-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi all,
I thought I'd share some thoughts on how the YouTube app developers can quickly get started in playing back YouTube videos straight from the source. I'm a software engineer working for Canonical that is working on the media backends for the Ubuntu Touch platform. Ideally it's desirable for the YouTube app to take advantage of these backends. What exists today: - ------------------ Today there exists a media player that is fairly robust in playing back any video/audio files located on local device storage. The media player is a QML app that uses the MediaPlayer instance from QtMultimedia 5.0. This in turn uses a QtMultimedia backend service plugin called qtubuntu-media, which in turn interfaces with the Android MediaPlayer to do hardware accelerated playback of supported media codecs. There's a bit more magic to it than this, but the architecture is basically that simple at a high level. What needs to be improved/added: - -------------------------------- Many things need to be improved and/or added to the overall system design, but specifically for the YouTube app, there is one thing that needs to be added: the ability to pass a URL through the QML MediaPlayer instance all the way down the stack to the Android MediaPlayer. Theoretically this should work today, but I have not personally tested it yet. I plan to test this very soon, but if someone beats me to it please let me know of your results. When this URL pass-through is verified to work, it'll be possible to instantiate a QML MediaPlayer instance in the YouTube app to play YouTube videos on the target device. If you're testing on a desktop Ubuntu, make sure you have GStreamer 0.10 installed and the proper media codec plugins. QtMultimedia should automatically use the qgstreamer service backend instead of qtubuntu-media on a desktop Ubuntu. If for some reason you believe you have GStreamer properly installed from the Ubuntu packages and have the proper codecs, try taking a look at the GStreamer output by running like this: GST_DEBUG=3 qmlscene youtube.qml Another option: - --------------- Another option will be just as above; to verify that a URL can get passed down to the Android MediaPlayer and then simply to have the YouTube app call the Ubuntu Touch Media Player app to play back the YouTube video. One thing that will need to be added is a command line flag that can be set to instruct the Media Player app to quit when playback completes and return to the YouTube app. I also intend on adding this feature to the app in the near future. If the YouTube developers prefer this route instead of embedding a QML MediaPlayer instance in their app, let me know and I'll make adding this feature a higher priority. Please take a look at the Media Player app's QML source for an example of using the QML MediaPlayer interface as well as setting up a window to render the video to. lp:mediaplayer-app If you have any questions, please feel free to reply to this email. I'm also open to setting up an IRC or Google Hangout meeting with the YouTube app developers. Lastly, if you want to get involved in helping with any of the media stuff on Ubuntu Touch, please let me know what you'd like to help with and what your skills are. Regards, Jim -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJRVJzTAAoJENCYE0OpVkFTVzcH/3qsSJvD9P6cL7M/1faI01pN 97P4do2QiqY64ucTC6juviQcKJ6+EpXKoHhC70humdY5SQF5Eh3eTusYaPQj+qok zuYzozoPb03uGjp4tMBYEuoUHI96w+8krBp5y8ib1t3k6tp8CImrddQw0vPhE8kp jMgezDhqfNdbhU89DlcGDqIGUmu2bQWfG0+whdcQDgLKCnc4oA5VIjHVhqhG+Oe3 uP3i4yLkKcOr1WnAfTb6L5l+m6Y+LFNfUFHYmcGhFqRQH3cX+PRJaybvcsg0HqzD 4bj6h5kWLtgx/3nrtjG9yQyjiX9dRjylZQypPoclyZf9SMldrHa2heeNZt3XT1E= =jp6w -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-phone More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
