Player

Loads, controls and renders audio and video content represented through Sources. A player instance can be created via the Player.create function and will idle until one or more Sources are loaded. Once load is called, the player becomes active and initiates necessary downloads to start playback of the loaded source(s).

In case multiple sources were loaded into the player, Source.isActive identifies which source is currently active in the player (i.e. being played back). Only one source can be active at any time and API calls on the player will act on that source. More information on how to manage multiple sources can be found on the PlaylistApi.

The player emits events during its lifecycle. See EventEmitter on how to subscribe to events. Events are divided into PlayerEvent and SourceEvent, depending on if they are specific to a player session or a source. While SourceEvents are naturally emitted from a source, they are also emitted from the player for the active source. This allows for all event handling to be done through the player in case only a single source is loaded, enabling the same workflows as on v2 of the Bitmovin Player SDK, where it was not possible to load multiple sources and where each event was a PlayerEvent.

The player implements the RemoteControlApi, which offers the ability to connect to a cast-compatible device, allowing remote playback of the loaded sources.

By default, a player instance does not provide any UI components. To use the default Bitmovin Player Web UI, a player instance can be attached to a PlayerView. The PlayerView already comes with a Surface to render video into, a ViewGroup to display ads, the Bitmovin Player Web UI and handling for standard UI use-cases. If a custom UI is preferred, a Surface must be provided to the player via setSurface and a ViewGroup must be set via setAdViewGroup if advertising features are needed.