Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
On Mon, 2011-07-18 at 14:42 +0100, Stephen Rowles wrote: On 17 July 2011 15:29, Tuomas Tonteri t...@tuomastonteri.fi wrote: Hi, I was wondering what is the place of Freevo 2.0 in the landscape of alternatives? What makes it unique from all the other HTPC software? There seems to be more competition here than there was five years ago. This from a very happy user of Freevo 1.X through its DirectFB backend. The best thing for me in Freevo (1) is the use of multiple separate programs, especially its use of mplayer. XBMC looks very flash, but configuring and actually using it is a pain IMO. It's very much style over substance. I tried it for a bit but got fed up and went back to Freevo. Yes they've made it look nice but don't appear to have sat down to make the day to day use smooth (or least not out of the box). It seems that I'm not in the minority then (well not on this list anyway :-) ). I though about switching but having played with it the UI flow just doesn't work for me. I think my biggest dis-like was having to go all the way back to the top of a directory listing just to go up one directory level. It also doesn't have built in TV support which is the main thing I use Freevo 1.0 for. Without TV recording Freevo 2.0 is no use to me personally. Unforunately I don't know enough python/C or have enough hours in the day to offer help at the moment. I've been having problems finding time to work on freevo recently, but my intention has been to look at this side of freevo 2 and see if I can't get it working with Freevo 1 initially, just to get the ball rolling, and then think about Freevo 2 and TV, Cheers Adam -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
On 17.07.2011 12:19, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: On Sun, 17 Jul 2011 11:47:46 +0200 Dirk Meyer dis...@freevo.org wrote: Long mail and I hope to get some feedback. Who is willing to help? Code C or Python? Clutter knowledge? Gstreamer? Web-stuff? Or a designer without coding? It would be a shame if Freevo dies, but I cannot do this alone. I'm not capable of coding or design but i've sent euros - that bit I can do. Thank you very much! Dischi -- Gee Brain, what are we going to do tonight? The same thing, we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world! -- Pinky and the Brain -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
Hi, On 17.07.2011 16:29, Tuomas Tonteri wrote: I was wondering what is the place of Freevo 2.0 in the landscape of alternatives? What makes it unique from all the other HTPC software? There seems to be more competition here than there was five years ago. IMHO there is only one big new player: XBMC. Yes, there are others, but they are small, just like we are now. This from a very happy user of Freevo 1.X through its DirectFB backend. The best thing for me in Freevo (1) is the use of multiple separate programs, especially its use of mplayer. I do not want to change that. There are good video players and many good people working on them. We do not have the man power to build our own player and I don't want to. Just hook into mplayer and gstreamer and reuse their good work. Dischi -- Veni, Vidi, VISA: I came, I saw, I did a little shopping. -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
Hi On 18.07.2011 15:42, Stephen Rowles wrote: On 17 July 2011 15:29, Tuomas Tonteri t...@tuomastonteri.fi mailto:t...@tuomastonteri.fi wrote: Hi, I was wondering what is the place of Freevo 2.0 in the landscape of alternatives? What makes it unique from all the other HTPC software? There seems to be more competition here than there was five years ago. This from a very happy user of Freevo 1.X through its DirectFB backend. The best thing for me in Freevo (1) is the use of multiple separate programs, especially its use of mplayer. XBMC looks very flash, but configuring and actually using it is a pain IMO. IMHO configuring it was easier than configuring Freevo. But I don't have everythng running, e.g. my LCD does not work with XBMC. But you only configure once, using it is the major part. And I think Freevo is better in that area: simpler! It's very much style over substance. I tried it for a bit but got fed up and went back to Freevo. Yes they've made it look nice but don't appear to have sat down to make the day to day use smooth (or least not out of the box). Agreed. It also doesn't have built in TV support which is the main thing I use Freevo 1.0 for. Without TV recording Freevo 2.0 is no use to me personally. Unforunately I don't know enough python/C or have enough hours in the day to offer help at the moment. I won't have time to work on the TV support, but since we already have it, I guess we can find someone porting what we have in 1.9 to 2.0 Dischi -- Disclaimer: the above is the author's personal opinion and is not the opinion or policy of his employer or of the little green men that have been following him all day. -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
Hi On 18.07.2011 16:32, Francisco Eduardo Álvarez Solano wrote: Without TV recording Freevo 2.0 is no use to me personally. Unforunately I don't know enough python/C or have enough hours in the day to offer help at the moment. Just as Freevo uses mplayer for music/movie playing, why cannot it use tvtime/vdr for watching/recording tv? I guess it should be easier to integrate both programs into freevo, in a similar way as mplayer, than reinventing the wheel. That is what I have in mind. I have the basic TV handling working but its code broke during some updates. Someone needs to fix it. The tvserver has extra processes called tv device to do the work. And these tv devices just use other programs without reinventing the wheel. There is an example in Freevo 2.0 using dvbstreamer as backend. I don't know enough Python or C either, but I do use vdr for tv recording, and I recall it from freevo main menu. Perhaps it wouldn't be difficult to achieve a closer integration. I do not know VDR well. Maybe. Dischi -- Don't read everything you believe. -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
On 19.07.2011 00:58, Elizabeth Dodd wrote: On Mon, 18 Jul 2011 16:32:16 +0200 Francisco Eduardo Álvarez Solano franciscoe.alva...@gmail.com wrote: Just as Freevo uses mplayer for music/movie playing, why cannot it use tvtime/vdr for watching/recording tv? My TV signal is now DVB-T and incompatible with tvtime I guess we could have the following sources for recording: - tvtime for analog - dvbstreamer for DVB-T/C/S - gstreamer has generic backend Dischi -- The only problem with mornings is that they happen too early in the day. -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
Hi Adam, On 19.07.2011 20:47, Adam Charrett wrote: It seems that I'm not in the minority then (well not on this list anyway :-) ). I though about switching but having played with it the UI flow just doesn't work for me. I think my biggest dis-like was having to go all the way back to the top of a directory listing just to go up one directory level. Yes, that kind of sucks. It also has so much eye candy I do not need. We should a put the video I am playing into a small window or the background to go into another menu like weather? I've been having problems finding time to work on freevo recently Welcome to the club but my intention has been to look at this side of freevo 2 and see if I can't get it working with Freevo 1 initially, just to get the ball rolling, and then think about Freevo 2 and TV, That would be great. You are one of the two people I had in mind for the TV part. The other one is Soenke. The TV part is designed to even work without Freevo 2.0 itself -- well, you need some sort of interface, but a webserver or smartphone app would also be possible. Dischi, now done with answering all the mails :) -- Only Irish coffee provides in a single glass all four essential food groups -- alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and fat. -- Alex Levine -- Magic Quadrant for Content-Aware Data Loss Prevention Research study explores the data loss prevention market. Includes in-depth analysis on the changes within the DLP market, and the criteria used to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these DLP solutions. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfnl/114/51385063/ ___ Freevo-users mailing list Freevo-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freevo-users
Re: [Freevo-users] The future of Freevo 2.0
Hei Dischi great to hear that freevo 2 is back on the road! For me, the main plus of freevo 1.x is the simple plugin API... and the powerfull configuration options. Is there allready a plan, how the plugins can be used/reused in freevo 2? is there a new API or just copy and past of the old ones? Andreas Am Sonntag, 17. Juli 2011, um 11.47:46 schrieb Dirk Meyer: Hi everyone, please read this if you are a Freebo user, even if you are no developer at all. I have been thinking about the future of Freevo 2.0 and need all your help to get it going somehow. I tried XBMC some days ago and while it looks very nice, it forces me to organize my media collection in a way I don't want to and has some usability issues (IMHO). Therefore, I still need Freevo. :) The main problem with Freevo 2.0 is my and Jason's lack of time the last year. Development was not only slow, it wasn't existant. I now have one Freevo-hacking day in my calender each week which may be dropped if the weather is too good but it is there and I plan to use it. There are some minor issues I will fix no matter what happens. But I do not have the time to finish Freevo 2.0 to make it look and feel like I want. If you want to help in any way, please answer to this mail and we can discuss it. If you need help to start (like kaa.base help), feel free to ask. Jason and I can both answer your questions. Jason: I assign your name to some smaller stuff here, I hope it is OK. ;) Freevo Core: 1. kaa.base is done and has all the cool stuff I want. If there is a bug, Jason and I will take care of it. But it shouldn't be much. 2. kaa.metadata is also done. Maybe add or change a parser, but that is not important right now. Patches are always welcome. 3. kaa.imlib2 is also working as it should and it does not play a big role in the Freevo 2.0 core. 4. The Freevo core directory is also mostly done. There are some minor bugs in the playlist stuff but it should be easy to fix. The menu reload also has some problems I need to investigate. To summarize: the core is mostly done and the remaining points are on my TODO list and I will fix them. Now the bigger problems: GUI. The clutter-based GUI can do nice stuff but needs some more work. 5. kaa.candy has the basics, but may need some nice effects like mirror-effect, better animations, etc. It has everything we need to make Freevo 2.0 work but it could be nicer. If you know C (Python not needed) and want to play with clutter or if you now Python and want to dive into kaa.candy, drop me a note. You only need to know kaa.base and clutter as dependency. 6. XBMC looks s cool. The big background images, the animations. Nice! We do have the code in Freevo 2.0 to do the same (even support to grab TV show or movie specific wallpapers and images). I need help from a designer to make look Freevo even better. Can someone make a fake screenshot how Freevo should look like? Can someone provide nice wallpapers (CC licence)? This is one of the things I can not do myself. The GUI stuff needs help from you. C programmers, Python programmers and artists. Or if you cannot help with that, tell us what you want to have. Let's dive into the media plugins: 7. kaa.beacon is mostly done. I have some minor things on my list I will do the next weeks. The big problem is a better network support. Jason: we talked about distributed beacon servers. Do you still plan to do this? Do you still have time for it? 8. kaa.popcorn (or video player) needs clutter support to write on a texture. This would enable us to draw on top of the video and put it on the background. Again: help needed here. we could either put the mplayer output on a texture or use gstreamer. Jason played with the first option but the code is not finished yet. Jason: do you think you can finish it? Others: do you want to help here? You need to understand kaa.base and kaa.popcorn (which you could change to your needs). Besides that, mplayer and/or gstreamer. The mplayer integration would also require C and clutter knowledge. The gstreamer integration needs pygstreamer. And we need to figure out how to integrate it with kaa.candy and the Freevo core. That would be my task. 9. The image viewer could look nicer. If you want to help on this smaller part of Freevo, feel free to tell me. 10. I have no time to work on TV support. I need help on working on the TV server, the TV devices (e.g. dvbstreamer), the EPG, etc. This is one of the major tasks I want to assign a new maintainer. And something different: 11. There is not webserver for Freevo 2.0. Anyone willing to take over this part? You have complete control what you want to do. I guess you have to know your HTML/CSS/JS-fu. 12. Android / iPhone support? Not needed but nice to have 13. Port plugins from Freevo 1.9 to 2.0 And last but not least: 14. It has been 2 or 3 years since I last asked for donations and I am paying
