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Author Topic: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?  (Read 5705 times)

fatmonk

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Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« on: November 29, 2021, 12:01:27 pm »
Does the 'included' LCLVLCPlayer component support streaming video?
Does it require VLC to be installed on the running machine?

I previously wrote a small application using, I think, PasLibVlc which supported receiving video streams from URIs, for example tcp://127.0.0.1.

If I remember correctly, though, that library was reliant on VLC being installed on the machine running the application as it used a .dll included in the VLC installation (Windows). The application I wrote checked for this and prompted the user, but as my application was 32bit and some users were installing the 64but VLC I ran into problems.

I have lost the source code for the application I wrote previously (don't ask! My only excuse it was about 6 or seven years ago), so would like to simplify the application in a rewrite.

-FM

MarkMLl

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #1 on: November 29, 2021, 12:15:29 pm »
I can't comment definitively but various tinkering with VLC on Linux suggests that just about everything requires a fairly comprehensive installation (i.e. it's not just a single library).

However I'd also add that on (Debian) Linux it's fairly simple to add 32-bit libraries etc. to a 64-bit system, and I'd be disappointed if Windows didn't provide something equivalent... although I suppose there's a risk that with the popularity of virtualisation MS would prefer you to do things that way.

Beware of a known problem debugging paslibvlc interaction: at least on Linux communication between the library and the bits of VLC doing the actual work is debugger-unfriendly.

MarkMLl
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Zvoni

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #2 on: November 30, 2021, 08:11:21 am »
As far as i understood the source-code, you need the Libvlc-Library, but not the player itself
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in the Land of Redmond, where the Windows lie
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Pe3s

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #3 on: November 30, 2021, 09:19:51 pm »
PasLibVlc will be a good choice. As for the installation of VLC, you can install VLC copy the VLC application folder and in onCreate Forms give the path
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. PasLibVlcPlayer1.VLC.Path := 'E:\VLC';
You can then use PasLibVlc without installing VLC.

fatmonk

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #4 on: December 01, 2021, 02:18:24 pm »
PasLibVlc will be a good choice. As for the installation of VLC, you can install VLC copy the VLC application folder and in onCreate Forms give the path
Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]
  1. PasLibVlcPlayer1.VLC.Path := 'E:\VLC';
You can then use PasLibVlc without installing VLC.

But copying and distributing the VLC library would be a breach of VideoLAN's copyright, surely.

I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that's not allowed.

I had the application working well with PasLibVlc years ago, as I said in the first post, but as I am re-writing from scratch I was looking for a Lazarus package that doesn't need a VLC installation as well. But it looks like that's not going to be possible with the existing libraries (which I kind of expected).

Zvoni

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #5 on: December 01, 2021, 03:21:20 pm »
But copying and distributing the VLC library would be a breach of VideoLAN's copyright, surely.

I haven't checked, but I'm pretty sure that's not allowed.
https://www.videolan.org/vlc/libvlc.html
Quote
libVLC is a C library which can be embedded in your own applications. It works with most popular OS platforms, on both mobile and desktop. It is under the LGPL2.1 license.
One System to rule them all, One Code to find them,
One IDE to bring them all, and to the Framework bind them,
in the Land of Redmond, where the Windows lie
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fatmonk

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Re: Does LCLVLCPlayer support streaming?
« Reply #6 on: December 01, 2021, 05:27:48 pm »
Wow, thanks for that Zvoni... much appreciate you digging that out for me. I'm swamped on another project at the moment, but as soon as I get back to that at least I know I can just bundle the library if its under LGPL  :D

-FM

 

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