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Playing multimedia with Dillo

Dillo doesn't have the capability to play audio or video directly from the + browser, however it can easily offload this task to other programs. + This page collects some examples of how to do watch videos and listen to audio + tracks or podcasts by using an external player program. In particular we will + cover mpv with yt-dlp which supports YouTube and Bandcamp among many other + sites. + A black and white drawing of an armadillo
+ watching a futuristic looking TV playing the famous video of Rick
+ Astley, Never Gonna Give You Up +

Requisites

You will need at least Dillo + version 3.2.0 to open URLs in external + programs, be sure to install an updated version or + built it yourself from source.

To play multimedia files you will also need + mpv along with + yt-dlp tool to extract video + and audio streams from + several + sites. + There are other alternatives, but these are the ones I have tested and they + seem to work fine. Be sure to use an updated version of yt-dlp, as it + is likely that old versions don't work anymore.

+ +

Opening URLs in mpv

Apart from opening video and audio URLs, Mpv can + also open URLs that contain embedded video or audio elements by extracting the + relevant sources from the website with the help of + yt-dlp + under the hood. For example, a YouTube video can be directly opened like so: +

$ mpv 'https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ5LpwO-An4'

+ As well as any Bandcamp album: +

$ mpv 'https://tokyoskaparadiseorchestra.bandcamp.com/album/35'

When opening audio files, mpv won't show a new window and will read + the input keys from the stdin of the console. As we will be using Dillo to run + mpv, we change the force-window option to always open a window by + setting in the ~/.config/mpv/mpv.conf config file this option: +

force-window=yes

You can also specify this option from the command line if you prefer to do it + only for Dillo. You may want to also specify other options regarding the + quality of videos, see the mpv(1) manual page.

+ +

In order to open an URL in mpv, we simply add this line to the + ~/.dillo/dillorc config file: +

link_action="Open in mpv:mpv $url &"

+ The $url variable is set by Dillo to the value of the URL of the + hyperlink. The & (ampersand) at the end ensures that when + Dillo is closed, the mpv process continues running. +

You will need to close Dillo and open it again for the changes to + take effect. Now when you are over a link, you can click with the right + mouse button and select the new Open in mpv option, and the link + should be opened by mpv. You can try with the above two links. + +

To search, consider using an alternative YouTube frontend like + Invidious which doesn't need JavaScript.

+ +

Playing URLs in a queue

While opening a single video or audio URL is helpful, often multiple + videos or audio links are intended to be opened in sequence. This can be + achieved by using the mpv control socket and a + small script that queues them in the current playlist (there are other tools, + but this method has almost no extra requirements). To use this technique + you will need to install the + socat program as well, to + communicate with the UNIX socket. +

We will add two modes of playing elements, play next in the queue or add at + the end of the queue. The $url variable will provide the URL that + we should open, and the first argument will control where it gets added in the + queue. With mpv, this is controlled by the loadfile command, + which accepts the insert-next and append-next options. +

Create the ~/.dillo/mpv/ directory and place the following + script in the file ~/.dillo/mpv/queue.sh, and make it executable + with chmod +x ~/.dillo/mpv/queue.sh: +

#!/bin/sh
+
+if [ -z "$url" ]; then
+  echo "error: url not set" >&2
+  exit 1
+fi
+
+mode=${1:-append-next}
+sockfile=~/.dillo/mpv/mpv.sock
+conffile=~/.dillo/mpv/mpv.conf
+
+# Try queueing it by appending it, see loadfile in mpv(1) manual
+echo "loadfile $url $mode" | socat - "UNIX-CONNECT:$sockfile" && exit 0
+
+# Otherwise start a new mpv server in the background
+mpv --include="$conffile" --input-ipc-server="$sockfile" "$url" &
+

+ +

Additionally, create a custom mpv configuration file at + ~/.dillo/mpv/mpv.conf with the following content: +

# Always show the player window even if it is only audio
+force-window=yes
+
+# Keep the player open after playing all files
+idle=yes
+
+# Select small video formats (optional)
+# ytdl-format="best[height<500]"

You can add more options that will only affect mpv when running in this + queued mode, for example to disable video and only play audio which would + reduce bandwidth usage, but these are enough for now. + +

Then add these two new actions in ~/.dillo/dillorc to play + files in the queue and restart Dillo: + +

link_action="Queue next in mpv:~/.dillo/mpv/queue.sh insert-next"
+link_action="Queue last in mpv:~/.dillo/mpv/queue.sh append-play"

+ +

The first time that you queue an URL, a new instance of mpv will start which + will setup the socket, and will remain opened even if the file ends. Succesive + URLs will be added to the playlist at the specified position.

+ +

Notice that the mpv program is running in the background, and if you close + Dillo it will continue playing. You can in fact open Dillo later and queue + more items and so on.

+ +

Closing remarks

The queue.sh script always opens all URLs in the same way, but + you could handle different URLs in different ways. The $origin + variable is also available with the value of the URL from which the + link was opened, which can also be used to determine how to load the URL.

You can also add more options, for example to handle audio and video + separately with different mpv options for each type, or particular options for + your hardware to better use the video hardware decoder (if present).

Finally, this technique works for any other program that can handle URLs + which can be configured to be used with Dillo in the same way.

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