Project VLC

[l3mce]

I have decided to try and write a DCE wrapper for VLC, because in my belief it will fix a number of issues. I am also going to be looking real hard for a solution to asterisk prob.

I tried for many days to get 8.1 rolling during the avenard fiasco, and am still unsuccessful. I will go at that some more later. For now I will be trying to develop for 7.10 and 8.10 concurrently.

So I have set up a dev box and would like to know some info. I have a lot of reading ahead of me, but if someone could help me with a couple of basic "where do i find"s that would be great.

1. I am green to linux. Where do I get avail source code? For instance if I wanted to look at the xine wrapper... where would I find that? Is it even available?

2. I am comfortable in java. I need to learn c++ anyway, have for about 20 years and just never got around to it. Any suggested reading? It is still object oriented... I should be able to get the swing pretty quick.

3. I just found the svn part of the site. How is that managed, I see assignments... but do not know if they are self or admin assigned. Because I am just above useless, should I try and tackle things related to features and not function... as the more experienced guys are more likely to find a quicker solution?

Any rules, tips, suggestions are welcome. I have never developed outside of contract before, so I am new to the community.

[sambuca]

The source code is available in SVN, You can browse the current 810 code online http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/browser/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src, or you could check it out and view and edit it locally, which you will need to anyway if you're to do any development. There is an article on building 810 in the wiki for more details.

As for developing for 710, imho: let it go! Focus on 810. Your time will be better spent figuring out what prevents 810 from working for you.

1. The xine player specifically is available in http://svn.linuxmce.org/trac.cgi/changeset/22596/branches/LinuxMCE-0810/src/Xine_Player.

2. Not really. I'm sure there is some tutorials online, but maybe you should start looking at some code and take it from there. And remember, google is your friend 

3. The tickets in trac is both self-assigned, and assigned by others (an admin, for instance).

Well, this is the first oss project I have contributed to also, so my suggestion would be to jump in, like I did. Start off with something you are not quite happy with, investigate it, and make up your mind if it is easy enough for you to do.
As we're in beta now, no new features/functionalities are allowed, but I'm sure there are still some bugs/tweaks to be found..

Oh. btw. there are already some code for VLC intergration in SVN, but it was abandoned for some reason. You should check it out.

[jthodges]

I think that having multiple player options would be a very great feature for LMCE.  I just wanted to suggest  following up with niz23's post at http://forum.linuxmce.org/index.php?topic=9257.msg64724#msg64724 before proceeding with wiring in vlc directly.  I'm not sure what his status is, but that approach sounds to me like an excellent way to integrate multiple players (vlc included), if it works out.

[totallymaxed]

I have decided to try and write a DCE wrapper for VLC, because in my belief it will fix a number of issues. I am also going to be looking real hard for a solution to asterisk prob.

I tried for many days to get 8.1 rolling during the avenard fiasco, and am still unsuccessful. I will go at that some more later. For now I will be trying to develop for 7.10 and 8.10 concurrently.

So I have set up a dev box and would like to know some info. I have a lot of reading ahead of me, but if someone could help me with a couple of basic "where do i find"s that would be great.

1. I am green to linux. Where do I get avail source code? For instance if I wanted to look at the xine wrapper... where would I find that? Is it even available?

2. I am comfortable in java. I need to learn c++ anyway, have for about 20 years and just never got around to it. Any suggested reading? It is still object oriented... I should be able to get the swing pretty quick.

3. I just found the svn part of the site. How is that managed, I see assignments... but do not know if they are self or admin assigned. Because I am just above useless, should I try and tackle things related to features and not function... as the more experienced guys are more likely to find a quicker solution?

Any rules, tips, suggestions are welcome. I have never developed outside of contract before, so I am new to the community.

Hi l3mce,

What your up to with VLC brings back some memories I can tell you. When we first started working with Pluto back in 2005 we worked with Aaron on VLC as the video playback engine...we saw it as a way to get multi-cast streams and also the leverage the incredible abilities of VLC to play almost anything you through at it (and play it well too). However back then we hit a number of issues...only a very early vlc lib was one but the main one that comes to mind is that VLC is a little slack (or was back at least!) in reporting time-code values back from a player. This mad it virtually impossible to jump around in a video files or to have the system return to a specific time-code later.

In the end Aaron felt it was just not going to happen, and we had to agree...but lets hope that your experience is much better than that!

All the best

Andrew

[tschak909]

that's... 2005, right?

-Thom

[totallymaxed]

that's... 2005, right?

-Thom

Yep! Good spot ;-)

[tschak909]

actually, if you want to do some good work, work on a gstreamer-player DCE device. Literally just make a player that uses gstreamer, but has no UI, and uses DCE for control.

-Thom

[bugui]

Hi Andrew,
I found a trick on VLC to get Synchronized VLC Streaming. I found it at http://hackedexistence.com/project-vlc.html.
The trick is to "add the IP Address of the server to the streaming client list, start the stream without playing it locally, launch a new instance of VLC, define the IP Address of the Server in the Network Sync Settings, then open the stream exactly as you would on a client." (Text copied from http://hackedexistence.com/project-vlc.html)

Also there is a Demo video on that page.

Thanks
Hernan

[tschak909]

Why don't you work on a media player which implements this, as a test.

-Thom

[totallymaxed]

Hi Andrew,
I found a trick on VLC to get Synchronized VLC Streaming. I found it at http://hackedexistence.com/project-vlc.html.
The trick is to "add the IP Address of the server to the streaming client list, start the stream without playing it locally, launch a new instance of VLC, define the IP Address of the Server in the Network Sync Settings, then open the stream exactly as you would on a client." (Text copied from http://hackedexistence.com/project-vlc.html)

Also there is a Demo video on that page.

Thanks
Hernan

That looks very promising. As Thom says why dont you work on a media player that implements this as a test...it looks like this might be a big breakthrough.

Andrew

[tschak909]

You can fuse ideas from the SmartQ Media Plugin/Player and the corresponding Xine Plugin/Player.

-Thom

[valent]

I would love if somobody also did wrapper for XBMC, that project ROCKS!

[totallymaxed]

I would love if somobody also did wrapper for XBMC, that project ROCKS!

Wrong thread...very off-topic

Andrew

[bulek]

Hi,

I'll add idea about vlc usage that I find useful in my house. I use vlc as rtsp server for my IPTV (vlc connects to my iptv on one side and servers streams to other vlcs as clients). Therefore I can watch TV from any PC with vlc in the local network and I find this extremely stable.... This is not LMCE integrated solution, but maybe useful info to someone else too...

Regards,
Bulek.

[nite_man]

I'm also trying to use VLC to watch IPTV. It's possible to integrate it with VDR using IPTV plugin. But there are two problems in my case. The IPTV operator doesn't offers play-lists and it supports VLC version 1.0.0 and higher.  Ubuntu 8.10 includes old version. So, I need somehow build the latest one. Bulek, do you ru VLC on LinuxMCE server? If so, what version do you use?