how to control VLC by java

Question

I want to run a program called VLC in java and control it while running, for example if user clicked on ❚❚ or ►► button, I do a specific suitable action.

I run VLC by this code :

try
{
    Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
    Process p = rt.exec(VLCProgramAddFile + " udp://@:" + listeningPort);

    OutputStream out = p.getOutputStream();
    InputStream in = p.getInputStream();

    p.waitFor();
    System.out.println("End of VLC");
}
catch (Exception e)
{
    System.out.println("error in running VLC");
}

I have heard about Java bindings, but I don't know how does it work for this job.

Answer 1

VLCj is what you're after yes - it's essentially a straight Java wrapper around libvlc. If you use it in process (especially if you use multiple players in process) you will sometimes see VM crashes - this isn't VLCJ's fault, rather libvlc and the native libraries it uses underneath have some subtle threading bugs that exposes these problems.

You can get it working reliably with multiple instances, but to do so you need to use it out of process. See here for my initial attempts at doing so. It's a bit of work to set up but once going, things seem to work very nicely.