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List:       kde-multimedia
Subject:    xanim vs. arts
From:       Charles Samuels <charles () kde ! org>
Date:       2000-11-04 20:16:32
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This comes from a current slashdot article

http://slashdot.org/articles/00/11/04/1730224.shtml
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/xa_nextgen.html

Since arts is LGPLd, these plugins could be for arts, and still be closed.

So, I propose that someone, excluding myself, contact this guy about this all.

The following text comes from the second URL I gave.

[Marketing Hype Description]
The next gen player is a highly modular, easily extensible, platform 
independent framework for generating, manipulating, transporting and playing 
multimedia streams. 

[Pipe Dream Description]
 The dream is to create something that can play anything from anything to 
anything on anything, anyhow, anyway, anywhere. 

anyways... :^) 

[Back to Reality] It is highly modular, even the GUI/UI is a module. And it 
hopefully will be easily extensible. This means new formats, codecs, 
input/output devices, special f/x modules, etc, can be added without 
recompiling and probably while the program is still running. Also there's no 
dependancy on X11(like the current xanim) since that part is all buried and 
selfcontained in the gui_x11 and viddevo_x11 modules. 

And the pipe dream is a nice goal to shoot for even if it won't be possible 
due to the proprietary nature of newer formats and codecs. 

Right now I'm concentrating on adding rudimentary support for as many 
different types of formats, codecs, devices, etc in order to stabilize the 
internal architecture. As a result, it can play a wide variety of stuff, but 
it's pretty raw. Broken-glass, rusty-tack raw. Scraped-knuckle, skinned-knee, 
sand-in-your-eye kinda raw. Anyways, you get the picture. 

[Availability] Not yet. I will eventually release some binaries just so 
people can play around with it and eventually the source once the internal 
architecture has stabilized. 

It will be under a free for non-commercial use type of license. Also a good 
number of the audio and video codecs will be under their own 
copyright/licensing and will be consider separate from the main body of the 
next gen player. 

[Current Capabilities] As in what can it do today, right now. 

Input Streams
The player can stream data from stdin, http, ftp or from a file. 

WAV
It can play, stream and seek within WAV files. 

FLI
It can play and stream FLI files, but not FLC, FLH or FLX. 

AVI
It can play, stream and seek within AVI files. Still have some work to do on 
non-interleaved AVI files. 

Quicktime
It can play, stream and seek within Quicktime files that contain audio and 
video tracks. Working on adding support for quicktime files that encapsulate 
mpeg as well as quicktime files that contain URLs to the actual media 
streams(ie RTSP, etc) 

MPEG 1 audio
It can play, stream and seek within MPEG 1 audio layer I, II and III streams. 
For example listening to radio stations broadcasting mpeg audio over http. 

MPEG 1 video
It can play, stream and seek within MPEG 1 video streams. And yes, type I, P 
and B frames are supported. 

MPEG 1 system layer
It can play, stream and seek within MPEG 1 system layer streams. MPEG 1 
system layer can contain multiple audio and video streams. The player 
currently will open up separate pipelines for each video/audio streams 
present. Need to put UI hooks in place to allow those streams to be 
dynamically selected. 

Audio CDs
It can play and seek regular Audio CDs provided your CDROM device driver 
supports reading raw sectors. 

Video CDs
It can play and seek VideoCDs provided your CDROM device driver supports 
reading raw sectors. 

RTP(Real Time Protocol)
It supports receiving/displaying RTP video(cuseeme,nv,h263,h263+,etc) and 
audio(pcm,dvi,gsm,mpeg,etc) packets. It does not yet support sending RTP 
packets. 

CuSeeMe
It can connect to a CuSeeMe client/reflector and display video(cuseeme, 
indeo, mjpeg, etc) and audio(pcm,dvi,etc). It can not yet send video/audio so 
it can only connect to places that allow lurkers. 

RTSP(Real Time Streaming Protocol)
It can play, pause, resume and seek within RTSP streams that use RTP as the 
underlying media transport. Doesn't yet support speed or size scaling modes. 
I've connected and played from darwin, static and univ of columbia's rtspd. 

V4L2(Video for Linux 2 )
It can open up a V4L2 video capture device and use that as a source to a 
stream. There's a lot more work that could be done here, but this was just to 
make sure the architecture could support it. 

Special F/X modules
You can insert special f/x modules into the audio and video streams. As test 
cases I wrote an echo and flap modules for audio and a blur module for video. 
Echo and blur are self explanatory. And flap is a poor name for flapping the 
audio between the left and right speakers using sine/cosine functions and 
various phases. Again, just simple things to help test the architecture. 

X11 GUI
Nothing special here. File descriptor, menu, scroll bars, buttons, etc. 

Audio Output Devices
Right now just linux and solaris are supported since those are my two main 
development platforms. Actually, to a file is also supported. Eventually, 
I'll have audio output devices that are format writers(avi,wav,au,etc) or 
network broadcasters(rtp,etc). 

Video Output Devices
Right now there is just a stand along X11 video window and a video window 
that is part of a GUI(menu on top and control underneath). Both can use X11 
shared memory. Eventually use of the X11 XVideo extention for YUV 
images(someone has already succesfully modified a version of XAnim to use 
it). Again, output devices could eventually be anything like format writers, 
rtp, cuseeme, etc. And 

[The Future]
 I need to do a lot of cleaning up and making what's currently supported more 
robust. I also need to work on getting UI hooks into all of the modules so 
users can control their parameters dynamically(like changing the echo delay 
while audio is playing). Haven't yet ported the .dll code into it yet. Need 
to do this before I start porting the rest of xanim's video/audio codecs into 
the new player. As well as porting support for all the various audio device 
drivers, etc. 

Need to come up with a name. 

Working on adding decompression modules to the input pipe so you could play a 
compressed file or stream. Decryption would go here as well. 

And add other things like V4L, audio input devices, MPEG2, DV(I bought the 
specs), firewire devices, DVD, H.323, MPEG4, etc, etc, etc. 

And then all the non-fun drudgery, like docs, configure scripts, etc. 

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