Video Player

[TheSuunny]

Hi, is there any way to play the video through Avalonia?

I found a project, but it works only on Windows, i would like cross-platform.

[WamWooWam]

To do this in Avalonia itself seems not-super-feasible, because you'd have to either include some kind of cross platform media player (VLC?), codecs or libraries (like libavcodec) with Avalonia itself (which is a lot of data most people don't need, and probably wouldn't perform great), or hook the low level media APIs in every single supported operating system, which wouldn't be super easy as far as i can tell?

[jmacato]

I think this won't be in our focus for the time-being, as @WamWooWam said, it's a bit tricky to coordinate a sane approach towards media decoding. First off we have a crippling bug for this kind of applications (#2244) because we need to shuttle image data to-&-fro native codecs to managed .NET space and thus will definitely rely with critical time rendering (#2185). Wrappers like FFMpeg.Autogen will definitely ease it up but for now it'd have to take a backseat.

[Sergey-Terekhin]

May be this project can be ported to Avalonia: https://github.com/unosquare/ffmediaelement - it already has wrappers around ffmpeg and some WPF controls which relatively easy can be ported

[jmacato]

@Sergey-Terekhin yes I've been aware of that project even before I got into Avalonia, but there are still some bugs (#2244) that we need to address first to have an acceptable media playback experience. Besides porting that is not for the faint-hearted, trust me coz i tried before and i judged that we're better off learning how it interacts with ffmpeg.autogen instead of porting ffmediaelement outright.

[shawnallen85]

videolan/libvlcsharp#173

Started working on this and hopefully it gets merged in. I've tested it on Windows, MacOS, and Linux (only Ubuntu so far) and it works pretty well.

[simonmurrell]

@shawnallen85 Is there a way to plug your video extension into an Avalonia UI application?

[shawnallen85]

Sorry for the delay -- this is what I have in my code for using the video extension:

In the XAML:

    <Panel>
        <controls:Video MediaPlayer="{Binding MediaPlayer}" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" />
    </Panel>

In the view model:

I have a property for the MediaPlayer (referenced above in the XAML):

public MediaPlayer MediaPlayer { get; }

Then in my functions I control the media player -- that being I start/stop/change the media, etc.

I hope that helps -- let me know.

Happy Thursday!
Shawn

Edit:

I just noticed this, but my code is referencing the control before it was integrated into the LibVLC project officially -- controls:Video might actually be controls:VideoView.

I think the rest is the same.

[simonmurrell]

Do you have a simple demo with this in?

Sorry for the delay -- this is what I have in my code for using the video extension:

In the XAML:

    <Panel>
        <controls:Video MediaPlayer="{Binding MediaPlayer}" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" />
    </Panel>

In the view model:

I have a property for the MediaPlayer (referenced above in the XAML):

public MediaPlayer MediaPlayer { get; }

Then in my functions I control the media player -- that being I start/stop/change the media, etc.

I hope that helps -- let me know.

Happy Thursday!
Shawn

Edit:

I just noticed this, but my code is referencing the control before it was integrated into the LibVLC project officially -- controls:Video might actually be controls:VideoView.

I think the rest is the same.

[shawnallen85]

I don't -- I'll see if I can modify the app I was using this in to use the official control and push it to github in the next day or so.

[shawnallen85]

I figured if I didn't knock it out now it wouldn't happen anytime soon :P.

https://github.com/shawnallen85/Homer

[simonmurrell]

Thanks. I will give it a whirl! From: Shawn Black ***@***.***> Sent: 18 March 2021 16:47 To: AvaloniaUI/Avalonia ***@***.***> Cc: Simon Murrell ***@***.***>; Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [AvaloniaUI/Avalonia] Video Player (#2571) I figured if I didn't knock it out now it wouldn't happen anytime soon :P. https://github.com/shawnallen85/Homer — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#2571 (comment)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AB7O7J3FEC7ST3B3FOAL53LTEIG7DANCNFSM4HPSWYWQ>.

[shawnallen85]

@simonmurrell Any luck?

[zls3201]

I success。
you can read

https://github.com/donandren/vlcsharpavalonia/blob/master/src/LibVLCSharp.Avalonia/NativeVideoPresenter.cs

https://github.com/hudec117/Mpv.NET-lib-/blob/master/src/Mpv.NET.WPFExample/MainWindow.xaml.cs

My Code:

*.csproj add line

<PackageReference Include="Mpv.NET" Version="1.2.0" />

/// <summary>
    /// Avalonia VideoView for Windows, Linux and Mac.
    /// </summary>
    public class VideoView : NativeControlHost
    {
        private MpvPlayer player;
        IPlatformHandle CreateWin32(IPlatformHandle parent)
        {
            //var control = base.CreateNativeControlCore(parent);
            player = new MpvPlayer(parent.Handle, "win-x64/mpv-1.dll")
            {
                Loop = true,
                Volume = 100
            };
            player.Load("http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4");
            player.Resume();

            return parent;// new PlatformHandle(control.Handle, "HWND");

        }

        void DestroyWin32(IPlatformHandle handle)
        {
            player.Dispose();
            base.DestroyNativeControlCore(handle);
        }

        protected override IPlatformHandle CreateNativeControlCore(IPlatformHandle parent)
        {
            if (RuntimeInformation.IsOSPlatform(OSPlatform.Windows))
                return CreateWin32(parent);
            return base.CreateNativeControlCore(parent);
        }

        protected override void DestroyNativeControlCore(IPlatformHandle control)
        {
            if (RuntimeInformation.IsOSPlatform(OSPlatform.Windows))
                DestroyWin32(control);

            base.DestroyNativeControlCore(control);
        }
    }

xaml

<UserControl xmlns="https://github.com/avaloniaui"
             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
             xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
             xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"			 
        xmlns:vlc="clr-namespace:ZTool.Common;assembly=ZTool"
             mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignWidth="800" d:DesignHeight="450"
             x:Class="ZTool.Controls.VideoPlayerView">
	<vlc:VideoView  HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" VerticalAlignment="Stretch" />
</UserControl>

[bbhxwl]

Do any of you have a simple VLC demo? I want to use it on raspberry pie, otherwise I can only use pyqt5 it, but I'm familiar with C#

[Symbai]

@shawnallen85 There is currently no way to draw something on top of the mediaplayer (because it has no content property) but for LibVLCSharp's WPF implementation it is. Any chance this can be done for Avalonia as well?

[Geektoolkit]

OMG this would be a game changer for those of us doing video on raspberry pis! I'll give this a try asap...that looks amazing! And from what I'm gathering, the video is playing without stuttering?!

[radiolondra]

OMG this would be a game changer for those of us doing video on raspberry pis! I'll give this a try asap...that looks amazing! And from what I'm gathering, the video is playing without stuttering?!

The video is playing per-fec-tly! And my Raspberry is a pi3 model b, so just 1 GB of RAM. But it works like a charme.

DietPi is lighter than whatever else Raspberry OS, but not less complete. Use the 32bits or you'll go against other issues.

Be sure to install MATE or Xfce, I didn't test yet with the other X options.

Be prepared to swallow a couple of shirts before to have it installed in a clean way. I had to flash it 3 times (on the SD).

At start, it uses the old text installation (it remembers the old RedHat way to install Linux) and it seems not so obvious. After some attempts (you have to manually configure the network too) you will thanks this kind of approach, as it's very powerful.

Remember to use "root" (default password is "dietpi") to install what you need (libx11-dev, libvlc-dev and vlc). Ther's no X pre-installed, so you have to choose which X you want and install it (MATE).

Once X is installed, if you have the default (text) login start MATE with normal "startx" command.

Now copy your published (full) project somewhere (I put mine in root/Desktop), then add needed libraries above. I don't know if they are the ONLY libs needed, they were for my test project.

You should set exec rights to your project files (I used chmod 777 for all) and start your app as root (or using sudo).

Everything should work.
Avalonia now is perfect for Raspberry too.

[radiolondra]

I have just created a pull request on Videolan/LibVLCSharp to include my solution in the distro.
videolan/libvlcsharp#294

[radiolondra]

For anyone is interested:

A sample to apply in the real world the changes I did in LibVLCSharp.Avalonia

I created YAMP2 repository (Yet-Another-Media-Player v2) here, which fully uses my new LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial lib.

To make tests, build it by yourselves and run.

Enjoy.

[radiolondra]

The new release of the Unofficial Avalonia LibVLCSharp, allows to display multiple draggable controls over the scene of a video played with LibVLCSharp in an Avalonia app.

For anyone is interested.
Enjoy.

output.mp4

[radiolondra]

All the links updated (latest libs and samples versions)

External Links

VLC video player inside an Avalonia Window/UserControl embedding single static customizable control (e.g.player buttons)
LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial

VLC video player inside an Avalonia Window/UserControl embedding multiple draggable customizable controls (e.g.player buttons, images,...)
LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial.UCanvas

LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial Samples
LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial.Samples

LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial.UCanvas sample
LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial.UCanvas.Samples

YAMP 2 - Open source video player sample using LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial library
Github sources
Watch YAMP2 in action

[xiaokun]

The overlapped window which hosts the content will be disappeared if it lost focus on macOS 12.6.3.

I changed some code (add a TextBox) in MainWindow.axaml to produce this problem:

<Grid RowDefinitions="*, 40"  ColumnDefinitions="*">		
       <controls:PlayerControl  Name="Player"/>
        <Grid Grid.Row="1" >
            <TextBox  />
        </Grid>
</Grid>

the overlapped content will disappear if your click on the TextBox.

Maybe someone has solution. Thanks.

[clawton]

Anyone tried this on a DRM framebuffer based configuration?

[timunie]

I'm going to move this issue into discussions as there is nothing to do on Avalonia code side

[mysteryx93]

VLC does not provide the best video quality. MPV is a more powerful player.

I have the MediaPlayerUI project that allows embedding any audio/video players with a standard UI, however, the MPV implementation hasn't been done yet.

Someone did make some progress in implementing MPV player in Avalonia with OpenGL integration but still has some issues.
mysteryx93/MediaPlayerUI.NET#5

[hahyes]

MPV is a more powerful player.

@mysteryx93 How about performance? I'm curious, because I have very specific case with software used on not very powerful CPU with 4 records playing at the same time. Playing these with WPF and default Media Plaer is a pain (dropping frames, CPU and GPU basically overloaded most of the time), so I'm looking for alternatives.

[homov]

LibMpv.Client - a complete libmpv API wrapper and some examples of implementing Avalonia controls for displaying video (using OpenGL and Software rendering).

Works on Linux and Windows (maybe MacOS)

[homov]

@Symbai If you read the post, this is an example of how libmpv can be used with Avalonia. This is not a complete player. But this is the way how one can build it.

[Symbai]

I read the post, it still doesn't change much of what I wrote.

[mysteryx93]

Could copy some API code from
https://github.com/hudec117/Mpv.NET-lib-

As for a decent UI, that's what MediaPlayerUI is for. Needs to be integrated. Avalonia version hasn't yet been completed for video support, including full screen mode that need to be ported from WPF.

[jack775544]

This project looks very cool. Glad to see someone finally made something like this.

[homov]

Just for information, maybe it will be useful for someone.
What works (MacOS has not been tested, but it looks like it should work):

• openGL rendering (Windows, Linux, maybe MacOS)
• software rendering (Windows, Linux, Android, should be on MacOS)
• native rendering (Windows, Android - with GPU acceleration)

[MikeCodesDotNET]

We've considered creating a video player as a "pro control"; we'd provide commercial support and charge a nominal fee to license it.

Is this something folks would be interested in?

[mysteryx93]

The monetization of open source software is a very real dilemma. I published a series of cross-platform apps, and am struggling myself to find how to make it sustainable to develop more. Ended up adding ads (my own ads, no data shared to 3rd parties) and an inexpensive license option. Putting any further development on pause until there is some income to justify it, or at least cover the expenses at a minimum.

I think that this is a dilemma for many. And how many projects adopt the abandonware model. What is a good guideline to follow?

Very often you have a job or paid activity, and develop something free on the side. But when that something becomes more serious, then at some point it becomes a problem.

And here I'm looking at the insane amount of work that goes into developing Avalonia 11.

[Symbai]

The monetization of open source software is a very real dilemma

The dilemma is the expectation of open source authors who feel like they should receive something in return for their work and open source users who feel like they can report something and someone else has to work on it. Here is the plain and simple fact: If you don't ask for money, you don't owe people work. Which means YOU decide what you do, when you do. If you think like that and publish open source projects then everything is cool. If you have the feeling it takes too much free time then just stop working on it, still cool.

But as soon as you asked for money, whether via donation or freemium or ads things get worse. Because THEN you definitely owe people work and support and all that stuff. And the real dilemma begins if you make money from it where other people around the world have contributed to for free. Because that is a real bad manner and as a non-lawyer I would question if this is even legal.

Right now as far as i know you pay Avalonia team and receive support in return. This feels, to me as a user, as something external. I mean I can also go to a freelancer site and pay someone else helping me out. This doesn't effect the work here. With that said, I don't even mind if Avalonia is making some controls being paid only if these controls are not standard controls. A good example is a ribbon menu you can find in office software. Such a control is almost only used by business software. A video player control is also very specific. I still won't pay for it but this is nothing a standard application needs. A bad example would be, i dont know, an image button or more features on a Textbox control or that kind of stuff. Things that most applications would need.

With that being said at the end of the day, its the authors decision only. You can put ads in your software. Avalonia can become freemium if its wants to. But there is definitely not a problem with money on open source projects, because they were never intended to make money. Its only some authors, after some time, noticing that things become too large. Yet its up to them to handle that and there are other ways than money as I described above.

[MikeCodesDotNET]

This needs a broader discussion, so I've created a new thread.

[seanstardev]

Making cross-platform video player capability commercial is an understandable temptation, but it is a myopic choice. Getting basic cross-platform 3D, video playback and game controller input should be part of the core package. No-one is more enthusiastic about Avalonia than I - and I fully endorse the commercial bent for advanced components being not-free - but don't cut your nose off to spite your face. Avalonia needs USPs. Cross-platform video for all will catapult your enterprise. Avalonia will be the only game in town, and your commercial endeavours will only benefit.

[seanstardev]

For context - I would love to demonstrate cross-platform video in a multi-target, GitHub project app base (web, desktop, Android). It would make it much easier to sell Avalonia to my colleagues on that basis. After that, you can put your own figures on cheques!

[MikeCodesDotNET]

If we put everything in the core library, there is nothing to sell; it'd all be FOSS, so I don't know what you'd be selling your colleagues. Users != Revenue.

To be clear, we're not working on video players, 3D or anything else you mentioned. We're focused on XPF and v11 right now.

[seanstardev]

Understood. Thanks for reading and keep up the great work :)

[homov]

LibMpv.Client - video control (a little more progress)

[jonmdev]

I need video playback within Avalonia that is effective for embedded videos and streaming videos and can have other visual elements (like text or UI graphics) over top. It must work in Windows/iOS/Android.

Does anyone know if this is currently possible? Or is this not currently possible?

Perhaps via:

LibVLCSharp as per: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75493300/avalonia-libvlcsharp-support-for-ios-android-and-wasm

And:

https://github.com/radiolondra/libvlcsharp/tree/3.x/src/LibVLCSharp.Avalonia.Unofficial

To get the overlay functions working?

Thanks

[homov]

Briefly, there is currently no easy way for all the platforms you listed. Simply displaying the video (without controls above it) is entirely possible. The solution for LibVLC works for desktop platforms, but does not work for mobile ones.

One of the possible solutions that you can try is using LibMpv.Client (displaying video using OpenGL FB). This is not an Avalonia control, but you will find examples of how to use the library to write such player. Writing a simple video player is a trivial task.

However, expect that video rendering speed on mobile platforms will not be very good and you will have to figure out how to configure LIbMPV to work on different platforms.

[homov]

The second possible way is to use Avalonia in a hosted element of another framework (for example MAUI). Then you can use the native video player for your chosen framework and place Avalonia content above it.

[jonmdev]

Thanks for the clarification @homov. Maui has been a nightmare, but I suppose it is my nightmare now, and I will need to stick with it.

Avalonia might have been a nice dream but not so practical for me now.

[timunie]

@jonmdev and then there is this for ones wanting to have both worlds: https://github.com/AvaloniaUI/AvaloniaMauiHybrid

[Monsalma]

I used the native control host approach to display video on Windows (LibVLCSharp) and Android (ExoPlayer). I guess the same approach could be used on iOS, but I personally haven't tried it yet.

By the way, I think MAUI is internally using the same approach - having different media players on different platforms.

More info on the topic in my blog post:
https://monsalma.net/avalonia-ui-native-video-playback-featuring-libvlcsharp-and-exoplayer/