A lightweight video player built on the SDL2 and ffmpeg libraries. It can play multiple videos simultaneously, all synced to a master clock. In addition, the video playback can be controlled via TCP commands, e.g. "open movie.mp4", "play", "pause", "seekto 350.0", etc. This allows for an easy interface to other applications - Python, Javascript, etc. -- anything that handles basic network sockets.
Originally built with msys2 and the mingw64 gcc compiler on a Windows 10 machine.
msys2 packages:
- mingw-w64-x86_64-ffmpeg 3.3-1
- mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 2.0.5-1
Here are my compiler options in CodeLite
- preprocessor : main=SDL_main
- libraries : mingw32;SDL2main;SDL2;avutil;swresample;avcodec;avformat;swscale;ws2_32
Everything is crossplatform except the socket programming code, read_from_client() method. The current source code has a winsock2 implementation, for Windows. It would be pretty easy to swap this out with linux socket programming.
If you don't specify a port number, it defaults with 50001, which should be open on most machines.
ffmpeg supports a wide range of codecs and formats, so most videos should load fine.
Hotkey | Command |
---|---|
Down | Seek 10 seconds forward |
Up | Seek 10 seconds backward |
Right | Show next frame |
Left | Seek 0.25 seconds backward |
Space | Toggle play/pause |
Videos can be opened and controlled via tcp commands.
For example in Python, after setting up tcp connection to vidserv.exe,
sock.send("seekto 60.0".encode())
-
open movie1.mp4 xscreen yscreen width height windowname
- e.g. open c:/users/fosterseth/desktop/movie.mp4 100 100 640 480 movie1
- To use native width and height of video, just put 0 for both width and height
-
seekto x
- x is in seconds
-
seek+
- seeks 60 seconds forward
-
seek-
- seeks 60 seconds back
-
seek+small
- seeks to next frame
-
seek-small
- seeks back 0.25 seconds
-
play
-
pause
-
toggleplay
-
gettime
- a request for the current playback time, in seconds
- client must call recv() to get the message back
-
getnumvideos
- a request for the number of active videos
- client must call recv() to get message back
-
getpos movie1.mp4
- a request for the current x,y,w,h of movie1.mp4
- client must call recv() to get message back
-
raisewindows
- restores minimized windows
-
closewindows
- closes all windows, but keeps server running
-
break
- closes all windows and quits the server
For convenience, the bin/ folder contains a compiled vidserv and the required DLL to run on a Windows machine.
dranger's tutorial was immensely helpful for this project. Check out his tutorial if you are new to AV processing.