Question

I am wanting to make a simple java applicaiton to play video. I want it to play mpeg4 and mov formats in particular. JMF is what I started with and I have a lovely working example. However, there is no support for mov or mpeg4 formats. I’ve looked at Xuggler but can’t see a SIMPLE way to get it working. VLCJ seemed easy – I downloaded the jar files and attached them to my project (vlcj-2.1.0.jar, jna-3.4.0.jar, platform-3.4.0.jar, vlcj-2.1.0.jar)). I got the sample code and adapted it (below). But when I run the code, I get a java.lang.NullPointerException exception. I’ve tried adjusting the number and direciton of the slashes (forward and backward) in the filename. Nothing seems to work. Please could you help???

import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities;
import javax.swing.JFileChooser;

import uk.co.caprica.vlcj.component.EmbeddedMediaPlayerComponent;
import java.lang.Object;
import uk.co.caprica.vlcj.mrl.FileMrl;

import uk.co.caprica.vlcj.binding.LibVlc;
import uk.co.caprica.vlcj.runtime.RuntimeUtil;

import com.sun.jna.Native;
import com.sun.jna.NativeLibrary;


public class TestPlayer {

  private final JFrame frame;
  private EmbeddedMediaPlayerComponent mediaPlayer;

  public static void loadLibs(){
      NativeLibrary.addSearchPath(
        RuntimeUtil.getLibVlcLibraryName(), "C:/Program Files/VideoLAN/VLC/"
     );
        Native.loadLibrary(RuntimeUtil.getLibVlcLibraryName(), LibVlc.class);
  }

  public static void main(final String[] args){
    loadLibs();   
      final String mrl = "file://C:/Test.mov";
        SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
        @Override
        public void run() {
            new TestPlayer().run(mrl);
        }
    });
  }
  public TestPlayer(){
      frame = new JFrame("test VLCJ");
      frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
      frame.setLocation(100,100);
      frame.setSize(600,400);
      frame.setVisible(true);
  }
  private void run(String mrl){
    System.out.println(mrl);
    try{
        mediaPlayer.getMediaPlayer().playMedia(mrl);
    }catch(Exception e){
        System.err.println(e.toString());
    }

  }
}

I’m using VLC version 2.0.2 and VLCJ 2.1.0 sources and JDK 1.7 on windows 32 bit. I hope it’s something simple…

Answer 1

It looks like you are using mediaPlayerwithout ever initializing it, thus causing a NullPointerException in run().

Try initializing it in your constructor.