[vlc-devel] A VLC idea of mine

[Olivier Aubert]

[cc: to vlc-devel, in case someone has more information about this]

Hello Justin

There has already been such a discussion on the web forum, see 
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39035&p=137313&hilit=censor#p137313
and
http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=39035&start=15&hilit=advene

A user apparently started to code it, but there have been no news since
last june. You could try to get in touch with him to know where he left.

>From the implementation POV, you can try to build such a dedicated
player in python or java using the bindings, it is not that complicated.
However, I think that for a  better user coverage (and thus attaining a
critical mass of users), it would be much better if it was integrated in
the plain VLC, and thus be coded in C. A progressive path could start by
quickly implementing a prototype in python/java, to see if there is some
interest, and later implement it directly in VLC.

For the edition part, I think that Advene ( http://www.advene.org/ )
could be useful for this, but I am biased...

Olivier

On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 18:11 -0800, Justin Spratt wrote:
> Hello Olivier,
> 
> I'm a VLC fan and promoter who is a computer science student, writing
> to you from Vancouver, Canada.  I have had an idea in the back of my
> head for half a year and thought I'd see what you (and anyone else on
> the VLC team) think about it.
> 
> Basically, I know many families who would like to be able to filter
> certain parts of videos.  There are many great films that have a few
> "unnecessary" scenes in them.  I don't know if you have seen American
> History X, but it has an important message, however, there are a few
> scenes that some people would find morally objectionable.  The people
> at "ClearPlay" have a paid subscription solution for certain DVD
> players, but VLC makes DVD players comparitivly inconveenient (for
> example, I play all my DVDs from ISO images on my media server).
> 
> The tool that I have in mind would take a database file of "exception
> codes" (for example, 1 for profanity, 2 for pornographic scenes, etc.)
> and time segments (the time codes of where the exception begins and
> ends) and merge these will the film in realtime (as the file was
> playing).
> 
> I believe that this would not be an extreemly difficult tool to build
> and I realize that it would be somewhat useless unless it had a
> database of film "exception code" dababase files.  I believe that a
> community-based approach could result in a free, online database of
> these files.  Perhaps a "video editing" tool with a file output could
> be merged with such an online database.  VLC could be combined with
> some way of graphicly indicating that, for example, "The time between
> A and B is sexualy explicit" or, "The time between C and D is
> profanity", etc.  The results could be exported and uploaded to a host
> site.
> 
> Please write me if the VLC team has any interest in this or if they
> have any suggestions as to where I could go for some help on this.
> 
> I write in Python, Java and SQL and I plan on learning C#.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Justin Spratt
> 
> You are permitted to forward this email to whomever you wish.  You are
> free to use the ideas herein without reference to myself.