Pipe Unrar Output Directly to a Media Player

Streaming video directly from a compressed RAR archive allows you to watch media without waiting for a full extraction or using extra disk space. By using the command-line utility unrar to send file data to standard output (stdout), you can pipe the uncompressed stream straight into the standard input (stdin) of media players such as VLC, MPV, or MPlayer.

The Basic Command Structure

To pipe a media file from a RAR archive into a player, use the p (print) command combined with the -inul (inhibit messages) switch:

unrar p -inul archive.rar | mpv -

Command Breakdown

  • unrar: Invokes the command-line extraction tool.
  • p: Instructs unrar to output the contents of the compressed file directly to standard output (stdout) instead of writing it to disk.
  • -inul: Suppresses all status messages, headers, and copyright banners. This is crucial because any text mixed into the video stream will corrupt the playback.
  • archive.rar: The path to your target RAR archive.
  • |: The pipe operator, which redirects stdout of the left command to stdin of the right command.
  • mpv -: The media player command. The trailing hyphen (-) explicitly tells the media player to read the video stream from standard input rather than looking for a local file.

Examples for Common Media Players

Depending on your preferred video player, you can adjust the receiving end of the command:

Using MPV

unrar p -inul movie.rar | mpv -

Using VLC

unrar p -inul movie.rar | vlc -

Using MPlayer

unrar p -inul movie.rar | mplayer -cache 8192 -

(Adding a cache buffer to MPlayer helps prevent playback stuttering.)

Handling Multi-Part Archives

If your media file is split across multiple RAR files (e.g., movie.part01.rar, movie.part02.rar), specify only the first volume in the sequence. unrar will automatically read the sequential volumes and stream the file continuously:

unrar p -inul movie.part01.rar | mpv -

Specifying a File in Multi-File Archives

If the archive contains multiple files (such as sample clips, text files, or subtitles), specify the exact filename of the video you want to play at the end of the unrar command:

unrar p -inul release.rar "video.mkv" | mpv -

If you do not know the exact filename, run unrar l archive.rar first to list the contents of the archive.