LibVLCSharp.Forms.Controls / LibVLCSharp.Controls - provide custom player views and controls

Provide custom controls/views (with customizable themes/templates) for music/video players and related views (buffering view, progressbar, equalizer, etc.)

This package could also include a drop-in control replacement for Xamarin.Forms MediaElement APIs. (suggested in https://github.com/videolan/libvlcsharp/pull/18)

Examples/ideas:

• https://github.com/jsuarezruiz/PulseMusic https://www.behance.net/gallery/23846315/Pulse-Music-App-Identity-UI-UX
• https://www.behance.net/gallery/12751313/UI-Design-Music-Player

Only for forms? I think that this must be a separate repository with its own issues... This is a lot of work to create and maintain this, I guess, so I'd keep it as minimal as possible. I don't know if it's a good idea to do the drop-in replacement.

Only for forms?

LibVLCSharp.Forms.Controls / LibVLCSharp.Controls both

I think that this must be a separate repository with its own issues...

yes probably.

This is a lot of work to create and maintain this

yes, but it should be mostly community powered.

Forms, Gtk, Wpf, WinForms... all supported platforms... I don't know whether WinForms supports theming.

I can probably help with the WPF part.

Any other volunteers?

For LibVLCSharp.Forms:

• VideoView with basic controls (seeking, play/pause, chromecast). Possiblity to hide/show elements. Possibility to enable/disable animations (show controls etc). Title.
• Audio player view
• seekbar (make it smooth and customizable with templates).

Did we already find this one : https://github.com/mysteryx93/MediaPlayerUI.NET ? It reminds me something, but I can't remember what we said about it.

Yeah we did. No screenshot of the final product though and haven't run it so not sure how it looks like.

We should aim to have something like a light version of https://raw.githubusercontent.com/unosquare/ffmediaelement/master/Support/ffmeplay.png I think (minus the right menus and a few buttons). But with native components for each platform.

So basically this: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls-and-patterns/media-playback

Just like the UWP MediaPlayer element provided by MSFT, users of LibVLCSharp that just need to play a video, should not have to implement the playback controls and such.

Just keep in mind that users expect a basic control set (play/pause, skip back, skip forward).

We can add chromecast to that and a few other stuff. Let's start small and see.

What do you think?

Let's start small and see.

mentioned in issue #109 (closed)

For information, I started to code a fully themable MediaPlayerElement control for Xamarin Forms.

I share the work progress here : https://github.com/kakone/LibVLCSharp.Forms.MediaPlayerElement

It's just the beginning but I think it's a good start :)

Would you be OK to publish that under the nuget videolan account?

That's something that is needed as evidenced by the presence of this issue, and there is no point in me re-implementing another version.

Would you be OK to publish that under the nuget videolan account?

Yes, no problem.

Do you think it should be in the LibVLCSharp.Forms package or a separate one that would depend on it?

Note that controls for Xamarin non-Forms projects (i.e. Android or iOS only etc.) are also on the roadmap and it might make sense to put them together.

Do you think it should be in the LibVLCSharp.Forms package or a separate one that would depend on it?

Good question. I think it will be easier to maintain if we have separate packages, but on the other hand, it starts having a lot of LibVLCSharp packages, only one package would be simpler. I'm divided...

Let's vote! I finally vote for an all in one package LibVLCSharp.Forms.

If that doesn't add any other dependency and doesn't add too many files, I'm in favor of having that in the same package, because handling versions of too many packages is a nightmare.

Alright. If we put the MediaElement for Xamarin.Forms in LibVLCSharp.Forms, then that means we will put the MediaElements for Android/iOS/WPF etc.. in LibVLCSharp.

If that doesn't add any other dependency

I did not think about that but there is a dependency with Xamarin.Essentials. I use it to get the device screen size and to keep the screen on when playing.

I also use the MaterialIcons-Regular.ttf icon font under Apache License 2.0, but the developper does not have to include it if he don't use the playback controls.

Apache2 license is not compatible with LGPL so we can't take a dependency on that.

We could get the screen size ourselves (using https://docs.microsoft.com/fr-fr/dotnet/api/xamarin.forms.page.onsizeallocated?view=xamarin-forms for example), but it may make sense to take a dependency on Xamarin.Essentials for other things...

The icon font is not really a dependency. The developper will be able to choose another icon font, or even set an image (I'm going to do a style per button). The default codes will be for the MaterialIcons-Regular.ttf but the font will not be included in the package.

The only problem is the dependency with Xamarin.Essentials. If I recode the KeepScreenOn in our projects, I must be able to remove the dependency.

Let's vote! I finally vote for an all in one package LibVLCSharp.Forms.

I agree with @kakone