uosc

Minimalist cursor proximity based UI for MPV player.

Most notable features:

• UI elements hide and show based on their proximity to cursor instead of every time mouse moves. This gives you 100% control over when you see the UI and when you don't. Click on the preview above to see it in action.
• Set min timeline size to make an always visible discrete progress bar.
• Build your own context menu with nesting support by editing your input.conf file.
• UIs for:
  • Loading external subtitles.
  • Selecting subtitle/audio/video track.
  • Selecting stream quality.
  • Quick directory and playlist navigation.
• Mouse scroll wheel does multiple things depending on what is the cursor hovering over:
  • Timeline: seek by timeline_step seconds per scroll.
  • Volume bar: change volume by volume_step per scroll.
  • Speed bar: change speed by speed_step per scroll.
  • Just hovering video with no UI widget below cursor: your configured wheel bindings from input.conf.
• Transform chapters into timeline ranges (the red portion of the timeline in the preview).
• And a lot of useful options and commands to bind keys to.

Changelog.

• uosc.lua - script file
• uosc.conf - configuration file with default values (optional)

• uosc.lua
• uosc.conf

1. uosc is a replacement for the built in osc, so that has to be disabled first.

   In your mpv.conf (List of all the possible places where configuration files can be located in is documented here: https://mpv.io/manual/master/#files):

   # required so that the 2 UIs don't fight each other
   osc=no
   # uosc provides its own seeking/volume indicators, so you also don't need this
   osd-bar=no
   # uosc will draw its own window controls if you disable window border
   border=no
   

2. Save uosc.lua into scripts/ folder.

3. To configure uosc to your likings, create a script-opts/uosc.conf file, or download uosc.conf with all default values from one of the links above, and save into script-opts/ folder.

All of the available uosc options with their default values are in the provided uosc.conf. Follow one of the download links to the version of this file that matches your uosc.lua, or just peak the latest development version for a quick reference, but this might have options that are different or not available in stable release.

To change the font, uosc respects the mpv osd-font configuration. To change it, you have to declare osd-font in your mpv.conf.

The only keybinds uosc defines by default are menu navigation keys that are active only when one of the menus (context menu, load/select subtitles,...) is active. They are:

• ↑, ↓, ←, → - up, down, previous menu or close, select item
• k, j, h, l - up, down, previous menu or close, select item
• w, s, a, d - up, down, previous menu or close, select item
• enter - select item
• esc - close menu
• wheel_up, wheel_down - scroll menu
• pgup, pgdwn, home, end - self explanatory

Click on a faded parent menu to go back to it.

Hold shift to activate menu item without closing the menu.

uosc also provides various commands with useful features to bind your preferred keys to. See Commands section below.

To add a keybind to one of this commands, open your input.conf file and add one on a new line. The command syntax is script-binding uosc/{command-name}.

Example to bind the tab key to peek timeline:

tab  script-binding uosc/peek-timeline

Available commands:

Expands the bottom timeline until pressed again, or next mouse move. Useful to check times during playback.

Toggles the always visible portion of the timeline. You can look at it as switching timeline_size_min option between it's configured value and 0.

Commands to briefly flash a specified element. You can use it in your bindings like so:

space        cycle pause; script-binding uosc/flash-pause-indicator
right        seek  5
left         seek -5
shift+right  seek  30; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline
shift+left   seek -30; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline
m            cycle mute; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
up           add volume  10; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
down         add volume -10; script-binding uosc/flash-volume
[            add speed -0.25; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
]            add speed  0.25; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
\            set speed 1; script-binding uosc/flash-speed
>            script-binding uosc/next; script-binding uosc/flash-top-bar; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline
<            script-binding uosc/prev; script-binding uosc/flash-top-bar; script-binding uosc/flash-timeline

Case for (flash/decide)-pause-indicator: mpv handles frame stepping forward by briefly resuming the video, which causes pause indicator to flash, and none likes that when they are trying to compare frames. The solution is to enable manual pause indicator (pause_indicator=manual) and use flash-pause-indicator (for a brief flash) or decide-pause-indicator (for a static indicator) as a secondary command to all bindings you wish would display it (see space binding example above).

Toggles menu. Menu is empty by default and won't show up when this is pressed. Read Menu section below to find out how to fill it up with items you want there.

Displays a file explorer with directory navigation to load external subtitles. Explorer only displays file types defined in subtitle_types option.

Menu to select a subtitle track.

Menu to select an audio track.

Menu to select a video track.

Playlist navigation.

Chapter navigation.

Switch stream quality. This is just a basic re-assignment of ytdl-format mpv property from predefined options (configurable with stream_quality_options) and video reload, there is no fetching of available formats going on.

Open file menu. Browsing starts in current file directory, or user directory when file not available.

Open next item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist.

Open previous item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist.

Open first item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist.

Open last item in playlist, or file in current directory when there is no playlist.

Open next file in current directory. Set directory_navigation_loops=yes to open first file when at the end.

Open previous file in current directory. Set directory_navigation_loops=yes to open last file when at the start.

Open first file in current directory.

Open last file in current directory.

Delete currently playing file and start next file in playlist (if there is a playlist) or current directory.

Useful when watching episodic content.

Delete currently playing file and quit mpv.

Show current file in your operating systems' file explorer.

Open directory with mpv.conf in file explorer.

uosc provides a way to build, display, and use your own menu. By default the menu is empty and won't show up.

To display the menu, add uosc's menu command to a key of your choice. Example to bind it to right click and menu buttons:

mbtn_right  script-binding uosc/menu
menu        script-binding uosc/menu

*menu button is the key between win and right_ctrl buttons that none uses (might not be on your keyboard).*

Adding items to menu is facilitated by commenting your keybinds in input.conf with special comment syntax. uosc will than parse this file and build the context menu out of it.

Comment has to be at the end of the line with the binding.

Comment has to start with #! (or #menu:).

Text after #! is an item title.

Title can be split with > to define nested menus. There is no limit on nesting.

Use # instead of a key if you don't necessarily want to bind a key to a command, but still want it in the menu.

If multiple menu items with the same command are defined, uosc will concatenate them into one item and just display all available shortcuts as that items' hint, while using the title of the first defined item.

Menu items are displayed in the order they are defined in input.conf file.

The command ignore does not result in a menu item, however all the folders leading up to it will still be created. This allows more flexible structuring of the input.conf file.

Adds a menu item to load subtitles:

alt+s  script-binding uosc/load-subtitles  #! Load subtitles

Adds a stay-on-top toggle with no keybind:

#  cycle ontop  #! Toggle on-top

Define and display multiple shortcuts in single items' menu hint (items with same command get concatenated):

esc  quit  #! Quit
q    quit  #!

Define a folder without defining any of its contents:

#  ignore  #! Folder title >

Suggested minimal context menu setup to start with:

menu        script-binding uosc/menu
mbtn_right  script-binding uosc/menu
o           script-binding uosc/open-file          #! Open file
alt+s       script-binding uosc/load-subtitles     #! Load subtitles
S           script-binding uosc/subtitles          #! Select subtitles
A           script-binding uosc/audio              #! Select audio
ctrl+s      async screenshot                       #! Utils > Screenshot
P           script-binding uosc/playlist           #! Utils > Playlist
C           script-binding uosc/chapters           #! Utils > Chapters
#           script-binding uosc/open-config-directory #! Utils > Open config directory
#           set video-aspect-override "-1"         #! Aspect ratio > Default
#           set video-aspect-override "16:9"       #! Aspect ratio > 16:9
#           set video-aspect-override "4:3"        #! Aspect ratio > 4:3
#           set video-aspect-override "2.35:1"     #! Aspect ratio > 2.35:1
O           script-binding uosc/show-in-directory  #! Show in directory
esc         quit #! Quit
q           quit #!

To see all the commands you can bind keys or menu items to, refer to mpv's list of input commands documentation.

uosc places performance as one of the top priorities, so why does the UI feels a bit sluggish/slow/laggy (e.g. seeking indicator lags a bit behind cursor)? Well, it really isn't, uosc is fast, it just doesn't feel like it because when video is playing, the UI rendering frequency is chained to its frame rate, so unless you are the type of person that can't see above 24fps, it does feel sluggish. This is an mpv limitation and I can't do anything about it :(

You can test the smoother operation by pausing the video and then using the UI, which will make it render closer to your display refresh rate.

You can remedy this a tiny bit by enabling interpolation. Add this to your mpv.conf file:

interpolation=yes
video-sync=display-resample

Though it does come at the cost of a higher CPU/GPU load.