FancyVideo-API - Notice of Discontinuation

As of today, February 12, 2024, FancyVideo-API support has been officially discontinued. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Reasons for the Decision

This decision was not made lightly. FV-API was originally created as a research project and technical demonstration of capabilities. As such, the project lacked thorough planning, and the technologies used represented a collection of problematic solutions connected by conditional patches. Although the situation improved in the first versions, the API never reached a level that would fully satisfy me.

About a year ago, I began a complete overhaul of the project, but due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, work on it stopped. Although porting the old API to new versions would have taken only a few hours, I decided not to do so. During the redevelopment process, I repeatedly came to the conclusion that many levels of the API were built with fundamental flaws from the beginning.

Over two years of supporting FV-API, I gained a much better understanding of how such systems should work. FV-API started as a technical demonstration, and I must admit that it remained just that. With today's knowledge, I probably would not have published this project on CurseForge for general use - the project was not ready for this (and was not originally intended for it). Nevertheless, FV achieved its initial goal: to show what is technically possible and inspire others to develop this idea.

Practical Implications

FV-API will no longer receive updates (including critical bug fixes and security updates). If you use FV-API as a library, you should switch to other solutions.

Alternatives for Developers

I don't want to recommend a specific project, but over the past year I've noticed the following developments:

• WATERMeDIA: Multimedia API by SrRapero720
• Project fork by BehindTheScenery

Project Future

I'm still interested in this topic and have recently become fascinated with Gstreamer technology. Perhaps someday FV-2.0 will appear (although probably only as a technical demonstration).

I want to thank everyone who used FV-API over the past two years. Perhaps I should have made this decision six months ago, but I wanted to personally verify its correctness. Due to changes in my personal life, I no longer have the time required to support this project.

Technical Information

This API provides mod developers with simple ways to play videos in Minecraft with efficient resource usage. This is achieved by rendering frames into a specially designed DynamicTexture that clears itself after displaying a new frame. For maximum performance, native VLC libraries are used, handling all rendering through direct GPU calls.

In situations where texture may not be suitable, a (less efficient) legacy rendering method using MatrixStacks is available.

The API contains native bindings for Windows. Work on versions for Mac and Linux continues (they are already functional, but installation requires additional effort).

Usage in Modpacks

You can freely use this mod in modpacks.

License

FancyVideo-API is copyrighted © Nick1st and distributed under the GPLv3 license.

This project includes files from the following projects:

• VLC, licensed by VideoLan under the terms of GNU General Public License version 2
• VLCJ, licensed by caprica under the terms of GNU General Public License version 3