QMPlay2, the free open-source Qt media player, released version 24.03.16 few days ago.
QMPlay2 is a Qt based media player that uses FFmpeg as backend for most video and audio codecs support. It also supports Audio CD, raw files, Rayman 2 music and chiptunes, as well as ALSA, PulseAudio or PipeWire sound servers. And, it has built-in a browser to search & play YouTube videos.
The most recent 24.03.16 release added better support for FFmpeg 6.1, and experimental Vulkan Video decoder support. So, since this release, the media player now supports hardware accelerated video playback through following APIs:
- Vulkan Video (needs FFmpeg 6.1).
- CUVID (NVIDIA only)
- DXVA2 (Windows Vista and higher)
- D3D11VA (Vulkan, Windows 8 and higher)
- VDPAU/VA-API (X11 for VDPAU, Linux/BSD only)
- VideoToolBox (macOS only).
QMPlay2 YouTube browser
To try out the new Vulkan Video Decoding, users needs FFmpeg 6.1 (sadly not available in Ubuntu repository until 24.04), and select “Vulkan” as renderer in settings. Finally, re-start the app with RADV_PERFTEST=video_decode or for Intel with ANV_VIDEO_DECODE=1 environment variables.
Other changes in QMPlay2 24.03.16 include:
- Default to Qt6 build, while Qt5 still supported.
- Set dark title bar on Windows if QMPlay2 theme is dark,
- Support reading lyrics meta-data from ID3v2 tags,
- Don’t use Qt for loading Vulkan library,
- Improve Vulkan device lost recovery,
- Various Vulkan improvements,
- Add support for TagLib 2.0,
- Other minor fixes.
How to Get QMPlay2 in Ubuntu Linux
QMPlay2 sadly so far is not made into Debian and Ubuntu repositories. Besides building from the source, user can download the AppImage in github releases page (under Assets).
Once you got the package, add executable permission under file “Properties” dialog, finally click Run AppImage to launch the player.
