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Setting Up Yomipv

Use Yomipv to create cards without leaving MPV or breaking immersion.

Requirements

  • MPV (0.33.0 or higher)
  • FFmpeg (Required for media extraction, falls back to MPV's internal encoder if not found)
  • Anki with AnkiConnect
  • Yomitan and Yomitan Api
  • curl (Pre-installed on most systems, used for API requests)
  • Node.js (Only required if installing from source or contributing)

Installation

  1. Download the Latest version for your OS
  2. Extract the contents directly into your MPV directory:
    • Windows: %APPDATA%/mpv/
    • Linux/macOS: ~/.config/mpv/

Alternative (Requires Node.js)

  1. Clone the repository to your MPV directory and install dependencies (make sure you have Node.js installed):

  2. Windows: %APPDATA%/mpv/ 

    git clone https://github.com/BrenoAqua/Yomipv && xcopy /e /i /y Yomipv . && rd /s /q Yomipv && cd scripts\yomipv\lookup-app && npm install

  3. Linux/macOS: ~/.config/mpv/ 

    git clone https://github.com/BrenoAqua/Yomipv && cp -rn Yomipv/* . && rm -rf Yomipv && cd scripts/yomipv/lookup-app && npm install

Usage

Configure Settings: - Open script-opts/yomipv.conf and update your Anki deck/note type names and field mappings

External Services: - Ensure Anki is running with AnkiConnect enabled - Ensure Yomitan Api is running and the browser where the Yomitan extension is installed is open, and you have dictionaries installed

Basic Workflow

  1. Open a video with Japanese subtitles in MPV
  2. Press c or move your mouse after an idle period (if selector_trigger_on_mouse_move is enabled) to activate the word selector
  3. Navigate with mouse hover or arrow keys to select a word
  4. Press Enter, c, or left-click to create an Anki card

Advanced Features

  • Append Mode (Shift+C): Select multiple subtitle lines before exporting

  • Press Shift+C to enter append mode, c to start the word selector, or Shift+C again to cancel

  • Subtitle Substitution & Colorization (S):

  • Press S to toggle between native MPV subtitles and Yomipv's colorized tokens
  • Enable substitute_mpv_subtitles in yomipv.conf to start with it enabled
  • Words are colorized based on their Anki card metadata:
    • Status: New, Learning, Review, Suspended
    • Intervals: Reflects how well a word is known (affects color shades)
    • Requirement: Press B to build/sync the local Anki database first before these statuses can be displayed for your existing collection

  • Instant Feedback: When you create a card, the word is immediately added to the local database and highlighted (red) in the current subtitle

  • Secondary Subtitle:

  • Automatically select secondary subtitles based on preferred languages

  • Configure secondary_sub_lang in yomipv.conf

  • Mora-level Navigation:

  • When selector_mora_hover is enabled, hovering over a word narrows the lookup to start from mora under your cursor instead of the full word

  • s: Toggle mora-level keyboard navigation (left/right moves by mora instead of word)

  • Lookup App (Ctrl+c): Opens a popup window powered by your Yomitan dictionaries, showing definitions, pitch accents, and frequencies

  • Right-click on the word in the selector to lock the lookup
  • Click any mora in the header to narrow the lookup to a sub-word
  • Right-click the header to go back to the previous word
  • Pitch Accents: Toggle lookup_show_pitch_accents in yomipv.conf
  • Frequencies: Toggle lookup_show_frequencies in yomipv.conf

  • See docs/lookup-app.md for full details

  • Persistent Mode (v):

  • Toggle persistent mode to export multiple words from a single subtitle selection without closing the selector
  • Press v to toggle; the selection color changes to indicate it's active

  • Confirming a selection exports the card but keeps the selector open for the next pick

  • Auto-Trigger Selector (z):

  • Automatically open the selector by moving the mouse after it has been idle.

  • Enable selector_trigger_on_mouse_move and customize selector_trigger_mouse_idle_time in yomipv.conf

  • Manual Timing:

  • q / w: Set a custom start/end time for audio and picture extraction
  • Unset start or end times default to the subtitle boundaries when opening the selector

  • e: Clear manual timings

  • History Panel (a): Toggle subtitle history panel

  • Click on previous/next lines to expand the subtitle lines (when selector is open)
  • Seek to a specific subtitle's timestamp by clicking on it (when selector is closed)

  • Alt+LEFT / Alt+RIGHT: Seek to the previous/next subtitle

  • AniList Tracking (Ctrl+A): Integrates AniList with Yomipv, enabling automatic episode progress updates.

  • See docs/anilist_tracking.md for setup and full details

  • Auto-Updater (U): Keeps Yomipv updated to the latest version

  • Press U in MPV to trigger the update, or:
    • On Windows: Run yomipv-updater.bat directly
    • On Linux / macOS: Run yomipv-updater.sh directly
  • Choose between latest official releases or latest source (main branch)
  • Automatically preserves user configuration in script-opts/yomipv.conf
  • Downloads platform-specific binaries for the Lookup App
  • (Source mode only) Updates dependencies for the Lookup App (requires Node.js)
  • Requires administrator privileges to run the PowerShell script on Windows

Troubleshooting

Windows

  • Ensure PowerShell execution policy allows scripts
  • Check that curl is available at C:\Windows\System32\curl.exe

Linux

  • Ensure curl, unzip, grep, and sed are installed
  • Ensure the updater script has execute permissions: chmod +x yomipv-updater.sh
  • For the lookup app, ensure the binary in scripts/yomipv/ has execution permissions

macOS

  • Ensure curl, unzip, grep, and sed are installed
  • Ensure the updater script has execute permissions: chmod +x yomipv-updater.sh
  • If macOS blocks the Lookup App with a Gatekeeper warning, run: xattr -cr scripts/yomipv/YomipvLookup.app
  • MPV config directory: ~/.config/mpv/ (create it if it does not exist)