dart_vlc

Bringing power of VLC to Flutter & Dart apps on Windows & Linux

Installation #

dependencies:
  ...
  dart_vlc: ^0.0.6

Support #

Documentation #

Create a new player instance.

Player player = new Player(id: 69420);

Create a media for playback.

Media media0 = await Media.file(
  new File('C:/music.mp3')
);

Media media1 = await Media.network(
  'https://www.example.com/music.aac'
);

Media media2 = await Media.asset(
  'assets/music.ogg'
);

Create a list of medias using playlist.

Playlist playlist = new Playlist(
  medias: [
    await Media.file(new File('C:/music.mp3')),
    await Media.asset('assets/music.ogg'),
    await Media.network('https://www.example.com/music.aac'),
  ],
);

Open a media or playlist into a player.

player.open(
  new Playlist(
    medias: [
      await Media.file(new File('C:/music0.mp3')),
      await Media.file(new File('C:/music1.mp3')),
      await Media.file(new File('C:/music2.mp3')),
    ],
  ),
  autoStart: true, // default
);

Control playback.

player.play();

player.seek(Duration(seconds: 30));

player.pause();

player.playOrPause();

player.stop();

Manipulate an already playing playlist.

player.add(
  await Media.file(new File('C:/music0.mp3')),
);

player.remove(4);

player.insert(
  2,
  await Media.file(new File('C:/music0.mp3')),
);

player.move(0, 4);

Set playback volume & rate.

player.setVolume(0.5);

player.setRate(1.25);

Get & change playback device.

List<Device> devices = await Devices.all;

player.setDevice(
  devices[0],
);

Show the video inside widget tree.

Instanciate Player as follows.

Player player = new Player(
  id: 69420,
  videoWidth: 480,
  videoHeight: 320,
);

Show Video in the Widget tree.

class _MyAppState extends State<MyApp> {
  @override
  Widget build(BuildContext context) {
    return Scaffold(
      body: Video(
        playerId: 69420,
        height: 1920.0,
        width: 1080.0,
        scale: 1.0, // default
        showControls: false, // default
      ),
    );
  }
}

Thanks to @tomassasovsky for adding visual controls to Video widget.

Retrieve metadata of media.

Media media = await Media.network(
  'https://www.example.com/media.mp3',
  parse: true,
  timeout: new Duration(seconds: 10),
);

Map<String, String> metas = media.metas;

Listen to playback events.

(Same can be retrieved directly from Player instance without having to rely on stream).

player.currentStream.listen((CurrentState state) {
  state.index;
  state.media;
  state.medias;
  state.isPlaylist;
});

player.positionStream.listen((PositionState state) {
  state.position;
  state.duration;
});

player.playbackStream.listen((PlaybackState state) {
  state.isPlaying;
  state.isSeekable;
  state.isCompleted;
});

player.generalStream.listen((GeneralState state) {
  state.volume;
  state.rate;
});

Broadcast a media.

Broadcasting to localhost.

Broadcast broadcast = await Broadcast.create(
  id: 0,
  media: await Media.file(new File('C:/video.mp4')),
  configuration: new BroadcastConfiguration(
    access: 'http',
    mux: 'mpeg1',
    dst: '127.0.0.1:8080',
    vcodec: 'mp1v',
    vb: 1024,
    acodec: 'mpga',
    ab: 128,
  ),
);
broadcast.start();

Dispose the Broadcast instance to release resources.

broadcast.dispose();

Record a media.

Thanks to @DomingoMG for adding Record and Chromecast classes.

Record record = await Record.create(
  id: 205, 
  media: await Media.network('https://www.example.com/streaming-media.MP3'), 
  pathFile: '/home/alexmercerind/recording.MP3',
);
record.start();

NOTE: For using this plugin on Linux, you must have VLC & libVLC installed. On debian based distros, run:

sudo apt-get install vlc

sudo apt-get install libvlc-dev

On Fedora, enable RPMFusion repositories first:

sudo dnf install https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

Then run:

sudo dnf install vlc

sudo dnf install vlc-devel

Example #

You can see an example project here.

Windows

Workings #

The internal wrapper used in the plugin is here in the repository (Based on libVLC++). It makes handling of events and controls a lot easier & has additional features to it.

Same wrapper will be used for upcoming FFI version.

I preferred to do majority of plugin handling in C++ itself, thus Dart code is minimal & very slight mapping to it.

Progress #

Done

• Media playback from File.
• Media playback from network.
• Media playback from assets.
• play/pause/playOrPause/stop.
• Multiple Player instances.
• Playlist.
• next/back/jump for playlists.
• setVolume.
• setRate.
• seek.
• Events.
• Automatic fetching of headers, libs & shared libraries.
• Changing VLC version from CMake.
• Event streams.
  • Player.currentState
    • index: Index of current media in Playlist.
    • medias: List of all opened Medias.
    • media: Currently playing Media.
    • isPlaylist: Whether a single Media is loaded or a Playlist.
  • Player.positionState
    • position: Position of currently playing media in Duration.
    • duration: Position of currently playing media in Duration.
  • Player.playbackState
    • isPlaying.
    • isSeekable.
    • isCompleted.
  • Player.generalState
    • volume: Volume of current Player instance.
    • rate: Rate of current Player instance.
• add/insert/remove/move Media inside Playlist during playback.
• Device enumeration & changing.
• Retrieving Meta of a Media.
• Embedding Video inside the Flutter window.
• Supporting live streaming links.
• Broadcast class for broadcasting Media.
• Record class for recording Media.
• Chromecast class.
• Adding headers for Media.network (Not possible, added user agent).

Under progress or planned features (irrespective of order)...

• FFI version of the library for plain Dart applications.
• Removing libVLC++ dependency. (Maybe).
• Writing metadata tags.
• Making things more efficient.
• Supporting native volume control/lock screen notifications (Maybe).
• Bringing project on other platforms like Android/iOS (Maybe).
• D-Bus MPRIS controls for Media playback control (Maybe).

Acknowledgements #

First of all, thanks to the VideoLAN team for creating libVLC & libVLC++. Really great guys really great at their work.

Massive thanks to @stuartmorgan from Flutter team to review code & help me fix the loopholes.

Thanks to following members of libVLC community to give me bit of look & advice about how things work:

• @jeremyVignelles
• @chouquette
• @mfkl
• @caprica

Contributions #

The code in the project is nicely arranged (I guess), I have added comments wherever I felt necessary.

Contributions to the project are open, it will be appreciated if you discuss the bug-fix/feature-addition in the issues first.

License #

Copyright (C) 2021, Hitesh Kumar Saini, Domingo Montesdeoca Gonzalez & contributors.

This library & work under this repository is licensed under GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1.

Vision #

There aren't any media (audio or video) playback libraries for Flutter on Windows/Linux yet. So, this project is all about that. As one might be already aware, VLC is one of the best media playback tools out there.

So, now you can use it to play audio or video files from Flutter Desktop apps.

Although, the mentioned repositories above are for audio playback, video playback is also a part of consideration for this project.