Re: Video support

[Paul Cooper <pgc openadvantage org>]

On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 16:43 -0500, Larry Ewing wrote:
> On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 03:20 -0500, Gabriel Burt wrote:
> > On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 09:10 +0100, Paul Cooper wrote:
> > > Thanks for the pointer - it was seeing the Gdv stuff on the Diva blog
> > > that got me thinking about video support in f-spot. For now it would be
> > > great if I could work out how to include video files in the db, tag
> > > them, and show a snapshot frame (like nautilus) and then launch totem
> > > when clicked. Inline playing would be great but right now I'm just
> > > struggling to work out how to do the simple stuff.
> > 
> > Okay, makes sense to bite of bits (well, chunks really :)) at a time.
> > The database shouldn't need to be modified for this, it doesn't care
> > about file types at all.  Tagging should work fine too.  The problem is
> > getting the photos in and represented as objects that can work in that
> > framework.
> > 
> > I'm not familiar with adding new formats in, but doing a quick grep
> > PngFile * on the source shows that you'll need to add an entry to
> > ImageFile.cs for the file types you're wanting to support, and the
> > corresponding class that knows about them (which implements the virtual
> > methods of ImageFile).  There are issues like disabling features you
> > likely don't want to implement for videos (like rotating), etc, but I
> > think that should get you started.
> > 
> 
> Supporting video clips are definitely a possibility since they are
> something that many many cameras produce and have organizational
> requirements similar to photos. Having said that I really don't want
> f-spot to be in the business of video editing so sticking to some simple
> tagging/playing (using the gnome mime db for player) would probably be a
> good goal.

Well I was thinking just about displaying a frame in the library, and
tagging. Playing and editing would be external apps (totem, Diva,
Pitivi, etc) - if you look at iPhoto it does this: take a frame
snapshot, then open QT to play the clip. It would be nice to filter by
tag, and then export the results into a new project in Diva/Pitivi - but
they need to be usable first.

> Timeline wise I don't have any room to work on this myself and I don't
> consider it high priority, but if any of you are sufficiently motivated
> I'll try to help out.  Gabiel's suggestion on how to get started is
> good, in the long run abusing ImageFile like that is a bad idea but it
> is a good place to start playing.

I followed Gabriel's advice and but I think my lack of ignorance of
media formats and how to use Gnome infrastructure to create a frame
snapshot (like nautilus does - if one has been made already we should
reuse it, and if not make one to be reused?) is holding me back. But
I'll keep plugging away over the next couple of weeks and see if I get
anywhere - trying to understand Gnome.Thumbnail and
Gnome.ThumbnailFactory atm.

Paul

> --Larry
>