The vlcj project provides a Java framework to allow an instance of a native vlc media player to be embedded in a Java AWT Window or Swing JFrame.
You get more than just simple bindings, you also get a higher level framework that hides a lot of the complexities of working with libvlc.
vlcj is primarily developed and therefore extensively tested on Linux - it does also work just fine on Windows and should work on Mac - but for Mac you likely need to use a release of vlc no later than 2.0.3, vlc 2.0.4 and later will likely not work on Mac.
At least JDK 1.6 is required, and it works without changes on JDK 1.7.
This is the open source vlcj project page, see also the 'official' home page where you can find more information as well as some new simple tutorials.
Add the following Maven dependency to your own project pom.xml:
<dependency>
<groupId>uk.co.caprica</groupId>
<artifactId>vlcj</artifactId>
<version>2.3.1</version>
</dependency>
Note that some features of vlcj 2.2.0 and later (access to the native log) require vlc 2.1.0 which has not yet been released.
22/05/2013 Made new release 2.3.1 at Maven Central, changed to fix execution of tests on Windows (you only need to uppdate to this version if you want to run the tests on Windows).
10/05/2013 Made new release 2.3.0 at Maven Central, minor API incompatibility with previous version caused by renaming SpuTrackInfo class to TextTrackInfo.
24/01/2013 Made new release 2.2.0 at Maven Central.
Note: vlcj now requires JNA 3.5.0 or later.
02/01/2013 Happy New Year! Current release artifacts are now available on Maven Central.
12/12/2012 github deprecated the downloads section, go to googlecode for distribution archives.
20/05/2012 Released version 2.1.0, for use with libvlc 2.0.
28/01/2012 Moved to github.
You can also follow @capricasoftware on Twitter for more vlcj news.
There is also a new vlcj-users discussion group at vlcj-users.
The vlcj project page is at github.
Online Javadoc is available:
Documentation is being made available at Caprica Software.
Free support for Open Source and non-commercial projects is generally provided - you can use github issues or the vlcj google group for this purpose.
Support for commercial projects is provided exclusively on commercial terms - send an email to the following address for more information:
mark [dot] lee [at] capricasoftware [dot] co [dot] uk
The vlcj framework is provided under the GPL, version 3 or later.
If you want to consider a commercial license for vlcj that allows you to use and redistribute vlcj without complying with the GPL then send your proposal to:
mark [dot] lee [at] capricasoftware [dot] co [dot] uk