Convert any movie into an experience of pure aesthetics by cutting it up and playing it in a random order

random-seek.lua

--[[
Plays a movie in random order, jumping every 5 seconds or so to a random position. Convert any movie into a purely aesthetic experience. Potentially useful for creating ambience in the background of something, a party for instance, less distracting than just playing the movie normally, though still a bit distracting.

how to use this: get mpv, put this script in its config/scripts dir

invoke mpv with a command like this:
mpv --script-opts=random-seek-enable=yes,random-seek-seed=393 video/dl/Legend.1985.DC.1080p.BluRay.x265-RBG.mp4

the options include
random-seek-enable: must be set yes for the extension to work
random-seek-interval: how long each random jump is in seconds (default 5)
random-seek-interval-plus: adds random variation on each pause length, and this says how long it is (default 0)
random-seek-seed: the randomization order will always be the same usually, this lets you set a different random-seed that changes the order from the usual one. It can be anything, I think. I've only tested it with numbers.
random-seek-prefer-keyframes: if set yes, it will only jump to keyframes. This makes it feel less chaotic, I ended up not liking that, so it defaults to false
]]

local opts = {
    plus = tonumber(mp.get_opt("random-seek-interval-plus")) or 0,
    seed = mp.get_opt("random-seek-seed"),
    prefer_keyframes = mp.get_opt("random-seek-prefer-keyframes") or false,
    interval = tonumber(mp.get_opt("random-seek-interval")) or 5,
}

local function random_seek()
    local duration = mp.get_property_number("duration")
    if duration then
        local random_pos = math.random() * (duration - (opts.interval + opts.plus) - 0.001) -- to make sure it never reaches the very end and stops playing
        if opts.prefer_keyframes then
            mp.commandv("seek", random_pos, "absolute", "keyframes")
        else
            mp.commandv("seek", random_pos, "absolute")
        end
    end
end

local function setup_timer()
    local enabled = mp.get_opt("random-seek-enable")
    mp.msg.info(enabled)
    if enabled == "yes" then
        mp.msg.info("running random-seek extension")
        if opts.seed then
            math.randomseed(opts.seed)
        end
        function running()
            random_seek()
            mp.add_timeout(opts.interval + math.random()*opts.plus, running)
        end
        running()
    else
        mp.msg.info("not running random-seek extension")
    end
end

mp.register_event("file-loaded", setup_timer)

prior art https://github.com/AN3223/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/mpv/lats.lua

seems to allow looping over multiple files, allows pausing, always goes to keyframes I think, doesn't have a "enable" option (recommends not permanently installing it).