[vlc-devel] How to create a multi view application using VLC

[Pierre d'Herbemont]

On Aug 1, 2008, at 3:23 PM, Andreas Benzler wrote:

> We would like to create a multi view application where we can view
> multiple videos and synchronize them. So what we want to do is to  
> start
> with a first video, then take a second one and search in both videos  
> for
> a common signal ( a sound or whatever) stop them at this position and
> then synchronize them. By synchronizing them I mean storing the  
> relative
> positions of the videos that you can do a playback of all videos
> simultaneously in a synchronized way. This is needed to do debriefings
> after psychological experiments where a subject or a scene was
> simultaneously recorded by multiple video cameras which are not
> synchronized during recording.
>
> First, does anyone of you know that something has been done before  
> with VLC?


I don't think so, but yet libvlc (0.9.0) should handle that pretty fine.

> After having a short look at VLC I think there are two ways of solving
> my problem. The first one is to run multiple VLC instances and control
> them by plugin that has to be written. The advantage would be that  
> we do
> not need to recompile the whole VLC tree with all libs and that stuff.
> The drawback would be that we would need some communication between  
> the
> multiple instances of the control plugins and a main control
> application. We do have a CORBA system running here so this would be
> possible.

I think that a custom App would suite you better.

> The second option would be to make a brand new application and embeds
> multiple VLC video windows. The advantage would be that there is no  
> need
> for an inter process communication. The drawback is that we have to
> recompile the whole VLC tree. Or do I get something wrong at this  
> point?

You have libvlc to do that. So if you have the binary for your arch  
plus the headers you are fine.

Good Luck :)

Pierre.