WGPU Video Player

A Rust-based video player leveraging WGPU for hardware-accelerated GPU rendering and FFmpeg for video decoding. Designed for high-performance video playback with support for various formats including HLS streams.

Features

• GPU-Accelerated Rendering: Uses WGPU (WebGPU) for efficient video frame rendering
• FFmpeg Integration: Supports wide range of video formats and codecs
• HLS Streaming: Play HTTP Live Streaming (m3u8) content
• Frame-Accurate Timing: Synchronized playback using PTS-based timing
• Aspect Ratio Preservation: Automatic letterboxing/pillarboxing
• Cross-Platform: Works on Windows, macOS, and Linux

Architecture

• Video Decoder: FFmpeg-based decoder running in separate thread
• Frame Buffer: Lock-free single-slot buffer using Tokio watch channels
• Renderer: WGPU pipeline with fullscreen triangle rendering
• Async Runtime: Tokio for concurrent task management

Requirements

• Rust: 1.70 or newer (latest stable recommended)
• FFmpeg: System FFmpeg libraries (development headers)
• GPU: Graphics card with Vulkan, Metal, or DirectX 12 support

Installing FFmpeg

Ubuntu/Debian:

sudo apt install libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libavutil-dev libswscale-dev

macOS:

brew install ffmpeg

Windows: Download FFmpeg shared libraries from ffmpeg.org and set FFMPEG_DIR environment variable.

Usage

Run with default video stream

cargo run

This will play the default test stream: https://test-streams.mux.dev/x36xhzz/x36xhzz.m3u8

Run with custom video URL

cargo run -- "https://your-video-url.com/video.m3u8"

Supported formats

The player supports any format/codec that your system's FFmpeg installation can decode, including:

• HLS streams (.m3u8)
• MP4, MKV, AVI, WebM containers
• Common codecs (H.264, H.265, VP8, VP9, AV1, etc.)

Controls

• ESC: Exit the player
• Close Window: Stop playback and exit

Building

Debug build

cargo build

Release build (optimized)

cargo build --release

Running the release build

./target/release/rs-wgpu-video-player "https://your-video-url.com/video.m3u8"

Project Structure

src/
├── main.rs           # Application entry point
├── app.rs            # Event loop and playback coordination
├── renderer.rs       # WGPU rendering pipeline
├── shader.wgsl       # GPU shader code
└── video_player/     # Video playback module
    ├── mod.rs        # Public API
    ├── decoder.rs    # FFmpeg decoder loop
    ├── frame_buffer.rs  # Frame synchronization
    └── probe.rs      # Video metadata extraction

Future Plans

• Audio playback support
• Playback controls (play/pause, seek, volume)
• GUI overlay with egui
• Extract video player into reusable crate
• Hardware video decoding (VAAPI, NVDEC, VideoToolbox)

License

Licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE file for details.