Video decoding and rendering library for XLib
Question
Currently what I have a Linux application that was written using Xlib and I needed to add video playing capabilities into it.
What libraries would you recommend that I could use for video decoding and rendering that works well with Xlib?
Solution
The options are plentiful.
- xine-lib.
- GStreamer (works best with glib-based programs).
- Phonon (works best with Qt-based programs).
- FFmpeg.
- libVLC.
- MPlayer + XEmbed.
Xine is probably the easiest (easier than FFmpeg, anyhow) without requiring anything beyond itself and Xlib. There's a short, complete example in under 180 lines of actual code.
muxine is a very small player that just creates a X11 window and play a given stream MRL. Source code: muxine.c.
You can compile muxine with:
gcc -Wall -O2 `xine-config --cflags` -o muxine muxine.c `xine-config --libs`
On the other hand, using MPlayer+XEmbed is pretty easy too, much easier if you don't care to have much control over the video playback. Create a X11 window, and run mplayer -wid <window-id>
.
OTHER TIPS
You could try using either FFMpeg or Mplayer.