SoC 2007 projects

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Here is a list of the accepted projects for the Google Summer of Code 2007.

List of current projects

Advanced subtitle support for VLC

Nowadays, with international shipping and multi-cultural nations, an increasing number of people prefers to watch videos with the original audio track. However, since most people wouldn't be fluent with all the source languages they come across, subtitles are in widespread use to overcome this.
The set of subtitling formats supported by the VLC player currently covers simple formats. One of the rather widely used formats, SSA/ASS, is not properly supported though - probably due to its capabilities for advanced styling, animation effects, and even drawing commands.
My goal for this Summer of Code project is to provide VLC with rendering capabilities for this format. Ultimately, I'm desiring 99% compatibility with what's considered the reference for it: the Windows renderer "VSFilter".
To achieve this goals, I already started implementing a standalone filter for this purpose, called asa. Therefore, a rough outline of my plans is:
1. Create bindings between VLC and asa.
2. Fix the remaining bugs and missings in asa.
3. Look for and cover extended usage cases in both VLC and asa (subtitle picture streaming, drawing mode, OpenType glyph substitution support)

VLC Mac OS X Framework Implementation

Proposition: Write a Cocoa Mac OS X (and possibly GNUStep) Framework that would serve as a foundation to the 2 differents Mac OS X VLC binaries.
Those binaries are the standard VLC.app executable, and the VLC web browser plugin.
This Framework could also be used as a library for other applications that need a video output.

Matroska Muxer for VLC

  • Project page: Matroska Muxer
  • Student: Hugo de Jesús Garza Gómez
  • Mentor: Steve Lhomme
  • Abstract:
In recent years the digital video industry has seen a boom in the number of users; thanks originally to the DVD for bring digital video in mass quantities, but more recently to innovative websites such as YouTube and peer to peer applications where users can share their videos. The reason that these applications are successful is because their users use a standard container for video files which for years has been the AVI container. However as time went on the AVI container was outgrown by the rapid pace of change and the needs of the consumer. To satisfy these needs new containers were created with more features such as menus, chapters, and multiple audio streams.
The AVI format was originally created by Microsoft as an extension to the RIFF format for its video for windows technology thus establishing it as the standard format for distributing video files. In recent years newer audio and video codecs have been released which brought to light many deficiencies in the AVI format. As a solution to this problem the matroska container was created to be an opensource flexible and cross-platform Audio/Video container format. In order to play matroska streams it is necessary to use a media player capable of reproducing them, such as VLC by the VideLAN project. VLC is a cross-platform media player, but is unique in that it supports a large number of multimedia formats without the need for additional codecs. One of the major strength of VLC is also that it can receive and broadcast videos streams, which is where Matroska could find a new use.
The proposal for this project is to create a matroska muxer for the VLC media player in C++ using the libmatroska library which would allow the creation of new matroska streams and modification of existing streams. The muxer would support various audio/video codecs and most of the features of the matroska spec: multiple audio streams and multiple subtitles.

RTSP Streaming Server in VLC

The main goal as mentioned in the project listing is to enable VLC with RTCP features, interleave RTP stream over RTSP when firewall is encountered, perform rtsp tunneling over http and perform per account options. If time permits follow-up with a performance evaluation of the streaming server code and pinpoint bottleneck issues.

Fullscreen Controller and Advanced Subtitle Support on VLC media player

VLC is known as a lightweight media player that shines in playing files regardless of format. However, its UI is underdeveloped in comparison to competitors. While a revamped UI might not be first and foremost on the developers' minds, adding a basic control interface in fullscreen mode would greatly enhance VLC's adoption.
From a usability standpoint, it is a hassle for users to exit fullscreen mode just to operate the controls controlling pause, play, fast forward, and the position of playback. Power users and developers usually have customized keybindings for use in fullscreen mode, but the vast majority of users expect a controller in fullscreen mode. Moreover, it is inconsistent to support fullscreen controls on the Mac OSX version but not on *nix or Windows.
The second proposal concerns displaying and rendering subtitles. VLC's current subtitle capabilities is rather rudimentary. Work on this aspect of VLC will consist of three parts: detection of subtitle streams (either with DVD input on disc or in a file in the same directory as the video), automated parsing (must handle all formats and errors in syntax), and display (smart rendering, advance rendering, positioning, size, shape, font, colour, HTML tags, etc.).

Audio Extensions for VLC media player

  • Project page: Audio Extensions
  • Student: Biodun Osunkunle
  • Mentor: Derk-Jan Hartman
  • Abstract:
The VLC media player's audio post processing capabilities can be improved. Currently, preset equalizer values, an option for a graphic equalizer with the extended GUI, and a headphone virtualization option.
The goal of this project is to extend these audio capabilities to include such features as Dolby Prologic 2 like features, (psycho acoustic audio processing), and other effects such as artificial reverberation.

Overlay Video Filter for VLC

The goal for this project to develop a video filter for VLC to allow third party applications to overlay static and dynamic alpha-blended images ontop of a VLC video. The idea here is to provide VLC with a video filter that is comparable to what bmovl and bmovl2 provide for MPLayer. What that is, is a video filter that enables third party applications to get access to a piece of shared memory or similar, in which the third party application can draw something. The third party application can then notify VLC that the shared memory has been updated, and VLC will then composite the image into subsequent frames.
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