VVdeC Web Player

This project only contains the JavaScript and HTML code to build a minimal WebAssembly based VVC Player for the web using the VVdeC library. It can play raw VVC bitstreams, MP4 files, or segmented MP4s delivered via DASH. There is no audio support, since this sample code is primarily focused on the feasibility of decoding VVC in the browser.

The compiled VVdeC WebAssembly binary and emscripten support code are not included in this repository, but need to be built separately and copied into the bin/ folder.

Usage

Build WebAssembly

You need to build the VVdeC WebAssembly binary first. Emscripten SDK and CMake should be installed at this point and included in the search PATH.

NOTE: Emscripten versions after 3.1.26 currently sometimes lead to deadlocks or crashes in the decoder, so please use version 3.1.26 for building VVdeC. (Install like this: emsdk install 3.1.26 && emsdk activate 3.1.26)

Clone the VVdeC repository from https://github.com/fraunhoferhhi/vvdec. Within the vvdec directory run:

emcmake cmake -B build/wasm
cmake --build build/wasm

Copy the resulting files vvdecapp.wasm, vvdecapp.worker.js, and vvdecapp.js from bin/release-static to the bin/ folder in this repository.

Deploy to Webserver

Edit the bitstreams.json file to include the VVC files you want to play and place them below this directory. The files can either be raw bitstreams, packaged as MP4-files, or DASH manifests. When using a raw bitstream or a single MP4 file, the file will be downloaded completely before playback, segmented MP4 files will be downloaded segment by segment as specified in the DASH manifest.

For testing purposes a tiny script to run a Python webserver is included. Just run wasm_test-server.py using Python 3 from the current directory. This starts a very simple webserver listening on localhost port 8000. Open https://localhost:8000/ in your webrowser.

You can also deploy the player to any standard webserver. The following HTTP headers need to be set for WebAssembly to work:

Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy: require-corp
Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy: same-origin

Also, the site must be accessed using HTTPS, if not running on localhost.

Limitations

• The player currently does not have support for playing audio.
• Performance depends on the browser and platform. At the time of writing Chrome and Edge work best.
• Safari currently does not provide multithreading support for WebAssembly (Oct. 2021).
• (UHD decoding works in principle using VVdeC > 1.3.0, but is probably too slow for practical purposes.)
• DASH playback is only very minimal: no support for DASH live manifests or using range requests for segment download.

License

Please see LICENSE file for the terms of use of the contents of this repository.

For more information, please contact: [email protected]

Copyright (c) 2021-2022 Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.

All rights reserved.