C-Play : Cluster Media Player

C-Play is an open source cluster media player, useful for video playback and presentations in immersive environments (such as domes, powerwalls etc).

Documentation

https://c-toolbox.github.io/C-Play/

Content features

These are just some features that set C-Play apart from others media/video players:

C-Play support media that is:

• Stereoscopic (Side-by-side or Top-Bottom) and Monoscopic

• 180 fulldome / fisheye

• 360 equirectangular or equiangular cubemap (common on YouTube)

• Any "flat" media arbitary aspect ratio

Primary media (video and images) is easily opened and configured(through playfiles) and added to playlist for a standard media player setup. An additional powerful feature in C-Play is the presentation tool, where you can be add arbitrary amount of layers within slides, using numerous inputs, such as

• Images (JPG and PNGs)

• PDF (Common export format from PPT)

• Videos (H264, HEVC/H265, AV1/H266, VP9 etc)

• Audio (WAV, AAC etc)

• NDI (Live streams form local network)

• Streams (Youtube etc supported through FFmpeg)

• Text (With custom font, also used for subtitles.)

With above layers, you can make it as easy as using powerpoint to create an immersive presentation.

Technical features

• Runs a QT/QML UI application on master computer and small none-UI GLFW/SGCT application on nodes/clients.

• Sync playback, loading and other properties between master and clients.

• Playing audio is usually performed on master (Support for node audio is added in 2.2). Change of audio output is supported, and C-Play is pre-built with "JACK", which opens for multi-channel low-latency output to for instance ASIO devices.

• Loading external audio files as multiple tracks.

• Editing and saving playlist and playfiles including all necassary parameters.

• Configure "sections" in a editor to create bookmarks to jump between clips inside a larger movie.

• C-Play nodes can run on-top other application. For master, viewing your video (or layer) on secondary monitor is also simple and requires no extra decoding resources.

• HTTP Web API (Such that you can include control in custom system.)

• Tested and used on Windows 10/11, in domes and other big arenas.

Backend

C-Play is an open source cluster video player, based on these open source projects:

• SGCT - Our own simple graphics cluster toolkit
• LibMPV - command line video player, using FFmpeg
• FFmpeg - The one and only video decoder/encoder
• Haruna - Qt/QML UI for MPV

Optional libraries in C-Play version 2.1 and above.

• NDI SDK - Support frame-synced NDI streams, video and audio
• Poppler - For rendering PDF pages

Build on Windows

• Use Craft Guide to install all dependencies for the UI, from Qt and KDE Frameworks libs.

• Use the Build FFMPEG and MPV Guide guide to build FFmpeg and MPV with JACK+portaudio support.

• Install optional libraries through such as NDI and Poppler (for PDF support), either through installers or using vcpkg.

• Configure C-Play with CMake.

• Good practice to follow Deploy Guide as well, to copy the build with it's dependencies to single binary folder.

• Build in Visual Studio 2022 (or what viewer you prefer).