Thanks for the response David, hope you got the sand out of your toes :) I wanted to update my prior post so that hopefully no-one wastes time on things I've already solved.
Overnight I actually solved most of the problems I was having and had a first pass at the video controls. Firstly my build issue was due to 1) my having failed to delete the plug-in cache and cached plugins and 2) the moovida elisa packages being present on the standard python path. Removing these from dist-packages got me up and running from a remote terminal. While 2) was reasonably obvious it would have been useful to detail to delete the plugin cache within the instructions somewhere (or maybe it is detailed...). I'd still be interested in whether or not patches sent to this list would be acceptable...although I can probably go the bzr route now. So I was able to have a look at the video controls. In the end, adding the videobalance filter to the pipeline turned out to be reasonably trivial. If I understand correctly, the videobalance plugin is using the gstcolorbalance interface internally...whether this is the most efficient way of adding this functionality though, I don't know. In order to get things working I have hooked up the controls much as I would expect to find them in mplayer i.e. keys 1 and 2 = -+ brightness; 3,4 = -+ contrast etc. This all works much as I had expected although I'm not sure about the granularity at this point (I need to watch more material hehehe). Anyways, my point here, assuming adding the videobalance filter into the pipeline is acceptable, is regarding the interface for this. If I understand you correctly David you're looking to minimise the number of controls so that there is as little as possible for the user to frack up (a good strategy - I use wifey as my usability test subject and hence the KISS rule is essential *grin*); hence I was thinking of setting these controls to being dependent upon the "power_user" configuration setting being enabled. I was also thinking of tying the following keys into the enhanced player functionality I'm looking to add: 1 = decrease brightness 2 = increase brightness 3 = decrease contrast 4 = increase contrast 5 = decrease hue 6 = increase hue 7 = decrease saturation 8 = increase saturation z = increase zoom Z = decrease zoom (alternatively z = toggle zoom) a = cycle through aspect ratios i = technical video information (aspect ratio, video stream type, audio stream type, etc) Would this be acceptable from a usability standpoint and not interfere with any roadmaps if I were to submit my changes? My last point is also an interface related one - feedback to the user on current settings. I obviously don't want the video dimmed when the user adjusts these settings but it would be nice to add a status bar to give feedback to the user as they adjust the video balance. I've not looked in detail at how the status bars work - I assume they aren't tied to dimming (or are they?), would it be acceptable to add a status bar in the centre of the screen giving feedback on current levels as they are adjusted? Lastly, would you have any glyphs for these sort of functions just lying around? Sorry again for the length of this, regards Lee -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of [email protected] Sent: 25 July 2009 15:02 To: Moovida developers list Subject: Re: A few questions Hi Lee, Picking this email up as I saw it on my phone earlier. Maybe someone has gotten back to you already but it is the weekend and most of the developers are at home or, judging by the weather out there in Barcelona this weekend, on the beach (just heading off myself). So, hopefully someone can get back to you on Monday at the latest. Im not a developer...UI designer here, and I know not the ways of the magic box we call computer. (well not in that way :p). As for the two missing features that you describe. I don't believe anyone is doing any work on those. It might be possible someone has or will look at the 'darkness' factor as I think I saw a bug report come in before about this (might have been you?). The zoom control, nobody has been looking at it, but, I had considered it before (even did some 'glyph' or button work for it) I imagined doing something simple such as zooming the video proportionately until the black bars are 'gone'. In example, if you were looking at a video with a very wide aspect ratio on your 16:9 screen: if you hit the 'zoom' button it would proportionately scale the video, keeping it centered until the bars top and bottom where gone (of course, this means you lose a lot left and right of the picture). Was considering it as a toggle, zoom in... zoom out. Nothing more. I've heard people talk about XBMC and even used the zooming controls on XBMC myself. They are interesting but, very geeky. At some point, I wouldn't mind putting in some 'more/advanced options' at the player level so you can access very geeky things like this. It is important to limit the amount of buttons on the player to the absolute bare necessity in order to keep things clutter free. This helps none technical users which is our main target group... as they got more advanced, I hope to have a simple button to access those in depth options. Anyway, beach for me now. Trust we will hear more about this on Monday and someone will be in touch. David On Sat, 25 Jul 2009 05:51:02 -0700, "Lee Jackson" <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi peeps, > > I've been having some problems getting the development branch of moovida > set-up and running according to the instructions at > http://www.moovida.com/documentation/tutorials/ubuntu-8.04.html. Before > I spend an age hacking at this is there anything significant that has > changed (or been omitted) from those instructions (I'm on ubuntu 9.04)? > I DID at one point find a different command to get the development tree > (compared to that in that document and in the hack page on the main > site) using a different path but I can't seem to find that page again so > I'm also wondering if I'm indeed looking at the development branch.... > > > > I should also ask, if I am running from a remote shell with the display > exported, should I be expecting a blank screen (the splash displays but > moovida doesn't) when I start the development version of moovida from > that shell? I've no problems doing this with the live version..... > > > > The above notwithstanding, I've spent a few days hacking the > video_parser.py in-order to get my library recognised. It's an > assortment of anime, TV and movies coming from various sources and > **probably** typical of most users content. I've gone from the 1.05 > version having 10-20% of the content being recognised and added to the > movie/tv show libraries (with 80% uncategorised), to @90% being > categorised with most of the content that is being problematic being so > for understandable reasons. I'd like to submit a patch at some point (I > need to tidy my code and I wouldn't mind knocking a few of the outlying > cases on the head first) - is it acceptable to submit patches to this > list rather than going the bzr route? > > > > Lastly, the single biggest problem I have with using moovida as my main > HTPC "platform" is the lack of video controls. On my main display there > are a few problems with the video coming out of gstreamer: > > > > 1) It's too dark. I'm comparing this to the video that > mplayer will output with the default settings and there is a definite > loss of video quality. I'm really noticing this because I bought a > Panasonic 50" G10 a few weeks ago and have been constantly playing with > the settings to get the "best" quality picture out of it. > > 2) Lack of aspect/zoom controls. I HATE black bars with > a vengeance (I know, I'm a philistine) so I will usually zoom or change > the aspect ratio until I'm happy. > > > > Now I've been looking at how moovida handles video playback and finally > found some examples of how to add additional filters into the playbin > pipeline (http://pygstdocs.berlios.de/pygst-tutorial/playbin.html - this > is my first time working with gstreamer) and I was thinking that I would > try adding the videobalance plugin and just hooking in some keys to > increase or decrease each value. If this worked I could also look at > zooming/aspect control with the videobox/videocrop plugins. > Alternatively, I had a quick look at how totem implements their > brightness, contrast etc controls and presumed I could adopt a similar > strategy of using gstcolorbalance. I also found an example with pigment > (https://code.fluendo.com/pigment/trac/browser/branches/pigment-tests/pi > gment-python/examples/colormatrix.py) and I was wondering if there was > anything else in pigment which might "do the trick" for changing basic > settings. > > > > The point of the above is to ask a) is there anyone working on this sort > of features at the moment and if not b) would it NOT be a waste of my > time to work on it? I've only a few hours each week to work on personal > projects so it will take me a while to hack this and I don't want to > have something working in a few months only to find that the core > developers managed to add something in a few hours of their time ;) And > if it is worth me working on this can anyone suggest which would be the > best strategy of the above or suggest an alternate approach? > > > > So, sorry , longer than I thought and I hope that I can at least > contribute something of a little use to this project since I want it as > my main HTPC platform. I really love the front end, absolutely brilliant > work, and the code behind it also looks wonderful (so nice to read code > and understand what's going on). > > > > Regards > > > > Lee > > > Internal Virus Database is out of date. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.175 / Virus Database: 270.9.9/1806 - Release Date: 22/11/2008 18:59
