VLC for Unity now supported on Linux | Hacker News Reader

VLC for Unity now supported on Linux

code.videolan.org

169 pointsmartz55 comments

On a similar note: Godot VLC (<https://github.com/xiSage/godot-vlc>), because let's not pretend we don't remember the Unity terms change controversy.

yes this is good too, actually started contributing to this :)

Context about the Unity terms change controversy: https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/unity-is-killing-its-...

> Initially, the Runtime Fee sought to charge developers a per install tariff once projects had passed certain milestones. It was a decision that left many users reeling, resulting in a colossal backlash (…)

How users reacted: https://old.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/16h9lnw/whats...

> Any install, any reinstall, any installation on a second device, each and every one slap the dev with a fee. It gets dumber, because that cracked copy of your game on the high seas still incurs a fee when the pirate installs it. You might think we're at peak stupidity. You might think anyone who makes anything with Unity is a "fucking idiot" (the CEO certainly does), but we're not done yet. It's retroactive. (…)

Sounds similar to Apple's "Core Technology Fee", literally a mechanism for sabotaging third party app distribution in the EU.

Except at least there are alternatives to Unity without replacing your entire OS and hardware.

This is a very big oversight in that EU law.

Allowing third-party "app stores" is completely useless when all apps must be approved by the operating system company.

It's also being abused by google (technically, will be, very soon), I guess they saw that since the legal framework for this kind of thing has now been written, they can do it too.

There was no oversight. The EU told Apple the CTC did not comply with the law. Apple's new scheme still seems bad but I don't think this is the end of it.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_24_...

Google just got fined €430 million for a very similar fee scheme, practically copied from Apple, so it's highly unlikely that Apple will get away with it forever. Theoretically Apple should have a monster fine brewing since they're a repeat offender and it should be retroactively applied.

Side note--is there any way to access reddit now for people who refuse to log in or get the app? Old reddit asks tells me I have to use new reddit for "security" and new reddit says "Get the app to keep using Reddit".

On Android https://github.com/QuantumBadger/RedReader - no account required

I just used UBlock Origin to block the "Get the app..." message.

There is Redlib[0], an open source alternative Reddit frontend, with many public instances[1], e.g. https://redlib.catsarch.com/

There is also LibRedirect[2] (or PrivacyRedirect, although I for one have no experience with that), a browser extension that automatically redirects reddit.com URLs to your Redlib instance of choice (it also does the same for other platforms, configurable).

[0] https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib

[1] https://github.com/redlib-org/redlib-instances/blob/main/ins...

[2] https://libredirect.manerakai.com/

On mobile ? Not really. Their website is mobile cancer, and their app is barely better. I'm impressed at how bad it is, and it's not even about "pushing more ads" but "controlling what people see". That's also why they've removed r/all.

I’ve actually noticed at least on iOS, the native app is really nice since the last update. It uses native system navigation and controls.

Its r/popular now

r/popular already existed before, and this is different, it's the same idea as facebook, instagram, twitter ... It's a curated feed not in an order or same weight feed. In other words, it's used or can and will be used to push whatever.

Oh, I thought I was the new one :(

Maybe try the "use desktop site" option in your phone's browser? Old reddit works on my phone either way.

firefox+ublock+the extension that forwards to old.reddit

i guess if you are using apple, you have chosen that the apple security is correct in requiring you to install the app?

Are you logged in? I think they generally don't let people use old.reddit not logged in. I use all three of those.

> apple security... requiring you to install the app

It's the reddit website that freezes me out, nothing to do with the OS.

Someone already linked RedLib below, I'm just gonna add that you can add "safe" before "reddit.com" (i.e. safereddit.com/r/whatever) and it's going to redirect you to a redlib instance.

I've been using eddrit.com, I think it best matches the minimalist old ui (no full size images without clicking drop-down, pagination, etc).

Recently added support for Linux to VLC for Unity, with full hardware decoding.

It uses OpenGL rendering through GLX and EGL, with DMA-BUF texture sharing to pass video frames efficiently to Unity’s renderer.

Only x86_64 is supported at this time. In the future, I will add ARM64 support as well as Vulkan.

Thank you very much.

Don't forget to build 'correct' ELF64 binaries for broad elf(glibc)/linux distro support (-static-libgcc -static-libstdc++, and tight glibc ABI version control with binutils VERSION scripts).

At least those build options should be default.

thanks for your comment, will look into it!

Let me add a bit more:

The part which in missed all the time is the control of the glibc ABI version. Either you link with an "old" glibc, or you go 'Right Way(TM)', documentation is on binutils web site (noscript/basic HTML) : https://sourceware.org/binutils/docs/ld/VERSION.html

Must include glibc internal symbols.

I would use the "readelf" command to audit the binaries for broad elf(glibc)/linux distro support (like stock unity has been). Namely DT_NEED entries, symbol/shared lib version requirement (at the end of readelf output), etc.

An additional note: in the case of a complex set of ELF64 binaries, don't forget that ELF DT_RPATH is deprecated in favor of ELF DT_RUNPATH (see man page of ld.so). To force DT_RPATH into DT_RUNPATH, you must use the follower binutils ld option: '--enable-new-dtags' (using the compiler driver, that would be '-Wl,--enable-new-dtags'. Carefull, you'll see that in ld.so man page, DT_RPATH and DT_RUNPATH do not behave the same way. You should use dynamic loading for your private shared libs using the $ORIGIN keyword anyway.

Ofc, dynamic loading (libdl/dlopen/dlsym/dlclose) is mandatory for system interface shared libs, and for core video games: libX11 set or xcb set of client X11 libs, libasound (wayland code is statically linked with its libxkbcommon for xkb keymap handling). Basically, The DT_NEED entries of your set of ELF64 binaries must reference only common glibc libs (and if you don't dynamically load them, your private ones with proper DT_RUNPATH).

feel free to open a MR :)

Would it not be more efficient to create the decoder in-process, then you could feed it the bitstream via a compute buffer, and the video would be rendered to a texture.

I assume it’s a GPL workaround.

To everybody else being confused: This is about Unity the game engine, not Unity the desktop environment.

Unity (the DE) was discontinued 9 years ago..

It's still being developed outside of Canonical. The latest release of an Ubuntu version is 26.04.

https://unityd.org/

Can a unity dev/game dev help elucidate why you'd use vlc in unity?

For cutscene playback?

For a sandbox game this is very useful, where you can spawn video players in-game. For social games (like VRChat) this is also great since synced video playback is a very popular feature for people to watch content together in VR.

Unity includes its own video player implementation ( https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/Video.html ), so presumably you'd mainly want to use VLC for wider range of supported codecs?

Basically. Unity video player is fine if you control the content. The other very reasonable option is to funnel shared content through a synced web browser interface. I've developed a few collaborative XR applications, and have used a blend of things to support sharing.

It’s not hard to use libavcodec to transcode, though.

RTSP support, twitch-style in-game visio, any kind of non-game Unity apps (there are many), 360 video playback, mediaplayer in VR headset, simulators of all kinds, etc..

Unity video player leaves a lot to be desired.

The standout option for a more elaborate video handling was typically AVPro. It's a really good option, with that said with vlc stepping up hopefully it's no longer strictly necessary.

VRChat folks will love this. Videoplayers are embedded into Unity scenes aka "maps" as a regular imported lib. The videoplayer is a drawn surface where users can see video playback. Most commonly used for streaming live music from a stream like Twitch.

Just in case you only read the headline and were confused, this is libVLC which underpins the VLC player.

Forgive me for my ignorance - but my understanding is that VLC is a frontend for ffmpeg, and even ffmpeg is 'just' a wrapper for hardware video decoders such as NVDEC when viewing supported codecs, like h264/5.

My understanding is that VLC and FFMpeg are both projects which develop in house codecs and also incorporate codecs developed by third parties.

I don't know why, but on windows, the first time I start VLC after a windows boot, it takes about 5s to 8s to open a video file, any sort of video file

I suspect it's a graphics driver issue, or something else

It's caused by a stale plugin cache, which somehow triggers a blocking windows defender scan on application launch.

I only managed to figure that out thanks to this[1] reddit comment, which also includes a solution:

  Noticed this a while back with 3.0.23. Managed to troubleshoot via debug logs.
  
  Basically the plugin cache goes stale and has to rebuild itself every first launch. No clue why.
  
  To fix: go to C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC (or wherever you installed) with a terminal in administrator mode.
  run the command: ./vlc-cache-gen.exe "C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\plugins"
  
  That will rebuild the plugins.dat file which should fix it.

No windows defender exclusion required.

[1]: https://old.reddit.com/r/VLC/comments/1skofwx/vlc_3023_windo...

Sidenote:

Video game programming with unity was an absolute nightmare to try and get working with any kind of gitops and or with multiple people working on the same code base a couple of years ago

Wonder if that changed ?

They acquired Plastic SCM around 2020 and I believe they integrated it into the engine, but that was shortly after I stopped using Unity

Unity native files are still pretty much a nightmare to merge. With that said I find it's not too hard to break things up in a way that multiple people can work on separate pieces of the game so the actual files don't need to be merged.

While plasticSCM has come a long way, I still find it a bit buggy and hard to work around. I miss the more advanced features of git.

I wish Unity's built-in videoplayer wasn't such a disappointment. The performance on Windows is god awful. Have had to write a mass video reference recompressor/in-scene replacer that just attempts to pick the best compression flags and reduces resolution just avoid dropping frames playing ~1080p videos on multi-core PC's with discrete GPU's. Mac was fine playing even the overly high res original footage, high 2000+ pixel portrait tutorial videos.

Wrote a proper double-buffering video/audio player in Unity using parts of an ffmpeg wrapper over ten years ago. Seems silly they never did anything similar officially, just used lackluster platform API's.

Completely agree! Unfortunately this is the Unity MO.

A tool that's a bit half baked.

They have been doing a hell of a lot better lately though.

Blocked because I don't use cookies. Ok, I've always preferred mpv anyway.

I've 3rd party cookies blocked and it works just fine. Have you disabled all cookies?!

Why do you do this to yourself?

Yeah, why use software that works instead of software that doesn't

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