Support SOCKS5 proxies

[adamhotep]

It would be nice to have a config item like socks_proxy or socks5_proxy to support SOCKS proxies.

At the moment, even commands like tsocks mpv http://server/test.webm fail to work, and though curl --socks5 localhost:1080 http://server/test.webm |mpv --cache=512 works, you can't seek since mpv isn't controlling the network stream.

This SO question explains the issue farther.

[haasn]

If you can use a regular HTTP proxy instead of a SOCKS proxy, you can set the environment variable HTTP_PROXY="url" to make FFmpeg and youtube-dl pick up on it.

Judging by a quick glance at FFmpeg code, it doesn't seem to support socks proxies at all, so any support for them in mpv would be blocked by this. (Also keep in mind that youtube-dl would also need support for them if you plan on using it)

[lamarpavel]

The combination of privoxy, HTTP_PROXY/HTTPS_PROXY as envvar and youtube-dl works well enough. I would argue that additional code for this in mpv would be an unnecessary burden to maintain.

[nxtreaming]

Why do you need socks5?

There is no a good open source SOCKS 5 server available.

[adamhotep]

OpenSSH is an open source SOCKS 5 server. It's even the one I use (ssh -D1080 myserver). I do not use an HTTP proxy and am not interested in setting one up on my remote server. If the right move is to escalate to FFMPEG (and youtube-dl), then so be it. I was just hoping it would be attractive enough to implement here.

[v2px]

I just found this after looking at the man page and not seeing anything socks related. At least for the youtube-dl integration it works for me, like this:

http_proxy=socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 mpv [...]

mpv 0.18.0
youtube-dl 2016.07.09.2

[liaowang11]

@v2px I tried

http_proxy=socks5://127.0.0.1:9050 mpv [...]

But it no longer works. Found polipo to the rescue.

[haasn]

Btw, I forgot to mention this, but proxychains mpv works fine. I use it for watching youtube videos over tor (which also exposes a SOCKS proxy).

[Justsoos]

Hope mpv could provide proxy support, might you not know, the VPNs are slaughtered in some countries, like China, Iran, North Korea, and people of those nations have to set up socks and http proxy to get the Youtube, Google and so on.
So nicely handy thing if MPV could have a proxy support.

[Justsoos]

@haasn yeap, proxychains is good at linux and unices, but in windows, it is hard to find a handy way except a proxy included in mpv.

[ilf]

I would also love SOCKS proxy support. It's the proxy of choice for Tor.

[Justsoos]

resolved.
first, set your environment variable with:
$ set http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:1080
$ set https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:1080

second, with privoxy or gost to transfer remote socks5 proxy service to a local http proxy port -> 127.0.0.1:1080.

then mpv can use local http proxy instead of any socks ones.

[garoto]

AFAIK, the http_proxy envvar will cover both secure and non-secure http variants, so no need for a set https=... one?

But otherwise, good info I guess.

[lamarpavel]

@garoto This is application dependant and I wouldn't trust all programs to get this right. It doesn't hurt to simply

export http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:8118
export HTTP_PROXY="$http_proxy"
export https_proxy="$http_proxy"
export HTTPS_PROXY="$http_proxy"
export ftp_proxy="$http_proxy"
export rsync_proxy="$http_proxy"
export no_proxy="localhost,127.0.0.1"

to reduce risk of information leaks.

[garoto]

If that's the case, then it sucks that there's no conventional way of doing it. Feels kinda dirty to polute your shell .rc with what might be redundant envvars afterall... (I'm on Windows btw).