VLC.js: VLC for WASM/asm.js

This project is a port of VLC to run completely in the web-browser.

It is, of course, quite insane, but it will be doable in the future, as WASM improves.

The goal is to be able to have a full player and framework inside the browser to be able to customize it as you wish, and support more formats, instead of hacking around the browser video support and MSE integration.

We could have support MKV, DVD menus, chapters, 4:2:2, 10bits, custom audio and video filters, or support for MPEG-2, Karaoke, SSA subtitles, interlaced video, or custom demuxers and decoders. We could support both software and hardware decoding...

History

It started with an asm.js port, from the Firefox OS days, to have a PoC. But now that WASM is ready with :

• threads
• WASM (and not only asm.js)
• SIMD.js/wasm
• Full webgl support
• Audio support in threads

we are getting closer to a usable version.

After, when we have modules, then VLC modules could be downloaded at runtime.

Missing evolutions from webbrowsers

In fact, we would need, in addition to what we have:

1. Webcodecs to have both software and hardware decoders,
2. Modules loading, to have a lean VLC installation that loads at runtime what it needs,
3. Sockets access for custom protocols,

Nice to have would be:

4. Better audio API, like Audio Device Client
5. More APIs without calling to main thread, like logs...

On the toolchain side, we need to find a way to recycle our existing .S asm files.

Installation

Autotools: Update the config.sub in your system.

cp config.sub /usr/share/automake-1.15/config.sub

Compile vlc.

./compile.sh

You can run it locally by launching a webserver on your computer.

source emsdk/emsdk_env.sh
emrun --no_browser --port 8080 vlc.html --emrun

And seeing the result at url : http://localhost:8080/vlc.html You can also put the generated files on a server and access it normally.

Run

It should be able to run in all browsers and OSes except Chrome in MacOS where there is a bug

(*) Type about:config in the Location Bar and press Enter to see all Preferences.

Features to enable :

• Set 'javascript.options.shared_memory' to true
• Set 'gfx.webrender.all' to true
• Set 'dom.postMessage.sharedArrayBuffer.bypassCOOP_COEP.insecure.enabled' to true

Then, you should be able to see vlc.js.

Hack

To compile vlc.js, we need to apply patches on VLC master.

All the patches are grouped in this folder:

• patch_vlc: vlc patches

There are also patches to enable dav1d and dvd contribs.

The script compile.sh sets up the toolchain, clones vlc, compiles it, generates the module_list and compiles all into a html + js pages.

To generate the module_list it calls a subscript which will generate a C file with all modules and entry points, because that is required for a static build of VLC.