c++ – Use FFmpeg or ffplay as a library, instead of calling exe

My ultimate goal is to be able to play a RTSP stream(h264) in a native window(Windows VC++) in my application, using FFmpeg, but without calling any exe, rather, use FFmpeg as a library that’s linked with the application as part of it.

This answer gave me some ideas:
stackoverflow.com/a/3167088/3842917

My first approach was to build ffplay into a library and link it to my application. However I am running into problems with building ffplay. (I have posted a separate question for it. )

My second, and less preferred approach, is to find out how to decode and play the stream using their API calls that are built into libraries(DLL’s), so that I can avoid calling ffmpeg.exe. The problem with this approach is I’d have to understand the process of dealing with a raw video stream, something I’m not very familiar with.

Is there any other approach I can achieve what I need?