I'm trying a to create a basic media player using libvlc which will be controlled through dbus. I'm using the gtk and libvlc bindings for python. The code is based on the official example from the vlc website
The only thing I modified is to add the dbus interface to the vlc instance
# Create a single vlc.Instance() to be shared by (possible) multiple players.
instance = vlc.Instance()
print vlc.libvlc_add_intf(instance, "dbus"); // this is what i added. // returns 0 which is ok
All is well, the demo works and plays any video files. but for some reason the dbus control module doesn't work (I can't believe I just said the dreaded "doesn't work" words):
I already have the working client dbus code which binds to the MPRIS 2 interface. I can control a normal instance of a VLC media player - that works just fine, but with the above example nothing happens. The dbus control module is loaded properly, since libvlc_add_intf doesn't return an error and i can see the MPRIS 2 service in D-Feet (org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc).
Even in D-Feet, trying to call any of the methods of the dbus vlc object returns no error but nothing happens.
Do I need to configure something else in order to make the dbus module control the libvlc player?
Thanks
UPDATE
It seems that creating the vlc Instance and setting a higher verbosity, shows that the DBus calls are received but they have no effect whatsoever on the player itself. Also, adding the RC interface to the instance instead of DBus, has some problems too: When I run the example from the command line it drops me to the RC interface console where i can type the control commands, but it has the same behaviour as DBus - nothing happens, no error, nada, absolutely nothing. It ignores the commands completely.
Any thoughts?
UPDATE 2
Here is the code that uses libvlc to create a basic player:
from dbus.mainloop.glib import DBusGMainLoop
import gtk
import gobject
import sys
import vlc
from gettext import gettext as _
# Create a single vlc.Instance() to be shared by (possible) multiple players.
instance = vlc.Instance("--one-instance --verbose 2")
class VLCWidget(gtk.DrawingArea):
"""Simple VLC widget.
Its player can be controlled through the 'player' attribute, which
is a vlc.MediaPlayer() instance.
"""
def __init__(self, *p):
gtk.DrawingArea.__init__(self)
self.player = instance.media_player_new()
def handle_embed(*args):
if sys.platform == 'win32':
self.player.set_hwnd(self.window.handle)
else:
self.player.set_xwindow(self.window.xid)
return True
self.connect("map", handle_embed)
self.set_size_request(640, 480)
class VideoPlayer:
"""Example simple video player.
"""
def __init__(self):
self.vlc = VLCWidget()
def main(self, fname):
self.vlc.player.set_media(instance.media_new(fname))
w = gtk.Window()
w.add(self.vlc)
w.show_all()
w.connect("destroy", gtk.main_quit)
self.vlc.player.play()
DBusGMainLoop(set_as_default = True)
gtk.gdk.threads_init()
gobject.MainLoop().run()
if __name__ == '__main__':
if not sys.argv[1:]:
print "You must provide at least 1 movie filename"
sys.exit(1)
if len(sys.argv[1:]) == 1:
# Only 1 file. Simple interface
p=VideoPlayer()
p.main(sys.argv[1])
the script can be run from the command line like:
python example_vlc.py file.avi
The client code which connects to the vlc dbus object is too long to post so instead pretend that i'm using D-Feet to get the bus connection and post messages to it. Once the example is running, i can see the players dbus interface in d-feet, but i am unable to control it. Is there anything else that i should add to the code above to make it work?