FancyVideo-API - Notice of Discontinuance

As of today, Friday, Feburary the 12th 2024 FancyVideo-API is officially discontinued immediately. I'm deeply sorry for all inconveniences this causes.

Why?

I didn't make this decision light-hearted. FV-API started as a research and tech demo project. As such, the project wasn't well planed, the tech used by it was a bunch of buggy hacks, held together by loose amounts of duct-tape. That luckily got better within the first versions, however the API did never reach a level that I was satisfied with. Because of that I started a rewrite about one years ago, but due to a series of unlucky events this project stalled. Despite simply forward porting the legacy API would've been a task of hours, I decided against it. During the rewrite I was beaten time and time again to the conclusion that several layers of the API were flawed from the grounds up. That further stalled progress, and also was the reason why I didn't simply continue forward porting. During the two years I maintained FV-API, I got a much better understanding of how things work, and how they should've be done instead. FV-API started as a tech demo/research project and I must admit that that's all it ever was. With the knowledge I have today, I probably wouldn't have published the project on CurseForge for others to use, the project was not ready for that (nor meant for it in the beginning). I think FV still reached the goal it was originally created for: showing whats technically possible and getting others to build upon the idea.

What does this mean?

FV-API will no longer receive updates (This includes critical bugfixes and security updates). If you're using FV-API as a library, you should move on (simply read on for more details).

What should I do (Modder)

I do not want to recommend a specific project, however here are two projects that I came along over the last year:

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

What's going to happen with this discord server?

I'll put this server in read-only mode until there is something new from me. I'm still interested in the project, and I've recently been obsessed with Gstreamer. Maybe one day there will be FV-2.0 (probably as a tech demo only though!).

I just want to thank everybody who used FV-API over the last two years. I should've probably done this step half a year earlier, but I just wanted to (personally) feel sure that this is the right decision. I simply do no longer have the time required to maintain this project due to things that changed in my personal life. Thanks again for using FV-API. I hope you all stay well.

Mods currently using this

- Video Extension for FancyMenu [Forge] by Keksuccino

- Video Extension for FancyMenu [Fabric] by Keksuccino

- Video Player by ngoedix

- Nightmare Craft: Game Engine by divinegaminginc

- Nightmare Craft: Survival by divinegaminginc

- Cinematic by mitosvoficial

- Work-in-progress: Cinematica [Forge] by Keksuccino

About 

This API provides easy ways for mod developers to play videos in a resource friendly way in Minecraft. This is achieved by rendering the frames into a special designed DynamicTexture that cleans itself after a new frame is rendered. For best performance, this uses VLC native dynamic linked libraries (dll), handling all rendering in native direct GPU calling code. For situations were a texture might not be suitable, a (not so efficient) legacy render that uses MatrixStacks is available.

A great example what this API is capable of is Keksuccino's Video Extension for FancyMenu [Forge], definitively check it out!

This contains native bindings for windows systems. I'm working on mac/linux bindings right now. (Mac & Linux are fully functional! Installation is just a bit harder.) Forge 1.16.5 is now discontinued. A port to 1.19.4 is being worked on.

Bug Reports and Requests

You can report bugs and request features either on GitHub or via Discord!

Modpacks

You can freely use this mod in modpacks.

**Special Thanks
**

**To the guys that kept me believing that this is possible:
**- Keksuccino
- caprica
- Silk

**Copyright
**

FancyVideo-API Copyright © Nick1st.
FancyVideo-API is licensed under GPLv3.

This project contains files from the following projects:

- VLC, licensed by VideoLan under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 2. Sources are available at https://code.videolan.org/videolan/vlc/.

- VLCJ, licensed by caprica under the terms of the GNU General Public License Version 3. Sources are available at https://github.com/caprica/vlcj.