Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Front End Support => MaLa Frontend => Topic started by: loadman on December 03, 2009, 05:09:52 pm
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As most of you know I spent some time replacing the video Engine in mala. This can be found in the mala beta.
I also wanted to replace the audio engine that drives the background music and Jukebox. There were various problems, Music resuming, shuffle/ random music was not so random etc.
I did some research the considered and tested the latest engines available and what I ended finding was the best idea was to use the 'VideoGrabber' package as it supports a Playlist and a few other goodies. I paid good money for this so it is a great that I can use it for audio as well.
So far so good. And no more bass.dll required :-)
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Great News!
About that Video package. What was it called? I know it uses FFDSHOW in the background, and I downloaded the docs on the ffdshow api but haven't quite groked it yet. Did you purchase a wrapper for ffdshow, or are you making use of the ffdshow api directly.
I only ask because, well, since it's already going to have to be installed to run Mala, I thought I might as well make use of it in my plugin as well (assuming that doesn't violate any license agreements).
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I also wanted to replace the audio engine that drives the background music and Jukebox. There were various problems, Music resuming, shuffle/ random music was not so random etc.
I noticed that the screensaver isn't very random and I've actually had the same video play 2+ times in a row or within a few minutes of each other. I'd think that with 250+ videos that you would constantly see new ones pop up. Would this randomness be fixed as well?
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With true randomness, a video that has just played has the same odds of playing as any other video. Therefore it is very possible to to have the same video play twice in a short period of time. Sounds like you want a random playlist created before play begins instead of a random choice made after every video is displayed.
On the other hand, its getting late here in GMT-05:00 and I'm posting while too sleepy. Wasn't this a thread about audio? :dizzy:
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On the other hand, its getting late here in GMT-05:00 and I'm posting while too sleepy. Wasn't this a thread about audio? :dizzy:
Oh it is, but he mentioned VideoGrabber and using it for the audio. So I was just wondering. :)
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Really, for "random" things like this, what you really want is a shuffle.
Ie take your whole list, shuffle it randomly, then start playing top to bottom. When you've played everything, reshuffle. I supposed it'd still be possible to play the same piece back to back, but just once per rotation.
That's the way I'm doing the slideshow anyway.
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About that Video package. What was it called? I know it uses FFDSHOW in the background, and I downloaded the docs on the ffdshow api but haven't quite groked it yet. Did you purchase a wrapper for ffdshow, or are you making use of the ffdshow api directly.
Using a Wrapper. http://www.datastead.com/products/tvideograbber.html (http://www.datastead.com/products/tvideograbber.html)
With true randomness, a video that has just played has the same odds of playing as any other video. Therefore it is very possible to to have the same video play twice in a short period of time. Sounds like you want a random playlist created before play begins instead of a random choice made after every video is displayed.
Yes, I just added a line into the code so that might improve things a little for now. http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=Randomize (http://www.delphibasics.co.uk/RTL.asp?Name=Randomize)
Ie take your whole list, shuffle it randomly, then start playing top to bottom. When you've played everything, reshuffle. I supposed it'd still be possible to play the same piece back to back, but just once per rotation.
Yes, Audio will be like this. The Video screensave uses a different method but I will consider porting it to use this one day