playing / 04 of 15

Videos and streams

phonto plays a video file, a stream URL or a YouTube link. Whichever it is loops, without sound, until you stop it.

Files

shell

$phonto ~/Videos/harbour.mp4
$phonto ./clips/rain.webm

A path can be relative, or start with ~/. phonto plays whatever the platform’s decoder can open:

On Linux, anything your GStreamer plugins decode. With the plugins from Installing, that includes MP4, MOV, MKV and WebM files in H.264, HEVC and VP9.
On macOS, what AVFoundation plays: MP4 and MOV files in H.264, HEVC or ProRes. MKV and WebM don’t play there.

When a video ends, phonto starts it again from the top.

A video made at your screen’s resolution looks best and costs least. phonto scales on the GPU, but a 4K file on a 1080p screen is still decoded at 4K, every frame.

Streams

shell

$phonto https://example.com/live/stream.m3u8
$phonto rtsp://camera.local/stream

A URL that starts with http://, https://, rtsp:// or rtmp:// plays as a stream. HLS playlists and camera feeds work. When a stream ends, phonto opens it again. On macOS, AVFoundation plays HTTP streams, HLS among them, but not RTSP or RTMP.

The scheme is required. Without it, phonto reads the URL as a file path. YouTube links are the exception.

YouTube

shell

$phonto youtu.be/VIDEO_ID

phonto passes YouTube links to yt-dlp to find the stream. YouTube has the flags for quality and signing in.

Sound

There isn’t any. phonto drops the audio track on Linux and mutes the player on macOS.