avplay

Overview ¶

Command avplay plays a video file in real time -- with sound -- and reports what actually happened: how many frames the video output vended, how far the clock moved, and how the two compare to the wall clock.

It is the Player's dogfood and its on-device proof. Everything it does goes through the public API, and the numbers it prints are the ones worth distrusting: a player whose clock does not advance is not playing, however many frames it hands out.

Nothing is displayed. There is no window here; -png writes a frame to disk so the picture can be looked at.