LibMPlayerWinform 26.0.0

LibMPlayerWinform

WinForms-style video playback controls — WinFormMPlayerControl (a ready-made panel with play/stop buttons) and VideoView (the bare video surface, for building your own transport controls) — for playing video through mplayer or libmpv from .NET.

The controls are built on Majorsilence.Forms, a WinForms-API-compatible UI toolkit that itself runs on more than one native windowing toolkit. That means WinFormMPlayerControl/VideoView are not System.Windows.Forms controls — they are Majorsilence.Forms.Controls — and the same control code runs unmodified on any of Majorsilence.Forms' backends: WinForms (real System.Windows.Forms windows), Avalonia (the default, cross-platform), and Uno Platform. Only how you host the control changes between them; this document covers all three.

Install

dotnet add package LibMPlayerWinform
dotnet add package Majorsilence.Media.Videos

Then add exactly one Majorsilence.Forms backend package for the platform you're targeting — see the sections below.

What you get

• WinFormMPlayerControl — a UserControl with a video panel plus Play/Stop buttons wired up already. Set VideoPath/MPlayerPath and call SetPlayer.
• VideoView — just the video-painting surface, no chrome. Use this when you're building your own transport controls (play/pause/seek/track bar) against Majorsilence.Media.Videos.Player directly — see src/MediaPlayer/Player.cs in this repo for a complete example with a synced track bar, fast-forward/rewind, audio-track and subtitle selection, and fullscreen.

Shared setup, every platform

However you host it, wiring a player to the control looks the same everywhere:

using LibMPlayerWinform;
using Majorsilence.Media.Videos;

var player = new WinFormMPlayerControl
{
    VideoPath = @"C:\videos\sample.mp4",
    MPlayerPath = @"C:\mpv\libmpv-2.dll",   // or a path containing "mplayer" to use the mplayer backend instead
};

player.SetPlayer(PlayerFactory.Get(player.Handle, player.MPlayerPath));

player.Handle is always 0. Majorsilence.Forms composites every control into one drawn surface, so a control has no native window of its own to hand mpv/mplayer for embedding — VideoView (already attached inside WinFormMPlayerControl) instead paints the frames the player renders into memory, so passing the zero handle through is what tells the backend to do that rather than open a separate native window. See VideoView.cs.

Once SetPlayer has been called, either use the control's own Play/Stop buttons, or drive Player yourself (Play, Pause, Stop, Seek, the CurrentPosition/VideoExited events, ...) the way Player.cs does.

Two ways to host it

A — Majorsilence.Forms owns the whole app (simplest). Write the app with the familiar WinForms-style Majorsilence.Forms API (Form, Panel, Button, TrackBar, ...) and drop WinFormMPlayerControl in like any other control — exactly what src/MediaPlayer does. Only Program.cs (which backend package you reference, and one line selecting it) differs between WinForms/Avalonia/Uno.

B — Embed inside an app you already have. If you have an existing native WinForms, Avalonia, or Uno app and just want the player inside one panel or window, wrap the control with ToWinFormsControl() / ToAvaloniaControl() / ToUnoControl().

Both are shown per-platform below, and as complete files in examples/.

WinForms

Whole app on WinForms

dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms
dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms

Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms is Windows-only and, as of this writing, not yet published to nuget.org — build it from the src/Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms project in majorsilence/Majorsilence.Forms until it ships, or use the Avalonia backend below in the meantime. The control code is identical either way — only this selection line changes.

[STAThread]
private static void Main()
{
    Majorsilence.Forms.Backends.Platform.Backend = new Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms.WinFormsPlatformBackend();
    Majorsilence.Forms.Application.Run(new MainForm());
}

MainForm is an ordinary Majorsilence.Forms.Form containing a WinFormMPlayerControl — src/MediaPlayer/Player.cs in this repo is a complete one (it currently runs on the Avalonia backend by default; the Backend = ... line above is the only change needed to run that same form on real WinForms windows instead).

Embed inside an existing System.Windows.Forms app

dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms

using Majorsilence.Forms.WinForms;

var player = new LibMPlayerWinform.WinFormMPlayerControl { VideoPath = "...", MPlayerPath = "..." };
player.SetPlayer(Majorsilence.Media.Videos.PlayerFactory.Get(player.Handle, player.MPlayerPath));

System.Windows.Forms.Control host = player.ToWinFormsControl();   // a real WinForms Control
host.Dock = System.Windows.Forms.DockStyle.Fill;
myExistingWinFormsForm.Controls.Add(host);

Full example: examples/WinFormsExample.cs.

Avalonia

Avalonia is the default backend — reference it and there is nothing else to configure:

dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms
dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms.Avalonia

Whole app on Avalonia

This is exactly what src/MediaPlayer in this repo already does — see Player.cs/Player.Designer.cs/Program.cs for the complete player.

Embed inside an existing (XAML) Avalonia app

using Majorsilence.Forms;   // ToAvaloniaControl() ships in the Avalonia backend package, in this namespace

var player = new LibMPlayerWinform.WinFormMPlayerControl { VideoPath = "...", MPlayerPath = "..." };
player.SetPlayer(Majorsilence.Media.Videos.PlayerFactory.Get(player.Handle, player.MPlayerPath));

Avalonia.Controls.Control hostControl = player.ToAvaloniaControl();
myExistingAvaloniaPanel.Children.Add(hostControl);

Avalonia.Controls.Control and Majorsilence.Forms.Control share a name — keep them qualified as above (or alias one) rather than using Avalonia.Controls; and using Majorsilence.Forms; together unqualified, or the compiler can't tell them apart.

Full example: examples/AvaloniaExample.cs. src/Majorsilence.Media.Desktop.UI in this repo is a native Avalonia app; it currently paints video with its own hand-rolled control rather than hosting WinFormMPlayerControl this way, but it's the kind of app this embedding pattern is for.

Uno Platform

dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms
dotnet add package Majorsilence.Forms.Uno

Unlike Avalonia, this backend runs inside an Uno app head — an Uno project that boots the Uno platform and installs the backend on launch, rather than a Program.cs that just calls Application.Run.

Whole app on Uno

using Microsoft.UI.Xaml;
using Majorsilence.Forms;
using Majorsilence.Forms.Uno;
using Uno.UI.Hosting;

public static class Program
{
    [STAThread]
    public static void Main()
    {
        var host = UnoPlatformHostBuilder.Create()
            .App(() => new MediaPlayerUnoApp())
            .UseX11().UseWin32().UseMacOS()
            .Build();

        host.Run();
    }
}

public sealed class MediaPlayerUnoApp : Application
{
    protected override void OnLaunched(LaunchActivatedEventArgs args)
    {
        Majorsilence.Forms.Backends.Platform.Backend = new UnoPlatformBackend();
        new MainForm().Show();   // MainForm: a Majorsilence.Forms.Form containing WinFormMPlayerControl
    }
}

Start from Gallery.Uno in the Majorsilence.Forms repo for a complete, working app head rather than wiring one by hand.

Embed inside an existing Uno app

using Majorsilence.Forms.Uno;

var player = new LibMPlayerWinform.WinFormMPlayerControl { VideoPath = "...", MPlayerPath = "..." };
player.SetPlayer(Majorsilence.Media.Videos.PlayerFactory.Get(player.Handle, player.MPlayerPath));

Microsoft.UI.Xaml.FrameworkElement hostControl = player.ToUnoControl();
MyExistingGrid.Children.Add(hostControl);

Full example: examples/UnoExample.cs.

mplayer / libmpv setup

Majorsilence.Media.Videos (which PlayerFactory comes from) needs either mplayer or libmpv available — see the top-level README for install/path/LC_NUMERIC details for each platform.

Links

• Platform backends — the full embedding API (ToXControl/ToXWindow) and backend concepts this document builds on
• Majorsilence.Forms documentation
• Repository

Licensed under the LGPL v2.1 or later — see lgpl-2.1.txt.