dart_vlc

Flutter media playback, broadcast, recording & chromecast library for Windows, Linux & macOS.

Written in C++ using libVLC & libVLC++.

Installation

Flutter

dependencies:
  ...
  dart_vlc: ^0.1.6

Dart CLI

dependencies:
  ...
  dart_vlc_ffi: ^0.1.3

More on Dart CLI implementation here.

Feel free to open a new issue or discussion, if you found a bug or need assistance.

Support

Consider supporting the project by starring the repository or buying me a coffee.

Thanks a lot for your support. Android support is on its way.

Documentation

Checkout Setup section to configure plugin on your platform.

Initialize the library

void main() {
  DartVLC.initialize();
  runApp(MyApp());
}

Create a new player instance.

Player player = Player(id: 69420);

For passing VLC CLI arguments, use commandlineArguments argument.

Player player = Player(
  id: 69420,
  commandlineArguments: ['--no-video']
);

Create a media for playback.

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

Media media1 = Media.asset(
  'assets/audio/example.mp3'
);

Media media2 = Media.network(
  'https://www.example.com/music.aac'
);

// Clip the media.
Media media2 = Media.network(
  'https://www.example.com/music.aac',
  startTime: Duration(seconds: 20), // Start media from 20 seconds from the beginning.
  stopTime: Duration(seconds: 60), // End media at 60 seconds from the beginning. 
);

Create a list of medias using playlist.

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

Open a media or playlist into a player.

player.open(
  Media.file(File('C:/music0.mp3')),
  autoStart: true, // default
);

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

Control playback.

player.play();

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

player.pause();

player.playOrPause();

player.stop();

Traverse through the playlist.

player.next();

player.back();

player.jump(10);

Manipulate an already playing playlist.

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

player.remove(4);

player.insert(
  2,
  Media.file(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 = Devices.all;

player.setDevice(
  devices[0],
);

Save the video snapshot

player.takeSnapshot(file, 1920, 1080);

Show the video inside widget tree.

Show Video in the Widget tree.

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

By default, Video widget's frame size will adapt to the currently playing video. To override this & define custom video frame size, pass videoDimensions argument while instanciating Player class as follows.

Player player = Player(
  id: 69420,
  videoDimensions: const VideoDimensions(640, 360)
);

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

Change user agent

player.setUserAgent(userAgent);

Retrieve metadata of media.

Media media = Media.network(
  'https://www.example.com/media.mp3',
  parse: true,
  timeout: 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).

Listen to currently loaded media & playlist index changes.

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

Listen to playback position & media duration.

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

Listen to playback states.

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

Listen to volume & rate of the Player.

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

Listen to dimensions of currently playing Video.

player.videoDimensionsStream.listen((VideoDimensions video) {
  video.width;
  video.height;
});

Listen to buffering progress of the playing Media.

player.bufferingProgressStream.listen(
  (double event) {
    this.setState(() {
      this.bufferingProgress = event;
    });
  },
);

Set an equalizer.

Create using preset.

Equalizer equalizer = Equalizer.createMode(EqualizerMode.party);
player.setEqualizer(equalizer);

Create custom equalizer.

Equalizer equalizer = Equalizer.createEmpty();
equalizer.setPreAmp(10.0);
equalizer.setBandAmp(31.25, -10.0);
equalizer.setBandAmp(100.0, -10.0);
player.setEqualizer(equalizer);

Get equalizer state.

equalizer.preAmp;
equalizer.bandAmps;

Broadcast a media.

Broadcasting to localhost.

Broadcast broadcast = Broadcast.create(
  id: 0,
  media: Media.file(File('C:/video.mp4')),
  configuration: 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 = Record.create(
  id: 205, 
  media: Media.network('https://www.example.com/streaming-media.MP3'), 
  pathFile: '/home/alexmercerind/recording.MP3',
);
record.start();

Setup

Windows

Everything is already set up.

macOS

To run on macOS, install CMake through Homebrew:

brew install cmake

If you encounter the error cmake: command not found during archiving:

1. Download CMake and move it to the Applications Folder.
2. Run:

sudo "/Applications/CMake.app/Contents/bin/cmake-gui" --install

Linux

For using this plugin on Linux, you must have VLC & libVLC installed.

On Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt-get install vlc

sudo apt-get install libvlc-dev

On Fedora:

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

sudo dnf install vlc

sudo dnf install vlc-devel

iOS [WIP]

Disable bitcode generation for the whole project for MobileVLC to work. Add the following to the post_install function living in the Podfile of your iOS Flutter project. For reference look at the Podfile in the example project.

target.build_configurations.each do |config|
    config.build_settings['ENABLE_BITCODE'] = 'NO'
end

For the example project to work you need to configure a real device in the xcode project, or comment out the build script Build Device lib in in ios/dart_vlc.podspec.

Example

You can see an example project here.

dart_vlc running on Ubuntu Linux.

Workings

The repository contains a C++ wrapper based on libVLC++. This makes handling of events and controls a lot easier & has additional features in it. I preferred to do majority of handling in C++ itself, thus Dart code is minimal & very slight mapping to it.

This project might seem like a Flutter plugin, but it is based on FFI instead. Here are the FFI bindings to C++ wrapper, which are shared by all platforms & same can be used in Dart CLI apps aswell. Platform channel interface is only used for [flutter]

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.
• Equalizer support.
• Adding headers for Media.network (Not possible, added user agent).
• Switching to FFI for more cross platform freedom.
• Changing Video's frame size according to video.
• Saving snapshot.

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

• Removing libVLC++ dependency. (Maybe).
• Subtitle control.
• Audio track control.
• 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.

Thanks to @jnschulze for his awesome contributions to this project & to Flutter engine itself like adding texture support.

Thanks to @krjw-eyev for working on iOS support.

Thanks to @jnschulze & @namniav for working on macOS support.

Thanks to @stuartmorgan from The Flutter Team for helping out the project with his opinions.

Thanks to following members of libVLC community (irrespective of the order) for giving general ideas about libVLC APIs:

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

Contributions

The code in the project is nicely arranged and follows the clean architecture.

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 [email protected].

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 or Dart 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 or Dart apps.

As the project has grown, awesome people from community have added support for iOS & macOS aswell.