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 3D spatial audio.
• 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.

• Audio Overview
• Video Overview
• Camera Overview
• Spatial Audio Overview (Technology Preview)

Multimedia Recipes

For some quick recipes, see this table:

Multimedia Security Notes

Qt Multimedia relies heavily on media hardware and its drivers. Therefore, we highly recommend using trusted hardware, such as cameras, audio devices, graphics cards, and other peripherals, as well as a properly configured environment to avoid unexpected Qt Multimedia behavior that could result in security-critical issues.

Qt Multimedia components, such as QMediaPlayer, QAudioDecoder, and QGStreamerVideoSource may process untrusted media sources. When using these components, follow the general best practices for handling untrusted data. We aim to keep Qt Multimedia secure regardless of the media file or stream provided as input. However, the module highly depends on third-party libraries, such as FFmpeg and GStreamer, resulting in a long processing data chain that may be vulnerable to security issues if a flaw exists at any stage. See Multimedia Security Considerations page describing security-related data flow and exploiting risks.

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

• C++ Classes
• QML Types