NOVA · Ved Chauhan

55/55compatibility samples play, in software and hardware decoding
100 msexact seeking, measured in the test harness
0accounts, telemetry or network needed

NOVA plays local video like a professional tool would, ProRes, DNxHR, HDR and 8K included, and remembers where you were even after a crash. The interface only ever shows what the playback engine confirms.

The problem

Desktop players either look modern and fake their state, or tell the truth and look like 2005. NOVA puts native video from libmpv under a transparent React interface in a Tauri shell, with the rules of playback kept in plain Rust crates that know nothing about the engine.

NOVA's player showing Tears of Steel with subtitles and the control deck. — The player. The title bar reports what libmpv decoded: H.264, 1280×534, hardware decoding. Tears of Steel © Blender Foundation, CC BY 3.0.

NOVA's Home in Daylight: Continue with Tears of Steel and a Resume button, Recently added, and Your shelf. — Home in the Daylight theme. Continue picks up where you stopped, even after a crash or a renamed file.

Status

v0.3.0 for Windows x64, tested on Windows 11. Android 8+ as a pre-release that updates itself.

Website

My part

Author. Built under SNOWBROS.

Stack

Rust
Tauri 2
React 19
TypeScript
Tailwind CSS 4
libmpv
SQLite
Expo

Tracklist: the decisions that made it work

A1Engine-confirmed state only
The UI shows what libmpv reports, never what it hopes happened. A queue only advances when the engine confirms the end of the media.
A2Native video under a web interface
libmpv renders through D3D11 with hardware decoding and a software fallback; the React interface sits transparently on top in a Tauri 2 window.
A3Resume that survives crashes and renames
Progress lives in local SQLite and is tied to the media's identity, so a moved or renamed file keeps its place across restarts and crashes, with a Start over option.
B1A contract the engine can't leak through
Playback is a backend-neutral API and a pure state reducer with no engine dependencies; libmpv is one backend behind it, loaded at runtime.
B2Licensing stated plainly
The code is MIT or Apache-2.0. The first installer bundles a libmpv build with GPL parts, so the installer ships under the GPL with its source; later releases move to an LGPL engine built from source.

What holds true

Every limitation is listed before anyone asks: Windows x64 tested on one Windows 11 machine, Android still a pre-release.
Exact seeking within 100 ms, measured on 55 synthetic samples, once in software and once with hardware decoding.
Updates only ever install signed releases.

Repository Website