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AppGameKit Classic Chat / Video Playback NEEDED!!!

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Alex_Peres
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Posted: 3rd Apr 2012 18:10
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When will you (The Game Creators) make a video playback?
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LeeBamber
TGC Lead Developer
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 02:21
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You can make a request for this feature here (http://code.google.com/p/agk/issues/list) and we will mark it as a feature request, other users can then find this and add their comments to support the idea or not. We agree video playback is a key feature AppGameKit needs, and if anyone has suggestions on which formats to support that are cross-platform in nature, that would be useful to hear.

I drink tea, and in my spare time I write software.
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 11:21
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Hi Lee - unfortunately, video playback is a complete rats' nest even just on Windows, as I know to my cost over the last 13 years working on our Language Lab software. New standards come out all the time, and different platforms like or dislike them.

On Windows you really need to use the DirectShow subsystem for playback, and each video standard needs a user-install of the appropriate (or often not appropriate!) filters. The only video standards guaranteed to work on Windows are MPEG-1 and WMV.

On Android currently: H263 H264 MP-4. WebM(VP8) is available on Android 4.0 and up.

On iOS: .mov, .mp4, .m4v, and .3gp

Mac OS - various with installed codecs.

HTML5 standards group originally wanted to make Ogg video and audio a requirement for browsers, but as usual, Apple objected. As a result the HTML video and audio tags provide for multiple versions of a video and audio file, and the browser selects the format which it knows about. For a comparison see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video

Then there's the problem of rendering the video in OpenGL. There's a discussion of it here: http://lurkertech.com/lg/ogl.video.html

So it looks as though whatever implementation is used, programmers will have to provide content in at least two formats, and probably in different sizes. On OpenGL it may be necessary to ensure that the video dimensions are ^2

For intro video or cut scenes it may be simplest to call out to the platform's default browser or media player and let that do the work. It's not elegant, but it's fast to implement.

Sorry for the long post, but I think it's important for people to understand that implementing video playback is a very complex issue indeed. There is no simple "out of the box" solution, and that's why AppGameKit (and Monkey) have so far not supported it.

-- Jim
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MrValentine
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 12:01 Edited at: 11th Apr 2012 12:03
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I think if devs are happy with having to modify the video coding aspect as per platform, it should minimise the issues...

but yeah maybe just DIVX? [I do not care for paying a licence fee but strangely I would end up with 2 licences then lol]

is it not possible to embed a codec? and sacrifice file size by a couple of meg, come on the videos will bump up the size anyway what's a couple more MB...

EDIT

Sorry I really need to switch keyboards this wireless one is annoying... [switches kb] fixed typos

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bjadams
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 12:35
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support mov and mp4 on ios, native wmv on windows and mp4 on android.

those are the most popular formats & they work natively on the respective platforms.
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polomint
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 13:54
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I agree with bjadams, those formats would be the minimum needed.

Blackberry App Development & ZX Spectrum Game Development.
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 14:55
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Quote: "formats would be the minimum needed"

That's not true for HTML5.

Quote: "maybe just DIVX"

Requires a user install on all platforms. Not popular.

Quote: "is it not possible to embed a codec?"

It's highly problematic. Plus: which codec, from where? On Windows, DShow filters are in-process COM Servers and have to be registered.

-- Jim
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apocolyp4
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 15:02
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A current work around for tier 1 is to load the video frames into an animated sprite, and play it along side a mp3 containing the videos audio. Ive done this one of my games on Android that plays an intro video when the game loads.
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MrValentine
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 15:06
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Quote: "Requires a user install on all platforms. Not popular."


not entirely true... .avi is usable...

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bjadams
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 15:38
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lets just have mov mp4 & wmv for a start, and then in due course when agk html5 is out, we can see which video format is more popular on the web & tgc can add support for that too.

but having those formats we can at least play movies.
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 16:56 Edited at: 11th Apr 2012 16:58
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Quote: "not entirely true... .avi is usable..."


AVI is a container format. It can have a variety of required codecs, for example DIVX or Cinepac or anything else. It is NOT a video format as such. You cannot guarantee that any AVI will run on all platforms.

Microsoft removed Cinepac support with Vista. As they do!

-- Jim
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MrValentine
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 17:34
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I almost forgot about that...

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Marl
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 20:31
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I must say, I'm not a fan of mp4.

Sure everyone is using it, lately, and it may be down to how people encode using it, but almost all videos I've seen that use it are smegged up with noise.

Do we need to rely on external codecs? can't something be built into the core to handle the decoding?
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 11th Apr 2012 21:11
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mp4 is also actually a container format, usually for mpeg or h.264 streams. The quality entirely depends on how good the encoding is. But the playback quality is highly dependent on the player software.

Quote: "can't something be built into the core to handle the decoding?"

That's seriously heavy-duty. Even VLC, which plays just about anything, hasn't yet been ported to Android. I don't think TGC would want to hire several programmers to do this at the moment!

-- Jim
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Kobaltic
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 00:15
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3gp works on android and ios and is small file sizes.
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JimHawkins
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 02:32
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3gp is also a container format.

If you say it "works" you mean it works in specific players. That does not mean it's easy to make it work generically in systems like AGK. 3gp is actually an mp4 container variant by yet another name with yet another set of encoding standards. It's a nightmare. It's a nightmare on Windows alone, forgetting cross-platform issues.

I have lot of painful experience of this and I really do not believe there is a simple solution. We have lecturers and teachers across the world downloading videos from X or Y site and wondering why they can't use them. Then we have to try to locate a decoder which they can use. That's just Windows. Then, of course, some codecs work on some machines with graphics system A and don't work on other machines with graphics system B.

Spawning out to default players with alternative file types seems to me to be the only practical solution currently.

-- Jim
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Mobiius
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 12:28
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Am I the only one who doesn't want video decoding??

"here is a an expression to remember - He who has the gold makes the rules."
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polomint
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 12:37
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It wouldn't really bother me too much about having video decoding at the moment. I was just thinking of writing some kind of media player for myself,

Blackberry App Development & ZX Spectrum Game Development.
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Mobiius
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 13:06
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A media player which wouldn't be able to play any media except that in it's own media folder...

"here is a an expression to remember - He who has the gold makes the rules."
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bjadams
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 13:12
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Mobiius, as long as i have a guide how to playback MOVs in iOS in T2, I don't really care much about video playback. But it would be a good option to have for future projects.

I would much more prefer to do ingame sequences and intros in html5 and be able to play that back in agk
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Mobiius
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Posted: 12th Apr 2012 21:17
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I'd rather HTTP be implemented. lol

I'm not too fussed about video playback due to file size considerations. I'd rather create a 2d 'cartoon animator' for playback, but I'm not too fussed about that either! lol

(Hmmm, maybe I'll create a 2d animation engine to go with version 2 of my my UI engine?)

"here is a an expression to remember - He who has the gold makes the rules."
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DVader
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Posted: 13th Apr 2012 00:14
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@ Mobiius, isn't 1.07 supposed to allow access to the SD card? That would solve the media folder problem easy enough when it is released. I think video playback would be useful for some apps, and fully encourage TGC to support it when finished with current updates.

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Mobiius
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Posted: 13th Apr 2012 00:22
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Quote: "isn't 1.07 supposed to allow access to the SD card?"

Dunno, apart from HTTP and drawing I haven't been looking at the new commands! lol

"here is a an expression to remember - He who has the gold makes the rules."
Paypal disagreed!
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DVader
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Posted: 13th Apr 2012 04:29
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Quote: "In addition to the camera commands, you can raid the existing photo library of your desktop/device to grab an image directly, allowing you to browser through your entire photo collection."

I assume you will be able to browse for pictures at least, obviously as video isn't supported yet.

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polomint
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Posted: 13th Apr 2012 10:10
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HTTP??? oooo PBTube

Blackberry App Development & ZX Spectrum Game Development.
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