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VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

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Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#11

Post by zobzu »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

I'm all for funding 40k pounds (~65k USD) for VLC (they deserve it), but 40k under the guise of Metro seems a bit much, no?

Personally I feel like the 40K GBP should go to all the devs of VLC combined. Porting to metro is only a small part of VLC itself, and is not worth 40K GBP.

What makes it worth that money, and that people will pay for it, is that VLC is the hard work of all the _previous_ developers.

So while I'm all for giving people money to make an open source project advance, I feel a little wrong about this very one.

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#13

Post by i386 »

zobzu wrote: post #11
ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

I'm all for funding 40k pounds (~65k USD) for VLC (they deserve it), but 40k under the guise of Metro seems a bit much, no?

Personally I feel like the 40K GBP should go to all the devs of VLC combined. Porting to metro is only a small part of VLC itself, and is not worth 40K GBP. What makes it worth that money, and that people will pay for it, is that VLC is the hard work of all the _previous_ developers. So while I'm all for giving people money to make an open source project advance, I feel a little wrong about this very one.

What? then have no VLC for metro because they gave the kitty away and had no work done at all? Defeats the purpose don't you think?

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#14

Post by mtgx »

jbk wrote: post #7
ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

I'm all for funding 40k pounds (~65k USD) for VLC (they deserve it), but 40k under the guise of Metro seems a bit much, no?

Well, no, this is not too much. This is an excellent question. Designing a UI above VLC for Metro is quite easy, and we've already done some proof of concept. Finding a designer would be simple and 1k$ for the project would be too much already :) It would take a couple of months and be done with it. The issue is to get on the store. And this is hard. Why is that? VLC (and its underlying libraries, including codecs, n…

Wow. Sounds like anyone who's ever made Windows software and wants to port it to Windows 8 store is going to have to go through a lot of pain.

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#15

Post by asveikau »

Todd wrote: post #8
jbk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, this is not too much. This is an excellent question. Designing a UI above VLC for Metro is quite easy, and we've already done some proof of concept. Finding a designer would be simple and 1k$ for the project would be too much already :) It would take a couple of months and be done with it. The issue is to get on the store. And this is hard. Why is that? VLC (and its underlying libraries, including codecs, n…

It sounds like it's going to be a real challenge, then. Much of the restriction around API usage is related to IO and other things that can block for more than about 50ms. As you know, the APIs that are allowable have been converted to be asynchronous, or have been replaced entirely with an async equivalent (more or less). This will make it difficult to just link with a gcc lib unless it's been purged of these refere…

The asynchronicity stuff has made it into many a presentation, but it's not really about that. If it were all about async maybe someone can tell me why they're not allowing I/O completion ports and APCs. It's about not trusting developers, and rooted in an overreaction to the perceived problems in the existing Win32 ecosystem. You can do async I/O with Win32 just fine, but Microsoft now believes you're too stupid to do it.

Also, there is a port of sqlite to WinRT.

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#16

Post by Todd »

PaulHoule wrote: post #9
Todd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's going to be a real challenge, then. Much of the restriction around API usage is related to IO and other things that can block for more than about 50ms. As you know, the APIs that are allowable have been converted to be asynchronous, or have been replaced entirely with an async equivalent (more or less). This will make it difficult to just link with a gcc lib unless it's been purged of these refere…

Async comm is relatively easy to deal with in the context of media players than it is in other applications because in media players there is a fairly direct flow of information from a file or a network connection to the video and sound subsystems. If you're building the kind of app I was building a few years ago, such as semantic graph editors, where a change in one UI element might have effects that propagate to ot…

You make a good point about the linear flow that's typical in media players. I haven't looked at the VLC source, so I'm not sure about how it's structured. With 7M LOC, I'm guessing that there might be some entanglements. The async model causes the async pattern to propagate all the way up the call chain. The I/O and other async dependencies would have to be decoupled from the gcc library to minimize impact on the existing code base.

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#17

Post by cheapsteak »

mtgx wrote: post #14
jbk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, no, this is not too much. This is an excellent question. Designing a UI above VLC for Metro is quite easy, and we've already done some proof of concept. Finding a designer would be simple and 1k$ for the project would be too much already :) It would take a couple of months and be done with it. The issue is to get on the store. And this is hard. Why is that? VLC (and its underlying libraries, including codecs, n…

Wow. Sounds like anyone who's ever made Windows software and wants to port it to Windows 8 store is going to have to go through a lot of pain.

If it's not very computationally intensive program, using javascript/html is starting to make a lot more sense

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#18

Post by Todd »

asveikau wrote: post #15
Todd wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like it's going to be a real challenge, then. Much of the restriction around API usage is related to IO and other things that can block for more than about 50ms. As you know, the APIs that are allowable have been converted to be asynchronous, or have been replaced entirely with an async equivalent (more or less). This will make it difficult to just link with a gcc lib unless it's been purged of these refere…

The asynchronicity stuff has made it into many a presentation, but it's not really about that. If it were all about async maybe someone can tell me why they're not allowing I/O completion ports and APCs. It's about not trusting developers, and rooted in an overreaction to the perceived problems in the existing Win32 ecosystem. You can do async I/O with Win32 just fine, but Microsoft now believes you're too stupid to…

You're right, that's not the only issue. The "Windows Store" apps are limited to a specific subset of what we're accustomed to coming from Win32 and COM. Much of this is designed to sandbox applications.

So there's a new API and the new API is async all the way through. The async aspect gets a lot of attention because it's so pervasive, and can require some adapting. But you're right, the limited API can have a larger impact on a porting effort.

BTW, my point about no database API is in reference to the lack of System.Data (ADO.NET). The assumption is that people are expected to consume data through Web services. It's great that SQLite supports WinRT, though. That definitely fills a big need.

Re: VLC for the new Windows 8 User Experience ("Metro")

#20

Post by sliverstorm »

jbk wrote: post #7
ComputerGuru wrote: post #6

I'm all for funding 40k pounds (~65k USD) for VLC (they deserve it), but 40k under the guise of Metro seems a bit much, no?

Well, no, this is not too much. This is an excellent question. Designing a UI above VLC for Metro is quite easy, and we've already done some proof of concept. Finding a designer would be simple and 1k$ for the project would be too much already :) It would take a couple of months and be done with it. The issue is to get on the store. And this is hard. Why is that? VLC (and its underlying libraries, including codecs, n…

Do you think VLC will be the better for it?
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