GDX-Video

A libGDX cross platform video rendering extension

Contents

• Getting Started
  • Repositories
  • Using with Gradle
• Playing video
• Encoding recommendations
  • File format and codec
  • Resolution and framerate
• Contributing
  • Building from source
  • Cross-compilation on macOS
• Licensing

Getting Started

Gdx-video is currently available in maven with official builds and snapshot builds. You can find them at the following repositories:

Repositories

• Official For official releases, use https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/releases
• Snapshots For snapshot builds, use https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots

Gradle dependency declarations

Core:

implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video:$gdxVideoVersion"

Desktop:

implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-lwjgl3:$gdxVideoVersion"
// or (when using legacy LWJGL2):
implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-lwjgl:$gdxVideoVersion"

Android:

implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-android:$gdxVideoVersion"

iOS (with RoboVM):

implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-robovm:$gdxVideoVersion"

Html:

implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video:$gdxVideoVersion:sources"
implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-gwt:$gdxVideoVersion"
implementation "com.badlogicgames.gdx-video:gdx-video-gwt:$gdxVideoVersion:sources"

You also need to add the following file to your GdxDefinition.gwt.xml in your html project:

<inherits name="com.badlogic.gdx.video.gdx_video_gwt" />

Playing video

First, get a video player for the current platform using

VideoPlayer player = VideoPlayerCreator.createVideoPlayer();

Then, open a video from your game's assets.

FileHandle file = Gdx.files.internal("video.webm");
player.play(file);

The file gets loaded and starts playing as soon as the first frames are decoded. Note that loading a file ahead of time is not supported yet. As a workaround, try to pause() the video once it has started playing and resume() playback later.

Once the video has fully loaded, you may retrieve additional information about the file.

if(player.isBuffered()) {
    int videoWidth = player.getVideoWidth();
    int videoHeight = player.getVideoHeight();
}

On each frame, call the update() function to acquire new video frames and keep the decoder running. You may then retrieve the frame using getTexture(), but note that the texture may be larger than the video itself. The provided VideoActor takes care of both updating and drawing when using Scene2D.

Once you are done playing, remember to dispose() the video player.

Encoding recommendations

Depending on the devices your game targets, you may need to encode your videos with multiple formats and resolutions.

See the following tables for a rough overview, but remember to test your game on real devices.

File format and codec

Format	Desktop	Android	iOS	Web
MP4 (H.264/AVC + AAC)	❌ *	✅ *	✅	⚠️
MP4 (H.265/HEVC + AAC)	❌ *	⚠️ > 5.0	⚠️ > 11	⚠️
WebM (VP8 + Vorbis)	✅	✅	❌	✅
WebM (VP9 + Opus)	✅	⚠️ > 5.0	❌	❔
MKV (AV1 + Opus)	✅	⚠️ > 10	❌	⚠️

Additional notes

Desktop: Additional formats and codecs can be enabled when compiling gdx-video yourself. See the file gdx-video-desktop/build.gradle.

iOS: H.265 support notes from apple: https://support.apple.com/de-de/HT207022

Android: See the following webpage for officially supported media formats: https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/platform/supported-formats. Note that this support table is not always accurate, especially for devices and emulator images without Google Play Services. When in doubt, use VP8, VP9 and Vorbis.

Resolution and framerate

Even when the format is officially supported, not all devices have hardware acceleration for video decoding. Many video codecs specify the decoding capabilities as "levels" of bitrate, video resolution and framerate. Trying to play a video above the device's capabilities may cause increased power usage, frame drops, visual or audio artifacts or even game crashes.

Examples (using H.264 levels):

Level	(Mobile) device category	Example 1	Example 2
3	Low end	720 x 480 @ 30fps	-
3.1		720 x 480 @ 60fps	1280 x 720 @ 30fps
4	Budget / mid range	1280 x 720 @ 60fps	1920 x 1080 @ 30fps
4.2		1280 x 720 @ 120fps	1920 x 1080 @ 60fps
5.1	High performance	1920 x 1080 @ 120fps	3840 x 2160 @ 30fps

Possible approaches:

• Use a lower resolution as 'baseline' that works on all target devices
• Ship your videos in multiple resolutions and guess the best one for the device (e.g. based on OS version, RAM size or display resolution)

Contributing

Building from source

To build from source, clone or download this repository, then open it in Android Studio and perform a gradle sync. If you get any ZipFile errors, watch the logs above and install the remaining Android SDK components through the SDK manager.

When building for desktop, build the native components using the Gradle tasks :gdx-video-desktop:buildFFmpeg{platform}{arch} and :gdx-video-desktop:jnigenBuild{platform}{arch}.

Perform the following command to compile and upload the library in your local repository:

./gradlew publishToMavenLocal

See build.gradle file for current version to use in your dependencies.

Cross-compilation on MacOS

Install the cross compilers using homebrew with the commands

brew install mingw-w64 nasm
brew tap messense/macos-cross-toolchains
brew install i686-unknown-linux-gnu x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu arm-unknown-linux-gnueabihf aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu

Licensing

The project is licensed under the Apache 2 License, meaning you can use it free of charge, without strings attached in commercial and non-commercial projects. We love to get (non-mandatory) credit in case you release a game or app using this project!