[vlc] Help offered

[jboileau]

Hi,

I don't know if my help can be of use and I don't know if I am at the right
place to offer it. Please let me know.

I am doing a project using libvlc under Windows. I would be glad to report
my progress, successes and failures, share my code so you see how I am doing
things etc. Anything that can help you see how I am using the library and
the problems I am having in an attempt for you to get first hand experience
from a user of the library's. You can steer my development in the right
direction if needed and I can do quick tests for you guys and report my
findings. My time is somewhat limited I work 9 hours a day and have a
family. But currently I am spending most of those 9 hours of work on
using/testing libvlc. So my input should prove valuable for the next few
weeks. I can email daily reports of my progress. When I am more
knowledgeable, I will be glad to help on the documentation side and, if gain
enough knowledge with development. I will probably do some documentation as
I go along since it will be of help for me too. I am presently doing a test
application that simulates what the actual application will be doing. Here
is a brief summary of what it is doing:

   - My test application is playing a movie with the video being played
   locally while the audio (2 channels/languages) is streamed to another IP
   address using UDP/MPEG-TS. I need to use UDP/MPEG-TS to accommodate the
   subsystem I stream to.
   - I detect the end of the movie by polling the state every 100 msec (I
   haven't figured out how to get a callback called from an event) and simply
   start it back again. I am not using --loop here because in the real
   application the next movie will change dynamically.
   - It also stream 7 music playlists the same way as the audio of the
   movie. Here I use --loop because the same music will play in a loop in the
   real application.
   - All these audio streams are sent to the same IP Address with
   different port numbers
   - I am using libvlc from the trunk as I need multiple instance. libvlc
   from 0.8.6c does work properly with multiple instances, at least that
   is what I read in the forum. I have 8 instances running at the same time. So
   I am actually working with libvlc-control
   - I use --sout-display-delay to synchronize the video with the audio
   for the movie. Unfortunately this has the effect of chopping the equivalent
   of the buffer from the end. I know this is a known bug and I have seen it is
   listed as high priority, but I will try to find a workaround. Maybe using
   one of the other buffering options.
   - I use GetProcAddress to get entry points into the DLL.
   - I use the libvlc_... interface. Mostly libvlc_playlist_...
   - The development is done for Windows using Visual Studio and MFC
   - I create a CWnd (MFC) and do a libvlc_video_set_parent to have
   libvlc play in my window.
   - This runs on a 650 Mhz Windows XP embedded machine with 256 meg of
   ram. But this is fine, it uses roughly 10 to 20 % of the CPU. Not bad!

My application is partially written. I need to add error handling and
tracing. I have made a test run over the weekend and unfortunately it didn't
survive the weekend. I will investigate and more importantly I will add
tracing to get a picture of what happens before it crashes. I will be doing
overnight test runs this week and will gather information.

I have not installed the needed developement environment and compiled
libvlc, but will do if needed. My application is developed using Microsoft
Visual Studio 2003. This is a requirement for my project. My understanding
is that libvlc can not be compiled using Visual Studio.

As you may detect from my name I am french speaking. Although I speak and
write fluently in english, if you feel it is easier to communicate in french
feel free to do so. If it is of any interest: I am doing this work for the
french company Alstom for the train entertainment. I am located in Montreal,
I have over 20 years of development experience. I have been using VLC as an
external application and controlling it using HTTP for over a year now, not
without problems, and would like to switch to a more controllable and
integrated environment like libvlc. We are also looking at other
alternatives to VLC (LEADTOOLS for instance) but would rather stick with VLC
and leverage all the experience I have gained with it over the past year or
so. I also have gained the honorable mention of 'VLC expert' here :-) which
actually only means I know more about VLC than anyone else here! :-)

I hope I can help in some way and gain a better understanding of VLC in the
process.

-- 
 Jacques Boileau
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