[vlc-devel] Re: Intergrating libVLC with real-time graphics library

[Sigmund Augdal]

On Fri, Jan 28, 2005 at 11:01:48AM +0000, Robert Osfield wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
> I am currently scoping out how to integrated video into an open source 
> real-time graphics library (www.openscenegraph.org), I would like to support 
> rendering of streamed video as well as videos played from DVD and local disk.  
> Much of what libVLC provides appears to fit many of the requirements, so I'm 
> looking into how I might integrate it.
> 
> The current design of libVLC appears to be designed around providing a modular 
> way of creating a VLC style application, which is not quite what I need in my 
> case so I'll need to work with it in a slightly unusual way.  I'd like 
> suggestions for the dev community about how I might be go about it.
> 
> What I'm aiming for is to be able to have a 3D world, such as a movie theatre, 
> or a gallary, or just kiosk in museum or TV in a house, this world would be 
> created programatically, or in a 3D modeller like 3D Studio MAX or Maya, then 
> imported into the graphics application.  Within the the 3D database there 
> will be references to external images which provide the textures, and 
> potential refernces to movie files on disk or possibly just an address of 
> where to stream the movie from.  The graphics application will need to pick 
> out the movie imagery and set up libVLC and all its associated threads and 
> modules to create the imagery that can be subloaded into OpenGL textures.  
> Now the graphics application will delegate all this work to a plugin that 
> I'll be writing for the OpenSceneGraph.
> 
> Once I've written this plugin (which will encapsulate all the complexities of 
> setting things up) lots of different graphics application could be written 
> which leverage VLC's video functionality, since the graphics application will 
> have to do little more than do then specifiy a string specifying the movie to 
> read it'll be easy to add this functionality.  The OpenSceneGraph is pretty 
> scalable, and widely used in the field of VR, so you'll even be able to see 
> videos in fully immersive environments.
I like the idea, I have even played with similar ideas in my mind before
(without ever getting close to realizing them). 

> 
> My first question is, is the vlc-dev the right mailing list to be discussing 
> such developer integration topics, or is this more of an vlc-user topic?  It 
> might be that small ammendments to libVLC might make my task much easier, it 
> may be even that the VideoLan community would want to provide a full 3D 
> graphics version of the player (I'm not about to write this, but I'm sure 
> happy to help open a few doors in this direction:-).
vlc-devel is indeed the right list. Next think I have to say is that,
unfortunatly, the libvlc api is not really suitable for this kind of task.
As you say it mostly provide a modular way to create vlc-like applications.
I know several other apis are available that might suit your needs better.
This includes (but are probably not limited to) gstreamer, libxine and ffmpeg.

I think indeed the libvlc api could be updated to support this kind of
setup without too much work, but as far as I know there is no plan for doing
so any time soon. Off course any contribution is welcome (and we might even
give you some starting pointers).

I'm glad to hear your interrest in vlc, and libvlc and hope my answer was
helpful.


Sigmund

> 
> I'll write more technical questions in a follow up email.
> 
> Robert.
> 
> ps. a bit of background of myself, I'm an OpenGL/C++ nut and I'm the project 
> lead and lead author of the OpenSceneGrpah, a scene graph API that sits on 
> top of OpenGL.  Its all open source/free software and I've made my living 
> from providing consultancy, bespoke development and support ontop of the 
> OpenSceneGraph for the past four years.  I'm based in Scotland.
> 
> 
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