AutoIt 4K MPV Player

[CYCho]

I am excited to share a lightweight yet powerful 4K video player that I built using AutoIt and the MPV engine. This project is the first step in my efforts to find a viable way to migrate the engine of my zPlayer from the legacy winmm.dll to the modern libmpv-2.dll which has hardware acceleration and supports high resolutions. I was especially interested in finding a way to play 4K video files. I have high expectations for @MattyD's efforts to bring WinRT functionalities to AutoIt. In the meantime, I looked into libvlc.dll and libmpv-2.dll, but frankly, I found both to be very difficult to learn. I was inclined to use MPV because it seemed oriented toward developers, whereas VLC was for users. This player has only rudimentary functions, but it uses most of the basic MPV commands and functions to support my migration.

For the latest version of libmpv-2.dll, you can download mpv-dev-x86_64-YYYYMMDD-git-f9190e5.7z from this site.

Any comments or suggestions would be most welcome.

File updated on March 24, 2026
File updated on March 25, 2026
File updated on March 27, 2026
File updated on April 3, 2026
File updated on April 12, 2026

 

 

AutoIt_4K_MPV_Player(20260412).au3

Edited April 12 by CYCho

[Dan_555]

Hi, it works ok so far ...

The _PlayListCreate() function should be called after the check for the libmpv-2.dll

for my local copy of the script i made this change:

If $hMPV_DLL = -1 Then
;MsgBox features: Title=Yes, Text=Yes, Buttons=Yes, No, Default Button=Second, Icon=Critical, Modality=Task Modal, Miscellaneous=Top-most attribute
$iMsgBoxAnswer = MsgBox(270596,"Error","libmpv-2.dll file cannot be loaded." & @CRLF & "Do you want to open the link to the download" & @CRLF &"page in your web browser ?"  & @CRLF &  "Download and extract the .dll from" & @crlf & "mpv-dev-x86_64-20260307-git-f9190e5.7z" & @crlf & "and copy it into the script folder" & @CRLF & "then restart this app")
    if $iMsgBoxAnswer = 6 then ;ok
        ShellExecute ("https://github.com/shinchiro/mpv-winbuild-cmake/releases")
    EndIf
    Exit
EndIf

to make it easier to get the dll file.

[CYCho]

MPV basically fills the GUI in full. The aspect ratio can be kept or ignored with one line of code:

_mpv_set_property_string($pHandle, "keepaspect", "yes") : keeps aspect ratio and fills the empty spaces with black background (Default)
_mpv_set_property_string($pHandle, "keepaspect", "no") : ignores the aspect ratio and fills the GUI with image

In my example, these options can be toggled with Ctrl+Alt+a hotkey.

Edit: This feature can now be set in the beginning of the program. Hotkey was eliminated.

Edited March 27 by CYCho

[CYCho]

I noticed that, if the video was hidden in the background for about 30 minutes and brought back to foreground, the image was frozen, though the audio was alive all the time. Through googling, I learned that the Windows power management sometimes freezes the GPU renderer while the audio, which is controlled by CPU, continues to work. So I made a small adlib function which fires every 10 minutes and, sofar, it seems to work.

Func _RefreshVideo()    ; Adlib to update the renderer with a harmless "seek" function every 10 minutes
    _mpv_command($pHandle, "seek", 0, "relative")
EndFunc

The file in the first post was updated.

Edit: The above workaround was not enough in both action and frequency. It still resulted in random freezes of video. Hopefully the following code would solve the problem.
 

Func _RefreshVideo()    ; Adlib to give a heartbeat to the renderer every 5 minutes
    ; Check if the center of the video window is not visible on the screen
    ; Position of video window ($aPos) is updated by WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED in real time
    Local $tPoint = _WinAPI_CreatePoint($aPos[0]+$aPos[2]/2, $aPos[1]+$aPos[3]/2)
    Local $hTopWnd = _WinAPI_WindowFromPoint($tPoint)
    If $hTopWnd = $hVideoGUI Then Return    ; Return if visible

    _mpv_command($pHandle, "add", "ao-volume", "-" & $iVolume)
    _mpv_command($pHandle, "seek", 1, "relative")
    Sleep(10)
   _mpv_command($pHandle, "seek", -1, "relative")
   _mpv_command($pHandle, "add", "ao-volume", $iVolume)
EndFunc     ; _RefreshVideo

The revised code is in the first post above.

Edited March 24 by CYCho

[bladem2003]

Could you please test it?

For me, minimized for 45 minutes and didn't freeze.

 

 

 

_mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "priority", "high")

 

 

[CYCho]

3 hours ago, bladem2003 said:

For me, minimized for 45 minutes and didn't freeze.

Thanks for your attention. It seems the freezing can be a random behaviour mainly depending on the computer and file specs. I have a 10-year old computer and I would think I should make it work at least on my computer. MPV offers so many options and I'm sure we can fix it. One problem is that one round of test takes at least an hour.

Edited March 24 by CYCho

[CYCho]

Through tests with many different options set, I could shorten the "seek" time to 0.5 seconds, which is so small that we don't need to worry about the audio interruption. It would be greatly appreciated if you could let me know if there were a less intrusive way to get the desired result.
 

Func _RefreshVideo()    ; Adlib to give a heartbeat to the video renderer every 5 minutes
    ; Check if the center of the video window is visible on the screen
    ; Position of video window ($aPos) is updated by WM_WINDOWPOSCHANGED in real time
    Local $tPoint = _WinAPI_CreatePoint($aPos[0]+$aPos[2]/2, $aPos[1]+$aPos[3]/2)
    Local $hTopWnd = _WinAPI_WindowFromPoint($tPoint)
    If $hTopWnd = $hVideoGUI Then Return    ; Return if visible

    _mpv_command($pHandle, "seek", 0.05, "relative")
    _mpv_command($pHandle, "seek", -0.05, "relative")
    ; Please let me know if anyone knows of a less intrusive way to keep the video renderer alive
EndFunc     ; _RefreshVideo

I also found that some of the options I set for video performance prevented low-spec computers from playing even a low-resolution video. So I added a function to check if the computer has GPU card with 2GB or more of RAM, and provided different sets of options depending on the result.
 

Local $sSpec = _GetVideoCardSpec()
If $sSpec = "low" Then
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "profile", "fast")
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "vo", "direct3d")
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "dither", "no")
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "framedrop", "vo")
Else
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "profile", "gpu-hq")
  _mpv_set_option_string($pHandle, "vo", "gpu")
EndIf

This way, I could play low-resolution videos with a 10 year old laptop without a GPU. It could even play a 4K video, but the video rendering quality was not satisfactory.

The updated code is uploaded in the first post above.

Edited March 25 by CYCho

[CYCho]

Three features were added in the latest file (AutoIt_4K_MPV_Player(20260327).au3):

1. Playback speed can now be adjusted in 0.1x increment by Ctrl+Alt+[ or Ctrl+Alt+] hotleys. It can be reset to default 1.0x by Ctrl+Alt+{backspace] hotkey.
2. The video can be paused/resumed by a single click on the image.
3. The full screen mode can be turned on/off by doubleclicking on the image or pressing F11 key. The full screen mode can be turned off also by pressing Esc key.

Edited March 27 by CYCho

[bladem2003]

A small improvement suggestion.

Put wait for the file to load into a while loop with a maximum timeout of, say, 10 seconds. Files loaded from the internet or local network often take longer than 200ms.

_mpv_get_property($pHandle, "idle-active")` returns "no" if mpv is still loading and "yes" if it's in idle mode. This could be used to handle loading errors.

 

 

expandcollapse popup

Func _PlayFile()    ; Invoked by the main loop when the player is in idle state
    _mpv_set_property($pHandle, "speed", 1.0, "double")
    _mpv_command($pHandle, "loadfile", $sFolder & $aPlaylist[$iIndex])
    ;Sleep(100) ; <-- This is not needed

    ;----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Local $TimerWaitStart = TimerInit()
    While 1
        If TimerDiff($TimerWaitStart) > 10000 Then ExitLoop  ; wait 10 sec max to load. internet streams often take longer to load than 200ms
        If _mpv_get_property($pHandle, "idle-active") = "yes" Then ExitLoop  ; if no file loaded = error
        $iAspect = Number(_mpv_get_property($pHandle, "video-params/aspect"))
        If $iAspect > 0 Then ExitLoop
        Sleep(50)
    WEnd
    ;-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


    If $iAspect > 0 Then
;~      If $sKeepAspect = "yes" Then
;~          _mpv_set_property($pHandle, "keepaspect", "yes", "string")
;~      Else
;~          _mpv_set_property($pHandle, "keepaspect", "no", "string")
;~      EndIf
        $iVideoWidth = _mpv_get_property($pHandle, "width", "double")
        $iVideoHeight = _mpv_get_property($pHandle, "height", "double")
        $iVideoWidth = Int($iClientWidth * 2 / 3)
        $iVideoHeight = Int($iVideoWidth / $iAspect)
        If $iVideoHeight > $iClientHeight - $iTitleHeight Then
            $iVideoHeight = $iClientHeight - $iTitleHeight
            $iVideoWidth = Int($iVideoHeight * $iAspect)
        EndIf
        Local $x = ($iClientWidth - $iVideoWidth - $iBorderWidth * 2) / 2, $y = ($iClientHeight - $iVideoHeight - $iTitleHeight - $iBorderWidth) / 2
        Local $w = $iVideoWidth + $iBorderWidth * 2, $h = $iVideoHeight + $iTitleHeight + $iBorderWidth
        WinMove($hVideoGUI, "", $x, $y, $w, $h)
        GUISetState(@SW_SHOW, $hVideoGUI)
        GUIDelete($hVCGui)
        _VCCreate()
        ;       _VCResize()
    Else
        MsgBox(1, "Error", $aPlaylist[$iIndex] & @CRLF & "This file cannot be loaded.")
        _Exit()
    EndIf

    $iMediaLength = Int(_mpv_get_property($pHandle, "duration"))
    GUICtrlSetData($idLength2, _SecondsToTime($iMediaLength))
    AdlibRegister("_VCShow")
    AdlibRegister("_Progress")
    AdlibRegister("_HotkeySet", 990)
    AdlibRegister("_VideoRefresh", 300000)
    WinSetTitle($hVideoGUI, "", "AutoIt 4K MPV Player - " & $aPlaylist[$iIndex])
EndFunc   ;==>_PlayFile

 

Edited March 28 by bladem2003

[CYCho]

As I get to know more about mpv, I am more determined to migrate my zPlayer from winmm.dll to libmpv-2.dll. It offers so many functions that it will make zPlayer do many more things more easily than the legacy winmm.dll. One feature I found fascinating is "observe" function. In winmm.dll, I had to run an adlib to "poll" the current position of a media to update the progress bar. I had to pay attention to the frequncy of adib for fear of overloading the CPU. In mpv, however, if I set the "observe" function once in the beggining of the program, it automatically saves the current position in a memory pointer as soon as it is changed. I can just read the memory at whatever frequency I want. The other function I found interesting was equalizer capability. I can make a graphical equalizer with silders for several bands if I want to. But considering the overall simplicity of zPlayer, I chose to adopt several preset audio filters instead.

An update of the code is uploaded in the first post above, with the following features added or fixed:
1. Screen shot function: pressing "s" key any time while the video window is active will take a screen shot of the video image and save it as a file.
2. Display of album art for audio files
3. 7 different audio modes: Normal, Deep Bass, Crystal Clear, Pop/Rock, Cinema Voice, Midnight and Speech/Podcast
4. Option for the video to fill the GUI or keep its original aspect ratio
5. Changed the way the player gets current position.
6. Previous codes produced an error when loading a file-path containing UTF-16 unicode characters. I found that mpv accepts only UTF-8 characters, so I rewrote _mpv_command() function to convert unicode characters to UTF-8 binary before passing them to DllCall().

For now, the option for album art, audio modes and aspect ratio were hard coded in the beginning of the program. When zPlayer gets fully migrated, they will become a part of Options where they can be changed dynamically.

Edit: I forgot to mention one more feature above: the ability to synchronise the audio volume and mute state with the Windows Volume Mixer for this app. Now, adjustments to the volume and mute state through the Volume Mixer are reflected in the audio controls of this player, and vice versa.

Edited April 4 by CYCho

[bladem2003]

Can I ask you something?
How do you create the symbols in  the code?

Is this some kind of ASCII code?

"▶"

[CYCho]

5 hours ago, bladem2003 said:

 

Is this some kind of ASCII code?

Yes, they are Unicode characters available on internet sites. I came up with my set of symbols after many trials and errors. Copy and paste was easier than using ChrW().

Edited April 3 by CYCho

[CYCho]

I’ve pushed a new update to fix the random crashes occurring during file transitions and startup.

The fix involves a "warm-up" routine for the libmpv-2.dll and better management of Adlib commands during file changes (including a 1.5s buffer before the end of a file to prevent command overlaps). It’s been stable in my tests so far—if you see any more crashes, please let me know!

Added features:
1. "A" hotkey toggles KeepAspect mode instantly if pressed while the video window is active.
2. Using the new "✅" icon in the controls, you can lock your current window size and position as your default. Once clicked (the icon turns red), the program will remember that layout for all upcoming videos. The height may still adjust automatically based on the KeepApect settings.