libvlc for .NET

This repository is about presenting libvlc and its capabilities to .NET developers.
It also contains packaging tools and files for nuget packaging/deployment.
In other words: It’s just the same thing as if you had downloaded the files from VideoLAN’s website, in a NuGet package,
that you can add in your .NET project so that it gets copied into the output directory.

• What is libvlc?
• How do I use this thing from .NET?
• Build and packaging customization with MSBuild
• Supported platforms
  • Windows Classic
  • Windows Universal
  • Android
  • iOS
  • macOS
  • tvOS
  • Linux
  • Unity3D
• Roadmap
• Commercial services

What is libvlc?

libvlc is the multimedia framework powering the VLC applications. It is fully opensource, so other apps use it too.

API documentation: https://www.videolan.org/developers/vlc/doc/doxygen/html/group__libvlc.html

it contains all modules, data structures and functions documentation to understand how to use the libvlc C API.

The source is in the main VLC repository: https://github.com/videolan/vlc

libvlc is modularized into hundreds of plugins, which may be loaded at runtime. This architecture provides great flexibility to developers (both VLC devs and devs consuming the library). The unified, complete and (somewhat) high level libvlc C API allows a wide range of operations, such as:

• Play every media file formats, every codec and every streaming protocols
• Run on every platform, from desktop (Windows, Linux, Mac) to mobile (Android, iOS) and TVs
• Hardware and efficient decoding on every platform, up to 8K
• Network browsing for distant filesystems (SMB, FTP, SFTP, NFS…) and servers (UPnP, DLNA)
• Playback of Audio CD, DVD and Bluray with menu navigation
• Support for HDR, including tonemapping for SDR streams
• Audio passthrough with SPDIF and HDMI, including for Audio HD codecs, like DD+, TrueHD or DTS-HD
• Support for video and audio filters
• Support for 360 video and 3D audio playback, including Ambisonics
• Able to cast and stream to distant renderers, like Chromecast and UPnP renderers.

Full list of the new 3.0 features can be found here: https://www.videolan.org/vlc/releases/3.0.0.html

Full directory tree overview of what’s included (dlls, headers, lib files) in the nuget can be found at https://github.com/mfkl/libvlc-nuget/blob/master/tree.md

How do I use this thing from .NET?

There are usually 2 ways to go about consuming C code from .NET:

• Using C++/CX. This allows to author Windows Runtime components and it is Windows-specific. VLC for UWP currrently works this way using both libvlcppcx and libvlcpp.
• Using P/Invoke. If crossplatform is a focus, you should checkout LibVLCSharp.

Versioning of the nuget packages naturally follow the libvlc versioning.

Build and packaging customization with MSBuild

How do I configure what gets copied to my output directory?

Currently, you can customize three things during the build:

• Whether the library gets copied or not
• Where the library is placed in the output folder
• Which files are copied

Supported platforms

LibVLC 3:

Latest stable version is 3.0.21. Feel free to check out the release notes.

Minimum OS version supported by LibVLC 3.x:

• Windows XP
• macOS 10.7
• iOS 7
• Android 2.3

Windows Classic

 dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.Windows

For the GPL version, use the following command:

 dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.Windows.GPL

Supported CPU architectures:

• x86
• x64

Note: if you intend to use libvlc with UWP projects, you probably need to install the UWP package instead because this build directly uses win32 APIs.

Windows Universal

 dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.UWP

Supported CPU architectures:

• x86
• x64
• ARM

Android

dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.Android

Supported CPU architectures:

• armeabi-v7a
• arm64-v8a
• x86
• x86_64

iOS

dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.iOS

Supported CPU architectures:

• i386
• x86_64
• ARMv7
• ARM64

macOS

dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.Mac

Supported CPU architecture:

• x86_64

tvOS

 dotnet add package VideoLAN.LibVLC.tvOS 

Supported CPU architecture:

• x86_64
• ARM64

Linux

For Ubuntu, follow this guide.

Unity3D

Platform	Unity Store Asset
Unity3D - Windows
Unity3D - UWP
Unity3D - Android
Unity3D - iOS
Unity3D - macOS

Roadmap

• More Unity back-ends and other game engines
• WebAssembly
• LibVLC 4

Commercial services

If you would like VLC developers to provide you with:

• custom development on LibVLC and/or LibVLCSharp,
• training and workshops,
• LibVLCSharp commercial licenses,
• support services,
• consulting services,
• other multimedia services.

Feel free to contact us.