Welcome to Shaka Player

Shaka Player is a JavaScript library for adaptive video streaming. It plays DASH content without browser plugins using MediaSource Extensions and Encrypted Media Extensions.

Shaka Player is meant to be deployed after being compiled. The tools you need to compile the sources and documentation are included in the sources: Closure Compiler, Closure Linter, and JSDoc.

If you are integrating Shaka Player into another Closure-based project, our build process will generate externs for Shaka Player itself.

If you installed Shaka Player via npm, the source has been compiled and the externs have been generated.

Prerequisites

You can build Shaka on Linux, Windows, or Mac. To get the sources and compile the library, you will need:

If you just want to compile for export to other projects, you might consider compiling through a docker container. (see compile instructions)

To quickly install these prerequisites on Ubuntu or Debian, you can run this script:

curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/shaka-project/shaka-player/main/build/install-linux-prereqs.sh | bash

We do not provide detailed instructions or scripts for installing these prerequisites on other operating systems or on non-Debian-based Linux distributions. (We couldn't possibly document them all.) You can follow the links above to download and install the prerequisites manually on any OS.

Get the source

git clone https://github.com/shaka-project/shaka-player.git
cd shaka-player

Compile the library and generate the docs

python build/all.py

Alternatively you can use a docker container:

cd build/docker
docker-compose run --rm shaka-compiler

The output is:

  • dist/shaka-player.compiled.js (compiled bundle)
  • dist/shaka-player.compiled.debug.js (debug bundle)
  • dist/shaka-player.compiled.externs.js (generated externs, for Closure-based projects)
  • docs/api/index.html (generated documentation)

Run the tests

The tests depend on a few third-party tools, which are installed automatically via npm when you run the tests. Nothing will be installed globally.

Run the tests in your platform's browsers using ./build/test.py. You can specify particular browsers with the --browsers argument. For example:

./build/test.py --browsers Opera

# or:

./build/test.py --browsers Chrome,Firefox,Edge

You can find a full list of available browsers with --browsers help, and you can find a complete list of testing options with --help.

Join the announcement list

If you want to receive release or survey announcements, you should join our mailing list. The list is very low volume.

Continue the Tutorials

Next, check out Basic Usage.