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How to Write a Video Player in Less Than 1000 Lines (2015)

112 points by selvan 6y ago

ilaksh 6y ago
> ffmpeg takes care of all the hard work of video processing by doing all the decoding, encoding, muxing and demuxing for you. Seems like a pretty good hint that you are not actually writing a video player in less than 1000 lines. I mean it's a cool article, but the presentation is misleading and taking credit for something that it is not. And some people who aren't in programming actually see titles like that and think that this type of thing is literally 'easy to program'. Another example is when people say they quickly 'built their own browser'.
- dexwiz 6y ago
  So using the ffmpeg plugin in less than 1000 lines?
- satori99 6y ago
  Acclaimed video software like VLC also uses FFmpeg/libavcodec to do the encoding/decoding etc, and I don't think anyone is claiming those developers are 'cheating'.
  - ganstyles 6y ago
    They’re also not claiming they’re writing everything themselves, and certainly not in X lines of code...
    - satori99 6y ago
      You seem to have a problem with the X lines of code... part. I guess I can see how it might be seen as boastful or showboating, but to me it signals "This might be a fun coding project for a single afternoon."
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Yeah, I'd just claim that VLC has garbage playback.
- jxy 6y ago
  I routinely write video players in a single line. ffplay how_to_write_a_blog_post_with_a_better_title.mov
phoboslab 6y ago
Shameless plug: here's an MPEG1 player in 400 lines and the decoder in 4000: https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg
umvi 6y ago
"How to write a json parser in 2 lines of Python" import json json.loads('{"That": "was easy"}') (To be fair, knowing ffmpeg exists doesn't mean I'd be able to easily write a video player with it without a lot of research. For that reason I find this tutorial is still quite interesting and valuable.)
- arcticbull 6y ago
  Not to mention you can do this on iOS in about 10 lines with AVPlayerViewController [1] Don't get me wrong, this is a cool SDL <> ffmpeg integration tutorial. [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avkit/avplayerviewcontroller https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avkit/avplayerview...
  - FraKtus 6y ago
    The AVKit only plays a few codecs. It's fine if you are in the Apple ecosystem but many formats from Windows or Linux will fail with it.
- nothis 6y ago
  I had to resist the urge to post something similar and yea, it's still way too hard to track down documentation for already solved stuff like this, so there's great value in an article demystifying the process.
- disconnected 6y ago
  > (To be fair, knowing ffmpeg exists doesn't mean I'd be able to easily write a video player with it without a lot of research. For that reason I find this tutorial is still quite interesting and valuable.) The tutorial is still 1000 lines of C, involving SDL, ffmpeg and threads. Yikes :) Last time I did something like this (a UI that among other things, played a live stream from a cheapo IP camera), I used python and the libvlc python bindings. Creating a bare bones media player with it was trivial and it worked very well for what I needed. The only complaint I had at the time was that the documentation was absolutely terrible. A cursory look today reveals that they seem to have improved it, so yay? And yes, the end result in my case came out MUCH smaller than 1000 lines (but lines of code is a shitty metric anyway). If you "just" need a media player, IMHO, libvlc is not an awful option (in Python, at least - I have no experience with other bindings): https://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC/ https://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC/
modeless 6y ago
ffmpeg is awesome. However, there are some issues that all ffmpeg-based players share that I wish someone would tackle (either by fixing ffmpeg or making something new). Seeking performance and reliability (especially single frame seeking) is a big one. Robustness in the face of truncated or otherwise corrupted video files is another. Ffmpeg isn't terrible in these areas, and I realize that there are underlying issues that make these things very hard, but still I believe it is possible to do much better.
- Torkel 6y ago
  Yep. It's a lot of work creating a non-stuttering, fast-seeking player using ffmpeg/libav. For high resolution / high bitrate streams ffmpeg doesn't issue frames smoothely in itself (I-frames takes longer) so I had to create a whole caching structure and issue the frames from a different thread to get it to play smoothely in my application... On the other hand there are so many edge cases around codecs and assumptions around what is and is not coming so I think that if a different API was created there would likely be a lot of cases where it would break? Something like the NDI API would be great, it is really quick to integrate.
stephc_int13 6y ago
This is a perfectly fine and useful tutorial by my standards. For the naysayers out there, a better title would be "Writing a Video Player in Less Than 1000 Lines of C using FFmpeg and SDL"
- ngold 6y ago
  This does look like a nice place to start learning with FFMPEG and SDL.
- ilaksh 6y ago
  If that were the title then I would not have complained about the title. Like I said, it is a cool article.
fisherjeff 6y ago
Wildly off topic, but I ended up on his and Isaac Hoffer’s ‘Top 100 albums of 2004-05’ [0], and wow I’d forgotten how many amazing albums came out in that short span! Wonderful commentary too. Then I did the math and I guess now I’m an old guy that listens to... classic rock? Back on topic: For anyone using ffmpeg/libav this tutorial might as well be the official documentation. Absolutely indispensable in my opinion. [0] http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html
akssri 6y ago
Sadly, the code in this tutorial doesn't work anymore due to upstream changes in FFmpeg. There are quite a few attempts at keeping Dranger's tutorial up to date, but I found the repo below to be one of the better ones. https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video-player https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video-player
vernie 6y ago
(2015)
dpe82 6y ago
A lot of folks don't know that ffmpeg isn't just a command line utility (which is pretty powerful in its own right) but also a set of super powerful and reasonably well designed media libraries that can be used to do all kinds of stuff with media. I remember finding this tutorial years ago and it opened up a whole range of possibilities eventually leading to my startup Vidmaker[0] which, while not successful itself, got my cofounders and I acquihired into YouTube. Thank you, dranger, whoever you are. [0] https://www.vidmaker.com/ https://www.vidmaker.com/
lostgame 6y ago
This should maybe be a little more specific with its title. Maybe include 'with FFMPEG'. Because I can easily write a video player in ten lines or so: <html> <head> <title>Basic video player</title> </head> <body> <video width = "5122" height = "51" controls> <source src = "video.mp4" type = "video/mp4"> </video> </body> </html>
- ilaksh 6y ago
  I think its actually mainly just the HN submission actually now that I look at the article again, I see that his first part of the title is "SDL and ffmpeg tutorial".
dang 6y ago
Discussed in 2016, with almost an identical top comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616 (current top comment here is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669)
unnouinceput 6y ago
Title is a bit misleading. Should say "How to write a video player using ffmpeg in less than 1000 lines". Otherwise it can be interpreted that in those 1k lines is included the heavy workload that ffmpeg arguably does it in more then 10k lines.
FraKtus 6y ago
The FFmpeg project is amazing but a constantly moving target. This was very popular around 2015 but is now broken because the API changed. If you want to try that code you must download an older version of FFmpeg.
pwdisswordfish2 6y ago
What does the "ff" in ffmpeg, ffplay, ffserver, ffprobe, etc. stand for?
- ttoinou 6y ago
  FreeFrame ?
sempron64 6y ago
I love this guide! I used (an earlier version of) this to write a multimedia-based game in C++ before any of the free game engines had HD video playback support.

112 points by selvan 6y ago

> ffmpeg takes care of all the hard work of video processing by doing all the decoding, encoding, muxing and demuxing for you. Seems like a pretty good hint that you are not actually writing a video player in less than 1000 lines. I mean it's a cool article, but the presentation is misleading and taking credit for something that it is not. And some people who aren't in programming actually see titles like that and think that this type of thing is literally 'easy to program'. Another example is when people say they quickly 'built their own browser'.

dexwiz 6y ago
So using the ffmpeg plugin in less than 1000 lines?
satori99 6y ago
Acclaimed video software like VLC also uses FFmpeg/libavcodec to do the encoding/decoding etc, and I don't think anyone is claiming those developers are 'cheating'.
- ganstyles 6y ago
  They’re also not claiming they’re writing everything themselves, and certainly not in X lines of code...
  - satori99 6y ago
    You seem to have a problem with the X lines of code... part. I guess I can see how it might be seen as boastful or showboating, but to me it signals "This might be a fun coding project for a single afternoon."
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Yeah, I'd just claim that VLC has garbage playback.
jxy 6y ago
I routinely write video players in a single line. ffplay how_to_write_a_blog_post_with_a_better_title.mov

phoboslab 6y ago

Shameless plug: here's an MPEG1 player in 400 lines and the decoder in 4000: https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg https://github.com/phoboslab/pl_mpeg

umvi 6y ago

"How to write a json parser in 2 lines of Python" import json json.loads('{"That": "was easy"}') (To be fair, knowing ffmpeg exists doesn't mean I'd be able to easily write a video player with it without a lot of research. For that reason I find this tutorial is still quite interesting and valuable.)

arcticbull 6y ago
Not to mention you can do this on iOS in about 10 lines with AVPlayerViewController [1] Don't get me wrong, this is a cool SDL <> ffmpeg integration tutorial. [1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avkit/avplayerviewcontroller https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avkit/avplayerview...
- FraKtus 6y ago
  The AVKit only plays a few codecs. It's fine if you are in the Apple ecosystem but many formats from Windows or Linux will fail with it.
nothis 6y ago
I had to resist the urge to post something similar and yea, it's still way too hard to track down documentation for already solved stuff like this, so there's great value in an article demystifying the process.
disconnected 6y ago
> (To be fair, knowing ffmpeg exists doesn't mean I'd be able to easily write a video player with it without a lot of research. For that reason I find this tutorial is still quite interesting and valuable.) The tutorial is still 1000 lines of C, involving SDL, ffmpeg and threads. Yikes :) Last time I did something like this (a UI that among other things, played a live stream from a cheapo IP camera), I used python and the libvlc python bindings. Creating a bare bones media player with it was trivial and it worked very well for what I needed. The only complaint I had at the time was that the documentation was absolutely terrible. A cursory look today reveals that they seem to have improved it, so yay? And yes, the end result in my case came out MUCH smaller than 1000 lines (but lines of code is a shitty metric anyway). If you "just" need a media player, IMHO, libvlc is not an awful option (in Python, at least - I have no experience with other bindings): https://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC/ https://wiki.videolan.org/LibVLC/

modeless 6y ago

ffmpeg is awesome. However, there are some issues that all ffmpeg-based players share that I wish someone would tackle (either by fixing ffmpeg or making something new). Seeking performance and reliability (especially single frame seeking) is a big one. Robustness in the face of truncated or otherwise corrupted video files is another. Ffmpeg isn't terrible in these areas, and I realize that there are underlying issues that make these things very hard, but still I believe it is possible to do much better.

Torkel 6y ago
Yep. It's a lot of work creating a non-stuttering, fast-seeking player using ffmpeg/libav. For high resolution / high bitrate streams ffmpeg doesn't issue frames smoothely in itself (I-frames takes longer) so I had to create a whole caching structure and issue the frames from a different thread to get it to play smoothely in my application... On the other hand there are so many edge cases around codecs and assumptions around what is and is not coming so I think that if a different API was created there would likely be a lot of cases where it would break? Something like the NDI API would be great, it is really quick to integrate.

stephc_int13 6y ago

This is a perfectly fine and useful tutorial by my standards. For the naysayers out there, a better title would be "Writing a Video Player in Less Than 1000 Lines of C using FFmpeg and SDL"

ngold 6y ago
This does look like a nice place to start learning with FFMPEG and SDL.
ilaksh 6y ago
If that were the title then I would not have complained about the title. Like I said, it is a cool article.

fisherjeff 6y ago

Wildly off topic, but I ended up on his and Isaac Hoffer’s ‘Top 100 albums of 2004-05’ [0], and wow I’d forgotten how many amazing albums came out in that short span! Wonderful commentary too. Then I did the math and I guess now I’m an old guy that listens to... classic rock? Back on topic: For anyone using ffmpeg/libav this tutorial might as well be the official documentation. Absolutely indispensable in my opinion. [0] http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html http://www.dranger.com/top100/index.html

akssri 6y ago

Sadly, the code in this tutorial doesn't work anymore due to upstream changes in FFmpeg. There are quite a few attempts at keeping Dranger's tutorial up to date, but I found the repo below to be one of the better ones. https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video-player https://github.com/rambodrahmani/ffmpeg-video-player

vernie 6y ago

(2015)

dpe82 6y ago

A lot of folks don't know that ffmpeg isn't just a command line utility (which is pretty powerful in its own right) but also a set of super powerful and reasonably well designed media libraries that can be used to do all kinds of stuff with media. I remember finding this tutorial years ago and it opened up a whole range of possibilities eventually leading to my startup Vidmaker[0] which, while not successful itself, got my cofounders and I acquihired into YouTube. Thank you, dranger, whoever you are. [0] https://www.vidmaker.com/ https://www.vidmaker.com/

lostgame 6y ago

This should maybe be a little more specific with its title. Maybe include 'with FFMPEG'. Because I can easily write a video player in ten lines or so: <html> <head> <title>Basic video player</title> </head> <body> <video width = "5122" height = "51" controls> <source src = "video.mp4" type = "video/mp4"> </video> </body> </html>

ilaksh 6y ago
I think its actually mainly just the HN submission actually now that I look at the article again, I see that his first part of the title is "SDL and ffmpeg tutorial".

dang 6y ago

Discussed in 2016, with almost an identical top comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11232616 (current top comment here is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23435669)

unnouinceput 6y ago

Title is a bit misleading. Should say "How to write a video player using ffmpeg in less than 1000 lines". Otherwise it can be interpreted that in those 1k lines is included the heavy workload that ffmpeg arguably does it in more then 10k lines.

FraKtus 6y ago

The FFmpeg project is amazing but a constantly moving target. This was very popular around 2015 but is now broken because the API changed. If you want to try that code you must download an older version of FFmpeg.

pwdisswordfish2 6y ago

What does the "ff" in ffmpeg, ffplay, ffserver, ffprobe, etc. stand for?

ttoinou 6y ago
FreeFrame ?

sempron64 6y ago

I love this guide! I used (an earlier version of) this to write a multimedia-based game in C++ before any of the free game engines had HD video playback support.