mpv is super powerful multimedia player. Though I use SMPlayer sometimes, SMPlayer can either use mplayer or mpv as its multimedia engine.

I found a useful usage of mpv, that’s to play YouTube playlist through command-line, without opening the video or through web browser.

To invoke a YouTube playlist, we must make sure the playlist URL has only the list parameter, if there is v parameter, then it will not work. Eg,

Yah, after posting about VLC, now it is SMPlayer. What is so good about SMPlayer? SMPlayer, playing the RMVB file is smoother than VLC. I don’t know why. Next, playing the f4v file (Flash video), the video is also smoother than VLC.

So, because of the needs or watching RMVB movie and f4v movie, that is why I use SMPlayer frequently.

But under Linux, there is a small problem about SMPlayer to play the video with a separate subtitle with Chinese encoding, namely GBK. To play the video in the Unicode locale, the subtitle will shows the characters with underline only. To get the locale of your Linux, enter “locale” in the command-line, it will show something like this,

Actually I am using two movie players in my Linux. One is VLC, the other is SMPlayer.  Both are cross platform. Comparing VLC and SMPlayer, each of them has its own advantage, that is why I use both.

The features that VLC can do, which SMPlayer cannot do, is that VLC can play the MIDI file with the SoundFont. This is something nice in Linux. Because playing MIDI file in Linux unlike Windows, need a SoundFont file and some configuration.