Qt Multimedia

Qt Multimedia is an add-on module that provides a rich set of QML types and C++ classes to handle multimedia content. It contains an easy to use API for playing back audio and video files and rendering those on screen, as well as a comprehensive API for recording audio and video from the systems cameras and microphones.

The functionality of this module is divided into the following submodules:

Qt Multimedia	Provides API for multimedia-specific use cases.
Qt Multimedia Widgets	Provides the widget-based multimedia API.

Getting started

If you are porting from Qt 5 to Qt 6 see Changes to Qt Multimedia.

If you are new to Qt Multimedia, the QML types can be imported into an application using the following statement in your .qml file.

import QtMultimedia

If you want to use the C++ classes in your application, include the C++ definitions using the following directive:

#include <QtMultimedia>
#include <QtMultimediaWidgets>

To link against the C++ libraries, add the following to your project's CMakeLists.txt file. Substitute my_project with the name of your project.

find_package(Qt6 COMPONENTS Multimedia REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(my_project PUBLIC Qt::Multimedia)

QML Types

The following table outlines some important QML types.

Type	Description
MediaPlayer	Add audio/video playback functionality to a scene.
CaptureSession	Create a session for capturing audio/video.
Camera	Access a camera connected to the system.
AudioInput	Access an audio input (microphone) connected to the system.
AudioOutput	Access an audio output (speaker, headphone) connected to the system.
VideoOutput	Display video content.
MediaRecorder	Record audio/video from the CaptureSession.
ImageCapture	Capture still images from the Camera.
Video	Add Video playback functionality to a scene. Uses MediaPlayer and VideoOutput types to provide video playback functionality.

C++ Classes

The following table outlines some important C++ Classes

Class	Description
QMediaPlayer	Playback media from a source.
QVideoWidget	Display video from a media player or a capture session.
QMediaCaptureSession	Capture audio and video.
QCamera	Access a camera connected to the system
QAudioInput	Access an audio input (microphone) connected to the system.
QAudioOutput	Access an audio output (speaker, headphone) connected to the system.
QImageCapture	Capture still images with a camera.
QMediaRecorder	Record media content from a capture session.
QVideoSink	Access and render individual video frames.
QAudioSink	Sends raw audio data to an audio output device.

For playback QMediaPlayer, QAudioOutput and QVideoOutput contain all the required functionality. The other classes are used for capturing audio and video content, where the QMediaCaptureSession is the central class managing the whole capture/recording process.

Licenses and attributions

The Qt Quick Multimedia module is available under commercial licenses from The Qt Company. In addition, it is available under free software licenses. Since Qt 5.6, these free software licenses are GNU Lesser General Public License, version 3, or the GNU General Public License, version 2. See Qt Licensing for further details.

Related information

Guides

• Changes in Qt 6
• Multimedia Overview
• Audio Overview
• Video Overview
• Camera Overview

Platform notes

For most features, Qt Multimedia builds upon the multimedia framework of the underlying operating system. Therefore there are several multimedia back ends based on different technologies and APIs.

While we try to support our full API on all platforms, platform specific limitations do exist in a few places. This is due to the fact that the feature set supported by those frameworks varies, implying that some functionality might not be available on all platforms. This is especially true for the set of supported file formats and codecs, as well as advanced camera functionality.

Where limitations exist, we aim to document those in the respective classes and methods.

• macOS and iOS

Reference

• Qt Multimedia
  • QML Types
  • C++ Classes

Examples

• Qt Multimedia Examples