[vlc] Help offered

[Gun Akkor]

Hello Jacques,

 

I would be very interested in learning from your experiences using libvlc. I
have been considering VLC for a project which also involves some application
development in Windows. I am mostly a Linux developer person, so Windows
experience would be extremely useful.

 

We can communicate via the VLC list, but if this is not something of
interest to the general users of the list, you can reach me at
gakkor at nospam.patton.com (please remove nospam from the address, when
mailing.)

 

Thanks,

Gun Akkor

 

From: vlc-bounces at videolan.org [mailto:vlc-bounces at videolan.org] On Behalf
Of jboileau
Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 9:56 AM
To: vlc at videolan.org
Subject: [vlc] Help offered

 

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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