XineCanvas - Home Page

ABOUT

The XineCanvas aims to provide a Java AWT Component displaying videos through the xine library. I started this project because I did not find any easy to use and fast video player for Java. JMF is outdated and complex to use. I don't know other solutions. Pointers are welcome.

NEWS

070930 - First binary release.

BUILDING

The building is in three phases:

Compile the classes, in particular XineCanvas (javac xinecanvas/*.java);
Generate the C header file xinecanvas_XineCanvas.h. The script build_header.sh do this. It is put in the XIneCanvasNative directory;
Build the native library (Unix only at the moment). A build.sh script in the directory XineCanvasNative is provided.

USAGE

This package is for (Java) developers. The project provides essentially 3 classes/interfaces:

XineCanvas - it is the core component, with native methods, providing the core methods to open/close and play/stop a movie. Other informations, such as the movie length and its play position, can be obtained. Using this class is quite delicate: misuse can cause invalid memory accesses and crash the whole JVM. So better use the XinePlayer.
XinePlayer - An utility class, that contains a XineCanvas, providing a simpler usage of the player. It adds the support to handle a playlist and a listening interface to know when the playlist is finished.
XinePlayerListener - A little interface to detect when a player finishes playing its playlist.

Simply create an instance of a XinePlayer and add it to your AWT/Swing stuff. The two provided examples, TestCanvas and TestPlayer, clearly shows it.

When launching the JVM, the native library (libXineCanvasNative.so) must be in your classpath:

java -Djava.library.path=XineCanvasNative ....

The libxine.so must be in your system linking path (Generally /usr/lib) or specify it through the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. In my system I use:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib

Downloads and Docs

To contact me, please look at the source project page.

TODO

The canvas currently hangs the JVM when used in conjunction to complex interfaces. This might be caused by the following issue.
The players needs a call to XInitThreads to work. The default XLoxk and XUnlock calls must be replaced. Can Xine work without X multithreading support? Help is welcome.
Check multithreading support. Instantiating more players is desirable.
Easier deploy to other platforms. Can xinelib be statically linked into a single, big, .so file? Help is welcome.
Porting to other platforms.

XineCanvas - Home Page

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