autoload

Features

• Automatic Playlist Generation: The script automatically identifies and loads video and audio files from the same directory into your playlist.
• Mixed Method for File Type Identification: The script now uses a combination of file extension checks and mimetype checks to identify file types. This approach is more reliable and still fast, as it uses extension checks for common media files and mimetype checks for the rest.
• Easy Setup with Sensible Defaults: The program works immediately upon installation with a default configuration that should be suitable for most use cases. However, it also offers flexible configuration options for advanced users who wish to customize their experience.

Non-Features

1. Include Files from Subdirectories: This feature is not implemented because it could make the resulting playlist unexpected and inflexible. I want to ensure that users have full control over the files that are included in the playlist.

2. Limit Number of Files in Playlist: This feature is not implemented because it could limit the flexibility of the program. I believe that users should have the freedom to include as many files in the playlist as they want.

3. Absence of Image Support: The program does not support images, as mpv is primarily intended for video playback, not image viewing. For image viewing, there are other tools that are more suitable in this context, such as imv, gwenview, or various file managers which support the preview functionality.

Requirements

Ensure mpv can access the required dependencies:

• Linux: The file and xdg-mime executables should be located in a directory listed in your PATH.
• Other Operating Systems: The file executable should be located in a directory listed in your PATH.

For Windows users, you can install file by first installing git using Chocolatey with the command: choco install git. Alternatively, you can manually download git from https://git-scm.com/download/win. After that, add <Git_Installed_Directory>\usr\bin to your PATH as necessary. This will make use of the file command that comes with git. Please note that installing file directly via Chocolatey is not recommended as it cannot handle unicode filenames properly. (See also for more details)

Installation

Direct Download

1. Download the latest version of autoload.js from the Releases.
2. Move the downloaded autoload.js to your mpv scripts folder.

Building from source

git clone https://github.com/gaesa/mpv-autoload
cd mpv-autoload
pnpm install --frozen-lockfile && pnpm run build
cp dist/autoload.js ~/.config/mpv/scripts

Usage

Just move autoload.js to your mpv scripts folder and it will work out of the box. Enjoy your video and audio without any hassle!

Customization

You may want to modify some of the default options. Currently, there are 5 available options: commonVideo, commonAudio, allowedMimeTypes, ignoreHidden, and sortCaseSensitive. The program first utilizes commonVideo and commonAudio to filter files in a directory. If a file passes this filter, it is added to the list. If not, the program checks whether the file's extension typically represents a non-media file, such as subtitles, executables, or archives. If it does not, it then examines the file’s mimetype. If the mimetype is in allowedMimeTypes, the file is also added to the list. Files that do not meet these criteria are not included in the list.

You can add more extensions (they are case-insensitive) to commonVideo or commonAudio to speed up this process. Alternatively, you can assign an empty array [] to commonAudio and then assign ["video"] to allowedMimeTypes to disable support for audio files.

Here is the default configuration. You can copy it to ~/.config/mpv/script-opts/autoload.conf and modify it to suit your needs:

# It's okay to leave spaces between the elements of the array.
commonVideo=[".flv", ".mkv", ".mov", ".mp4", ".mpeg", ".mpg", ".ogv", ".webm", ".wmv"]
commonAudio=[".flac", ".m4a", ".mp3", ".oga", ".ogg", ".opus", ".wav"]

# The main type (e.g., 'video' in 'video/mp4')
allowedMimeTypes=["video", "audio"]

# This option, either `true` or `false`, controls whether files beginning with a `.` are ignored.
ignoreHidden=true

# Enable case-sensitive playlist entries sorting
sortCaseSensitive=true

Improvements Over autoload.lua

autoload.ts is a refactored and optimized version of the original autoload.lua script from the mpv player. Here are some key improvements:

• Readability and Simplicity: The code has been restructured and simplified, making it easier to understand and maintain.
• Modularity: Unnecessary options have been removed and the code has been made more modular, enhancing its flexibility.
• Efficiency: Complex nested loops and lengthy functions have been eliminated, resulting in a more efficient script.
• Simplified Logic: The main logic of the script has been simplified, making it more straightforward and easier to follow.

With these improvements, autoload.ts provides a cleaner, more efficient, and ready to use approach to automatically loading video and audio files into the mpv player’s playlist.

Known Limitations

Potential performance issues on calling external commands

The autoload.ts script leverages the getMimetype function to filter all video and audio files within a directory. It’s important to note that this operation is not recursive. This is because the mp.utils.readdir function does not recursively return files.

The getMimetype function employs the mp.command_native function to call an external command and obtain the precise mime type of each file. As this operation is performed individually for each file, it can take over 3 seconds to return results for a directory containing more than 200 files. (However, by using the mixed method, this task is now completed within 0.04 seconds on Arch Linux if most of files are common media files or common non-media files)

Although mpv offers the mp.command_native_async function for asynchronous commands, to utilize it with async/await and restrict concurrency in mujs, the JavaScript engine employed by mpv, I have to introduce many polyfills to make my life easier. This adds extra overhead introduced by async/await and significantly increases the file size. Consequently, even occasional usage of external commands can noticeably slow down the entire program.

Any suggestions or contributions on how to mitigate this issue are welcome.