2.0.2 • Published 6 years ago

node-mpv-km v2.0.2

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github
Last release
6 years ago

Node-MPV 2

A wrapper to comfortably use mpv player with node.js. It provides functions for most of the commands needed to control the player. It's easy to use and highly flexible.

The module keeps an instance of mpv running in the background (using mpv's --idle) and communicates over the Json IPC API.

It also provides direct access to the IPC socket. Thus this module is not only limited to the methods it provides, but can also fully communicate with the mpv API.

This module makes heavy use of Promises to deal with the asynchronous nature of sending message over a socket and waiting for the reponse.

Works on UNIX and Windows.

This module requires mpv to be installed on your system to work. On Windows you can provide the path to the mpv.exe using the binary option, when creating the mpv instance

For streaming playback from sources such as YouTube and SoundCloud youtube-dl is required

This fork

This fork includes these specific fixes :

  • Fix for IPCRequestID exception when using latest version of mpv (at least 0.29 git version from August 2019, may also affect earlier versions)
  • Fix formatOptions in case several = characters are present in options parameters when loading up files

Important

With Version 2.0.0 the API how to initialize and start MPV has changed. See the Usage and Example section to see, how it changed.

Migration to Node-MPV 2

If you're already using Node-MPV 1 please refer to this Migration Guide to see how to migrate your application to Node-MPV 2.

Table of Contents

Install

npm install node-mpv

OS X

brew install mpv youtube-dl

Linux (Ubuntu/Debian)

sudo apt-get install mpv youtube-dl

Windows

Go to the respective websites mpv and youtube-dl and follow the install instructions.

youtube-dl is only required if you want to stream videos or music from YouTube, SoundCloud or other websites supported by youtube-dl. See here for a list of supported websites.

Usage

Every single method of Node-MPV returns a Promise, more on that later.

const mpvAPI = require('node-mpv');
const mpv = new mpvAPI();

// starts MPV
mpv.start()
.then(() => {
    // loads a file
    return mpv.load('your/favorite/song.mp3');
})
.then(() => {
    // file is playing
    // sets volume to 70%
    return mpv.volume(70);
})
// handle errors here
.catch((error) => {
    console.log(error);
});

You can optionally pass a JSON object with options to the constructor. Possible options, along with their default values are the following

{
    "audio_only": false,
    "auto_restart": true,
    "binary": null,
    "debug": false,
    "ipcCommand": null,
    "socket": "/tmp/node-mpv.sock", // UNIX
    "socket": "\\\\.\\pipe\\mpvserver", // Windows
    "time_update": 1,
    "verbose": false,
}
  • audio_only will add the --no-video and --no-audio-display argument and start mpv in audio only mode
  • auto_restart - if set to true, MPV is restarted when it has crashed
  • binary will use the provied path to a mpv binary instead of using the one found in $PATH
  • debug prints error messages
  • ipc_command sets the ipc command to start the ipc socket. Possible options are --input-unix-socket and --input-ipc-server. This is usually not needed since Node-MPV is able to determine the correct command on its own
  • socket specifies the socket mpv opens
  • time_update the time interval in seconds, how often mpv should report the current time position, when playing a song or video
  • verbose will print various information on the console

You can also provide an optional second argument, an Array containing mpv command line options. A list of available arguments can be found in the documentation

const mpv = new mpvAPI({
  "verbose": true,
  "audio_only": true
},
[
  "--fullscreen",
  "--fps=60"
])

mpv.start()
.then(() => {
	// Code
});

mpv is then easily controllable via simple function calls.

mpv.loadFile("/path/to/your/favorite/song.mp3");
mpv.volume(70);

Events are used to detect changes.

mpv.on('statuschange', (status) => {
  console.log(status);
});

mpv.on('stopped', () => {
  console.log("Gimme more music");
});

Promises

As stated above, every single method of Node-MPV returns a Promise. This means you will have to create a promise chain to control the player. The promise will be resolved if everything went fine and possibly returns some information and it will be rejected with a proper error message if something went wrong.

mpv.start()
.then(() => {
    return mpv.load('/path/to/video.mkv');
})
.then(() => {
    return mpv.getDuration();
})
.then((duration) => {
    console.log(duration);
    return mpv.getProperty('someProperty');
})
.then((property) => {
    console.log(property);
})
// catches all possible errors from above
.catch((error) => {
    // Maybe the mpv player could not be started
    // Maybe the video file does not exist or couldn't be loaded
    // Maybe someProperty is not a valid property
    console.log(error);
}

Async / Await

Starting from Node 8.0.0 Async/Await is fully supported. If you're within an async function you can use await for better readability and code structure.

The promise code from above becomes this

someAsyncFunction = asnyc () => {
    try{
    	await mpv.start();
    	await mpv.load('path/to/video.mkv');
    	console.log(await mpv.getDuration());
    	console.log(await mpv.getProperty('someProperty'));
    }
    catch (error) {
    	// Maybe the mpv player could not be started
    	// Maybe the video file does not exist or couldn't be loaded
    	// Maybe someProperty is not a valid property
    	console.log(error);
    }
}

Methods

Starting & Stopping

  • start ()

    Starts the MPV process in the background. Has to be called before the player can be used.

    return - a promise that resolves when MPV is started and is rejected if an error occured

    mpv.start()
.then(() => {
    // The player can be used here
});

  • quit ()

    Quits MPV. The process in the backgroud is terminated and all socket connection is closed.

    MPV can be restarted using start ()

  • isRunning () - boolean

    Returns whether mpv is running or not. This method is an exception, it does not return a Promise

Load Content

  • load (content, mode="replace, options)

    Will load the content (either a file or a url) and start playing it. This behaviour can be changed using the mode option

  • mode

    • replace(default) replace current title and play it immediately
    • append appends the file to the playlist
    • append-play appends the file to the playlist. If the playlist is empty this file will be played

  • options (optional) an array that can be used to pass additional options to mpv

    There is another append function in the playlist section, which can be used to append either files or streams.

    return - a promise that resolves if everything went fine and the file or stream is playing (or appened when mode was set to append) and is reject with an error message when something went wrong

Controlling MPV

  • play ()

    Starts playback when in the pause state

  • stop ()

    Stops the playback entirely

  • pause ()

    Pauses playback

  • resume ()

    Resumes from the pause state

  • togglePause ()

    Toggles the pause state

  • mute ()

    Mutes the player

  • unmute ()

    Unmutes the player

  • toggleMute ()

    Toggles between muted and unmuted

  • volume (volumeLevel)

    Sets volume to volumeLevel. Allowed values are between 0-100. All values below or above will just set the volume to 0 or 100 respectively

  • adjustVolume (value)

    Adjusts the volume with the specified value. If this results in the volume going below 0 or above 100 it will be set to 0 or 100 respectively

  • seek (seconds)

    Will jump back or forth in the song or video for the specified amount of seconds. Going beyond the duration of a title results in the playback stopping

  • goToPosition (seconds)

    Jumps to the position specified by seconds. Going beyond the boundaries of a title results in playback stopping

  • loop (times)

    Loops the current title times often. If set to "inf" the title is looped forever

Information

Because node-mpv communicates over a Unix IPC Socket with mpv it has to wait for the response, if it asks mpv for information. To make this more easily usable Promises are used. All the methods in this section return such a Promise and can be used like this

getSomeInfo()
.then((info) => {
    console.log(info);
});

Or with Async/Await

const info = await getSomeInfo();
console.log(info);

  • isMuted ()

    Tells if mpv is muted

  • isPaused ()

    Tells if mpv is paused

  • isSeekable ()

    Tells if the currently playing title is seekable or not. Streams that are not fully loaded might not be seekable. The same goes for readiostreams for example.

  • getDuration ()

    Returns the duration (as a promise) of the currently playing title if available. For example for radiostreams this will not be known.

  • getTimePosition ()

    Returns the current timeposition (as a promise) for the currently playing title

  • getPercentPosition ()

    Returns the current timeposition as a percantage value (as a promise) for the currently playing title

  • getTimeRemaining ()

    Returns the remaining time (as a promise) for the currently playing title, if possible

  • getMetadata ()

    Returns the available metadata {as a promise) for the currently playing title. The promise returns a JSON Object

    There are some helper function for quicker access to some metadata, they all return promises as usual.

    • getArtist ()
    • getTitle ()
    • getAlbum ()
    • getYear ()

  • getFilename (mode="full")

    Returns the filename (or url) of the currently playing track (as a promise).

    • full (default) the full path or url
    • stripped the path stripped to the file or the end of the url

Playlists

  • loadPlaylist (playlist, mode="replace")

    Loads a playlist file. mode can be one of the two folllowing

    This function does not work with YouTube or SoundCloud playlists. Use loadFile or loadStream instead

    • replace (default) Replaces the old playist with the new one
    • append Appends the new playlist to the active one

    return - a promise, that is resolved when everything went fine or rejected when an error occus. For example if the playlist file cannot be found or the first song in the playlist cannot be played

  • append (file, mode="append")

    Appends file (which can also be an url) to the playlist.

    • mode
      • append (default) Append the title
      • append-play When the playlist is empty the title will be started
    • options (optional) an array that can be used to pass additional options to mpv

    return - a promise that resolves if everything went fine and the file or stream is playing (when mode was set to append-play) or was appended (when mode was set to append) and is reject with an error message when something went wrong.

    Note

    It is not necessarily required to check the promise when using append (default). Checking whether the file can be played or not is done when it is played, not when it's appended.

  • next (mode="weak")

    Skips the current title. mode can be one of the following two

    • weak (default) If the current title is the last one in the playlist it is not skipped
    • force The title is skipped (even if it was the last one) and playback is stopped

    return - a promise that resolves to true when the track was skipped and false otherwise. The promise is rejected with an error message if the file is not playable.

  • prev (mode="weak")

    Skips the current title. mode can be one of the following two

    • weak (default) If the title is the first one in the playlist it is not stopped
    • force The title is skipped (even if it was the first one) and playback is stopped

    return - a promise that resolves to true when the track was skipped and false otherwise. The promise is rejected with an error message if the file is not playable.

  • clearPlaylist ()

    Clears the playlist

  • playlistRemove (index)

    Removes the title at index from the playlist. If index is set to "current" the current title is removed and playback stops

  • playlistMove (index1, index2)

    Moves the title at index1 to the position at index2

  • shuffle ()

    Shuffles the playlist into a random order

  • getPlaylistSize ()

    Returns a promise that resolves to the playlist size

  • getPlaylistPosition ()

    Returns a promise that resolves to the current playlist position. The position is 0-based, which means, that positon 1 is 0 and so on.

  • getPlaylistPosition1 ()

    Just like getPlaylistPosition() but 1-based, so the first position is 1 and so on.

Audio

  • addAudioTrack (file, flag, title, lang)

    Adds an audio file to the video that is loaded.

    • file The audio file to load
    • flag (optional) Can be one of "select" (default), "auto" or "cached"
    • title (optional) The name for the audio track in the UI
    • lang (optional) the language of the audio track

    flag has the following effects

    • select - the added audio track is selected immediately
    • auto - the audio track is not selected
    • cached - select the audio track, but if an audio track file with the same name is already loaded, the new file is not added and the old one is selected instead

  • removeAudioTrack ()

    Removes the audio track specified by id. Works only for external audio tracks

  • selectAudioTrack (id)

    Selects the audio track associated with id

  • cycleAudioTracks ()

    Cycles through the audio tracks

  • adjustAudioTiming (seconds)

    Shifts the audio timing by seconds

  • speed (scale)

    Controls the playback speed by scale which can take any value between 0.01 and 100

    If the --auto-pitch-correction flag is used (default), this will not pitch the audio and uses a scaletempo audio filter

Video

  • fullscreen ()

    Goes into fullscreen mode

  • leaveFullscreen ()

    Leaves fullscreen mode

  • toggleFullscreen ()

    Toggles between fullscreen and windowed mode

  • screenshot (file, option)

    Takes a screenshot and saves it to file. options is one of the following

    • subtitles (default) Takes a screenshot including the subtitles
    • video Only the image, no subtitles
    • window The scaled mpv window

  • rotateVideo (degrees)

    Rotates the video clockwise. degree can only be multiples of 90 and the rotation is absolute, not relative

  • zoomVideo (factor)

    Zooms into the video. 0 does not zoom at all, 1 zooms double and so on

  • brightness (value)

    Sets the brightness to value. Allowed values are between -100 and 100

  • contrast (value)

    Sets the contrast to value. Allowed values are between -100 and 100

  • saturation (value)

    Sets the saturation to value. Allowed values are between -100 and 100

  • gamma (value)

    Sets the gamma to value. Allowed values are between -100 and 100

  • hue (value)

    Sets the hue to value. Allowed values are between -100 and 100

Subtitles

  • addSubtilte (file, flag, title, lang)

    Adds a subtitle file to the video that is loaded.

    • file The subtitle file to load
    • flag (optional) Can be one of "select" (default), "auto" or "cached"
    • title (optional) The name for the subtitle file in the UI
    • lang (optional) The language of the subtitle

    flag has the following effects

    • select - the added subtitle is selected immediately
    • auto - the subtitle is not selected
    • cached - select the subtitle, but if a subtitle file with the same name is already loaded, the new file is not added and the old one is selected instead

  • removeSubitlte (id)

    Removes the subtitle file specified by id. Works only for external subtitles

  • selectSubitlte (id)

    Selects the subtitle associated with id

  • cycleSubtitles ()

    Cycles through all available subtitles

  • toggleSubtitleVisibility ()

    Toggles between hidden and visible subtitles

  • showSubtitles ()

    Shows the subtitles

  • hideSubtitles ()

    Hides the subtitles

  • adjustSubtitleTiming (seconds)

    Shifts the subtitle timing by seconds

  • subtitleSeek (lines)

    Jumps as many lines of subtitles as defined by lines. Can be negative. This will also seek in the video.

  • subitlteScale (scale)

    Adjust the scale of the subtitles

Properties

These methods can be used to alter properties or send arbitary commands to the running mpv player. Information about what commands and properties are available can be found in the list of commands and list of properties sections of the mpv documentation.

The most common commands are already covered by this modules API. This part enables you to send any command you want over IPC. With this you are not limited the methods defined by this module.

  • setProperty (property, value)

    Sets the specified property to the specified value

  • setMultipleProperties (properties)

    Calls setProperty for every property specified in the arguments Json object. For example

    setMultipleProperties({
    "volume": 70,
    "fullscreen": true
});

  • getProperty (property)

    Gets information about the specified property.

    return - a promise that resolves to the property value

  • addProperty (property, value)

    Increase the property by the specified value. Needless to say this can only be used on numerical properties. Negative values are possible

  • multiplyProperty (property, value)

    Multiply the specified property by value

  • cycleProperty (property)

    Cycles the values of an arbitrary property

  • command (command, args)

    Sends the command to the mpv player with the arguments specified in args The Json command

    {"command": ["loadfile", "audioSong.mp3"]}

    becomes a function call

    command("loadfile",["audioSong.mp3"]

  • freeCommand (command)

    This will send an arbitrary command to the mpv player. It must follow the specification of the Json IPC protocol. Its syntax can be found in the documentation.

    A trailing "\n" will be added to the command.

Observing

node-mpv allows you to observe any property the mpv API offers you, by simply using the observeProperty function.

  • observeProperty (property, id)

    This will add the specified property to the statusupdate event which is emitted whenever one of the observed properties changes.

    The Ids 0-12 are already taken by the properties which are observed by default.

  • unobserveProperty(id)

    This will remove the property associated with the specified id from the statusupdate.

    Unobserving default properties may break the module.

Events

The Node-MPV module provides various events to notify about changes of the mpv player's state.

  • crashed

    Whenever mpv has crashed or the process was killed. If the auto_restart option is set to true (default), mpv is restarted again right away.

    Use this event to for example reload your playlist, videos, etc when the player crashed

  • getrequest \<id, data> - deprecated

    Delivers the reply to a function call to the getRequest method

  • seek

    Whenever a seek() or goToPosition() is called, or some external source searches, this event is emitted providing a timeposition object with the following information

    {
    start: <timeposition before seeking>,
    end:   <timeposition after  seeking>
}

    In case the seek can not be finished, for example because the file is changed while seeking, this event is not emitted. It is only emitted when the seeking has successfully finished.

  • started

    Whenever mpv starts playing a song or video

  • stopped

    Whenever the playback has stopped

  • paused

    Whenever mpv was paused

  • resumed

    Whenever mpv was resumed

  • statuschange \<status object>

    Whenever the status of one of the observed properties changes, this event will be emitted providing the complete status object

    By default various properties are already observed and the status object looks like the following

    {
  "mute": false,
  "pause": false,
  "duration": null,
  "volume": 100,
  "filename": null,
  "path": null,
  "media-title": null,
  "playlist-pos": 0,
  "playlist-count": 0,
  "loop": "no"
}

    If the player is running in video mode the following properties are present as well.

    {
  "fullscreen": false,
  "sub-visibility": false
}

  • timeposition \<seconds>

    When a song or video is currently playing and the playback is not paused, this event will emit the current position in seconds.

    When creating the mpv instance you can set a parameter, how often this event should occur. Default is every second

  • quit

    When mpv player was quit by the user on purpose, this event is emitted. It is not emitted, when the quit() method was used.

    Use this to detect if the user has closed the player.

Note

  • filename When playing a local file this contains the filename. When playing for example a YouTube stream, this will only contain the trailing url

  • path Provides the absolute path to the file or the full url of a stream

  • media-title If available in the file this will contain the title. When streaming from YouTube this will be set to the video's name

    This object can expanded through the observeProperty method making it possible to watch any state you desire, given it is provided by mpv

Error Handling

If a method's promise is rejected it returns an error object. This object looks like the following

{
    'errcode': Error Code
    'verbose': Verbal version of the Error Code
    'method': Method that raised the error
    'arguments': List of arguments the method was called with
    'errmessage': More specific error message
    'options': JSON object with valid options for the method if possible
}

The following Error Codes are available

  • 0 Unable to load file or stream
  • 1 Invalid argument
  • 2 Binary not found
  • 3 ipcCommand invalid
  • 4 Unable to bind IPC socket
  • 5 Timeout
  • 6 MPV is already running
  • 7 Could not send IPC message
  • 8 MPV is not running

Example

const mpvAPI = require('node-mpv');
const mpv = new mpvAPI();

// Start the player
mpv.start()
.then(() => {
	// This will load and start the song
	return mpv.load('/path/to/your/favorite/song.mp3')
})
.then(() => {
	// Set the volume to 50%
	return mpv.volume(50);
})
.then(() => {
	// Stop to song emitting the stopped event
	return mpv.stop();
})
// this catches every arror from above
.catch((error) => {
	console.log(error);
});

// This will bind this function to the stopped event
mpv.on('stopped', () => {
    console.log("Your favorite song just finished, let's start it again!");
    mpv.loadFile('/path/to/your/favorite/song.mp3');
});

Known Issues

Old MPV Version on Debian

Debian took their stable policy a little to far and MPV is still on version 0.6.0. Unfortunately the IPC functionality was only introduced with version 0.7.0. Thus this module will just not work with the debian packaged MPV.

The dependecies to build MPV are also too old on Debian (but I guess they are stable, right?). Lucky there is this project, that helps you to build the dependencies and mpv afterwards.

Using this you can easily get the latest stable MPV Player on Debian.

IPC Command

The command line argument to start the IPC socket has changed in mpv version 0.17.0 from --input-unix-socket to --input-ipc-socket. This module uses regular expressions to find the version number from the mpv --version output. If mpv is compiled from source, the version number is stated as UNKNOWN and this module will assume, that you use the latest version and use the new command.

If you use self compiled version stating UNKNOWN as the version number below mpv version 0.17.0 you have to use the ipc_command option with '--input-unix-socket'.

To check this enter the following in your command shell

mpv --version

Bug with observing playlist-count in MPV Player 0.17.0

In mpv version 0.17.0, the playlist-count property is not updated on playlistRemove and append.

I filed an Issue and this is fixed with 0.17.1

MPV Player 0.18.1

MPV Player version 0.18.1 has some issues that the player crashes sometimes, when sending commands through the ipc socket. If you're using version 0.18.1 try to use a newer (or older) version.

To check your version number enter the following in your command shell

mpv --version

MPV Hanging or Crashing

If your JS code is correct but you are still experiencing crashes, a good place to start debugging is by disabling the default config and/or plugins.

mpvPlayer = new mpv({
  ...
},
[
  "--no-config",
  "--load-scripts=no"
]);

For example, autoload.lua is known to cause problems when loading files in quick succession from a folder with many files.

Changelog

See changelog for more information or API breaking changes

mpvAudioVideoStreammultimedia
cuid
@infinitebrahmanuniverse/nolb-node-m@everything-registry/sub-chunk-2306
2.0.2

6 years ago

2.0.1

6 years ago

2.0.0

6 years ago