlock (for YouTube).
I even use mpv as my music player with playlist that I manage using Neovim and the tool
echo(to add new tracks to my playlists).VLC has been disintegrating on Wayland, mpv became the default
VLC seems to be the gold standard. If you want to play something, it will. That should be more than enough for common users.
I always went with VLC until something got messed up with new laptops nVidia drivers. For whatever reason VLC could not properly use dedicated GPU acceleration with open drivers.
That’s when I tried out MPV. I like it, I like the minimalism, I like the CLI. It’s been working great so far.
For someone more technical MPV, for anyone else I’d still recommend VLC.
mpv. I like the minimalist UI. I have it configured to show no titlebar, just the video, and open by default in the corner of my screen at up to half the width of my display. It’s easy to customize with keyboard shortcuts, and by default it has sensible shortcuts for nearly everything. It’s easy to make videos with hardcoded letterboxing fit my full screen. It handles HDR and even Dolby videos (use gpu-next if you aren’t already). I can set default brightness/contrast/gamma settings, and then adjust them during playback if necessary with a single keystroke. I can adjust playback speed with a single keystroke. I can fix the aspect ratio of warped videos, again with a single keystroke.
As for VLC, well, it’s fine, really, and I’m not in the best position to say since it’s been a very long time since I used it regularly. So my experience is likely outdated. But back then, I found the UI a bit much, putting playlists front-and-center when I really just wanted to play individual files 99.99% of the time. It had too much going on besides the video. The GUI is great for discoverability but the more time I spend using something, the more I appreciate command-line usage and simple text-based config files.
VLC is my go-to recommendation for beginners, because everything is in the GUI, but mpv suits me better.
Functionally, both are similar. A few times over the years, one has adopted a critical feature a little bit before the other, like hardware acceleration for some specific codec, but for most videos they both do the job just fine.
I don’t remember VLC’s playlist showing up at all unless you open multiple files at once
For basic functionality both are great, but if I want to customise its settings VLC far more friendly.
MPV for what I read it is very powerful for customising everything but everything is hidden behind scripts.
Ever since VLC came on the scene it has been my go-to. Just a really functional player that plays almost anything I throw at it, and I like the UI well enough. For now I have no reason to use anything else. I’m not hating on other players, but VLC works for me.
Every time I find a new file format I just huck it at VLC to see what it’ll do. Most times nothing, but some interesting results have been observed.
In the 15 years I have used vlc there has only been one file it couldn’t play and so I have had no need to try another player.
Its not about only playing a video, its about more things too, like, colours, decoding etc
MPV, I can add custom scripts like cutting black bars for ultrawide monitors. And I like how customizable it is.
you can crop those bars with VLC
I use VLC. I have no real reason for choosing it other than knowing it since I was a kid, and it doing the job I need perfectly fine so far
MPV. I like the minimalism. and everything I need is under the hood in MPV.
Switched to mpv a decade ago. Love the minimal UI and how snappy it is. Used VLC or MPC-HC on Windows. Moved to linux and used SMplayer or VLC until mpv came around.
mpv for about 6 years now. Like VLC it plays pretty much anything I need to, but it feels snappier
