Hi there, We, three developers, are planning to start working on a GPL radiostation application. There are a few such applications already available like http://www.carmen.be. We would like to inherit the features from such applications and make it possible to import data from them. You can find screenshots of carmen on their website.
Some of the features include ... * Playing multiple music channels at the same time. This music can come from anywhere (a stream on the internet, a local mp3 or ogg file, a stream from a shoutcast-server, input from a soundcard, etc etc) * It should support all the advanced features of those fancy soundcards -this is, in the first stage, less important. Most radiostations don't yet need a very high quality sound which those soundcards can deliver- * It should support multiple soundcards. For example, one soundcard for the input of media, one for the output, another one for another radio station that is running on the same computer, etc etc * Support for Radio Data System (I don't know if it is used a lot in the US but it is in Europe.. the primary use of this application will be in Belgium/Europe. So we need support for at least one device) * Automated mixing of songs. Each song has information like fadein and fadeout time in a database. This information should be used to determine when the next song should start and when the current song should start fading in. It should also be possible to record a introduction for each song and the system should, if recorded, play that while starting the song (so, * A very, "VERY" advanced playlist which gives the DJ the possibility to of course add and remove songs very easily and which shows when the songs will start (the correct time, calculated using information like fadein, fadeout and song lengths of other songs that will be played). * Support in the playlist to have advertisement. Most radiostations have a "advertisement"-planning .. (for example, they start the commercials each hour or each half-hour or at 16:00 and 16:15 and ...). The playlist should show that... * It should be possible for the DJ's to control the computer at home. For example in case nobody is mixing at night or in the early morning and something went wrong... So perhaps a webinterface or something like that should add the possibility to change the next song that will be played. * Monitoring of data: Another soundcard gets input. If there is nomore sound then something like sending a mail or a SMS to a key DJ should happen automatically. The idea is to be on the air 24/7... * Multiple players (duh). So we are not JUST trying to recompile xmms or another simple mp3-player. And all these players can play anything like.. a stream from a shoutcast-servver, a local mp3file, a cd, a a a... * A music-voting system. So that people can vote the next songs on a website, using their mobile, etc etc .. For example, at night or in the early morning when there is no DJ .. the voting system is used. And, of course, the mixing and the playlist does it job starting and mixing songs. I figured..we will need a VERY VERY VERY advanced multimedia framework for this. Then I saw a demo of GStreamer at FOSDEM in Brussels and started thinking .. maybe this can help us. We will also need a very good application development framework. Two of the three developers have been programming .NET. One (me) is also a fanatic GNOME developer and one is willing to learn a lot. Maybe C# is a good choice so thats why I am sending this question to both the GStreamer and Mono mailinglists. The questions.. * Are both GTK# and GST# mature enough for this? And if the "#" is not mature enough then is GStreamer ready for a project like this? * Are there others interested in helping this project? We do want to use the GPL license but .. we are also planning to actually sell this application and do professional support for it here in Belgium. Of course once it is finished (so, we are serious.. not a bunch of kids trying to hack a application and then throw it in the masses -> this is a very specific application with a huge amount of very important features that just need to work, period). We think we will need a year to complete the application (three developers). Note that we will not work on this application every hour.. we have real jobs and [girl|boy]friends :)! * Is the linux platform ready for this? Afaik it is. But what about support for multiple soundcards and RDS?) * How portable are GStreamer, Mono and Gtk# (I know mono runs on Windows and a lot other platforms. But what about GStreamer and the C# bindings like Gtk# and Gst#?). It would be, of course, great if we can build our application once and can then deploy it on a lot platforms. * Is this project a good idea? Or should we not even think about trying to create it .. (yes, we know that Unix stands for anti-bloatware. Well. if you are a DJ then you understand that this application should work fast and well. A DJ does not have time to switch between mp3-players, mixing tools, playlists, crab, a advertising/commercial-planning application, RDS, blabla, ... it should all be integrated in one system) * Are there specific requirements for non-Belgian and/or not Europe radiostations? Are there idea's ? Hints? Tips? * etc -- Philip Van Hoof me at freax dot org http://www.freax.be http://www.freax.eu.org _______________________________________________ Mono-list maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.ximian.com/mailman/listinfo/mono-list
