Building a Desktop Video Player in Rust

Introduction

Creating a desktop video player in Rust is a great way to learn more about this powerful and fast-growing programming language. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the steps to build a simple video player using Rust and the gtk and gstreamer libraries. By the end, you'll have a basic understanding of how to create a graphical user interface (GUI) and handle video playback in Rust.

Prerequisites

Before we get started, ensure you have the following installed on your system:

• Rust
• GTK+3
• GStreamer

You can install Rust using rustup:

curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rust-lang.org | sh

To install GTK+3 and GStreamer, follow the installation instructions on their respective websites.

Setting Up the Project

First, create a new Rust project:

cargo new video_player
cd video_player

Next, add the necessary dependencies to your Cargo.toml file:

[dependencies]
gtk = "0.9"
gstreamer = "0.17"
gstreamer-video = "0.17"

Building the GUI