SoC 2009/Media Center Interface for VLC

This project is part of Google Summer of Code 2009. Student: Barry Wardell Mentor: Ilkka Ollakka

Project Abstract

While it is easy to use and functional, the existing default, Qt based GUI for VLC is targeted towards use on the desktop. I propose to develop a new "Media Center" style GUI. This GUI will be based on Qt and OpenGL and will aim to be aesthetically pleasing, while remaining easy to use and functional. It will draw on many nice features of other popular media center software such as Front Row, Windows Media Center and XBMC.

There was a Summer of Code project last year by Dylan Yudaken to work on PVR improvements. This project included some work on a PVR-style interface using OpenGL. My project could potentially build on this work to develop a fully fledged media center interface.

Compiling the GUI

The media center GUI was created with the intention of being able to make use of the many cutting edge improvements that have come to Qt in recent versions, some of which are not yet available in the most recent Qt release. As a result, compiling it is a bit more involved than compiling the standard version of VLC. These instructions assume that you are already able to compile the VLC master branch and will just discuss the extra steps required for compiling the Media Center GUI. Once Qt 4.6 is released, some of this will become redundant.

Dependencies

Recent version of SQLite 3

The media library requires a recent version of SQLite (I think 3.6 or newer). Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) already includes a sufficiently recent version, although older operating systems may not.

In particular, the version of SQLite included in the latest version of OS X Leopard is 3.4.0, which is too old. It's relatively straightforward to install a more recent version using MacPorts. Just install MacPorts and then do 'sudo port install sqlite3'.

Qt 4.6

The Media Center GUI makes use of the Qt animation and state machine frameworks from the Kinetic project. These frameworks were previously available as Qt solutions (animation, state machine), were recently merged into Qt's master branch and are scheduled for inclusion in the next version, Qt 4.6, scheduled for release later this year. It also requires the QtOpenGL and QtSVG modules, which are already included in Qt 4.5 and above.

To get a sufficiently recent Qt version, you need to checkout the code from their Git repository and compile it yourself. This isn't as difficult as expected, but does it take some time to compile. The basic steps are:

• Checkout the git repository: git clone git://gitorious.org/qt/qt.git
• (optional) Switch to the master-stable branch: git checkout -b master-stable origin/master-stable. This branch was designed to give you code that is guaranteed to at least compile, whereas the master branch doesn't guarantee anything. See this blog post for more details.
• ./configure
• make
• sudo make install

This will install Qt into /usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.6.0/.

OpenGL

It is required that OpenGL be working on your system. Any OpenGL implementation that works with Qt's OpenGL module (which I think most do) should be fine.

Getting the code

All of the code for this project is available in the qtmc branch of my git repository. The code can be checked out using:

git clone git://git.videolan.org/vlc-barry.git

and then switching to the qtmc branch:

cd vlc-barry

git checkout -b qtmc origin/qtmc

Compiling

Compiling follows the normal VLC compilation process, but we need to make sure the new version of Qt gets used:

export PATH=/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.6.0/bin:${PATH}

export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/Trolltech/Qt-4.6.0/lib/pkgconfig/

and also need to give a few extra options to configure (the last two are optional):

../configure --enable-qtmc --enable-media-library --enable-sqlite --enable-debug --disable-nls

If SQLite has been installed in a non-standard place (as is the case in OS X), you also need to direct configure to that location:

../configure --enable-qtmc --enable-media-library --enable-sqlite --enable-debug --disable-nls --with-sqlite=/opt/local/

Running

The code is run in the usual way, but you specify that the media center interface and opengl vout should be used:

./vlc -Iqtmc -Vopengl

or on OS X

./VLC.app/Contents/MacOS/VLC -Iqtmc

Before any media will appear in the browsing screens, make sure to configure the Media Library search paths in the settings.

Status

I will post regular status updates to my blog.

Projected Timeline

April 20 Accepted for summer of code!

April 20 - May 23 Familiarise myself with the VLC code and the PVR code in the vlc-dylanza git repository. Meet with my mentor and the developers on IRC and the mailing list to discuss plans for the project. Determine a realistic set of goals to aim towards.

May 23 - June 6 Begin planning of the interface. Collect the best ideas from other media centers and determine what will be involved to implement each of these ideas. Start writing code to implement the GUI, either building on top of the existing PVR code or starting anew.

June 7 - June 15 I will aim to have some initial code incorporating VLC into a full screen window. This will allow for basic control of playback of audio and video.

June 15 - June 21 I will be attending the conference "12th Capra Meeting on Radiation Reaction" and will take a break from Summer of Code.

June 21 - July 6 I will aim to have at least a minimal Qt/OpenGL Media Center GUI fully up and running with at least basic functionality of video playback and playlist support. I will then continue to refine the interface, adding functionality and documentation.

July 6 - July 13 I will prepare for the mid term review and will aim to have completed any tasks my mentor has deemed necessary for me to pass.

July 12 - July 18 I will attend the conference "Twelfth Marcel Grossmann Meeting".

July 20 - Aug 7 I will aim towards a functioning Media Center GUI running on at least one Operating System (ideally, the code will be written in a cross-platform way since it will make use of Qt/OpenGL). It may not be as fully featured as existing media center software, but will provide a good base for future work to build on. It will support browsing for media and playing back of video and audio.

Aug 8 I will aim to have my project completed ahead of the suggested pencils down date and will take a holiday.