An implementation of FFmpeg for audio playback of almost any media format

When building, the FFmpeg libraries are dynamically linked by default, which means that you'll need a local installation of these libraries in order for the external to work.

Includes the following features:

• play/pause and seek functionality.

• changing the speed of playback.

• reading and iterating through m3u playlists.

  • It reads pseudo m3u playlists. Each line in the m3u should be just the file name, preceded by a path relative to the location of the m3u if they don't reside in the same folder.

  • The m3u reader can also read nested m3u's. For example, an m3u could consist of the following three lines:

  disc1.m3u
  disc2.m3u
  disc3.m3u
  

• opening files from http urls.

• retrieving metadata.

Creation args

1. numeric list

   • The channel layout. Defaults to stereo if no args given.

   • Numbers specified represent the bits of an audio channel bit-mask. A full list of available channels can be found here: https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/libavutil/channel_layout.h

Inlets

1. bang - Play/pause the currently loaded track.

   • Sends a 1 or 0 through the last outlet to indicate whether it's playing or paused.

   float - (Re)start playback of a given track number

   • Zero will stop playback.

   anything - Look for matching metadata

   • If metadata is found, it will be sent through the right-most outlet.

• A file must be successfully opened for any of the above to work

2. signal - Change the playback speed.

   • speed can be a factor between 16 and 1/16th.

   • speed can also be altered by sending the message [ speed $1 ( to the 1st inlet.

Outlets

1. signal - Left channel

2. signal - Right channel

   • The number of signal outlets there are depends on the number of creation args given, with the default being 2 signals for stereo.

3. list - Outputs various messages including information regarding whether a file was successfully opened, whether a track is currently playing, track metadata, etc.

Messages

• [ print $.. ( or [ info $.. ( - Prints metadata info.

  • If no args given, it will print general info. Otherwise, it will print custom info.

  • metadata needs to be surrounded with percent signs.

    • Example [ print %artist% - %title% (

• [ send $.. ( - Sends metadata info through the
  last outlet.

• [ open $1 ( - Attempts to open a file.

  • Sends a 1 or 0 through the last outlet to indicate success or failure.

• [ seek $1 ( - Seek to a track position.

• [ speed $1 ( - Set the playback speed.

• [ play $1 ( - Set playback state to either playing or paused.

  • Acts as a toggle when no args are given.
  • When an arg is given, state is forced to playing(1) or paused(0).

• [ interp $1 ( - Change the interpolation algorithm.

  • Options include:
    • Sinc (good | medium | fast)
    • Zero-order hold
    • Linear (the default)

• [ stop ( - An alias for [ 0 (.

• [ pos ( - Returns the track position.

• Any unrecognized message is assumed to be a metadata term. If there is a match, the metadata will be sent through the last outlet.

Update - March 16 2022:

ffplay~ now uses Secret Rabbit Code for resampling, which makes playback speed transitions much smoother. Playback speed can also be manipulated with signals via the 2nd inlet.

ffplay~ is now available through deken. It is part of a larger library called quilt. Searching either "quilt" or "ffplay~" should give a result.

The FFmpeg libraries are still separate, but can be either easily downloaded or easily installed via a package manager.

For Windows users, the FFmpeg libraries can be downloaded here: https://github.com/myQwil/pd-quilt/releases/download/v0.7.7/ffmpeg.v4.4.1.Windows-amd64-32.zip.

For Linux and macOS users, A README file is included, which lists the dependencies for those platforms.

ffplay~.zip

You can find all my pd externals here: https://github.com/myQwil/pdxtra

I wasn't able to build for OSX, but only because the environment I use for OSX builds is really old and out-dated, and I was not able to do a brew install of ffmpeg. For anyone with a more up-to-date version of OSX, they should be able to build it by installing ffmpeg and running make

As for Windows, I did a 64-bit build (m_amd64), but not 32-bit. I came across an issue when attempting to build for 32-bit, though I can't recall at the moment what the exact issue was.

Great thanks.

I managed to compile it for OSX 10.15.4 using my brew installed ffmpeg version 4.4.1 against pd 0.52.1.
Here is the external (don't know if it is the right way to distribute it), I modified the makefile to add pd sources inside. I tested the http example with ogg , also a webradio stream and it works well.

As for Windows, it's more complex for me as I don't use this crazy systems, but many of my students do.
But using 64bit externals with 64bit pd is the modern choice right? Is it possible to test this 64bit build?

ffplay_OSX.zip

This should be what you need for the Windows version: https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/ffmpeg-release-full-shared.7z

Inside the zip, there's a 'bin' folder and you just need to extract the .dll files and place them in the same folder as ffplay~.m_amd64. I'm assuming it'll still work. Even though the ffmpeg libraries are newer than when I built it, no big changes have been made to how any of the functions are called.

Also, thank you for sharing your OSX build

Thank you for the ffmpeg windows package!
But, I am still missing the file ffplay~.m_amd64 right?

ffplay~.m_amd64 can be found inside of ffplay.zip
It's basically a dll with a special naming convention so that 64 and 32-bit builds of the same external can reside in the same folder

Ah ok, so I tried but It didn't work unfortunately, "The specified module could not be found (126)", it's sound like a missing Microsoft C++ redistributable package or something...

My guess is it either needs a fresh build or it's missing some other dependency from MSYS2/MinGW.
I recommend trying Dependency Walker. It might be able to shed some light on which dependencies aren't being met. Their site: https://www.dependencywalker.com/

If that doesn't work, I'll see about doing a fresh build tomorrow

Okay, I think I've found out the problem. Here's the list of dependencies of ffplay~.m_amd64:
avcodec-58.dll
avformat-58.dll
avutil-56.dll
swresample-3.dll

But all the libraries have been updated since I built it, so the version numbers in their names have been incremented to 59, 57, and 4.

So, you could probably just rename the dll's and my guess is it'll still work.

Great.
Renaming files wasn't successful, but thanks to those informations, I found ffmpeg-4.4.1-full_build on the website which contains the correct files revision and that made it.

So for those interested, here is a distribuable FFplay~ for win64 (27Mb)

Performing a static build is also an option. That would make it so that the libraries are built into the external. I've always been on the fence about distributing a static build though because I've read that some of the decoders used in the ffmpeg library are proprietary. Their site talks about that near the bottom of this page: https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

It sounds like it's only a problem if someone, as they put it, "starts trying to make money from patented technologies" but since this is being distributed freely, it's probably not an issue.

@myQwil said:

https://www.ffmpeg.org/legal.html

Yes, I guess since it is a free distribution it must have no issues.

What would be a next step is to be able to add it to deken externals management, but a lib that big or with such dependencies open new questions...

wow thanks you two! this is really cool, i tried some webradio, different audio formats and even video, everything worked, even changing the speed of a webradio stream

Nice, I am curious about on which system did you tried?

I'm on windows 10 and used the files for 64bit windows you uploaded above.
Before I read the whole thread here I was a bit why it didn't work even though I have ffmpeg installed and can use it from the console, it was unclear for me from the first post which files are actually needed and where to put them.

@rg.kies I tried for win7 with the download bundled with the " *********58" binaries.
I just kept all the files together in the unzipped folder.
It works for .mp3 and .ogg and .webm files but not .wma.
It will play the audio from a .avi video...... impressive....... but that is as far as I have gone with testing.
There are a couple of unknown objects controlling the volume and other things in the help file so I had to bypass the [zp~] object, and of course turn on dsp.
David.

@whale-av You should be able to find those missing objects in the original zip of the first post

oops, yes, I added them in the archive.
Also, I wonder : how to build a macOS binary that search for .dylib in the same local path like windows?
Now MacOS users need to copy those .dylib files to their /usr/local/opt/ffmpeg/lib folder

Since I'm using Pd on a Raspberry Pi quite a lot i tried to compile ffplay~ on it, aaand it worked!
Thats 32 bit arm linux, i think.

ffplay~.pd_linux

So Nice
I think sooner or late we should provide a deken package because that's a great external.