LibVLC Documentation

Introduction

libVLC is an embeddable engine for 3rd party applications and frameworks.

It runs on the same platforms as VLC (and sometimes on more) and can provide playback, streaming and conversion of multimedia files and streams.

libVLC has numerous bindings for other languages, such as C++, Python, java, Objective-C and C#.

The generated documentation can be browsed from here.

License

libVLC is released under the LGPLv2 (or later) license. This allows embedding the engine in 3rd party applications, while letting them to be licensed under other licenses.

However, note that some plugins are under more restrictive licenses, such as GPLv3 (or later).

Example

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <inttypes.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <vlc/vlc.h>
 
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
    libvlc_instance_t * inst;
    libvlc_media_player_t *mp;
    libvlc_media_t *m;
 
    /* Load the VLC engine */
    inst = libvlc_new (0, NULL);
 
    /* Create a new item */
    m = libvlc_media_new_location("http://mycool.movie.com/test.mov");
    //m = libvlc_media_new_path("/path/to/test.mov");
 
    /* Create a media player playing environement */
    mp = libvlc_media_player_new_from_media (inst, m);
 
    /* No need to keep the media now */
    libvlc_media_release (m);
 
    /* play the media_player */
    libvlc_media_player_play (mp);
 
    while (libvlc_media_player_is_playing(mp))
    {
        sleep (1);
        int64_t milliseconds = libvlc_media_player_get_time(mp);
        int64_t seconds = milliseconds / 1000;
        int64_t minutes = seconds / 60;
        milliseconds -= seconds * 1000;
        seconds -= minutes * 60;
 
        printf("Current time: %" PRId64 ":%" PRId64 ":%" PRId64 "\n",
               minutes, seconds, milliseconds);
    }
 
    /* Stop playing */
    libvlc_media_player_stop_async (mp);
 
    /* Free the media_player */
    libvlc_media_player_release (mp);
 
    libvlc_release (inst);
 
    return 0;
}