Video Player From Scratch

📺 Check out build on YouTube

Link to YouTube Video

_{^{(Click thumbnail to watch)}}

Video player built using FFmpeg for processing and SDL for rendering. It supports basic playback controls and synchronization. I wrote in C, which i learnt for the first time when I took on this project. My C game is still a bit wack but eyy, it works ;).

Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Features
• Supported Platforms
• Architecture Overview
• Building and Running
• Known Limitations

Features

• Play/Pause: Toggle playback with spacebar or on-screen button
• Seeking:
  • Short jumps: ±10 seconds (left/right arrows)
  • Long jumps: ±60 seconds (up/down arrows)
• Audio-Video Sync: Automatic synchronization with audio as master clock
• Basic UI: On-screen controls for play/pause and seeking

Supported Platforms

• macOS (primary development platform)
• Note: I don't know if it will work on other platforms

Architecture Overview

The player is organized into several key modules:

Core Modules

1. Player (player.c/h)

   • Main event loop and state management
   • Handles user input and playback controls
   • Coordinates audio/video threads

2. Audio (audio.c/h)

   • Audio stream decoding and resampling
   • SDL audio callback implementation
   • Audio clock management for synchronization

3. Video (video.c/h)

   • Video stream decoding and frame processing
   • YUV conversion and texture management
   • Frame timing and display scheduling

4. Synchronization (sync.c/h)

   • Implements audio-video synchronization logic
   • Supports multiple sync strategies (audio master, video master, external)

5. Packet Queue (packet_queue.c/h)

   • Thread-safe FIFO queue for AVPackets
   • Used for both audio and video streams

Building and Running

Prerequisites

• FFmpeg libraries (avcodec, avformat, avutil, swscale, swresample)
• SDL2 (with SDL_ttf for UI elements)
• C compiler (tested with clang)

Build Instructions

1. Install dependencies:

   brew install ffmpeg sdl2 sdl2_ttf

2. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/deshydan/not-vlc.git
cd not-vlc

3. Build the project:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make

4. Run the player:

./Not_VLC 

Known Limitations

• Why is there no option to select video files? I don't know, I just didn't implement it.
• Limited video format support
• Basic UI with minimal controls. Improvement needed include -> video progress bar(very cool), volume and speed control
• Seeking can be choppy with some codecs
• No volume control or fullscreen toggle yet
• Not cross-platform compatible

Please open issues or pull requests to contribute.