Multimedia Overview

Multimedia support in Qt is provided by the Qt Multimedia module. The Qt Multimedia module provides a rich feature set that enables you to easily take advantage of a platform's multimedia capabilities, such as media playback and the use of camera devices.

Features

Here are some things you can do with the Qt Multimedia APIs:

Access raw audio devices for input and output.
Play low latency sound effects.
Play media files in playlists (such as compressed audio or video files).
Record audio and compress it.
Use a camera, including viewfinder, image capture, and movie recording
Decode audio media files into memory for processing.

Multimedia Components

The Qt Multimedia APIs are categorized into three main components. More information specific to each component is available in the overview pages. You can also take a look at some recipes.

Multimedia Recipes

For some quick recipes, see this table:

Use case	Examples	QML Types	C++ Classes
Playing a sound effect		SoundEffect	QSoundEffect
Playing encoded audio (MP3, AAC etc)	player	MediaPlayer	QMediaPlayer
Playing raw audio data with low latency	audiooutput,		QAudioSink
Accessing raw audio input data	spectrum, audiosource		QAudioSource
Recording encoded audio data	audiorecorder	CaptureSession, AudioInput, MediaRecorder	QMediaCaptureSession, QAudioInput, QMediaRecorder
Discovering audio and video devices	audiodevices	MediaDevices, audioDevice, cameraDevice	QMediaDevices, QAudioDevice, QCameraDevice
Video Playback	player, mediaplayer	MediaPlayer, VideoOutput, Video	QMediaPlayer, QVideoWidget, QGraphicsVideoItem
Capturing audio and video	camera, recorder	CaptureSession, Camera, AudioInput VideoOutput	QMediaCaptureSession, QCamera, QAudioInput, QVideoWidget
Capturing photos	camera, recorder	CaptureSession, Camera, ImageCapture	QMediaCaptureSession, QCamera, QImageCapture
Capturing movies	camera, recorder	CaptureSession, Camera, MediaRecorder	QMediaCaptureSession, QCamera, QMediaRecorder

Limitations

The Qt Multimedia APIs build upon the multimedia framework of the underlying platform. This can mean that support for various codecs, or containers will vary between machines. This support depends on what the end user has installed. See Supported Media Formats for more detail.

Changes from Previous Versions

If you previously used Qt Multimedia in Qt 5, see Changes to Qt Multimedia for more information on what has changed, and what you might need to change when porting code to Qt 6.

Reference Documentation

QML Types

The QML types are accessed by using:

import QtMultimedia

Multimedia Classes

QAudio	Contains enums used by the audio classes
QAudioBuffer	Represents a collection of audio samples with a specific format and sample rate
QAudioDecoder	Implements decoding audio
QAudioDevice	Information about audio devices and their functionality
QAudioFormat	Stores audio stream parameter information
QAudioInput	Represents an input channel for audio
QAudioOutput	Represents an output channel for audio
QAudioSink	Interface for sending audio data to an audio output device
QAudioSource	Interface for receiving audio data from an audio input device
QCamera	Interface for system camera devices
QCameraDevice	General information about camera devices
QCameraFormat	Describes a video format supported by a camera device
QGraphicsEffect	The base class for all graphics effects
QGraphicsVideoItem	Graphics item which display video produced by a QMediaPlayer or QCamera
QImageCapture	Used for the recording of media content
QMediaCaptureSession	Allows capturing of audio and video content
QMediaDevices	Information about available multimedia input and output devices
QMediaFormat	Describes an encoding format for a multimedia file or stream
QMediaPlayer	Allows the playing of a media files
QMediaRecorder	Used for encoding and recording a capture session
QMediaTimeRange	Represents a set of zero or more disjoint time intervals
QMediaTimeRange::Interval	QMediaTimeRange::Interval class represents a time interval with integer precision
QPlatformAudioSink	Base class for audio backends
QPlatformAudioSource	Access for QAudioSource to access the audio device provided by the plugin
QSoundEffect	Way to play low latency sound effects
QStaticText	Enables optimized drawing of text when the text and its layout is updated rarely
QVideoFrame	Represents a frame of video data
QVideoFrameFormat	Specifies the stream format of a video presentation surface
QVideoSink	Represents a generic sink for video data
QVideoWidget	Widget which presents video produced by a media object

© 2024 The Qt Company Ltd. Documentation contributions included herein are the copyrights of their respective owners. The documentation provided herein is licensed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License version 1.3 as published by the Free Software Foundation. Qt and respective logos are trademarks of The Qt Company Ltd. in Finland and/or other countries worldwide. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.