On Wed, 2003-10-22 at 16:41, Aubin Paul wrote:
> It looks very interesting to me; I'm going to try it if possible;
> though currently, the patch doesn't apply against mplayer CVS; is
> there a more current version?

Yeah, it was patched from CVS on Monday, so things have clearly changed
since then.  I'll email here an updated patch and as well a sample test
program (which will use imlib2, sorry) for your experimentation.  Check
back here in a couple hours.

Just so that you know my motives: I had an idea a couple weeks ago about
using Mplayer as a graphics platform for a Freevo like program.  It
would rely on Mplayer to do all visual display (menus, as well as video
playing), so basically you get for free support for all devices on which
mplayer works.

I was initially inspired by seeing videos of Tivo in action.  It has
very cool animated backgrounds and sliding menus and I am such a sucker
for eye candy.  I whipped up in the gimp a similar whirling/fading
background and am using that as a background for the menu, which is
displayed via bmovl[2].

Here is a screenshot:

   http://people.auc.ca/tack/archive/2003-10/mplayer-experiment.jpg

The background here is animated and wavy, and the "Programs" slides
across the screen and fades away, copying somewhat blatantly how the
Tivo works (and much more amateurishly, since I'm pretty pathetic when
it comes to the artistic stuff).  You can see what I mean here -- sorry,
it's lame:

   http://people.auc.ca/tack/archive/2003-10/whirly-background.mpg

The menu you see in the screenshot slides in from off screen and fades
in as well.  From my test program, I use the arrow keys to move up and
down, and new menus slide and fade in, and the existing one slides off
screen and fades out.  It's a very nice effect and in spite of the whole
thing using 100% of my poor Athlon 1400, it is very smooth.

For mplayer to be used as a platform for this sort of thing, there are
certain requirements.  One is that obviously when a video is paused, the
user must still be able to navigate menus.  So bmovl2 allows for
updating images while mplayer is paused.  Also, to get a nice animated
effect, it has a MOVE command, and allows you to change the location of
an image without having to resend the whole thing through the FIFO each
time.  Lastly, you can specify multiple images which are stored in
mplayer's memory which you reference by id from your application.  (It
acts sort of like an X server in this respect, storing pixmaps.)  This
allows you to, for example, have a menu in one id, and some sort of OSD
background in another id, which you can slide in from off screen at any
time without having to retransmit each frame over the FIFO.  Much more
efficient and much smoother.

I think a lot of the features above also align with Freevo's goals.  In
my case, my project is mostly an experimentation for ideas, but it also
may some day evolve into a competitor for Freevo and possibly Mythtv
too.  (Probably not, but who knows :))

Cheers,
Jason.

-- 
Jason Tackaberry  ::  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  :: 705-949-2301 x330
Academic Computing Support Specialist
Information Technology Services
Algoma University College  ::  www.auc.ca



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