Qt5 QMediaPlayer use codecs that are delivered with the program

Question

I need to write a (portable) program that, amongst other things, is able to play a video file. The QMediaPlayer in Qt5 seems to be the obvious choice, but apparently it only uses codecs that are installed on the executing machine. All I need for the video player is being able to play at least one video format on all (windows) machines without installing anything, and communicate the current status to the main program (currrent time in ms, playing/paused).

Specific question: Can someone give me some hints where I have to look? How can I implement a video codec into my program so that QMediaPlayer can reliably play videos on all machines? Alternatively (but less prefered): How to (easily) implement another video player into the program that is capable of doing the task?

I've already tried my luck with libVLC and one or two other options but it never worked so far and it seems to make my program way more complex than it has to be.

Answer 1

QMediaPlayer can play any format that the platform's media service supports. You should install the right codecs for a video type to be played successfully. So you have to install GStreamer codecs on Linux or if you are on Windows you should install something KLite Codecs.

May be it is good to consider using libraries like QtAV. It will work for most platforms and no additional codecs and plugins are required to install.

QtAV uses FFmpeg and has some interesting features like multiple renderers for 1 player, region of interest(video crop), custom filters, ... It also works fine for both Qt4 and Qt5.