Ah, finally, a real job - and I get to use Blitz!

I'm working for a small company here in Malaysia who has been contracted
by the Kuala Lumpur City Center to do some work(That's the Petronas Towers,
if you're unfamiliar). I'm an intern, and I've been given a challenge.

I was brought over because of my design and 3d skills, but my boss
overheard that I program as a hobby. Now he wants me to make a
simple video-player that plays mpgs on shuffle. If I can make it
work, It will be used throughout the whole KLCC complex. I want this to work.


I own Blitzmax right now, and I have already written a working program
using this code, posted by Mirko (thanks).

Are there any other solutions that you guys recommend?


[edit]
By the way, I also need to add simple a simple menu system, and
some simple animated graphics, so Windows Media Player isn't the answer.

Scala.

If it was a static set of videos that dont need to be dynamically loaded, I'd have just converted them to AVIs and do it in Flash, easy as crap to make menus in it, and they look all nice & vectorized in the process. ;/

Cant see a prob usin BMax w/ GUI module though, as it appears to be very flexible with what you can do with it (dont own it here {yet}, so just a spectators opinion), just as long as you can get the MPG playback goin flawlessly.

That is kick butt. I think those towers are soo cool ... have been in love with that place since I watched Entrapment.

Banshee : Scala, is that the same as the great Amiga program? Is there a PC version from the same company?

Jason.

Scala runs very nice on PC..i had it and try it and its great

Drew,

Banshee is right, Scala is perfect for this. I have done some really nice installations using Scala for Christie's Hostpital, P&O Cruises, Mersey Ferries, Thomas Cook.

Scala will allow you to design a menu for touch screen or mouse, easy as pie. It can handle practically all media types, including video, audio, images, graphics, dynamic text, live information feeds, using XML it can grab info off websites and repurpose it too.

The Human interface or GUI to you and me is so easy to use and very, very powerful. There is a srcipting language underneath it but thats for boffins and the main interface does nearly everything you could ever wish for anyways!

It is a Master/Player type scenario, You produce the piece with a Master programme and deliver the results to a server which automatically lets the stand alone players know new content is available. You setup the players so they will download the new content at the most appropriate time. You can run as many player licenses across a network with other multimedia information too, hence its modern name "InfoChannel". Each can have the same content or varied content. This allows different departments to have information aimed at them, or perhaps a welcome board for their area.

You need a small suite of software to do the job but its a fantastic solution and very easy to maintain on a minute by minute or daily or weekly basis. Scheduling, advertising revenue information, news and weather feeds, it is very powerful, yet so easy to implement.

www.scala.com is the website.

People used to be able to have a desktop channel which they can dip into during the day for upto the minute news etc. Other suggestions would be Director or Flash (as suggested), but the automatic network update capabilities of Scala really do make it the top consideration.

Good luck with the project and if you need a hand drop me an email.

Best regards


IPete2.

Scala does indeed seem like a great option. The price is a big minus though. I'll have a hard time getting the boss's permission to spend over $900 for something Blitz or Flash can do already (mostly).

I would really like to get this to work in Blitzmax, if I could. I concede that my pride is making that decision for me, heh heh.

I've only got a couple of small issues with the program I've written already. When switching from one video to the next, the screen flickers very badly. Looking at Mirko's code, could anyone tell me how I might be able to fix this?

i'm not sure if i'm not missing something here, i probably am... but do you think that you have looked at carefully at the task ahead, and the solution you plan to provide...

i'm sure you are familiar with the term multi-tiered application... a secure back end with some database functionality serving a deployed client front end...

surely this would have to be factored into your decision making if the plan is to eventually deploy this app enterprise wide... and this being the case, i'm not sure if your choice of a development platform is the best here...

small projects like this usually wind up ballooning up to become more than the little demo project they started out being... considerations widen dramatically when it becomes a business deployment...

good luck... wow em eith this, and your ability to provide a solid, secure, dependable solution... and get on the payroll... as a projects manager...

then tell me how i can send my resume to you :)


--Mike

Yes, It would probably be good to go with 2 apps. One a the simple player app that goes onto the PC's or PC that displays the videos.

The other as an editor or backend, that you can use to make/add content that distributes to the players.

Drew,

Yeah I thought the price would be a factor, Scala is a lready a complete solution which has the functionality you require out of the box, which means development time is not really a factor as I could probably build this start to finish within a day.

Ok lets look at your problems currently. In Director I would do one of two things to prevent a flash at the start or end of a video clip, maybe you can try these ideas.

(1) Move the clip off screen just before a video ends, and start the video playing off screen before you bring it into position. Not sure how this would operate inside BMax.

(2) Use an underlaid first frame/last frame so when the video stops you have something to take the eye to a frozen frame. With BMax you could then fly it off screen maybe, or fade it to black quickly.

Hope this helps.

IPete2.

I would first build up a list of options for the project, then present them to your boss. He might jus go with scala, and put you in charge of implimenting it.

If is is $900 thats nothing really, compaired to the price of the hardware you will need to impliment this.

OK, I don't know Scala but I do know that in business, buying in a solution to avoid spending man hours reinventing the wheel is nearly always worth it, esp. if the solution is well proven.

i really think that Scala would be a bit of overkill... especially at this point...

doesn't win2k server have the capability to serve and deploy streaming video out of the box (multimedia server i think it's called), similar to how you'd deploy database info (sql server)...

the last i looked at this it could be deployed on the client as a com object, so IE could server as the browser, and html/asp as the devvelopment/scripting code...

you have all you need to whip up a prototype deployment app that could be viewed from any workstation on your current enterprise...

--Mike

Cool! I went to KL a couple of years ago - and the Petronas Towers are very impressive.

Pic I took
www.elliottproductions.co.uk/temp/PT.png

You might want to look at PureBASIC for this one.

What about using MMF from Clickteam? Last time I looked it seemed taylor made for these types of apps.

Later,

This all sounds exciting.

I always thought 'Kuala Lumpur' was a kind of animal.

Puki,

No thats a Push Me Pull You.

Tut!

IPete2.

Steve: how'd you take that pic, from a helicopter?

No, from the KL Tower nearby - it has a 360 degree viewing platform.

nice.

Great photo, Steve! You'll make a good professional photographer!

>I always thought 'Kuala Lumpur' was a kind of animal.

"Kuala Lumpur" in Malaysian means a muddy confluence...

Thanks Rob, not bad for a compact camera (I've got a SLR camera now).

Have you considered using igLoader for this purpose? It would enable you to show/launch different videos by using a simple web interface, you can use your existing BMax code and it will automatically handle updates and upgrades.

I mention this as I am already talking to manufacturers of embedded systems regarding kiosks etc. The are looking at igLoader for the deployment and launching of kiosk based applications.

Tim.