sfeMovie project [v1.0 RC1 available]

[slotdev]

Ahh ok, thanks very much

[Ceylo]

Hello!

Here are some news about the project . This time the updates mainly target bugfixes. And at the time I'm writing this, there is no more known blocking bug!

As for the fixed bugs:
- there's no more shimmering while rendering on Windows
- there's no more freeze at the end of the movie playback
- there's no more freeze when replaying the movie after its end
- there's no more freeze when replaying the movie after a manual Stop()
- there's no more random freeze when pausing/playing the movie

As for the other changes not directly related to bugs:
- the time system has been switched to milliseconds, in order to follow SFML 2.x updates
- the underlying implementation now further relies on threads : the image swap at the right time and the video decoding now occur in different threads
- when opening a video file, the first image is automatically loaded before you call Play(), in order to display this image even if the movie playback hasn't started yet
- pausing/resuming is now a little bit more efficient as it does no more involves stopping and restarting a thread

And the only remaining bug:
- there's still nothing done when the audio playback gets late

What I'm currently working on but which is still not ready:
- Visual Studio support for Windows


So, if you want to give a try at this latest update, I invite you to have a look at the sfeMovie wiki .

[Haikarainen]

Hello!

Sweet update! will check this out immediatly and reply with some feedback

Edit: Fail Couldn't play any of the 28 video files i had on my computer because of codec-errors :/ and the compileityourself-thing wasnt a road i felt like taking today.

[Ceylo]

What did you use to read your files?

If you used the beta binaries, they only include decoders for the flac, vorbis and theora formats. This is for patents reasons, because I cannot distribute the other (compiled) decoders without paying royalties.

That's why everything is provided to build sfeMovie with the decoders you want.

Thus, if you want to give it a try, you'll have to find OGV video files, or build sfeMovie yourself.


PS: note that the provided beta binary is from may 12th, which is not the updated version I was talking of in my last post.

[slotdev]

Sounds like really good progress is being made, I can't wait to get this running under Visual Studio, this will make a BIG different to the stuff I am working on.

On another note, do any of the included decoders support transparency?

I have animations I need to play, but over the top of the rendered scene. Rendering out a few thousand frames is a bit time-consuming :p

Thanks

[Ceylo]

Hi slotdev,

Thanks for your comment .

As for the decoders that support transparancy, you should have a look at the Sorenson Video 3 codec. It does look like it is indeed supported by FFmpeg (named as "svq3"), thus by sfeMovie too. It has never been tested though.

Ceylo

[slotdev]

Ah that's fantastic, thanks for the info!

[Nexus]

sfeMovie is not ready yet on Visual Studio, is it?

You define the macro sfe_movie_EXPORTS, although you use SFE_EXPORTS in the code. And it seems like some libraries aren't linked yet, I get unresolved symbols to av_free() etc.

[Ceylo]

Indeed it isn't, though I have no unresolved symbols. Actually I succeeded in making the sfeMovie Visual Studio libraries but it crashes at runtime. And even if sfe_movie_EXPORTS is defined, SFE_EXPORTS is supposed to be defined too.

Did you use the build.sh script to build sfeMovie?
Because the purpose of this script is to build FFmpeg and make the project file for your IDE through CMake, plus a little explanation for Visual Studio:

The files required to build sfeMovie for Visual Studio have been created.
Now run Visual Studio, open sfeMovie.sln and follow these instructions:
- go to the sfe-movie properties panel. There, go to Linker > Input and add the following lines:
libavdevice.a
libavformat.a
libavcodec.a
libavutil.a
libswscale.a
libz.a
libgcc.a
libmingwex.a
libmoldname.a
- build the solution

Edit: hum looks like I forgot to commit my latest CMakeLists.txt file, that defines SFE_EXPORTS. You should manually add this definition for now.

[Nexus]

Did you use the build.sh script to build sfeMovie?

No, I only ran CMake. How can I execute a .sh file without a Linux environment/emulator?

And don't you want to build FFmpeg with CMake, too?

[Ceylo]

Well.. the FFmpeg developers only provided a configure script, and I need this script to enable only the decoders that the user wants to use (and possibly pay the royalties). Thus no, I can't use CMake to build FFmpeg.

To run the build.sh script, you must use MinGW (download here) as stated on the wiki.

[Nexus]

Can't CMake invoke the configure script? It would certainly be good if you didn't force every Windows user to install those Linux tools just to build the library... Maybe you can also add binaries or links to websites where users can find them.

I think it is not MinGW, rather MSYS, isn't it? I have downloaded the "msys/console" binaries from here, and guess what's there: A Linux shell file! Is that some kind of "to understand recursion you must first understand recursion" joke? The documentation (which is stored in an extension-less file, probably to annoy Windows users more) recommends console2, the only problem is that this is a Windows console, of which I already have cmd.exe.

[Edit] Okay, I have now installed the whole MSYS, in spite of my initial hope that the shell could come standalone. To ensure that this isn't getting boring, the configure script and with it cmd.exe crashes (host for console window stopped working). With option 4 (use all codecs), I get "./configure: fork: Invalid argument", but cmd.exe stays alive.

Have you ever encountered these issues? By the way, I tried both sh.exe and bash.exe.

[Ceylo]

I dunno whether CMake could invoke this script, but anyway FFmpeg needs a recent MinGW runtime to build.

And that's why MSYS is not suitable for building sfeMovie. MSYS fails in passing the whole configure tests because of a too old runtime version. That's why a gave a link to MinGW and not MSYS.

As for giving a link to prebuilt versions, I dunno whether this is a good idea.  Because these versions usually include all the decoders and the user thinks everything is fine. But what the user often doesn't know, is that if he/she distributes his/her software program with sfeMovie, he'll probably have to pay royalties or get sued, because not all decoders are free to distribute.

By the way, I should probably add a check like "I have read the above notice and I am aware of the involved responsibilities (among which, the fact I may have to pay royalties for some decoders)".

[Nexus]

Thanks for the explanation. Sorry for the annoying questions, but how do I actually build the configure scripts with MinGW? I have already installed MinGW to test my code on g++, but I can't find a shell or a tool to run .sh files apart from those in MSYS. Do you happen to know the name of the executable with which I can execute your build script?

[Ceylo]

Your questions are NOT annoying! Actually it rather shows what anyone could wonder, and what's make sfeMovie tricky to use. And as I want it to be the most easy to use as possible... you're welcome .

As for your question, I've switched to Windows and... I'm a bit surprised. You were right with MSYS, but it's the one provided with MinGW : C:\MinGW\msys\1.0\msys.bat